From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: Killer Bs Discussion <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Killer Bs Discussion) Subject: Re: Two Towers Extended DVD Date: Tue, 02 Dec 2003 18:28:56 -0500
In a message dated 12/2/2003 12:00:21 AM Eastern Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
> Now they've got to spend a good bit of time finishing book two in movie > three and I'm sure they'll have to axe a bunch of stuff out of that to > make it short enough. No Scouring of the Shire, I'll bet, or if it's > there it will be severely truncated. > > If I had the patience to watch it again I could probably > write a much > longer and more specific rant, but you get the idea. > > Stow rant mode...
I actually think that axing much of the stuff in book 3 after the ring is destroyed was poor. Almost half of the book was therefore an anti-climax. The dire things happening to the shire seemed artificial, an anti-industrial rant that made it clear to me where Tolkein's sympathies lay. I don't agree with the view that a bucolic agrarian culture is pure and an industrial culture is bad. The pre-industrial societies were long on inequality routine cruelty and short on democracy fairness and hope. Tolkien's view was a fantasy and a nasty one at that. Most of this was not overt in the books so I could ignore this but I will not be unhappy to see some of this stuff disappear from the film. I thought TT was great and the extended version even better. I am not believer in absolute fealty to the source in any case so I took the movies on their own merit
I'm really of two minds about The Scouring of the Shire being taken out. On the one hand, Tolkien uses it to show that bad things were happening already even as far away as the Shire, and uses it to show how all of the adventures the hobbits went on really changed them. It shows the consequences of their actions and their ability to apply all they learned without having Aragorn or Gandalf or anyone else around to bail them out or point them in the right direction. I guess I liked the Scouring of the Shire for the same reasons I liked the fifth season of Babylon 5.
On the other hand, from a film perspective, it would have seemed tacked on, not really having the same dramatic weight as the stuff that happened before it. With a big epic movie like this, you want to end with the big victory and not with a "small" victory. Scouring of the Shire could have been a big letdown. Of course, a lot of people thought the fifth season of Babylon 5 was a letdown...
Reggie Bautista
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