Christopher Lee - not in RoTK?

[Morthoron]

Originally Posted by PrinceOfTheHalflings

I'll let Peter Jackson answer this himself:

"The problem is that the sequence was originally shot for The Two Towers, as it is in the book. Since The Two Towers couldn't sustain a 7 min "wrap" after Helm's Deep, we thought it would be a good idea to save it for the beginning of the Return of the King."

You see, that's a major problem with The Two Towers, the daftest of the three LotR movies. Rather than including Saruman's Orthanc scene, which is a natural aspect of TTT, Jackson instead wasted a 1/2 hour of film time having Aragorn falling off a cliff and then frenching his horse, and also having a degenerate Faramir dragging Frodo and Sam to Osgiliath, where Frodo offers the ring to a Nazgul (who naturally flies away rather than calling his brethren and attacking Frodo immediately). Neither the Aragorn or Faramir scene were necessary in further developing the plot, nor did either offer any interesting perspective or character development over the book's original plot.

Whereas the Saruman scene offered closure for the Saruman character (and I suppose he had to die at Orthanc because they already decided not to film the Scouring of the Shire). Honestly, the Saruman scene would have had a greater impact on the theater version TTT, rather than either the lame Aragorn or Faramir sequence. I know my appreciation of the film would have been greater if the one scene was added and the other two were edited out.

In fact, there is so much inane directorial and script manipulation in TTT that I really haven't watched it in its entirety for several years.