There are some things that were changed in Hollywood fashion, but not that much, in my oppinion... I miss Tom Bombadil, and as you said Arwen is much too exposed. Nevertheless, it is very close to the book.

Mario M.

Maki, i agree with you. i guess i am too spoiled by reading Professor Tolkien's works and having a good memory to remember all the particulars of the books. i own the movie on DVD and watched it, too bad Mr. Jackson was limited by time.

Chris Pig no.1

Thats the problem you run into with movies. You are limited by time and money. I'd be all for a seven hour movie if they'd put it together but nobody would go for it. Because of that you will generally find movies made about a book are lacking in more than one respect. That's why it's my personal opinion that people would be hard pressed to find a less enriching experience than reading-something I think people don't do enough of.

Come on Arwen was not too exposed!!! #:-)

Whilst I agree here, any movie cannot match the books excatly, and by combining characters and simplifiying things the movie can still tell the story well and be enjoyable. I have no problems with some of the small details being wrong, after all they are going to have to be!




I disagree here quite a bit. I find that Bombadil adds nothing to the story, and when one reads the books the story does not suffer if you completly skip the Bombadil parts. I know that there are two camps here, those for and against Bombadil, but I'm most assuredly in the latter camp.




No matter what his motiviations (ie, was he tricked or not), Saruman was still allied to Sauron. The first book does not detail their relationship to any great extent, nor should the first movie. That all comes later.




Butcher? No, not at all. The movie is very close to what I imagined from reading the books 6-7 times previously. Damn, even Dad (another huge fan) loved the movie, and that was the first he had seen on the big screen for as long as I can remember. Jackson tells a great story, and translates Tolkien's work (with minor surgery) into cinema-speak very well. Was there nitpicks? Sure, there is a bunch of little things that weren't in the book, but still, the movie is an astoundingly good representation.

Compare how close Jackson is to the text with this trilogy, then compare movies like Starship Troopers to the text they are based on. Now that is butchering.

Cheers,
Linz

Hear hear, Linz! I agree with you completely!
One thing I thought when reading Fellowship was, "And Tom Bombadil adds what to the story?" I thought it dulled the danger of the Black Riders a bit... "Help, we flee black riders... Let us go and sing happy tunes in a stranger's house!"
But aside from that, I thought the book awesome! I'm a little more than halfway through The Two Towers now :-) and I've gotta say , if this one translates to film as well as the first one, we are in for a real treat!
The battle of Helm's Deep... Gandalf vs. Saruman... Ents vs. Isengard....
The only thing I wish we'd seen a bit more of in the movies is the relationship between Legolas and Gimli. They start out distrusting each other, and by the middle of TTT they're good friends.
But, until the December 18th arrival of The Two Towers I'll have to be content with the Fellowship of the Ring Special Extended Edition DVD... November 12th!

YodaMan

Hmm....Give me the Old Forest, hobbit-gobbling Willow trees, mythical creatures, Barrow-Wraiths, and found weapons, over a quick hop skip and jump to Bree any day. As much as I love what Peter Jackson did in re-creating the World of Tolkien so far, I still felt somewhat cheated that these scenes were left out. All to make some studio time-watcher happy that a 3+ hour movie wouldn't be 8:26 longer! (or whatever)

He should have bucked them and at least shot those scenes so they could be added back later. THEN we would have a truly complete accounting of The Red Book.

Cheers,
Jim

I don't know how much they could have done that in the movie, the dwarf-elf distrust runs deep and long. In The Hobbit for instance, this can be seen by the dwarves and Bilbo being locked up in the Elf-King's palace.

Common mythology states that the tension between the two races is due to either ideological or territorial matters, I believe it's the former. The elves outlook on life is dramatically different to the dwarven outlook - as is to be expected. Hence the wars that they have fought.

I thought that the scene where we are introduced to the free people showed the tension between the two races very well - however like yourself I believe that some more could have been done. I think that in the fight where Pip and Merry are kidnapped and the following chase of the Orcs is where Legolas and Gimli finally lose all distrust and become like brothers. Witness the reactions of the two at Helm's Deep.

Even though more on the elf-dwarf relationship would be facinating, it would quickly becoming nothing like LOTR, and something more akin to a documentry. Something I would gladly watch, but not as part of LOTR.

Cheers,
Linz