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Originally Posted by Finduilas
I agree totally. Nothing is wrong with Bombadil. Just another great character from a great writer.
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I disagree totally. Bombadil reads like an anachronism - his bizarre behaviour, his bumbling attitude, his strange speaking habits - all in all he reads more like a character from
The Hobbit than LOTR. His insertion into the tale seems entirely random and somewhat tedious, and I'd say this one of very few points where Tolkien's writing falters somewhat.
To put him into the movie? Oh come on - introducing the Old Forest, taking on Old Man Willow, entering Tom's house, the conversation, the sequence on the Barrow Downs - you're already talking ten minutes at the very least, on a character and segment that has relatively little influence on the story overall. That simply isn't worth it. The movie is already over two hours (over three hours in the extended edition) as it is. Also, showing him laughing at the Ring would destroy all the sense of danger that has been built up around it previously. Finally a man in yellow boots singing a tree to sleep is frankly ridiculous, especially when put into movies that have been praised so much for their realistic view of fantasy.
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The whole Old Forest/Barrow Downs sequence could have been an amazing dream/nightmare sequence which imparted a real sense of strangeness & mystery to movies which lacked anything of the kind.
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The movies had a sense of mystery, in many ways more than the books - at one point Gandalf mentions 'the old wisdom born out of the West' - for a movie-viewer this wouldn't make any sense as nothing is told of the downfall of Numenor in the movies, yet it helps to create a sense of mystery as to what exactly happened back then. We just tend not to notice this because as book readers we already know all the answers. Also mystery is harder to convey in movies, where things are actually shown, instead of just written about.