**The Return of the King Extended Edition**

[HCIsland]

Originally Posted by Boromir88

Yes, that is a great line, and eventhough they didn't show Denethor with the Palantir, that is a hint he had it.

Yeah, I was hoping to see a bit of the Minas Tirith palantir as well but you would have had to invest some time to make sure it didn't get confused with the Orthanc stone.

Imagine if all of a sudden Denethor just pulled it out, the first reaction from the audience would be questions like, "how'd he get that from Gandalf?". You could establish that they were different (different colours maybe), but then you would have to provide some history as to why there were more than one and how they were distributed. A wizard having a "crystal ball" is something an audience will take without explanation, but when you give one to someone else you have to then get into how he has it.

I would guess the questions Jackson and company have to ask themselves are one, how much time should we devote to a explaining secondary character and two, do we really need to have the second palantir in the film to explain events. Denethor is one of my favourite (if not the favourite) character from the book. I find him so tragic and I love how his own father shuned him in favour of another (ironically Aragorn himself in the guise of Thorongil) and now Denethor cowed by the images from the palantir is doomed treat his own son in the same way.

Obviously, all this (and more) couldn't be brought in so they decided to just take the angle that the eldest son was the favourite of Denethor and that his death has pushed him over the edge - which isn't entirely untrue. This renders the second palantir as a needless complication. This simplifies and over vilifies Denethor but I do believe that the time and energy that would have had to be put into portraying this character with the depth he has would have been prohibitive. In the end, I'm happy with Denethor's portrayal mostly because I loved John Noble's performance and I thought that feeling of despair (which I think is the most important thing to get across) was presented very well, especially with the extended scenes.

By the way, I always took the line, "do you think the eyes of the White Tower are blind", to be another reference to the Minas Tirith Palantir.

H.C.