# LOTR: Why no "Scouring of the Shire"? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [December 18, 2006, 3:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lotr-why-no-scouring-of-the-shire/384635 "2006-12-18T15:32:16Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![tagos](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bbe5ce/32.png) [@tagos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tagos)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2006, 12:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lotr-why-no-scouring-of-the-shire/384635/41 "2006-12-19T12:09:36Z")
[QUOTE=Wendell Wagner] It’s about the fact that Jackson grew up making his own films. [/QUOTE] And you pull your rant out of THAT ass? :rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2006, 1:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lotr-why-no-scouring-of-the-shire/384635/42 "2006-12-19T13:09:13Z")
[QUOTE=4everkid] 1. Merry & Pippin were reduced to mere, comic-relief sidekicks. [/QUOTE] Yeah, when Pippin sang that song to Denethor, it was comedy gold. I nearly bust a gut laugh…oh, wait, no I didn’t, I bawled my eyes out. Not a mere sidekick at all, no. As to the OP - on a simple level, the Scouring serves to wrap up the loose ends of Saruman & Wormtongue, as well as drive home the point that things have changed for the adventurers. Well, as anyone who’s seen the ExtEd knows, Jackson dealt with the problem of Saruman & Grima as loose ends differently (but still plausibly), and he does a very subtle job of showing the returned Hobbits as different in the pub scene at the end, just in the looks they share. Plus, as noted, he pays homage to the Scouring in _Fellowship_’s Mirror scene. **Walter** , Jackson may only have read the book twice (which definitely makes him a fan, BTW) , but he wasn’t the sole (or even, IMHO, the chief) scriptwriter. I think the two ladies were bigger Tolkien nuts, Philippa certainly came across as a bigger fan than Peter. ---
**Author:** ![Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skald_the_Rhymer)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2006, 2:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lotr-why-no-scouring-of-the-shire/384635/43 "2006-12-19T14:01:39Z")
:: takes a Valium:: I have no idea what you are talking about. No live-action film adaptation of _Lord of the Rings_ was ever completed. Peter Jackson managed to get through the first two volumes, but during the third he was … um … beaten to death a mutant dung beetle. Yeah, that’s it. Mutant dung beetle. :: takes another Valium :: ---
**Author:** ![RikWriter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/49beb7/32.png) [@RikWriter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RikWriter)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2006, 2:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lotr-why-no-scouring-of-the-shire/384635/44 "2006-12-19T14:10:21Z")
[QUOTE=Skald the Rhymer] :: takes a Valium:: I have no idea what you are talking about. No live-action film adaptation of _Lord of the Rings_ was ever completed. Peter Jackson managed to get through the first two volumes, but during the third he was … um … beaten to death a mutant dung beetle. Yeah, that’s it. Mutant dung beetle. :: takes another Valium :: [/QUOTE] I’m thinking you’re taking the wrong drugs, dude. ---
**Author:** ![Menocchio](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9de053/32.png) [@Menocchio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Menocchio)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2006, 2:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lotr-why-no-scouring-of-the-shire/384635/45 "2006-12-19T14:54:29Z")
[QUOTE=Skald the Rhymer] :: takes a Valium:: I have no idea what you are talking about. No live-action film adaptation of _Lord of the Rings_ was ever completed. Peter Jackson managed to get through the first two volumes, but during the third he was … um … beaten to death a mutant dung beetle. Yeah, that’s it. Mutant dung beetle. :: takes another Valium :: [/QUOTE] Can I just interject here and say how tired I am of this joke. Also, there was a second Highlander movie, and multiple sequels after that. They all sucked. Deal with it. Anyway, I agree with the general consensus that the Scouring simply wouldn’t work in a film. You can’t follow a grand battle against the ultimate evil with a little battle against an already broken smaller evil, no matter how thematically important. The pacing of the end of ROTK was already pretty tortured, and I say that as a big fan of that film. ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2006, 3:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lotr-why-no-scouring-of-the-shire/384635/46 "2006-12-19T15:31:46Z")
[QUOTE=Wendell Wagner] It’s about the fact that Jackson grew up making his own films. [/QUOTE] And what does that have to do with anything else you’ve claimed? ---
**Author:** ![Anaamika](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/5f9b8f/32.png) [@Anaamika](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Anaamika)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2006, 3:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lotr-why-no-scouring-of-the-shire/384635/47 "2006-12-19T15:48:45Z")
You can add me to the list of people who hated the Scouring in the book. Oh, I understood the point of it but it was unneccessarily tacked-on and I was glad to see it cut. I think the part is somewhat well-written but it’s ridiculous in my eyes and I agree on the stupid name Sharky. Let me go on and class myself as a complete heathen and say I also don’t care much for Tom Bombadil. I also don’t think Tolkien is really that stupendous of a writer. Sure, he had some truly phenomenal ideas, but getting them across in print? Eh. I don’t think the movies were the end-all be-all but I am grateful _someone_ made them, and made them grand and overarching and did what they could to make them beautiful. I think that no matter who made them there would have been changes and tons of people would have critized. I think Jackson did an excellent job of making them true to the feel of Tolkien and still making them sellable. I think a whole lot of new people were introduced to LOTR and many people read the books that never would have. To me, that’s good enough. As for dialogue, quite frankly, I don’t think much of Tolkien’s dialogue. Yeah, people always talk like they do in the books, with hugely grand pronouncements that take up paragraphs and sometimes pages, with no breaks and no one ever says anything simple. And then they stop to eat. Please don’t think I didn’t like the books! I love them. I just don’t revere them. ---
**Author:** ![Dunderman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ecb155/32.png) [@Dunderman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dunderman)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2006, 4:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lotr-why-no-scouring-of-the-shire/384635/48 "2006-12-19T16:01:32Z")
[QUOTE=Anaamika] I also don’t think Tolkien is really that stupendous of a writer. [/QUOTE] He wasn’t. He was really, really badly in need of an editor. That he managed to get his vision through to so many readers anyway is a testament to the power of the worlds he created. I loved the Scouring in the book, and Tom Bombadil, and everything else that seemed strange or tacked-on or pointless or dramaturgically incorrect, because those things made the world that much more _real_. In the real world, sometimes things happen that aren’t connected to anything else. In the real world, you don’t kill the bad guy and live happily ever after. You kill the bad guy and life goes on much as it has this past age. But I also realize that those things (well, the Scouring anyway; Bombadil could have worked at least as well as the Grey Havens) would not have worked in the movie. It would have been nice on the Extended Edition, though, but that would have been financially impossible. I doubt a single person who now didn’t get the Extended Edition would have done so just for the Scouring. ---
**Author:** ![Ludovic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7ab992/32.png) [@Ludovic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ludovic)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2006, 4:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lotr-why-no-scouring-of-the-shire/384635/49 "2006-12-19T16:16:24Z")
[QUOTE=Priceguy] I doubt a single person who now didn’t get the Extended Edition would have done so just for the Scouring. [/QUOTE] I didn’t. I would have if the Scouring were included. ---
**Author:** ![Sunrazor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/2acd7d/32.png) [@Sunrazor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sunrazor)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2006, 4:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lotr-why-no-scouring-of-the-shire/384635/50 "2006-12-19T16:39:57Z")
[QUOTE=saoirse] I read a rundown of what was cut from the theatrical release of the LOTR movies Either Newsweek or Entertainment Weekly). Some were mentioned as having been cut from the movie, but that they would be on the DVD. For the scouring, it said, “Jackson always hated this part of the book. Don’t look for it on the DVD.” [/QUOTE] There were all kinds of good reasons for putting this in the book, most of them metaphorical and allegorical. Unlike Jackson, I liked this part of the book because it brought home the extent to which the evil had spread, and the need for good people to take action against creeping evil. It also allowed the heroes to be heroic in their hometown – remember, nobody from the Shire saw any of their exploits. In literary form, the scouring works on several levels. In the movie, however, it just wouldn’t work. Remember, movies have to be pigeonholed in the viewer’s mind, and LOTR was pigeonholed as an action epic. Audiences expect the depth of a teaspoon in action epics, and Peter Jackson excels at meeting audiences’ expectations. My only disappointment was making Arwen the love interest for Aragorn rather than Eowyn, as Tolkein had. It makes more sense to strengthen the alliance of Rohan and Gondor, but no sense for an elven princess to give up her immortality. But Jackson is a filmmaking genius, not a Tolkien geek, and as brawny, fun cinema, LOTR is as good as or better than Star Wars. ---
**Author:** ![Autumn\_Almanac](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/d26b3c/32.png) [@Autumn\_Almanac](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Autumn_Almanac)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2006, 4:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lotr-why-no-scouring-of-the-shire/384635/51 "2006-12-19T16:49:29Z")
[QUOTE=Sunrazor] It also allowed the heroes to be heroic in their hometown – remember, nobody from the Shire saw any of their exploits. [/QUOTE] I actually liked the way Jackson flipped this around. The Shire remained unchanged, but the four returned hobbits can’t fit in to simple and carefree Shire life anymore after all they’ve seen and done. A nice bittersweet touch that echoed Bilbo’s feelings at the beginning of the first film, IMO. ---
**Author:** ![RogueRacer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/7ab992/32.png) [@RogueRacer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RogueRacer)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2006, 4:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lotr-why-no-scouring-of-the-shire/384635/52 "2006-12-19T16:50:28Z")
[QUOTE=Sunrazor] My only disappointment was making Arwen the love interest for Aragorn rather than Eowyn, as Tolkein had. It makes more sense to strengthen the alliance of Rohan and Gondor, but no sense for an elven princess to give up her immortality. [/QUOTE] Any chance you could clear up your meaning on these sentences? I don’t remember Aragorn shagging Eowyn in the books either, so I’m guessing I’m reading it wrong. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2006, 4:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lotr-why-no-scouring-of-the-shire/384635/53 "2006-12-19T16:55:41Z")
[QUOTE=Sunrazor] My only disappointment was making Arwen the love interest for Aragorn rather than Eowyn, as Tolkein had. [/QUOTE] What The…? Did you actually read the books? ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2006, 5:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lotr-why-no-scouring-of-the-shire/384635/54 "2006-12-19T17:04:45Z")
[QUOTE=Sunrazor] In the movie, however, it just wouldn’t work. Remember, movies have to be pigeonholed in the viewer’s mind, and LOTR was pigeonholed as an action epic. Audiences expect the depth of a teaspoon in action epics, and Peter Jackson excels at meeting audiences’ expectations. [/QUOTE] Does he? Many of Jackson’s other works have been disappointments. “King Kong” was not nearly the hit they’d hoped. “The Frighteners” didn’t go the trade they’d hoped for that, either. Really, Jackson’s resume is not long on big time successes aside from the sleeper hit “Heavenly Creatures” and, of course, LOTR. > [@](#): > > My only disappointment was making Arwen the love interest for Aragorn rather than Eowyn, as Tolkein had. Might wanna dust the books off again. ---
**Author:** ![Jimson\_Jim\_1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/9fc348/32.png) [@Jimson\_Jim\_1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jimson_Jim_1)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2006, 5:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lotr-why-no-scouring-of-the-shire/384635/55 "2006-12-19T17:05:25Z")
[QUOTE=mrklutz] I thought that Jackson should have included a clip on the DVD that showed the hobbits scrubbing away at a bathroom. Pippin: “Why are we doing this?” Merry: “Because the fans want to see the Scouring of the Shower. Keep scrubbing!” [/QUOTE] Apparently this is far to serious a conversation for jokes but I loved that, damn near spat coffee on my monitor. It would make a perfect easter egg on the extended DVD’s. A joke only the Tolken geeks would get or even search for. For the record, I would have liked to seen it in the extended DVD. It completed the story arc for the hobits. ---
**Author:** ![saoirse](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/5daacb/32.png) [@saoirse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/saoirse)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2006, 5:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lotr-why-no-scouring-of-the-shire/384635/56 "2006-12-19T17:05:52Z")
[QUOTE=MrDibble] What The…? Did you actually read the books? [/QUOTE] Why? Is it all that different from the slashfic versions? ---
**Author:** ![Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skald_the_Rhymer)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2006, 8:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lotr-why-no-scouring-of-the-shire/384635/57 "2006-12-19T20:03:19Z")
[QUOTE=Menocchio] Can I just interject here and say how tired I am of this joke. Also, there was a second Highlander movie, and multiple sequels after that. They all sucked. Deal with it. [/quote] Actually I was mocking myself, not the movies. Hence the druggie reference. > [@](#): > > Anyway, I agree with the general consensus that the Scouring simply wouldn’t work in a film. You can’t follow a grand battle against the ultimate evil with a little battle against an already broken smaller evil, no matter how thematically important. The pacing of the end of ROTK was already pretty tortured, and I say that as a big fan of that film. I’m torn here. I don’t particularly like ROTK the movie, but not because (or not simply because) of its variances from the Holy Writ, but I agree that including the Scouring of the Shire would have been an enormous mistake. The movie was best in the spots when Jackson had someone sitting on his inner fanboy and remembered he was making a movie, not a transcript. ---
**Author:** ![Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skald_the_Rhymer)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2006, 8:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lotr-why-no-scouring-of-the-shire/384635/58 "2006-12-19T20:06:18Z")
[QUOTE=Anaamika] I also don’t think Tolkien is really that stupendous of a writer. Sure, he had some truly phenomenal ideas, but getting them across in print? Eh. [/QUOTE] Only my stupendous love for you keeps my head from exploding at this statement. Obviously I cannot do anything to YOU, so I must dispatch the genetically-engineered, etc. howler monkeys to ::throws dart at spinning globe:: New Zealand. The suffering of the Maori is on your head. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2006, 8:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lotr-why-no-scouring-of-the-shire/384635/59 "2006-12-19T20:07:49Z")
[QUOTE=saoirse] Why? Is it all that different from the slashfic versions? [/QUOTE] Well, Frodo gets a lot more action in the Secret Diaries, I can say that for sure… ---
**Author:** ![saoirse](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/5daacb/32.png) [@saoirse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/saoirse)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2006, 9:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lotr-why-no-scouring-of-the-shire/384635/60 "2006-12-19T21:06:58Z")
[QUOTE=MrDibble] Well, Frodo gets a lot more action in the Secret Diaries, I can say that for sure… [/QUOTE] So you’re telling me that no future DVD release will include the scene with Frodo, Merry, Pippin and Galadriel. I think I just saved myself $60. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lotr-why-no-scouring-of-the-shire/384635.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lotr-why-no-scouring-of-the-shire/384635.md?page=4)