Jan 20 movie: Return of the King. This is the first movie of the year seen in a theater. I actually had tickets for opening night, but I was sick as wasn't able to go. Georg and I finally went with Sylvia last night. I enjoyed it a lot. Not as much as the first one, but way more than the second. (Come to think of it, that's how I felt about the Matrix movies too, although ROTK was way better than Matrix: Revolutions.)
I'm not a fanatical devotee of the books, although I have read them. Okay, many times. But I don't object on principle to all changes. Slavish authenticity just isn't possible when adapting a book to a movie, especially not with a rambling epic like Lord of the Rings. I felt like Jackson got the first movie just right: the tone was perfect, most of the characters were just as I imagined them, and the changes made sense. The second installment I found more problematic: it seemed like they jettisoned a lot of material that I wanted to see, in favor of a bunch of junk that didn't make any sense.
This time, I think they did much better. [minor spoiler alert] There was only one change that ticked me off: Frodo believing Gollum and turning his back on Sam. I guess they were trying to show how much the ring had messed with Frodo's head, but it really wasn't necessary, in my opinion, and damaged Frodo's character, made him seem gullible. On the other hand, I think they totally made the right call in dropping the stuff about the destruction of the Shire. [/spoiler]
Sylvia hadn't read the books in a long time, so it was interesting to get a fresh perspective. We agreed that it made us sad when they killed the oliphants. It wasn't their fault, they weren't evil! We also agreed on how sympathetically Gollum was portrayed. I felt glad for him that his last few moments were happy; Sylvia wished that he hadn't died, but had been rescued and redeemed! Can you imagine the hue and cry from LOTR fans if they had made a change like that.
Sylvia also noted that the movie was almost entirely a white man's story. Which is true (Eowyn is the only woman with anything to do, and the only swarthy people we see are the bad guys riding the oliphants), but this was actually much worse in the books so it didn't really bother me.
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There's a good note about the Lembas scene, and my comment on it, on dotsomething's Livejournal from a few days ago:
http://www.livejournal.com/users/dotsomething/61911.html#cutid1
This, more than any other scene, seems to piss people off about RotK. I thought it worked well, for some reasons that were clear to me in the theatre and for more reasons which didn't.
I can see Frodo sending Sam away for his protection as a possible interpretation for that scene, but not the only one or even the likeliest one. I need to think this over a bit before making any grand statements about Frodo and Sam's relationship and why that scene doesn't fit into it for me. But I'm sorry, I'm definitely not buying it as "more Tolkein than Tolkein."
One of the things Jackson's doing in the lembas bread scene is setting up the finale at Mt Doom. By having Frodo turn his back on Sam, he's re-emphasizing the power of the ring, and specifically the extent to which Frodo is under its thrall. He returns to this again in the tower, when Sam's trying to give the ring back, and again on the ascent when Frodo collapses and says he can't remember the shire anymore. I think he's constructing the film to make Frodo's finally succumbing to the ring believable.