LotR1-FotR-Seq03

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Originally Posted by mormegil

I've been thinking about the whole passage of time and think I found something that would have worked rather well. When Gandalf comes back and grabs Frodo from behind that should have been scratched and Frodo merely comes home to find Gandalf has arrived. He is elated to see Gandalf again and simply says something along the lines of "Gandalf, you have returned, it's been ages since I last saw you" Gandalf agrees, does the fire test and tells Frodo that he must leave to see Saruman. At their departure, they find Sam and Gandalf tells them to leave within a month or two. That one line would have shown some passage of time and as Gandalf leaves then we could see the sequence of the Nazgul leaving Mordor heading for the Shire.

Too subtle for PJ, though I would rather have seen your version. I can just see someone proposing your same ideas in a writing session, yet PJ saying something like, "But instead of Gandalf just sitting around, why don't we have him scare Frodo? The audience, especially those book-fans, won't see that coming..."

Anyway, as I assume that mormegil along with others didn't stay up all night, burning more than a few candles, in order to come up with a similar scene that is more logical and also true to the books, my guess is that PJ et al just chose to modify the scene in order to PJ-ify it. A small change here, but I think that as the trilogy progresses, we'll see that (1) the changes begin to grow and (2) the changes become problematic.