Grr. Return of the King makes me angry.

[barsoomcore]

Some of the parts that people called "corniest" or "more artificial" was stuff that came straight out of the books, like Faramir's "show his quality" line, or Sam's speech at the end of TTT (in the book he says it when Frodo despairs at seeing the Witch King's army).

The implications of Faramir's line of course are completely reversed in the movie because of Faramir's reversed reaction to the Ring, so I don't think you can say it's "straight from the book". And Sam's line is certainly hampered by its new position in the story, Sean Astin's terrible delivery, the heavy-handed use of music and juxtaposition of imagery to make it "more serious." In the book it's just a quiet moment between two friends, Sam being his usual sensible self; in the movie it's an epic moment that spans the world and attempts to sum up the entire situation. It can't carry the weight they try to give it.

I think that those problems in any event pale next to stuff like the Warg attack (KenM: lots of ways to provide action without inventing an episode that has no effect on the storyline other than making us worry about Aragorn for twenty minutes), Merry and Pippin "tricking" Treebeard into know what's happening in his own forest, the lack of gravity to the battles from Helm's Deep on, and the evisceration of Eowyn's stand against the Witch King. Those are the REAL problems with the latter two films, I would say.

You'll note "not having the Scouring" isn't in there.

 

[Berandor]

Well, at least Eowyn's Stand will likely be improved in the EE.

 

[EricNoah]

I like the Scouring section of the book, and of course it would be cool to see, but I understand why it's not in the film. I do think the writers did nail the key themes of the story in nearly every significant way and RotK (the film) is a great conclusion. I have my gripes but they don't warrant any real complaints for me (the slo-mo hugging on the bed scene was nearly cringe-worthy but hey ... that's just me).

 

[JimAde]

It's not just you. I found that a bit smarmy myself. But complaining about thing I don't like in these moveis is like saying "this car you just gave me isn't my favorite color."

 

[Umbran]

The problem ACTUALLY being that the WRONG story points were made the climactic moments of the film. I agree, that if you make the destruction of the Ring the climactic moment of Return of the King, you have a problem. So don't make it the climactic moment. Make it the BIGGEST moment, but that's not the same thing.

Look at the structure of Fellowship for a good example. The climactic moment is the battle with the Uruk-Hai at the end -- but the BIGGEST moment is the confrontation between the Balrog and Gandalf....

There are limits to how much one can stretch like that, though. Through the entire work, we are beaten over the head with how getting rid of the One Ring is a big deal. The fate of the world depends on it. It is basically impossible to make the trials they go through believeable unless you make the audience believe that it's about the most important thing in the world.

Having done that, you can't realistically make something else the climax, especially considering what it means personally for Sam and Frodo. Sorry. Just doesn't work.

In the books, the Scouring is not a climax. It is a bit of demonstrative exposition on the growth of the hobbits and the nature of teh world following the War of the Ring. Heck, even within the section of the book, we are given the implication that, to the four hobbits, it's not a big deal. Just some tidying up before they can settle down. It's not a strain to them in comparison to what they've already done. If the hobbits themselves aren't really under stress and tension during the Scouring, how do you sell it as a climax?

 

[barsoomcore]

Umbran: I guess I'm not being clear. OF COURSE in the movies that PJ made, you couldn't just tack on another hour of The Scouring and expect it to work. I'm trying to say that I believe there's a way to create films in which the Scouring IS the climax. The existing films are not those films, I grant you, and so the setup they provide is not going to give us what we want.

Obviously you PUT the hobbits under stress and tension. I'm not talking about "Being True To Tolkien's Vision" or anything like that. I'm saying I LIKE the Scouring and to me it's the climactic moment, the most exciting part of the whole story. In order to translate that to a movie you'd have to make a lot of choices, and some of those choices would involve changing what Tolkien wrote, because, as pretty much everyone has pointed out already, what works in a book doesn't necessarily work onscreen.

I would need to spend some more thinking time to determine exactly WHY I find it so thrilling, so rewarding, and then more thinking time to figure out how to bring it to the screen. But I think I would start such a project with exactly that end in mind, to have the hobbits leave the Shire with the intent of protecting it, and return to find that all their efforts, while not exactly in vain, still were unable to prevent the slow onset of change. That's the movie I would want to make, and so I would make choices about what to beat over my audience's head and so on keeping that in mind.

Is that clear? Arguments like, "Well but they spent the whole first two and a half movies making this impossible" aren't relevant to the point I'm trying to make, nor are arguments like, "I think the books behave in such and such a fashion." I'm talking about completely redoing the movies and I'm talking about making choices as regards to representing the source material in a cinematically powerful way that might involve changing the text of the books.

Obviously nobody's ever going to give me the money to do this, so I'm just making stuff up in my head for fun. I don't think the existing movies would have been IMPROVED by adding the Scouring -- I'm just saying I don't think it's true that it's "impossible" to make a movie that includes it. Given all the other choices PJ had made, it was a good idea to leave it out.

 

[Berandor]

Umbran: I guess I'm not being clear. OF COURSE in the movies that PJ made, you couldn't just tack on another hour of The Scouring and expect it to work. I'm trying to say that I believe there's a way to create films in which the Scouring IS the climax. The existing films are not those films, I grant you, and so the setup they provide is not going to give us what we want.

Obviously you PUT the hobbits under stress and tension. I'm not talking about "Being True To Tolkien's Vision" or anything like that. I'm saying I LIKE the Scouring and to me it's the climactic moment, the most exciting part of the whole story. In order to translate that to a movie you'd have to make a lot of choices, and some of those choices would involve changing what Tolkien wrote, because, as pretty much everyone has pointed out already, what works in a book doesn't necessarily work onscreen.

I would need to spend some more thinking time to determine exactly WHY I find it so thrilling, so rewarding, and then more thinking time to figure out how to bring it to the screen. But I think I would start such a project with exactly that end in mind, to have the hobbits leave the Shire with the intent of protecting it, and return to find that all their efforts, while not exactly in vain, still were unable to prevent the slow onset of change. That's the movie I would want to make, and so I would make choices about what to beat over my audience's head and so on keeping that in mind.

Is that clear? Arguments like, "Well but they spent the whole first two and a half movies making this impossible" aren't relevant to the point I'm trying to make, nor are arguments like, "I think the books behave in such and such a fashion." I'm talking about completely redoing the movies and I'm talking about making choices as regards to representing the source material in a cinematically powerful way that might involve changing the text of the books.

Obviously nobody's ever going to give me the money to do this, so I'm just making stuff up in my head for fun. I don't think the existing movies would have been IMPROVED by adding the Scouring -- I'm just saying I don't think it's true that it's "impossible" to make a movie that includes it. Given all the other choices PJ had made, it was a good idea to leave it out.

If Bill Gates ever gives me the billion dollars I deserve - then maybe I'll finance this.

So start drawing storyboards!

 

[barsoomcore]

How about a couple of grand for drawing lessons?

 

[Fenris]

I am surprised in all the discussion about the Scouring that no one mentioned Tolkien's blatant metaphor for his dismay at the loss of pastoralism and the rise of industrialism. For indeed that was what the hobbits were to him the ideal of a pastoral life that he pined for and saw diminshing everywhere.

But 50 years can change perspectives and as others have pointed out waht works in a book doesn't always work in a movie.

 

[Captain Tagon]

Whether they are integral to the story of the book is largely irrelevant. As moviemaking it would have been a horrible anticlimax. In a movie, the audience doesn't take to having too much stuff happen after the major climax, and doing so would make the movie end on a weak note, rather than a strong one.

Then how do you explain the last thirty minutes actually in the film? Seriously, everything after the ring getting destroyed seemed to last twice as long as the entire rest of the film combined.