Who or what do you think should NOT have been left out of the movies.

Who - Glorfindel/Tom Bombadil
What - Scourging of the Shire and the Barrow Downs.

Scouring of the shire was dispoitning but i can understand why they left it out and Tom Bombadil i still say they made the right choice to leave him out.

Sure it would have made the film longer but I still think both of them are key parts of the book, and the Barrow Downs is one of the best parts. Not to mention Tom Bombadil is one of the most mysterious characters.

The problem is that while Tom Bom can be cut out without lossing that much, you can't do the Barrow Downs without him, and the Barrow Downs are of vital importance, and thus retroactively, so is Tom Bom.

Scouring of the Shire should definately have been left in (not only is it a vital part of the book, but we'd get to see more of Christopher Lee )

Well, Tom Bombadil is kind of an enigma and a bit hard to explain in a movie. It would utterly confuse half the audience as to why someone so powerful wouldn't just help them and kind of ruin the world for them anyway. As in what's the point when there's just some unbeatable person. Plus actually recreating him removes some of his enigma and characterises him. To Jackson, it would have just been unnesecary complication, for what? An extra 10/20 minutes that's not even related to the rest of the story?
And with Scouring of the Shire, it kind of muddies the clean and happy ending that the film wanted to portray.
Not saying those absences are right, but they're understandable to some extent.


Glorfindel definitely should have been in (though I understand they wanted to include Arwen more) and also would have liked to see some more of Sauron's men like the Haradrim or Easterlings who are really only in one scene (or two in the case of the Mumak).
On the other hand, Haldir's death should have been left out though i don't have a problem so much with the elves


Would have been really interesting to see some of the other wars going on, like the Dwarven/Dale stand.

Leaving out the Scouring may have made the ending 'happier' but it also made it feel more rushed. As it stands, the last 10 or so minutes of RotK is just a series of endings. If they'd drawn it out a bit more the pacing would have had a nice wind down from the Epic adventure to the Personal adventure and would have helped tie up the story nicely, and would have helped show that it's not just the soldiers who suffer in war.

I agree with Dinada, also becuase the LOTR is one of the few stories where the hero comes back home and it isn't all happy and dandy, even though evil has fallen in the rest of the world, Frodo finds the poison has reached the Shire. Such a great concept shouldn't have been left out in my opinion.

Radagast is a "useless" character as he "doesn't do anything" but it would have been cool for him to give Gandalf Saruman's message and seeing him here and there (maybe Rivendell) but Dwarves really should have been there more. All you see is Gimli, his entourage and corpses... That would have been a lot of midgets to hire though

Tom Bom is one of my favourite characters, and I was disappointed when they left him out of the film. That said, PJ would've had a hard job casting him just right and a character like TB needs to be perfect or is better off being left out.

Radagastbird wrote:

but Dwarves really should have been there more. All you see is Gimli, his entourage and corpses... That would have been a lot of midgets to hire though

Just wait for The Hobbit! You'll see an army of Dwarves, fully armed and filthy!

Radagastbird wrote:

Radagast is a "useless" character as he "doesn't do anything" but it would have been cool for him to give Gandalf Saruman's message and seeing him here and there (maybe Rivendell)

Personally I think it would have been better if he'd been left in to help explain Gwahir comming to Gandalf's rescue rather than Gandalf just talking to a moth and the Eagle king showing up.

Yes, I agree, Radagast is a LOT better than a moth

I agree that leaving out Tom (and the Barrow Downs for that matter) was probably a wise choice. Leaving Ghan-buri-ghan out was probably also wise, considering non-Tolkienites already had to deal with the creepiness/confusion of the Army of the Dead. I would have really liked to see Prince Imrahil, however. I think he would have been a useful if indirect foil for Denethor, although that might have been stepping on Faramir's toes so to speak.

Strange thing is, they removed Imrahil and Beregond, but created a new character to fill their roles (a blonde Citadel Guard). Why they couldn't just use one of the canon characters and just add elements of the other is a mystery O.o

That is odd. I must say, though, I don't care for Glorfindel getting bundled into Arwen. I also though Liv Tyler was a rare miscast in the trilogy.

At least she's better than the women they cast as Arwen in the The Hunt for Gollum fan film :/

Eh . . . not by too much. Whenever I watch the films, I can only think of a certain scene from Armageddon involving animal crackers. I think they would have done better with a relatively unknown like Miranda Otto. Someone with a more intelligent-looking face, I'd say, not so porcine.