Originally posted by: Schnieds
Jackson has mentioned for over a year that TTT will be the most changed, and FOTR and ROTK will follow much closer to the books. Translate the book word for word and not only would the movie be a little dry ( a la harry potter's exact translation...boring and uninspired i'm told) but you would NEVER EVER fit it into 3 hours unless you cut out other parts completely instead of changing them. TTT just has way too much stuff to cover.
I agree that they had to make some storyline cuts and minor changes to adapt to the movie. However, I disagree in that they did not have to make the major storyline changes. I think that speeding things up a bit, adding some extra lines / changing lines for humor and explanation is fine. But I do not think that changing major storyline plots was necessary or wise. I cannot fathom any reason for them to change Faramir, the Ent's decision, nixing the Huron's, adding 15 min. of Aragon almost dying, etc. The movie would have been better with shorter scenes of the orginal storyline, just like the rest of the movie...
Jeeze man, some of these are easy:
- investing a lot of time w/ the Ents would have been counterproductive by forcing him to introduce and develop another group of characters who, once their episode is over, disappear and are thereafter irrelevant - instead he elected to minimize the dramatic persona of the Ent in order to further focus on/develop that of Merry and Pippin. we're talking about narrative clarity here and this is a simple, salient reason for most of PJ's changes - the scattered writing of the book is ok in a written work of such length and is consistent with the epic/mythological genre Tolkien was working in, however they do NOT work in cinema. Jackson realizes this and, as this is an ADAPTATION of a book to film, he has made choices about the narrative lines/themes/characters that are most vital to the heart/spirit of the story and he has focused on them. view the additions/revisions through this lens and, like it or not/agree or not, you will see the reasoning behind ALMOST all of them.
= the wargs? two reasons - PJ thought they were cool and wanted them onscreen and it allows, in the near death experience, for him to explore the Aragorn/Arwen romance/rift.
= the Hurons would have been superfluous/confusing - to explain the distinction between Ent/Huron would have forced him to spend additional screen time to avoid massive audience confusion & to what purpose? they were a detail element that, much as I liked it in the text, would have made clunky cinema
= "shorter scenes of original storyline" wasn't really a possibilty, which should be pretty clear - nearly all of your revisions involved making the story MORE complicated which means MORE screentime for clarity
= the confusion that I DO share with you though is Faramir, but I can go a couple of different directions on this:
- it could be that PJ simply doesn't read the character of Faramir as sympathetically as I do
- diminishing his character avoids having to introduce yet ANOTHER male warrior/hero figure and prevents him from making an already teeming cast of metasupporting characters even worse (seriously, like the Ents and the Hurons, what does Faramir really DO? He's a cool character, but he's essentially a background to highlight Frodo against)
- his alteration of this episode in the film also casts Frodo as further under the ring's influence than what I expected, a decision which may be informed by how return of the king will play - which PJ knows, but we do not - I'm inclined to think that it is premature to judge to harshly here until we see #3
<shrug>
These changes are being called "major plot changes," but this is misleading:
- the only way that the change in the Ent decision process has is that it diminishes the characterization of the Ents and enhances the characterization of the Hobbits, it does not affect the action or alter the critical events of the Ent episode (the attack on Isengard)
- the Hurons served one purpose - eliminate a 2nd party of orcs - why was this in the book at all? it was NOT a plot vehicle, it was just a part of exploring the greater landscape of Middle Earth. As much as I enjoyed reading it (one of my favs) it just doesn't have a place in a film that MUST focus on the quest of the Ring in order to be any kind of good cinema
- Faramir was a 4th or 5th tier character - he has a small list of things that his character really MUST accomplish: mess up the Smeagol resurgance, fall for Eowyn and, (in my reading) to provide an opportunity to explore the changes in Frodo since the beginning - THIS is where I am curious as to what PJ is up to: in the book, Frodo shows how he has "grown" since Bree (he takes charge, speaks with authority), but PJ used this to show how the ring is extending its grip over him. Should be interesting to see how return plays out.
- "changing lines for humor" - there is LOTS of little humor in the text
I've given you lots of plausible reasons why these changes, none of which are "major storyline" changes, might have been made after only one viewing and off the cuff.
<shrug>
jeeze fellas, spend 2 seconds thinking about it before you declare there to be "no reason"