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.