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Message: <blockquote data-quote="barsoomcore" data-source="post: 1893460" data-attributes="member: 812">Well, one of us is definitely being unclear. I thought I stated earlier that I disagree with this basic premise. Hence all your argument based upon it is for naught.My whole point is that IF you want to include the Scouring, you have to make THAT the climax of the story. HOW you go about doing that I don't exactly know, but I refuse to believe it's outright impossible.Sez you. I say it ought to be a moment of high cinematic excitement, but it doesn't have to be the climax. Again, consider FotR (the movie). No question that the Balrog is bigger and badder and more exciting cinematically than the battle at the end. It's the BIG moment of the film -- that whole sequence from the tomb of Balin to the escape from Moria beggars everything that comes after it.Which is perfectly fine. Lots of very successful films follow this pattern (just about all of Hitchcock's, for example. He always put his big moments in the middle of the film). Indeed, it works perfectly well in FotR.Do you use the term "spin doctor" to describe people who see things differently than you? Which I have to admit is a funny sort of position for someone who says in their very next post:I'm NOT talking about "spin doctoring" -- I just happen to hold a different opinion about what's important about the book than you. To suggest that your interpretation is the ONLY way in which a successful film could EVER be made is a pretty strong position to hold. I'd want to see some weighty evidence before I gave such an opinion a shred of respect. Especially one couched in such a dismissive manner. And especially one followed by the admission that there is no objective means of determining the superior interpretation.About revealing Eowyn during RotK: it is a basic truism of cinema that suspense is always preferable to surprise. Hitchcock figured this out decades ago. So the correct play, cinematically, is for US (the audience) to know all along that Dernhelm is Eowyn. Keeping other characters in the dark is fine and dandy, but your suspense is heightened by giving the audience information the characters don't possess. Basic cinematic practice. Trying to pretend it wasn't Eowyn would have been counter-productive.It's different for books. But in movies, always go for the suspense.About Tolkien's comments on the books: There is no reason to consider an author a privileged commentator on their own work. The idea that what matters is the AUTHOR'S intent is hogwash. I mean, if you're curious, it's INTERESTING, fair enough. But when we decide what we love about a work, we are not obligated to follow the author's instructions in that regard. And the adapting of a novel to the screen is necessarily a process in which the adaptor takes what they love about the story and turns it into cinema. And in that process, other works written by the author are not necessarily going to provide useful input. It might be interesting to consult them, it might generate good ideas, but ultimately what makes a good film is independent of what the author of the book said was important.Authorial intent? *SNAP* for authorial intent! <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" />Finally, I must say that I find it interesting how people feel the need to declare that they won't let other people's opinions sway their own, and indeed attack people for holding opinions different than theirs. I happen to enjoy a pretty high level of critical debate on cinema. I don't mean to put anyone's nose out of joint or make them feel like they need to defend their choices. I just like talking about what went wrong in a film -- it's almost always more interesting than talking about what went right.I don't think people are stupid because they disagree with me. It's unfortunate that this notion is so strongly put forward in our society -- that somebody has to be right and somebody has to be wrong whenever two people disagree -- and even worse, that it's proof of superior worth to be right rather than wrong.A big part of my day-to-day job is convincing people that it's okay to be wrong. It's a tough struggle, let me tell you.</blockquote>

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