[HCIsland]

From the horse's mouth.<P>This is from the fan club magazine. Here's a <A HREF="http://www.theonering.net/rumour_mill/rpg/viewer/moviediscussion/3E9E9FE90002F2FB.html" TARGET=_blank>link</A> to the post at OneRing. It's Jackson on why they made the changes to Faramir.<P>"The thing with Faramir is that there are a few contradictions with his character that we felt would weaken the thrust and narrative tension of the film. You also have to bear in mind that when I say 'It would weaken it' we're thinking of the response of a general audience - people who are not familiar with the book or people who have forgotten the book because they read it a long time ago. We are really trying to make the movie work for those people as well. <P>We felt that the problem with Faramir's character that was presented to us straight out of the pages of the book was the fact that he is able to shrug off the Ring too easily. There is no conflict with Faramir. He essentially captures the Hobbits very, very quickly [and] in the book, he turns around and lets them go. He has an opportunity to take the Ring, but he shrugs it away with seeming ease... <P>The simple premise that our movie hinges on is this: The Ring is so potently powerful that anyone who comes into contact with it is going to, in one way or another, be affected by it. We felt that Faramir's attitude would, in the minds of the cinema audience - and certainly the one that was unfamiliar with J.R.R. Tolkien - [give the feeling that] the Ring had suddenly lost its potency and its strength. <P>There were very few other scenes in The Two Towers that showed the strength of the Ring. The Fellowship was full of moments when the Ring was affecting people - at the Council of Elrond or with Boromir or even Bilbo at the beginning. Yet, in The Two Towers, the Ring is hardly featured at all. Frodo doesn't put it on; he doesn't come across anyone other than Faramir. We felt it would basically contradict everything we tried to establish in The Fellowship of the Ring [if] our only 'Ring encounter' in The Two Towers [was] one that is effectively shrugged away. <P>Some of the essense of Faramir's character, at that point, had to be changed, we felt, for the film.... We also wanted to make his capturing of the Hobbits have potency; we didn't want it to be so easy for them to be let go. We didn't change it to the point that the Hobbits sneak out and escape - Faramir does make the decision to let them go. We gave Faramir that decision; we didn't take that away from him. But we stretched it out so that, essentially, they were captured for longer, and there was more tension involved." <P>H.C.