> You're right of course, but a big part of the tension in the book was the realization of how much time had been needlessly wasted as the enemy came closer and closer. I'm not sure how Jackson could have parlayed that form of tension into the film without adding too much length, but I really would have liked to see it done. Just another subjective "I would've done it this way" gripe, is all.

Ahh. That's the trick; most of the tension in Tolkien's books was in the past tense. It was more *dread* than immediate *fear* - realizations of the damage that has already been caused by actions already taken. The two latter books are a bit more "present," but there really isn't much active tension in all of Fellowship, and what there is is generally isolated ("Oh no! We're being attacked by orcs!" "Is 'Strider' a good guy or a bad guy?") rather than tension that builds toward anything.

The tension is, like you mentioned, in what has already happened - speaking of it in a general sense, that Sauron is already perilously close to "winning" when we've only just found out that any of this is even going on. Then we find out about all the wasted opportunities in the past - things like when the Istari were *going* to attack Sauron, but Saruman talked them out of it. Things like eighty years during which Gandalf had his suspicions about Bilbo's ring, but didn't do much about it. Or, going way back, things like Sauron escaping from Tulkas' wrath when the Valar overthrew Morgoth in the First Age (Note to Sam: Unlike *Gandalf,* I bet Tulkas wasn't playing with Cheat Death on ;-}). It builds a wonderful sense of foreboding doom which is heightened by the fact that it *isn't* in our faces all the time.

I have not seen the movie, and I have my concerns about it. There was no doubt in my mind that it would be a wonderful production, and Sam's review and commentary have allayed any fears I may have had about that. I had two concerns about it, however: one being that Jackson would not remain true to what Tolkien wrote, and the other being that he would.

To address the former: I am a bit of a Tolkien purist. I know his work very well (nearly all of the questions in the "Middle Earth Trivia" categury of Trivia Stampede were submitted by me), and I would be bothered by a movie that makes changes to this beyond what I would deem necessary to make it filmable (more on this later). A perfect example is the rumoured "expanded role" for Arwen, which, based on Iss' account of the quality of her performance, I gather is, in fact, true (in the book, Arwen had about three lines, and appeared in one scene).

The second concern deals with the fact that, as written, Tolkien's work is amazingly uncinematic. What drives the book is his vivid descriptive language and the quality of the dialogue; as Stephen noted, *not much really happens.* But in a film, the descriptive language is all but dispensed with, as what an authour could spend quite some time describing can be displayed instantaneously in a visual. And the dialogue would run dry as all heck.

Picture this. By my copy of Fellowship, the events in Rivendell take up seventy pages (of a book that runs 479). That's roughly fifteen percent of the book, and there isn't a shred of action. That whole secion is people talking. So that would be twelve straight minutes of a three-hour movie spent on characters sitting around and chatting.

But there's more. As previously noted, much of Tolkien's writing was taken up by lush descriptions, and whan Tolkien can spend pages describing uses up no noticable amount of screen time. Which makes the proportion of the movie to be taken up by Rivendell substantially *higher* than fifteen percent (as the Rivendell scenes in the book have a much higher speech-to-description ratio than average). And that's only one example. So unless something is drastically altered, the movie will play like a bunch of guys sitting around in medieval garb chatting about doom and destruction that never comes.

Again, I've not seen the movie. Don't anybody jump up my butt for claiming that the movie is bad, or for making claims about the movie without having seen it. I'm not. I'm merely voicing the concerns I have with the concept of making this into a movie to begin with, not criticizing what has been done with it.

Oh, and one last thing; Someone who has seen the movie, please answer one simple question for me. I can deal with them pronouncing Sauron as SORE-on instead of the technically-correct SOUR-on, but *please* tell me that Celeborn is pronounced correctly (KELL-a-born) rather than incorrectly (SELL-a-born). The same rule applies to Cirdan, Cirith Ungol, and a variety of other Sindarin names beginning with C.