LOTR:TTT Extended Edition News.

[Merlion]

I think what he was trying to say is Gandalf would likely have alerted them since he saw the trees being cut down etc
Making sense aside it was a total departure from the book....Treebeard had known what was happening as far as the trees for some time.

 

[Celtavian]

Re

The change to the Ents was very disappointing. Storywise, TTT was not as good as FotR. The battle scenes pretty much carried the second movie. I was rather disappointed with the changes, but I can live with them.

 

[RangerWickett]

So, forgive me, it's been a few years since I read the books, but what originally caused the Ents to march on Orthanc? In the book, apparently, Treebeard knew what was going on, so why didn't the Ents attack even before the Hobbits came? And why did they attack later?

 

[shilsen]

So, forgive me, it's been a few years since I read the books, but what originally caused the Ents to march on Orthanc? In the book, apparently, Treebeard knew what was going on, so why didn't the Ents attack even before the Hobbits came? And why did they attack later?

Treebeard makes the decision while discussing the situation with Merry and Pippin in his home, and actually does so in quite a "hasty" fashion. Even though he already knows about some of the actions of Saruman, the hobbits tell him more about it and esp. its context in the bigger picture. And that is what spurs Treebeard to do something. He realises that "something very big is going on", and even though he cannot do anything about Mordor, at least he can take care of Saruman. Ents don't usually care about things which don't directly involve them, which is why Treebeard has to persuade the others, and he only does that due to the hobbits' information. As Gandalf says later, it is the advent of the hobbits into Fangorn that starts the ents on their warpath.

 

[Bob Aberton]

I actually liked it better the way the movie handled it (I must be some sort of heretic, heh...). In the book you get:

Treebeard: Mumble, mumble, hoom, hom, mumble...

The hobbits: blah blah blah blah...

Treebeard: Y'know, I think you're right, after all. Let's go.

In the movie, you get that powerful image of the Ents, the trees incarnate, emerging, dumfounded, to mourn over their fallen brethren, amidst an ash-choked wasteland. It gives a more cinema-genic motivation than a long conversation between Treebeard and the hobbits.

 

[Michael Tree]

In the movie, you get that powerful image of the Ents, the trees incarnate, emerging, dumfounded, to mourn over their fallen brethren, amidst an ash-choked wasteland. It gives a more cinema-genic motivation than a long conversation between Treebeard and the hobbits.

I'm sure that's exactly why Jackson changed it. It's not as true to the original, but the original would be bad filmmaking, yet more dull talking and debate in the middle of a movie filled with quite enough talking and debate.

In the book the ents isolationism is a major theme, which is actually shown better the way Jackson writes it than it would if it were more faithful. The first rule of filmmaking is "show don't tell," and what Jackson did was show the ents being conservative and slow, but eventually rising out of it in anger and determination, which is exactly what happened in the books.

 

[shilsen]

I actually liked it better the way the movie handled it (I must be some sort of heretic, heh...)

...

It gives a more cinema-genic motivation than a long conversation between Treebeard and the hobbits.

I don't think you're a heretic. You just make a really nice point about the difference between different genres. The book scene works better for a book than if Tolkien had used what Jackson did in the movie. But it would have been a lot more difficult to pull off in the film, and would probably not have worked as well. I've spoken to a lot of people who hadn't read the book and so they didn't notice anything weird about the movie version. Neither did I, but then I didn't expect the movies to follow the book exactly. A lot of people did, so the movie changes upset them.

 

[Eridanis]

Just read that the release dates for TTT are August 26th (for the theatrical version) and November 18th (for the Extended version).

 

[dravot]

In the movie, you get that powerful image of the Ents, the trees incarnate, emerging, dumfounded, to mourn over their fallen brethren, amidst an ash-choked wasteland. It gives a more cinema-genic motivation than a long conversation between Treebeard and the hobbits.

It also lets the Hobbits do something, and in a clever, Hobbit-like fashion.

 

[reutbing0]

Just read that the release dates for TTT are August 26th (for the theatrical version) and November 18th (for the Extended version).

Cool ! Thank you for posting this.