I picked “Into the West” because even though it varies from Tolkien, that is essentially the end of the story for Frodo, the central character. You need to know his fate. Sam’s story was more important in the book and so it made sense for the book to end that way is terms of narrative, but for the movie the only thing they had to wrap-up was the Sam/Rosie possibility hinted at the beginning. The marriage does that so seeing him back in the Shire wasn’t necessary.
I think the problem with the end of the films is that Jackson cut each moment as if it was an ending, making the audience think that was finally it. So I understand the criticism. Had it been cut differently people would not have felt teased at each moment. Plus, I agree that the “you bow to no one” line is pretty powerful and the rest seems kind of a slow burn (even though that matches the book in that regard).
No, no, no, no, no. The fact that all of humanity (essentially) bends the knee to the hobbits in the holiest place in the heart of human civilization is the whole damn point of that scene. I would totally support moving Sleeping Beauty to the Houses of Healing and making it a less ridiculous sequence, but the coronation scene is exactly what it should be and must not be touched. Except to maybe cut down a bit of the “OMG it’s Arwen” shot that takes forever.
Losing the full Minas Tirith bow to the hobbits…just no way. Ack.
Why? It was a weird and anticlimactic sequence in the book and it would be flat out ridiculous in the movie. To begin with, is the audience really supposed to believe the most fearsome wizard in Middle Earth played by Christopher Lee is calling himself “Sharkey” now?
Yeah, that’s the one thing I agree that you’d lose - the giant crowd. I think the tradeoff would be that it might seem more personal and intimate with just their closest friends but…yeah, this is why I’m no Peter Jackson.
I like it the way Tolkien wrote it. I’ve sprinkled comments throughout this as to why. There is that natural moment when the denouement reaches it’s highest point when the king and all bow before the hobbits, but it misses that accentuation of the loss and suffering that Frodo has gone through (slow motion after slow motion stabbing and maiming of Frodo with sting, knife, spear, tooth and caustic critics’ barbs). The world had changed, the time of elves had passed, and the departure not just of Elrond and Gandalf, but Frodo also brought that home to readers/viewers. And then it looks like another natural ending, but I think that one last scene with Sam gives us just enough sweet to balance the bitter. Some good did come of what they did, some were able to salvage something, hope and happiness would bloom again.
One could end on any of the happy ending points (bed, book, King, marriage). And perhaps for the film, that sense of the world changing forever is not felt as strongly as it is in the book. But I prefer the more nuanced endings that give the story more depth and timelessness.
In the explanation of the choices, I usually ended as the scene actually did. The extended fade to black at Mt. Doom, the traditional zoom out at Minas Tirith, fade to white at the Grey Havens, etc., and I’d have to agree with you. Jackson composed and cut several of them as if they were the end of the film. Or at least close enough to make an audience wonder if they were an end. I would have superimposed Sam walking back over the last ship sailing into the sun, for example, so the one scene flowed into the other rather than look like an ending. But perhaps Jackson wanted the audience to have a moment to mentally digest that before moving on. And really, I’m not sure I disagree with his artistic decisions on that account, but I had the advantage of knowing that the story was not going to end at all the earlier points (or more precisely, I was going to be pissed if it ended there).
I take it you would reinsert (so to speak) the bathtub scene with Frodo, Sam, Merry, Pippen and Fatty. And probably the hobbits gamboling naked on the grass for the amusement of that old lecher, Tom Bombadil. What about Legolas throwing a more-than-companionable arm around Gimli, Bored of the Rings style? Aragorn and Boromir comparing sword sizes? Saruman and Gandalf fondling each others staff? And I mean, elves must reproduce so slowly for a reason!
Okay, maybe I’ll go for a little Arwen and Galadriel action…
Well, no. Sauruman got himself impaled for some reason at the start of the (extended edition of) the movie. So obviously it has to be someone else who is using the pseudonym Sharkey. Dare I suggest that it would be the perfect place to add in Tom Bombadil? And instead of Sharkey being a merciless crime lord, it’s more like Footloose, except it’s the opposite of Footloose because people have to sing and dance all the time and when the hobbits come home they find that the people of the Shire have hoarse voices and bloody feet and are dying under the brutal and iron handed watch of Dancin’ Sharkey McGee.
I think a Scouring-esque sequence would have fit in well as not the very last ending but a part sometime before Frodo throws the ring into Mount Doom as further emphasis of just how much was sacrificed and lost before the ring is finally destroyed. I realize if Saruman were to still be used for it it would rob the end of TTT of much of its glory, so maybe it could be someone else. Whoever! Some Uruk-hai detachment maybe. I just want to see hobbits in chains, is that so wrong?
Saruman’s (and Grima’s) death scene in the EE was kind of goofy anyway. I think Jackson meant for it to be some kind of Tolkien nerd catharsis or whatever but it came off a little too sophomoric IMO.
I have no answer for Sharkey, though. That is best left alone.
The Scouring of the Shire was stupid. Well, it was stupid by Saruman anyway. It seems to reflect a certain peculiar English class deference to their betters, that after causing a war that leads to thousands of deaths, Gandalf recommends just “letting him go”, whereupon he makes straight for the Shire, ruins everything, and kills a few just to be sure he’s still a bad guy. And of course, at the end of that they… let him go. The only way this makes sense is if you have a worldview where some persons are existentially better than others, greater in every way, and for whom ordinary standards of justice and law do not apply.
Agreed. And after all the effort they went to to show wizards fighting without zapping each other with magic, to have Saruman hurl a fireball? Definitely a letdown.
