Well, i'll always have the books - The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King Reviews

In our times of flash over substance it is not surprising that a movie of this ilk would woo the sheep and would be elevated to a cinematic masterpiece. After the first two movies, I started to develop a theory that peter jackson and his cohorts didn't actually read the books. This inkling was strenghtened by the third movie. Instead, it is my contention that he was cleaning a barn one day and found a dog-eared copy of the cliff-notes and decided to fill in the rest. As someone who has been reading the books off and on for 20 years, I was appalled by the constant and unecessary departures from the book. I can forgive many things. The removal of Tom Bombadil from the story is reasonable. Skipping the incident at the barrow-downs is perfectly understandable. I could even accept an elevated role for Arwen, a relatively minor character in the book. I was willing to overlook these minor departures because I always wanted to see these books on screen, but there were many other incidents that were unforgivable. My first major complaint I guess occured in the two towers. In the movie, it's claimed that the two towers are barad^dur and Orthanc, when in reality the Two Towers are Minas Morgul and Minas Tirith. There was no reason to get this wrong. It doesn't add to the story either way. I also had a problem witht he ents. The entmoot decides to fight, they despise saruman and want to exact revenge for the destruction of the forest. The ents don't need an annoying little fly tricking them into fighting. I also had a problem with helm's deep. At helm's deep, the hurons win the battle for the men of rohan. The hurons aren't even in the theatrical release and are delegated to cleanup duty in the extended dvd. I was actually pretty happy with the movies until the return of the king. In the return of the king, so many great elements from the book are completely thrown out the window in exchange for sappy melodrama. I won't bore a potential reader with all my complaints, I'm already getting bored writing this but I did have one glaring problem with the return of the king, namely the end. In the book, the hobbits return to the shire and find it destroyed. A gang of malcontents and republicans have taken over the shire and turned it into a wasteland and a happles and pathetic saruman has taken over bag-end. By the end of the "scouring the shire" chapter saruman and worm-tongue are dead. This is an imprtant part of the book. It ties up all the loose ends explaining what happened to saruman once he loses his powers and also exemplifies on of the themes that can be gleaned from the books that evel will not win if good is willing to stand up for waht is right ( Yea, I think it's lame to, but remember, these books were written by a guy who spent most have his career studying the intimate details of beowulf). None of this is in the movie, in fact christopher lee isn't in the movie at all. It's an imprtatnt part of the story that saruman has lost his powers and it is because of his association with sauron and none of this was in the movie. It was replaced by the kind of sentimental crap one would expect would be confined to a special episode of blossom (I'm dating myself I guess) To sum up, it's about time. I guess my main problem with the movies is that there were constant departures from the book that were completely unecessary and a more faithful interpretation of the book would have been more satisfying.