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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jeremy Ackerman-Yost" data-source="post: 1883765" data-attributes="member: 4720">That's pretty consistent with their previous behavior:GANDALF: "You're carrying around the most dangerous artifact in existence, forged of pure EV-IL."FRODO: "Well, I guess I should get moving sometime in the next couple weeks, then, eh?"GANDALF: "Well, there's no real hurry.  You should futz around here for a few months at least.  Give your dim friend Peregrine time to catch on."For me, personally, that was the biggest leap in the entire book.  Dwarves, dragons, nazgul, no problem.  But that level of stupidity is absurd.And, yes, I know that is neither the original dialogue, nor a reasonable approximation.  It is, in fact, an entirely unreasonable facsimile that nonetheless illustrates a moment where Gandalf's extreme age must have overcome the fact that he was immortal, leading to perhaps the most drastically senile decision on record.In your opinion, of course.  What is "important about the books" depends greatly on your point of view.  For some people, they hit the high points precisely.  For some, (like me) they were very, very close.  For others, it seems that they missed entirely.  There are so many things going on in the books, anyway, that there's enormous room for individual differences and interpretation.  There is no one thing (or even set of things) that is going to be equally important to all people.Given that, I think Jackson and Co. did a pretty good job of hitting the themes and moments that resonate with most people.  Of course, following Amal Shukup's spot-on post, I have to concede that they dropped the ball a bit with that scene.  However, they handled the Charge of the Rohirrim so well, (my favorite moment of reading or movie-watching, EVAR) that I'm willing to forgive.Point taken.However, it has been positioned, packaged, and sold as a novel.  Arguably, Tolkien himself would have preferred a different label, but a novel it remains.  And within the (justifiably applicable) bounds of that form, it has problems.I've always felt that LotR was an incredible story hampered at times by Tolkien's dreadful lapses of writing and redeemed by his occasional triumph.  Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that it is hampered more by its form, with moments unsuited to the form and moments where he manages to transcend it.  Certainly, viewing it as a Medieval Romance or epic of that type improves my ability to accept the Scouring.  Doesn't help much with the several metric tons of exposition he drops in a couple places for 100 pages at a time in Fellowship, though.  Sorry.  I have to chalk that up as a mistake in any form.</blockquote>

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