What on earth was going through my mind when I wrote scourging of the shower? Anyone… anyone?
A ty on the whole information about everything else stuff
Aragorn never carries the shards of Narsil in the book. It’s reforged, renamed Anduril, and given to Aragorn before the Fellowship leaves Rivendell.
I suspect they’ve changed this in the movies so that it can show up dramatically (probably brought by Arwen) right before the Big Showdown[sup]TM[/sup] at Minas Tirith.
Wrong
He does indeed carry the shards in the book. The fact that his sword is broken is one of the things that convince the hobbits that he can be trusted.
I disagree with regards to the idea of Faramir making the ring seem dull in the book. I can see where you are coming from, but I found that the book established the ring’s power very well by showing its effects on people like Gollum and Frodo. (Not to mention Boromir).
Gandalf couldn’t resist it, really, he didn’t give in to temptation, but it tempted him a lot. Galadriel passed the test, but it was a big struggle. As to the rest of the Fellowship, I wouldn’t say that it was delved into very deeply (except with Sam I guess), but there is nothing ot sugest that the ring didn’t have some temptation for them.
I think that the only person who really was unaffected by the ring was Tom Bombadil and he is a special force outside the power of the ring. In my opinion, the Faramir of the book would never take the ring from Frodo or in any other way desire to possess it. In that sense the ring has no power over him, but I also believe that if he ever did use the ring then it would work its corrupting influence on him. In other words, he is intensely aware of the ring’s effect and humble enough to know he wouldn’t be able to resist it and therefore he chooses not to desire the ring.
All of this is hard to convey in a movie format, so I can understand the change even if it pisses me off.
I think PJ redeems some of this by giving Aragorn the role of Faramir when he allows Frodo to go at the end and does not take the ring. I’m not so sure it is as appropriate as leaving this role to Faramir, but it worked OK anyway.
TWDuke mentioned my only real gripe with the two LOTR films thus far: his #8, the “Nuclear Galadriel” scene in Fellowship of the Ring. In the book, Galadriel’s menace in that scene is more subtle, and in some ways, implied only by what she says. The movie overdid the effect, and what’s worse, did it really really badly. So badly that it was the only scene in the film, the first time I saw it, that literally shocked me out of the world it had created. From the opening scenes up until that point, I was utterly enchanted by the film. It took me a bit to get back into it after that scene, but I did.
For what it’s worth, I recall Jackson saying (perhaps in the DVD commentary, or in Cinefex magazine) that that particular scene’s effects was farmed out to another company, not WETA or any of the major people they worked with on most of the other scenes. I could have guessed that. 
Though I did notice the plot and character differences from book to film, they seem like relatively natural choices in adapting a long story to a slightly shorter film series, and with a little adjustment, they don’t bother me. So far, the books and the movies seem to be telling the same story, in a slightly different way.
Yes, but from the context of Zebra’s post, it sounded like he thought Aragorn should still be carrying it around during The Two Towers, which definitely takes place post-reforging.
I’m sure that someone, somewhere has written a cringeworthy fanfic with that inspiration … 