From: briancanada71@yahoo.com   
      
   On 5/22/2014 8:31 PM, Mike Scott Rohan wrote:   
   > On Thursday, May 1, 2014 9:45:10 AM UTC+1, Sandman wrote:   
   >   
   > Why you should dislike it you leave unexplained, but there *is* a right way   
   to depict a character, which is the way the author wrote him; and there   
      
     is certainly a wrong one, which is to turn him into somebody   
   different, or even a total caricature. If you make Bill Sykes heroic, or   
   even sympathetic,   
      
     you destroy Oliver Twist completely. A truly foul case of this in the   
   LOTR movies is Merry and Pippin. In Tolkien's original they're young   
   adults,   
      
   light-hearted but intelligent and capable characters; in the films   
   they're irritating morons,  more like Moxie and Pepsi from "Bored of the   
   Rings".   
      
     Elrond becomes a peevish racist, hardly "as kind as summer".   
   >   
   > And Jackson/Boyens play equally fast and loose with other characters, just   
   to milk the action a bit more. Like making Aragorn a needless ditherer.   
      
     Like the Ents, refusing to help after their council, then having a   
   sudden change of heart when they see trees cut down, as if they'd only   
   just found   
      
     out Orcs were doing this.   
      
   > Mike   
   >   
      
      
      
   For better or worse I have always attributed those reductions of   
   character of Aragorn, Merry, Pippin, and so forth, to the current trends   
   in Hollywood of reluctant heroes.  The main characters of the story do   
   not seek out adventure, but rather have adventure forced upon them,   
   folks who just get caught up in events greater than themselves without   
   conscious choice.   
      
   I think it is supposed to make the protagonist more relatable to the   
   common viewing audience, most of whom are not descended from ancient   
   kings in an unbroken line of father to son.  We think...   
      
   Brian   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)