Adaptation is one thing, slavishly adding hollywood-isms is another. Notice how the final battle at the end was thrown in? Well, we wouldn't want to actually have the heroes not participating, never mind that it was totally Boromir's gig, gotta get Legolas and Gimli and Strider fighting..
Not to mention the fact that every bit of the first books where the hobbits prove that they are more than comic relief is completely cut.. The Wight, the Old Forest, Frodo driving off the Witch-King (I can't believe they had Aragorn rescue them, now that was really appalling.. He can take 5 Nazgul all by himself, but can't take a troll or a tough orc without real difficulty. Bullshit hollywood fucking shit.)
The movie really disgusted me, it could have been so great. As for whether I could have done better - possibly, if I didn't have hollywood shitheads (with the money) saying "Add more action!" "Gotta have a love interest!" "Make the hobbits funnier!" like whoever directed this movie did...
I give it 2/5 - it would have been great if it wasn't LOTR, but as it is, it's a desecration of a great book by mediocre hack screenwriters.
Cheers,
Backov
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