Christopher Tolkien is not a fan of Peter Jackson
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I can't remember much about Tom Bombadil from when I read the books, but the gist of all discussions surrounding his exclusion came down to "he did nothing to progress the story, and the movie was full as is."
I actually agree. That whole sequence really wouldn't have translated well into film, but it was very important to Tolkien, and his son clearly didn't like that a lot of the slower, less action-oriented elements of the story were excluded from the films.
How long was the full, uncut trilogy again? 10-11 hours? Even more? I definitely saw that there were lots of other scenes filmed that had the same issue- it didn't progress the story, and whatever character building it did was insignificant. "Acceptable time constraints for an audience" is a real bitch.
Should have been a hexalogy like the books.
They already had the actors, sets, costumes. How much extra would it have cost to sit Gandalf down and have him read some poems and crap on set during lunch? Or improv some Bombadil on a green screen so the banshee and barrow could be filled in later.
I'm sure they knew many of the deleted/director cut scenes were never going to be seen in theater before they filmed them so I feel like there's a lot more they could have done with the intention of it only appearing in the 50 hour paint-drying release.
The extended editions clock in at just over 12 hours for the whole trilogy.
Or maybe its importance flew over your head.
He gives the hobbits the Barrow-blades that are eventually used to kill the Witch King because that's the point of them. Films don't include this lore however and the blades are just hobbit sized "swords" in the end.
if they had gone with 6 films (each book in half part 1 part 2) they could have probably fit everything in
only problem is it would probably take 3 days to watch all the extended editions of the films
films are at a disadvantage when it comes to adapting existing stories because they can only be so long (bring back the intermission i say) and i think that is why in japan in the 90s at least OVAs were so big, you had a story it was too big for a film but probably too small for a TV series (or not enough budget) so they made 3-6 hour long episodes instead
Read em again my man.