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Message: <blockquote data-quote="MulhorandSage" data-source="post: 568790" data-attributes="member: 751">I hated what Jackson did with Faramir.Faramir is a frigging symbol. Just as Eowyn is for women who find the idea of a warrior liberating, Faramir does it for guys who consider themselves emotionally sensitive. He's noble, he's elegaic, and he's idealistic and honorable in times of trouble - and those are good things, things worth seeing in men. Giving Faramir more flaws did *nothing* to make him a more interesting character; in fact, the Boromir connection was so underexplored that Faramir just could have been a generic soldier of Gondor and it would have worked better. Don't get me wrong, I loved the Two Towers, and most of Jackson's changes have worked for me. But downplaying Faramir's ideals because "it's more realistic for a character to have flaws" does a real disservice to the character with little real gain elsewhere in the story.Imagine turning Eowyn into a nurse with no warrior spirit and justifying it by saying "it was unealistic for a woman to be a capable warrior in this culture". Perhaps that'd even be a defensible argument. But this is fantasy, dammit; the ideals matter, and the characters matter. Jackson nailed Gollum, he captured Eowyn nicely, he did a pretty good job with Theoden (my qualms over his newly acquired resentment against Gondor aside) and he added an interesting new layer to Wormtongue by just showing him shed a tear (sometimes long expositions *aren't* necessary to get across a narrative point). I'm sorry he dropped the ball on Faramir.And I'm sorry that a few people (more elsewhere than here) have chosen Faramir as a whipping boy to spit on Tolkien's prose, especially when the Faramir sections are some of the best written in the entire trilogy; the contrasts between Frodo, Sam, and Faramir's speech styles makes it a much more accessible read than the Edoras section.I hope we'll see more of a return to Faramir's poetic form in the extended version and in _Return of the King_. At least I'm keeping my fingers crossed.Scott Bennie</blockquote>

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