Poll The Superhero Films of 2017

[Beagleman]

Tom Bombadil brings the whole narrative to a screeching halt, he really messes with the flow of the story that we are invested in, fuck that guy. No seriously, fuck you, Tom Bombadil!

 

[JD]

Tom Bombadil never comes back, but he is an important part of the mythology itself. And the scouring of the shire is literally the moral of the story, which got taken out, thus neutering the entire narrative.

Even though I never read RotK I was still aware of the scouring of the shire, and I was shocked that it wasn't in the movie. Have they said anything about why it wasn't used? Was it just due to length?

 

[Turtletrekker]

I think the problem was that the movie had too many endings already.

 

[crookeddy]

I think the problem was that the movie had too many endings already.

It would also be totally anticlimactic. Some books really are unfilmable as is, and this is one of them. Peter Jackson did the best anyone could have possibly done...

With one curious exception. When you read the books, didn't you think the "eye of Sauron" is actually his network of spies? Not that he was literally an eye?

 

[Grendelsbayne]

I don't think movie really needed the scourging to get the whole 'you can't go home again' thing across, anyway. The scenes we had clearly still showed Frodo being haunted by his experience with the Ring and never really getting back to a normal life, until he eventually had to go leave the shire forever. A perfectly reasonable method of getting the point across which also doesn't require them to add at least another half hour to an already bloated movie.

Then again, maybe I'm biased. I never found Tolkien's writing that amazing in the first place - it's really only his worldbuilding that I consider truly impressive.