I have to ask: what is there in there that'll actually make a movie?? There's nothing grand and climatic that occurs between The Hobbit and LotR.
[...] Gandalf and Aragorn meet for the first time. Aragorn runs around helping people. Aragorn and Arwen do some stuff. [...] The only thing I guess they could stretch into a film is Aragorn running around calling himself Thorongil and being all emo over Arwen.
That was my thought: Aragorn fights alongside the Rohirrim with Theoden's father, and then serves Gondor with Denethor's father -- and Denethor, a young man at the time, is wicked jealous. That could actually be a reasonable story,
if I had any confidence in their ability to do Denethor justice, but the way they handled him in Return of the King was an absolute travesty.
And when are you referring to Sam leaving in the films, KoshFan?
As for the visuals, that's a matter of aesthetics. Personally, I felt PJ did a fantastic job of character and having the visuals there as a tool to tell the story, not be the story. [...]
CE
I agree on some points, but Jackson gutted Frodo's strength by having Gollum come between them and by having Frodo send Sam away on the steps (Vacantlook guessed right). I liked that Frodo's sympathy for the Ring-ravaged creature came out clearly, but the story of the trip to and through Mordor is the story of Frodo leaning on Sam almost every step of the journey. The only time he ever gets angry at Sam is when Sam's holding the Ring, and he apologizes a second later. And Jackson did it to up the dramatic tension, at a point where it was hardly needed -- Shelob's Lair is intense enough as is.
Also, PJ
savaged Denethor's character, for no good reason that I can see except massive oversimplification. In the book, Denethor is noble, loves his city, and is truly wise. His preparations for Sauron's attack probably save the city, or at least allow it to hold out. His greatest weakness is his pride: pride which makes him suspicious of Gandalf, and makes him certain that he can rule Gondor better than Aragorn ever could. It also leads him to challenge Sauron through the palantir. But even then he is never conquered and corrupted by Sauron the way Saurman was -- Denethor is brought down only by despair. He thinks that the world is doomed, and while we know a few things that we don't, he knows that the Ring has gone into Mordor, and he knows that's probably suicide. He's a complex person, good but not likable, very able in many ways but in the end betrayed by his not-unfounded confidence in himself.
How does Jackson present him? As a gluttonous madman with no understanding of the situation. Gandalf and Pippin have to sneak around him to send to Rohan for help, whereas in the books Denethor called for Theoden before Gandalf had even left Rohan. I understand that things need to be simplified for a movie, but not bastardized!
As to the visuals, Jackson had a tendency to go for broke on the visuals. Sometimes it's gorgeous -- witness the beacon-lighting sequence, or the forest of pillars in Moria. But the six-minute falling-stairway sequence was ridiculous, and those six minutes could have been used much better elsewhere to deepen certain characters; Legolas skateboarding down the stairway was buffoonish; the whole fight with the Warg-riders was entirely unnecessary and distorted the whole time-sequence of the trilogy... I could go on. Oh, yes, the avalanche of skulls deserves special mention.
He went overboard on several occasions, to the detriment of the story he was telling. I'm not a book purist (many of PJ's additions were rather inspired) but I, nothing more than a novice writer with no film-making experience, could tell him that if he took fifteen minutes away from his action sequences and gave them to character development, it would have improved the movies no end.
Whoa. Marathon post, there.... anyway, if Jackson makes The Hobbit, I expect him to get three or four things egregiously wrong, and the rest will be fine, even lovely.