You know, it's strange. I saw The Return of the King a few months ago and then started reading the Lord of the Rings books. When I was reading The Return of the King, I couldn't recall any images depicted in the movie in what I was reading.

Now having re-watched the movie, it's pretty much there, with the same dark arts of adaptive screenwriting applied as in the previous films, including the added elements, others greatly diminished, and the one-dimensional, dumbed-down portrayal of characters.

Then I realized why I didn't remember any of the scenes even after seeing the movie at least a few times over the years, all on TV or DVD. While watching this time, at some point my attention started to turn to what I had been doing on the internet, and paying just enough attention to catch what seemed to be the important bits.

I think I did this every time I watched the movie before. With the first two movies, I watched them all the way through. I guess what I'm saying is ultimately, the third movie is . . . boring. And if I had seen it in a theater, I likely would have at some point taken out my phone and started looking at it.

I don't have a phone to look at, but you get the idea. And if I did, I probably really wouldn't do that because it seems to fall under the behaviors that are considered rude. I don't know, maybe it's accepted behavior. I haven't been to the movies in a long time, either.

Again, I don't know how anyone who hasn't read the book had any idea what was going on in the movie, particularly the third movie. Maybe there's the broad outline through which audiences just let themselves be led by the nose, and since they could follow that, they thought they got it and became fans because of the flashy CG visuals and shiny objects. Them bad, them good, fight!, good wins, destroy the ring! destroy evil. Yaaaaaay.

But when I watched it before, I obviously had no idea what was going on and who was who and why were they doing what they were doing, and I started to get bored and paid half attention to the film. Even after reading the book and recognizing who was who and why they were doing what they were doing, which is not necessarily clear in the film, it got boring.

I don't know. I've been saying keep the films and book separate, they're different beasts. The book is legend among its certain audience, the films are historically epic just from the scope of the thing, and I'm not going to retract that, but I just have to note that every time I watched The Return of the King, apparently I got bored.

Oh my, did I really say that The Two Towers movie was faithful to the book?! Well, the reason why I said that was while reading the book, I could visualize all the scenes as presented in the movie. But the movie is veeeeery different from the book except the main plot points and general direction.

What I don't understand is why there is such a huge following for the movies. Did everyone read the book? If they didn't read the book and are just fans of the movie, how the hell did they understand who everyone was and their roles and relationships? You only get that from the book.

But if they read the book, how are they such huge fans of the movies when the movies take such liberties in changing the themes and feel of the book which give the book its charm. Once you read the book, you watch the movies and notice what's left out (but at least you know who everyone is).

I opined that The Two Towers was the worst of the trilogy, not to imply it was bad, but I stand by that. The screenplay is the weakest, and all the people and the parties are muddled unless you read the book. And if you read the book, again it's the dark arts of adaptive screenwriting that has them drop a single line to identify something that was fully explained in the book and have an audience member remember it.

What's inexplicable to me is that many of the changes and added scenes weren't necessary or were specious and came at the cost of keeping scenes from the book that would have better served the story. Faramir is kind of a jerk to the Hobbits in the movie, but he's a lionheart from the start in the book. He's more worthy than Boromir in the book, while he's exactly the same as him in the movie.

But again I remind myself they are different beasts. I'm purposely making comparisons because that's what I set out to do when I decided to read the book.

I think The Return of the King will be airing again next week. Truth to tell, when I was reading the book, I remembered very little from the movie aside from maybe the spider and the Mt. Doom scene. So I think a lot was changed in that movie, too.