The White Council

Re: AICN's Moriarty Reviews LOTR Script

Tolkien and Inklings Discussion

: Seemed kind of scary to me. Was I wrong or was he intimating : that Arwen appeared before Rivendell, taking the place (I : assume) of Glorfindel's role. Also, all three hobbits caught : eavesdropping outside Bag End? Only seven months (not : seventeen years) between the Party and "Shadow of the Past"? : Theoden's home is Helm's Deep?

Some compression is necessary, although some of the things Moriarty reveals are not defensible:

   From this point on, the writers wisely focus all the action on   the Ring. Bilbo vanishes, leaving Bag End to Frodo's care.   Gandalf warns Frodo to hide the Ring carefully, only to show up   seven months later, dirty, exhausted, dishevelled. He knows the   true nature of the Ring now, and his explanation to Frodo does   a wonderful job of filling us in without burying us. Jackson   and company seem to have learned their lesson from the   adaptation of DUNE, where the exposition was so dense that   Universal actually handed out glossary guides with each ticket   purchased. Everything in these scripts is handled with a   feather touch.. 

Well, I wish that were true. There is no reason to replace Tolkien's seventeen years with "seven months later" in the script. Hopefully this will be corrected in the current script, as it will only lead to irrefutable criticisms.

: Maybe I'm being nitpicky, and maybe there are things that will : be corrected with the new scripts. I hope so. I will never : understand why filmmakers feel they have to redo the book. : It's just not neccesary.

That's not fair. There is no way the book can be turned into a workable movie script without some changes. Wholesale deletions (such as the disappearance of Bombadil) are, IMO, regrettable but preferable to changing the history the way Moriarty implies a MAJOR point is changed (see above).

I won't guess whether Arwen has something to do with confounding the Witch-king. It would certainly weaken the story if she did, but I have long expected that there would be differences between the films and the book -- it's an adaptation, after all, and it's Peter Jackson's adaptation. In a way, it's his story -- his version of the story. If you or I were to describe the book to a friend and attempt to provide visual cues, we would undoubtedly tell widely divergent stories.