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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Umbran" data-source="post: 1307025" data-attributes="member: 177">Heh.  I'm not the only one conveniently omitting things - like the fact that there was a method to that particular madness. Let us consider...Bilbo, on his adventure, came into posession of the ring, and took it home ot the shire.  Something like 77 years pass...Then comes Bilbo's 111th (and Frodo's 33) birthday.  Gandalf, having seen some very vague signs and portents, is a little suspicious, and gets Bilbo to leave the ring with Frodo.  Note that Gandalf is not yet up in arms in panic.  It's been 7 decades since he and his friends ousted the Necromancer from Mirkwood.  He's only recently gotten the idea that the Enemy may have gone back to Barad Dur.Three more years pass, as Gandalf does research, among other things.  It is during this period that he really begins to suspect what the ring is, and comes upon Gollum and finds out that the Enemy may know about the Shire.At this point, the ring has been sitting in the Shire quietly for about 80 years.  And only now the Eye may be looking towards the Shire.  If you're trying to be stealthy and stay hidden, the one thing you don't do is make sudden moves when the enemy is looking at you.  So, Frodo takes months (for two of which Gandalf is even hanging around!) to pack and leave because he's trying to not attract too much attention.  The idea is for him to fade from the public eye before he leaves the Shire entirely - so there won't be any scuttlebutt about his disappearance that might raise a spy's eyebrow, so that nobody will know anything useful if questions are asked.  Given the time that's already passed, a couple extra months don't seem particularly important, especially when time should provide cover.  If everything had gone smoothly, Frodo would have quietly slipped away to Rivendell ahead of scrutiny in the Shire.  Unfortunately, that pesky Saruman turns out to have gone bad, and louses this up, causing Frodo to delay a bit too long, so he doesn't get to leave ahead of the scrutiny.The movie compresses three years of events into mere weeks.  With that compression, of course you can't have Frodo take his time leaving.  But that's not a "mistake" in Tolkien.  That's just a change for cinematic reasons.</blockquote>

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