Scouring of the Shire

I don't believe the Scouring would have ever fit into the structure of the films as it does in the novels. A better approach would have been to embed those same themes within the actual narrative and to be fair the film does attempt to do this. We see snatches of this in the Mirror of Galadriel and when Merry tells Pippin that "there won't be a Shire". I would have liked a few more moments like this but I understand it's harder to justify disrupting the flow of your story when the movies were already 3 hours long.

The three key moments in the book have to do with Saruman.


1. Gandalf confronting Saruman about The One Ring as told in flashback at the Council of Elrond.

2. Gandalf confronting Saruman as he's holed up at Isengard in the middle of the story.

3. The Hobbits confronting Saruman in the Shire at the end.


These scenes also contain some of the best dialog Tolkien ever wrote. Sadly, Jackson either screwed them up (turning the first confrontation between Gandalf and Saruman into an idiotic "Matrix-style" fight instead of the battle of words it was.

And to anyone who DARES to say that ridiculous fight was "more cinematic" when we're talking about two great actors who could have done more with words, facial expressions and gestures than all the puerile CGI in the world... Don't even go there.

And the sheer creepiness and evil of Saruman that is finally revealed when the hobbits discover him in The Shire at the end. That was one of the most cinematic moments of their whole book. But PJ decided to leave it out so he could show us 90 minutes of pointless crying and hugging?


Please.


-I don't watch Fox 'News' for the same reason I don't eat out of the toilet

I'm going to bump a few worthy threads. If for no other reason than to put them above the 'new board' advertisements and calls for petitions. These were our boards. We should have the 'last words' here. :-)

I saw the movie before I read the book but yeah the Scouring of the Shire was badass and it really showed how the Hobbits progressed throughout the quest, I thought it was particularly uplifting when Gandalf said he very easily could have defeated Saurman by himself but it was the Hobbit's battle and they now had the skills they needed to take back their homeland. We didn't need the other 10 endings but we did need this which is probably my favorite chapter out of the book.

That was hands down the best chapter out of the entire book. I don't know what infuriates me more, not including Battle of the Shire or not even giving Saruman a proper sendoff.