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[kaijyuu]

Yeah, books. I'm lukewarm to the movies; they're a little melodramatic.

NO. TOM. BOMBADIL.

/fanboy

The Ladyfriend agrees with you. Personally, I think cutting him out was fine

[fqllve]

Ehhhh. I see why they did, because Bombadil was basically Treebeard v1, but he did so much to make Book 1 enjoyable so I was still disappointed.

I actually didn't watch the movies until last year because of that (also because I'm an idiot, of course).

[Phantom of The Library]

Yeah, books. I'm lukewarm to the movies; they're a little melodramatic.

NO. TOM. BOMBADIL.

/fanboy

The Ladyfriend agrees with you. Personally, I think cutting him out was fine

WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAT!? NO TOM BOMBADIL!!!  THIS IS AN OFFENSE PUNISHABLE BY PUBLIC SHAMING!!!

<sub>Stupid fackin' director cut out the second best character in the book...

Although as a maker of stories I can see why he would cut him out, he doesn't add all that much to the overall plot, which is more important when you have a limited time frame. [/grudging admission]</sub>

[MagmaMcFry]

_{Although as a maker of stories I can see why he would cut him out, he doesn't add all that much to the overall plot, which is more important when you have a limited time frame. [/grudging admission]}

Limited time frame? They cut the book up into THREE WHOLE FRIGGING MOVIES, I don't even know how they managed to fill all of that time.

[The Darkling Wolf]

I liked/loved the first film, found the second alright, and have never gotten around to watching all of the third one

[Flying Dice]

_{Although as a maker of stories I can see why he would cut him out, he doesn't add all that much to the overall plot, which is more important when you have a limited time frame. [/grudging admission]}

Limited time frame? They cut the book up into THREE WHOLE FRIGGING MOVIES, I don't even know how they managed to fill all of that time.

Three volumes (and if we're not going to play semantics games, three books) and one film for each. Among other annoyances, they completely cocked up the Paths of the Dead. But yes, completely cutting out the Old Forest and Barrowdowns was bad; those were some of the most interesting sequences, not least because Tolkien wasn't spending as much time with wankery as he was with writing something interesting.

[Sirus]

I tried to read the books after watching the movies, and I guess the movies spoiled me. I got thoroughly sick with the Fellowship when the book was going on 10 chapters or so and they still weren't out of the damn Shire.

To me, it's okay to cut some stuff out of a movie adaptation to keep the plot moving.

* Sirus prepares to dodge various thrown objects

[Flying Dice]

That means you missed out on the Scouring of the Shire. 

[kaijyuu]

The extremely long intro also turned me off of the book series at first, so

[Reelya]

_{Although as a maker of stories I can see why he would cut him out, he doesn't add all that much to the overall plot, which is more important when you have a limited time frame. [/grudging admission]}

Limited time frame? They cut the book up into THREE WHOLE FRIGGING MOVIES, I don't even know how they managed to fill all of that time.

Three books, not one. And it runs at 1200+ pages. And includes several wars.

They had to remove one entire war entirely to cut the run-time (the return to the shire battles).

Have you actually read the books?

[Sirus]

That means you missed out on the Scouring of the Shire. 

You know, I'm perfectly fine with that. Not sure how they would have fit it into the movie anyway.

[Aklyon]

_{Although as a maker of stories I can see why he would cut him out, he doesn't add all that much to the overall plot, which is more important when you have a limited time frame. [/grudging admission]}

Limited time frame? They cut the book up into THREE WHOLE FRIGGING MOVIES, I don't even know how they managed to fill all of that time.

Its Tolkien. You can fill up three movies with just the background scenery and related history if you run out of book.

[SalmonGod]

I'm generally ok with most of the stuff they cut out.  Leaving out Bombadil, and even the barrow-downs was sensible.  The scouring of the shire not as much.  It's the stuff that he changed that really bothered me.  My rule of thumb for adaptions is that you can leave stuff out or add stuff in, but there's very rarely a good excuse for altering what original content you do include.  When a fan of the original thing goes to see the adaptation and, for instance, a character behaves in a manner completely counter to the original, it's very upsetting, especially when those changes fundamentally alter the themes and messages of the original work.

Regardless, I won't be going to see The Hobbit film.  I know it will piss me off immensely.  They're just going to turn it into an action movie (from 10-15% action to at least 60%, I'm guessing), probably with far too much comic relief and a bunch of mischaracterizations.  I bet they'll even turn the guy who shoots down Smaug into a well-developed, central character involved in all kinds of things he's not supposed to be involved in.  Tolkien liked to throw in characters who play their part in important moments without being otherwise involved in the plot, to portray a world much larger and richer than just that story and its cast.  This was the purpose of Tom Bombadil - to show that the war of the ring was a relatively trivial matter in the grand scheme of things.  But modern Hollywood storytelling absolutely hates things like that.

[Phantom of The Library]

_{Although as a maker of stories I can see why he would cut him out, he doesn't add all that much to the overall plot, which is more important when you have a limited time frame. [/grudging admission]}

Limited time frame? They cut the book up into THREE WHOLE FRIGGING MOVIES, I don't even know how they managed to fill all of that time.

6-9 hours is still 6-9 hours no matter how look at it, it's still a limit, as opposed to a book which is theoretically infinite so long as you don't run out of physical matter, and with the rise of e-books this has become almost a non-concern.

And as other people have said, yes, you could probably fill an entire movie with just them leaving the Shire. 


In entirely unrelated news, my roommate has left for break, so I am finally free to play my music out loud and sing along badly without fear of being a bad roommate!

[Reelya]

The BBC did a radio version of the Lord Of The Rings in 1981, which is 26 x 30 minute episodes, so even longer than the movies. Completely faithful to the books too, I might just check it out again.