Smell this, I think it's expired...

[The Saucepan Man]

Originally Posted by Aina

Perhaps the others would have done better had they kept the same order as the books and completely separated the two stories.

Although it works well in the books, this, to my mind, would have worked shockingly in the films. Perhaps it's just that we're all used to seeing the various threads of a story develop simlutaneously, rather than sequentially, on the screen, but it seems to me that there must be a reason why this is done in films. Maybe it's because people tend to invest less time and emotion in films than in books and so audiences would forget the first storyline by the time the second came to the end. Or perhaps, as films are more immediate, it would just have confused the time-scale in people's minds. Whatever, it would have seemed very strange to have the two stories develop sequentially in the films, as they do in the book.

EDIT: A further thought. Presenting the two threads of the story sequentially on film would have produced two climaxes, in TTT at least - one halfway through the film and the other at the end.