The Sacking of the Shire?

It made perfect sense to drop that section of the book from the movie. We've just seen the Hobbits take on armies of Orcs, battle giant spiders etc. To have them then battle kind of inbred hill folk with sticks, would have been totally anticlimactic in a cinematic sense.

In the book it serves as a way to show how far they've come since they left the shire, I think "You bow to no one" serves the same purpose only better.

It's either the "You bow to no one" moment, or thousands of Gondorian fuckmooks screaming "Praise the Hobbits with great praise!" ad nauseum to stay faithful to the books. I'll take the latter.

Personally, the very idea of the king of the greatest human country falling to his knees in front of the smallest and most innocuous of his subjects continues to be more thematically beautiful than the Scouring ever could've been, even with PJ at the helm.

I would have loved to see Christopher Lee laughing at Brad Dourif for eating Frodo's in-laws, though.

I don't miss the Scouring. I think the way the world has moved on from the war, and leaving Frodo feeling separate from all the happiness and joy from everyone else's lives, all the way to the Gray Havens, was perfectly done.

It doesn't even really work in the book. I know what Tolkien was trying to say with it, that no part of Middle Earth was untouched by the War of the Ring, but we already know that the four hobbits are heroes.

Yeah, if anything, the Shire being relatively untouched by war only adds to Frodo's feelings of isolation. Gaze not into the abyss, all that.

I have no problems with the Scouring in the book. As has been said, it works as a literary device not only to show that the Shire was not untouched by the war, but it also shows how low Saruman has fallen -- a once great mind now reduced to petty dictatorship and killed by the servant he had long despised, all because of his lust for the Ring.

Cinematically, though, we've seen all that, and to devote at least another 30 to 45 minutes to this after nine hours of screen time, it just wouldn't work. And besides, that shot of the Shire looking just the way the hobbits left it when they return home underlines that all the sacrifice and pain was worth it.

It would never have worked on a cinematic storytelling level. The whole thing cuts into the (rather long) denouement and gives you a little mini-story and a whole new set of conflicts after the major, how-could-anything-top-THAT? deal of the entire trilogy.

The Scouring acts as a way, as others have said, to show that the nothing in the world is untouched, but, along with Bombadil, you don't need it in the movie because you can actually see the world and characters changing and growing isolated.

I actually usually stop when the Scouring begins, then skip ahead to the Grey Havens. Feels like a more complete, non-interrupted story.

It's unnecessary and pointless in the book, it would've been even more so in the film.

Well I really missed it in the movie. But I will come clean and admit to the LOTR books being in the top ten of my reading list since the age of 13. I have probably read each book about twenty times. It was a tremendous shock not seeing it in the movie even tho I knew it would be missing going in. The funny thing is I don't consider myself to be a hardcore Tolkien fan. Once I got over the shock of so many things being missing from the movie I loved it.
But there still is a large space missing from my heart for the Scouring scene and Tom Bombadil. Saruman and Wormtongue's death work so well in the books--for me. I would explain it by saying that when I was young I wanted to live in the Shire and having a battle take place there really affected me. I need to get back to this subject after I think about it a little more. Sometimes it seems hard to explain to people who only have a lukewam affection for Tolkien.

Reading those books a combined 60 times when there's so much good literature in the world makes me want to cry. They're so tedious.

All snark aside, I'm curious as to what (in particular) you felt was lost by not having the scouring? Is it just you applying your love of the shire from the books? The movies give so little attention to the shire that it would have felt wildly out of place to spend 30 minutes on the scouring.

Plus, the Scouring is such an anticlimax. It'd be like if Luke had a thirty minute lightsaber duel with a guy in the Death Star commissary at the end of Jedi.

Actually, I think it's be a lot more like Wicket having a 30 minute stick fight. Luke would have given Wicket his medal and gone back to setting up a new republic.

Nah, you're mixing your metaphors. Showing the Scouring of the Shire in the LOTR films would have been like seeing the Rocky/Apollo fight at the end of ROCKY III, except at the end Apollo gets stabbed in the back by Duke.

You make great metaphors, but I'm a great metaphor maker.

It'd be like if at the end of Alligator, Robert Forster gets chased around by a regular sized komodo dragon.

I loved that chapter in the book, and though initially disappointed by its cinematic absence I now recognize PJ made the correct choice. However, I think its an important part of the book because:

1) While the American war experience might produce communities untouched by chaos, the English experience doesn't. England was frequently bombed during WW2, and though few (if any) fell in rural areas, the threat was ever present. Considering Tolkien's love of the older, greener Britain, I think he would have been quite sensitive to this.

2) Saruman's comeuppance in the Scouring is far more satisfying than his end in the film. Also, the book better shows the nature of tyrants, that they'll always look for something to dominate. Revenge against the hobbits was part of it, but had Saruman escaped the Shire you know he would have looked for some other community to lord over. Granted, Tolkien had an old-fashioned tendency to see things in black and white, but in this case I think he was absolutely correct.

3) The Scouring demonstrates that people are largely sheep. Society requires exceptional individuals and strong leaders to give it shape and direction. I'm not being Objectivist about this, there should be limits to what those individuals can do, especially at society's expense, but it should also be obvious that a handful of special people can accomplish things that hundreds of others cannot. I know a lot of people despise this notion, but I don't see how any reasonably perceptive person can't recognize its truth. Sometimes this exceptionalism is an innate trait, sometimes its born of experience, but it exists nevertheless and these folks have the responsibility of organizing their fellow men (or hobbits) to accomplish greater things than they would otherwise.

I know many people will take issue with this last point, but whether you personally agree with it or not, I believe Tolkien certainly did.

hahaha "some people are just born better".

It would be like at the end of Jaws Chief Brody chasing a raccoon away from the garbage cans outside his house.

No, but you'd have to be blind not to recognize that some people are much more effective leaders than others, and some people can't lead at all. We're not all equal blank slates ready to be imprinted with whatever is given us.

And again, whatever what we may feel, I think Tolkien bought into the old English notions of class.

Isn't the entire point of the Hobbits pretty much the opposite of what you're writing?

Also, this:
doesn't make any sense. "Whatever we may feel, my interpretation of how Tolkein felt is right"

I think you mean "former", unless you're all for f**kmook foam-fingers.

Bombadill will be missed by me, because the Journey (especially early on, as the FOTR is my fave out of the 3) is more important than the Destination. But clearly, in order to build suspense and create any sense of urgency out of the Shire and to Stryder, it needed to go. The amount of time that passes in the start of the movie is so condensed (Gandalf gone for years in the book before he comes back to Frodo???), that it makes sense to just keep the ball rolling all the way to The Prancing Pony, Weathertop, and Rivendell.

The Scouring is anti-climactic and superfluous in a film-sense, especially for the filled-to-the-brim ROTK. It truly fills like an epilogue and not an ending.

Faramir's character bastardization is much more egregious.


* As I type this, I'm listening to Flight of the Conchords. Frodo, Don't Wear the Ring just came on. Ha!

No, no, I really think it's awesome that you're a step away from using Hobbits as an excuse for eugenics.

Racism and eugenics aside, only certain Hobbits can become ubermensch.

Proudfoot, Proudfoot über alles!

Ah, the vivid imagination of the comic book artist.

I prefaced my comments with "I think" and "I believe", indicating that it's my opinion and not fact. Were you not taught reading comprehension?

Rather than poison this thread further with ideological feuds, I think I'll start another thread about egalitarianism versus exceptionalism.

In fact, I was. Allow me to break down your statement so that you understand it. My comments in parens.

"and again, (Allow me to reiterate) whatever what we may feel (regardless of our feelings as a group,) , I think Tolkien bought into the old English notions of class. (I think Tolkien bought into the old English notions of class.)

Now, that translates into "Allow me to reiterate: regardless of our feelings as a group, I think Tolkien bought into the old English notions of class."

Reading comprehension indicates that this statement is meaningless, since we had no group opinion on any topic related to your subject. However, I was going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that you meant to disregard the individual opinions of those who disagreed with you. Since you decided to get condescending, I'll let you explain what you were rebutting.

Apparently, here's what Tolkien meant in writing the chapter:

No source, unfortunately.

Late into this, but I'll jump in: I miss the Scouring from the films because it adds a needed dimension -- that the good and innocent can also turn due to indifference, fear and greed.

Some hobbits resisted but, like any other group of people, there were those who were cowed, influenced or stepped aside in the face of evil deeds by themselves and others.

Sandyman and Lotho are somewhat "expected" to settle on the dark side, but what about the unnamed Shirriffs (hobbit enforcers) and other collaborators?

The big raging battles are much more impersonal compared to finding out that your neighbours rat each other out. What about the compulsion to commit violence against people in your community to right things, i.e., no pretty speeches or appeals/bribery can/will work, nor would you trust the outcome?

I guess I'm just not into blaming everything on the Big Lidless Eye -- all the small evils even the supposedly best people commit to stay safe and happy add up as well.

Dare I repeat it, a metaphor for these times as well?

God, that writing is so horrible.

Frodo is apparently Captain Obvious.

Just to belabour the point: as much as the film is about how the very small can perform great good, I would have preferred to have the counterpoint as well.

My apologies, LD, the fault was mine for sloppy writing, specifically "whatever what we may feel." I was referring to modern liberal, particularly American, beliefs about "class", in that the implicit perceptions of inferiority/superiority that pervade traditional British classism are largely absent. Further reflection reveals that not only was I vague, but the consensus to which I (poorly) alluded may not even exist. My apologies as well for being condescending, it was displaced irritation for the suggestion that I support hobbit concentration camps.

However potentially incorrect my analysis of the Scouring may be, personally I find it more satisfying that the Shire had changed. People changed during the course of the books, but few places; Gondor always faced danger from proximity to Mordor, and Rohan had problems before the Aragorn and company arrived. We spent the first chapters of Fellowship in the Shire, and to have returned to that very same bucolic "paradise" at the end would have rung false to me. Just because all wrongs are righted at the end doesn't mean all original conditions are restored. Places as well as people evolve, and I find that recognition more satisfactory than an emotionally appealing return to innocence.

Another vital reason the Scouring wouldn't have worked boils down to the fact that PJ's LOTR is much more interested in its characters, their impact on the world and vice versa, more than the world itself. There's this healthy contingent of hardcore Tolkienites having trouble reconciling that with the books, where Tolkien is very obviously more obsessed with the overarching world view than anything else (also explaining why the books are boring as hell, but thats pure opinion). In the context that the films ride on our attachment to the Hobbits in particular, its much more appropriate that the place the Hobbits fought and sacrificed toprotect IS intact, and hasn't changed, but they have.

It often gets overlooked when the subject of the multiple endings comes up, but that moment in the Green Dragon where the four of them share those looks, knowing nobody in this bar will possibly know how much they went through is a satisfying ending in and of itself. And it happens and its over in less than a minute. The Scouring's another half hour to an hour at least. The film didn't need that.

EDIT: And yes, Darkmite, I meant former.

To be honest, I've never read the books, but Justin's post perfectly encapsulates the arguments one tends to hear from enthusiasts of the novels who have a problem with the movies. World-building isn't done the same way in film as it is in fiction. Long passages of description are eschewed in favor of visuals, what may be conveyed at length in a book can be brought across with filmic shorthand. For better or worse, film isn't as good at non-character-oriented detail work. It's up to you to notice the armor on orc number 47, whereas Tolkien may have described it.

But character-building is where film often shines, and Jackson, knowing this, changed the focus of the work appropriately. As filmgoers, we don't care about the world of Middle Earth as much as we care about Frodo, Sam, etc.

I'm going from memory here so bear with me but the Scourging of the Shire is not the only thing excised from the movie. There is a rather protracted sequence as everyone retraces their steps home and the group slowly sheds characters until only the hobbits are left. IIRC the main plot line wraps up somewhere near the middle to 2/3rds though The Return of the King. This ending sequence in movie form this would be unbearable while in the books it serves a purpose (although I'll let others debate the point of it).

I love the books, but even I'll admit that Tolkien looked at Middle-earth more as a place for his languages to develop than as a living, breathing fantasy world.

Also, the world of Middle Earth is just a really big version of England.

With damnable darkies at the end bits. Also esquimaux in the north.

Proudfeet.

I actually believe The Scouring to be one of the strongest parts of the book, and there's a fair argument that it was actually the point of the entire thing- that you have this heroic fantasy, and then deconstruct it by showing how everything goes wrong on a small scale while the characters are all caught up in big things.
Without it, the book would be considerably more thematically boring.

But with it, the film would be considerably more boringly boring.

With it, the book is incredibly thematically boring. It's a bad scene, and if it's meant to illustrate what you think, the "LOL UR FUCKED ENNYWAY UNIMPORTANT SHIT" idea, it's even worse.

It has occured to me that just about every chapter from the novel is at least referenced in some way. I'm surprised no one's brought up the mirror of galadriel scene in the movie, although I'm not entirely sure Frodo's vision of the scouring wasn't already in the book. Hell, it seems like just about every line of dialogue from the book made it into the movie, most interestingly in the very beginning where Treebeard's line from the protracted sequence ZebraMajor mentioned is given to Galadriel.

I'm sorry L.D. that you feel that I wasted my time rereading the LOTR books. Would it help if I said that I spent time rereading Atlas Shrugged and Dune during my teenage years? I could mention how I felt the first time I saw Lynch's Dune.
Yet I survived that trauma to go on to become a fan of David Lynch's many other films. After reading the posts by Nekkerbee,Sunwukong,and Xagarath the need is not there to explain my love for the Scouring scene. They summed up just about everything i feel. I'm happy the quote from Sam about seeing the works of Mordor in the devastation of the Shire was brought up. That's one of my favorite quotes.
I have had fun reading others posts who don't feel the same way about Tolkien's writings. I especially enjoy Brad's posts. There is no way to explain how safe and secure Tolkien made this overweight , Black teenage girl feel surronded by Jehovah Witness parents in the weird 70's.

Oh wait, I admit that Atlas Shrugged was godawful. What was I thinking ?

I never said it should be in the film. I'm simply inclined to defend it in the book.