Please read on only at your own risk. I have a question about the end of ROTK…
How much of the final couple chapters do you think Peter Jackson will show? Honestly, I am the most excited to see those. I want to see Merrie, Pippen and gang just waste up on the bad guys that have taken over the Shire. I LOVE this ending in the books and really hope the movie does it justice. I would hate an ending that was just the ring falling into Mount Doom. Any thoughts?
In the Director’s commentary on the FOTR extended DVD, I remember Peter Jackson saying that the scene with Galadriel’s mirror - where Frodo sees the Shire in ruins and enslaved - is his (Jackson’s) homage to “The Scouring of the Shire”.
ummm…yeahh…, you should spend some time over at theonering.net as well as puruse most of the LOTR threads that have been in Cafe Society for the last 2 years. The movie would be 6 hours long if it included the SOTS, not to mention that the climax of the movies would have happened 1 hour into the film. That doesn’t make for a very enjoyable experience.
And you left quite a bit out in your “-cutscene-”.
[ spoiler ]It seems very strange that Jackson would piss on his previous good work by messing up the ending. The Scouring, and the downbeat end-of-magic ending is absolutely essential to the story.[ spoiler ]
Also did the film change Saruman somewhat? I thought that in the book, he had been corrupted to evil, but was independent of Sauron . In the film he seemed to be under Saurons direct control. Or have I remembered both wrong?
nicky, don’t worry about the spoiler boxes, there’s “Major Spoilers!!!” in the title. People have been sufficiently warned. There are a bunch of threads in ATMB regarding editing.
In the books, Saruman was certainly under Sauron’s influence.
But I don’t understand the backlash to this “news”*. It would have drastically destroyed the pacing of a feature film, would have taken quite a bit of the foreshadowing that permeats the book that is nearly untranslatable to the screen, and would have abandoned most of the main characters halfway through the movie.
The Grey Havens scene is still in there, and there are certainly many other ways in which the book conveyed that “you can never go home again” that PJ can utilize.
IMHO PJ is doing the right thing by leaving out the scouring for all the above reasons. I also really appreciate him being open from more or less the start about how he just can’t do it. Anyone interested enough to already know of the scouring should also be interested enough that they have picked up on this info during the past 2 years.
Hmmm, wonder if you could make a whole film out of it? You probably could you know… Wonder if he will?
Ya, I guess you are right. I’m still disappointed though. I think the scouring shows just how much these characters have changed. I also like how Saruman meets his end…
[spoilers] from most powerful wizard to glorified land lord done in by his own man. [/spoilers] I just hope there is something similar to this.
I do spend some time at TORn but haven’t really dug into it.
The general comment was that, after the ring is destroyed, the audience has about a five to ten minute attention span. Anything else will seem anti-climactic.
And I think he’s right. I can argue all I want about the thematic need to bring evil home, to show what’s happened to the characters, to wrap things up, etc. But he’s right. Audiences won’t stand for lengthy exposition after Mount Doom (well, OK, I should say audiences won’t sit for lengthy exposition…)
There’s gonna be a freaking lot of action in RotK – remember they’ve got a lot of stuff from TWO TOWERS books that has yet to be seen in movie – the encounter with Saruman on the steps of Isengard, the palantir, Paths of the Dead, battle of Osgiliath, Denethor’s pyre, Battle of Pelenor Fields, battle at the Gates of Mordor… and Shelob, the orcs of Minas Morgul, Mount Doom… puff, puff…
Plus they gotta settle Aragorn and Arwen, Faramir, Eowyn, Grey Havens, etc.
End the film on Mount Doom. Show the credits. Let the peasants leace and the fanboys take a leak. Then show a 40 minute coda with the Scouring and the Havens…
C K Dexter Haven: It’s true that including the Scouring would make the ending over long, but it’s also true that ending the movie within five minutes of the destruction of the Ring just wouldn’t work. All the signs point to the movie ending something like 20 minutes after the Ring is destroyed.
True, a very brief wrap-up would be the standard operating procedure for a conventional two hour action movie. But LOTR is none of those things – it’s a unconventional nine hour (eleven hour with the EEs) epic war movie with a not-so-happy ending.
The audience won’t mind a long ending given the sheer number of characters and how attached they’ve become to them. Indeed, given how much the audience has invested in the characters, it’s the short ending that would seem anti-climactic.
Also, you can’t turn the audience’s emotions on a dime. Going straight from “Hooray we won!” to “Oh poor Frodo!” in five minutes isn’t feasible. To end that movie that quickly, you’d have to cut the Grey Havens, which would totally change the meaning of the story.
The biggest reason the ending will go on longer than five minutes is the sheer amount of story that has to be covered, even with the Scouring removed. You need to hit the following points:
-The wedding of Aragorn and Arwen
-The wedding of Faramir and Eowyn (this may only be in the EE)
-The Fellowship saying farewell. You don’t need the lengthy process described in the book, but you need something to wrap up Legolas & Gimli.
-A brief scene of the Hobbits returning to the Shire.
-Sam getting married. We know we’ll see this because Rose was set up in FOTR.
-Frodo suffering (and perhaps finishing Bilbo’s book, though again that may be an EE thing)
-The Grey Havens (which we know for a fact is in)
Considering the overall Grey Havens sequence will be at least five minutes, you’re looking at the credits coming some 15 to 25 minutes after the Ring is destroyed.
ummm… yeahh…: The current speculation about Saruman and Wormtongue is that …