I assume you are talking about LotR in general and not about TTT. The FAQ #2 (listed above) says:
Yep, I’m definitely going to hate what they did to Faramir’s character.
<< Yep, I’m definitely going to hate what they did to Faramir’s character. >>
I’m willing to let them take me where they take me. I loved FotR movie, and I felt (a year ago) that any minor deviations from the book were necessary for the sake of a movie. And the 4-disk commentary has completely validated that feeling.
A book can tell you what a character is thinking; a movie has to show you (or else become very very talkative and boring.) Tolkien’s work is laden with inner struggles, and temptations, but it is extremely difficult to do that in a movie. They will necessarily have to replace some of those thoughts with activity to symbolize the inner thoughts.
My bottom line: I can shrug about things that I would have done differently if I had been involved in their conversations (like, Lothlorian should be a golden wood, not silver), but on the whole, I love what they’ve done and I’m willing to let them do more without pre-judging.
It is unclear to me that he doesn’t touch it in the foyer of Bag End while it is on the floor, he certainly comes very close.
I just watched the DVD last night, and in the scene at Bag End, I’m pretty sure Gandalf does in fact touch the Ring. But only lightly- it looks like his fingers just touch the top of it, and then he gets the flash of Sauron’s Eye. He pulls his hand back like it’s been burned, and he goes and sits by the fire. He never directly touches the Ring again. He’s careful to use tongs when he hands it to Frodo, and he’ll only touch the envelope it’s in. I think this displays Gandalf’s own struggle with the Ring- he’s afraid of it, obviously, afraid of what it can do and what he would become if he succumbed to it.
But no one other than Frodo and Bilbo actually handle the Ring in FotR: Boromir only holds the chain, and Aragorn only touches Frodo’s hand during the last scene of them together- he pushes Frodo’s fingers around the Ring, even though you hear (whispery) the voice of Sauron saying “Aragorn…”. Galadriel reaches towards it, put never makes contact. I think PJ did a good job showing how all the characters were basically afraid of touching the Ring.
And this leads back to different people’s feelings on how the story is portrayed inthe film version. Personally, I’m very happy with it. I don’t think Tolkien’s works are the sort of thing there can ever be a definitive version of; even the Tolkster himself was unsure of some of his portrayals, and he wavered back and forth on many issues over the years. (Check out the volumes of The Histry of Middle-Earth and his letters to get a better idea of this.) Everyone reading these books comes away with something different- the movie is just PJ’s version. I don’t look on it as him bogarting the journey at all.
I haven’t done the stop motion on it to see if Gandalf touches the ring, but I did do slo mo, and it is deliberately ambiguous.
In the book, Tom Bombadil also touches the ring. No effect.
But Tom Bombadil’s experience qualifies as a different kind of “no effect”, doesn’t it? Gandalf could be tempted by the ring’s power, but Bombadil would have a hard time even remembering it for any length of time.