After all these years, I can't help wondering what the hell was going through Peter Jackson's head when he decided to remove Saruman's final scene from the theatrical cut of The Return of the King. I personally feel that it spoiled the movie a little bit, as a major character from the previous two films doesn't get satisfactory closure; he just disappears for no reason. Had their been some kind of disagreement between Jackson and Christopher Lee prior to the film being released in theatres?
LotR: RotK question
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Are you referring to his death scene in the extended cut?
The big issue was film length. ROTK was already crushingly long without that scene. I also seem to recall that they were worried that it was not a good way to open the film. Having seen the extended cut, though, I think it would have been fine.
If you are referring to the 'scouring of the shire' chapter in the book (and Saruman's end there), it was cut out early in the adaptation process and was never going to be filmed. As Mach5 said, the number of "endings" of ROTK was already way too high.
The big issue was film length. ROTK was already crushingly long without that scene. I also seem to recall that they were worried that it was not a good way to open the film. Having seen the extended cut, though, I think it would have been fine.
If you are referring to the 'scouring of the shire' chapter in the book (and Saruman's end there), it was cut out early in the adaptation process and was never going to be filmed. As Mach5 said, the number of "endings" of ROTK was already way too high.
The movie already had five endings in it, and Jackson didn't want another one?
Given that it would've been at the beginning of the film and not the end, your post doesn't make any sense.
I believe he said at the time that the theatrical cut needed a faster-paced opening and having Gandalf and company arrive at Orthanc didn't work for that. That became the opening of the Extended Edition, though.
And before anyone asks, the Scouring of the Shire was never going to be included because Jackson thought it was a giant anticlimax and would've killed the pacing of the final act. We would've essentially had an entire subplot sitting between the defeat of Mordor the sequence of epilogues.
RotK is the film I'm the most unhappy with. Simply changed too much from the book. The problem is that a lot of unneccessary and uninteresting stuff got extended, but the important stuff got removed or wasn't even considered.
Given that my post was just a joke, it doesn't really have to make sense.The movie already had five endings in it, and Jackson didn't want another one?
Given that it would've been at the beginning of the film and not the end, your post doesn't make any sense.
I've read the books, and I do agree that Saruman should have gotten some kind of a closure in the movie, but I must say, I didn't really like how JRR Tolkien did it either.
That too. I was really hoping to see some Eowyn/Faramir romance, but PJ reduced it to just a few hints.
They also failed to adequately explain Denethor's insanity (attributable to his own use of a palantir.)
Even the Rankin-Bass animated special gets that.
I also think that the theatrical film would have been fine with Saruman's death in the first twenty minutes. I understand Jackson's reasons for cutting it -- it would have been too much action too early, and an action that paid off the last movie but had nothing to do with this movie -- but the real problem is that it simply wasn't scripted well. I think the Saruman/Gandalf confrontation without Saruman's death would have worked better. It was really a case where Jackson's desire to do a Hammer-style scene that got in the way of his filmmaking.
The alterations didn't bother me a whole lot, and they're a function of the pacing that Jackson puts in place for the film. (Seriously, you're two hours into the film, and there's still a hell of a long way to go to Barad-Dur.) The one alteration that Jackson planned that I wished he had kept was the Aragorn/Sauron single combat at the Towers of the Teeth. (Aragorn fights the giant troll instead, because that CG could fit over Sauron in the scenes.) That's what the films were building towards, why there are all the hints in the first two films that Aragorn is not Isildur and he won't fail where his ancestor did. Because Jackson backed away from the story he was telling, the climax of the film feels hollow.
In an ideal world Saruman's death would have been added to the end of TTT. ROTK already covered so much material.
Even the Rankin-Bass animated special gets that.
I also think that the theatrical film would have been fine with Saruman's death in the first twenty minutes. I understand Jackson's reasons for cutting it -- it would have been too much action too early, and an action that paid off the last movie but had nothing to do with this movie -- but the real problem is that it simply wasn't scripted well. I think the Saruman/Gandalf confrontation without Saruman's death would have worked better. It was really a case where Jackson's desire to do a Hammer-style scene that got in the way of his filmmaking.
The alterations didn't bother me a whole lot, and they're a function of the pacing that Jackson puts in place for the film. (Seriously, you're two hours into the film, and there's still a hell of a long way to go to Barad-Dur.) The one alteration that Jackson planned that I wished he had kept was the Aragorn/Sauron single combat at the Towers of the Teeth. (Aragorn fights the giant troll instead, because that CG could fit over Sauron in the scenes.) That's what the films were building towards, why there are all the hints in the first two films that Aragorn is not Isildur and he won't fail where his ancestor did. Because Jackson backed away from the story he was telling, the climax of the film feels hollow.
On the other hand, Aragorn going toe-to-toe with Sauron just seems absurd. A mere man--Dunedain lineage notwithstanding--cannot plausibly engage in combat with a Maia and hope to survive, especially not one of Sauron's power and cunning. It would've been unbelievable, to say the least, which is quite a feat for a series that's so fantastical to begin with.
That would have been the worst thing, I'm glad they removed it. It's not in the book. Sauron doesn't exist physically without the ring.
Agreed. I would have facepalmed if I saw Aragorn going mano-a-mano with Sauron in the final battle. I was worried they were going to do something like that; fortunately, they realized it would have been a mistake and abandoned the idea.
Aragorn had already proven himself to be stronger than Isildur when he refused to take the Ring from Frodo on Amon Hen.
Aragorn had already proven himself to be stronger than Isildur when he refused to take the Ring from Frodo on Amon Hen.
Indeed. But why the hell didn't Elrond cancel Isildur when he refused to dump the ring into the lava pit is beyond me.
If you listen to the Director's Commentary, Jackson says he felt like it was anticlimactic to have the big battle with the Ents near the end of TTT and then go back and visit Saruman and have the long extended sequence at the beginning of ROTK. I know Christopher Lee was pissed off for a while, but I think he got over it.
Lee is, IIRC, a gigantic LOTR fan, and I believe his reasons for being pissed of weren't selfish. Old man was actually crying "CANON VIOLATION!"
No, really, overriding Tolkien surely didn't sit well with him.
I don't follow your reasoning. How would single combat with Sauron have proved anything about Aragorn's relationship with Isildur? Isildur's failure had nothing to do with his ability to face Sauron in combat and everything to do with his inability to cast the ring into the fire after helping to defeat him.
For the record, I am not a fan of these movies, though I think The Two Towers is clearly the best and The Return of the King clearly the worst. Removing Sauron from the final battle was a good choice, though, and I can also understand why it made sense to cut the early scenes with Saruman from RotK.
If you watch the ROTK EE special features, you'll realize how much footage they shot of the Aragorn vs Sauron fight. Much of it ended up in the final film as modified footage where Sauron was replaced by the mountain troll.
Now it isn't quite as bad as it sounds - The plan was never to have Aragorn defeat Sauron. Basically Sauron would kick Aragorns a$$ and be at the point of killing him, when the ring would be destroyed in Mount doom. Another part of that sequence would have been that Sauron would have appeared after the death of the "Mouth of Sauron" before the battle projecting his "fair" image to convince the army to give up the fight. Aragorn would see through his deception and the battle would start.
Still I'm glad they did not go through with it. It ended up fine. But part of me is curious to see how it would have turned out.
I know they actually filmed a lot of it. Just like they actually filmed quite a bit of Arwen fighting at Helm's Deep before they realized that, too, was a bad idea and scrapped it. (That's why you see two CG models of Legolas on horseback during that final charge, incidentally.)
I didn't know anything about that. Why was a lot of Arwen's material cut?
Also, I believe there are one or two hints in Tolkien's novels that at the time of the War of the Ring, Sauron did indeed possess some kind of physical body, and wasn't just a gigantic eye atop a tower. I don't have the actual phrases though.
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