Going into Fellowship of the Ring, fans always wondered how Peter Jackson would manage to, in the space of just three hours, do every character justice and suitably introduce them into the story so as to make their role and identity apparent to non-fans of the movie. Understandably, an emphasis was put on Boromir, Gandalf and Frodo while on the other end of things Gimli, Merry and Pippin seemed to suffer from a lack of screen time and cut scenes.

With Fellowship been and gone and the Two Towers approaching, we are once again questioning how PJ will handle the problem of characterisation. This weekend the Hall of Fire crew are discussing your expectations for The Two Towers, specifically with regards to character development and scene portrayal. After seeing FotR, do you now have a higher or lower degree of confidence in PJ’s adaption of the books, and do you feel that The Two Towers needs to take a directional change to make it ‘feel’ different?

Also, what characters do you feel need to be focused on in the second installment of the Lord of the Rings trilogy? Will the emphasis on the friendship between Legolas and Gimli play out as you expect? Or will Merry and Pippin’s struggle amongst the Uruk-Hai be a stronger point of focus? And what scenes do you believe will be pivotal to help illustrate these themes? PJ has admitted that The Two Towers has the least of the three books to bring to film in terms of length, and a 45 minute Helms Deep battle reflects this believe…but will this effect the characters themselves?

This weekend, join in on one of our two debates and join in with your fellow Tolkien fans as we take a peek into one of the most anticipated movies this year and the struggle in adapting it from its literature counterpart.

Upcoming Discussions
Apr 27 & 28: Literary Merits of LotR

Place:
#thehalloffire on theonering.net server; come to theonering.net’s chat room Barliman’s and then type /join #thehalloffire .

Saturday Chat: 5:30 pm ET (17:30) [also 11:30 pm (23:30) CET and 7:30 am Sunday (07:30) AET]

Sunday Chat: 7:00 pm (19:00) CET [also 1:00 pm (13:00) ET and 4:00 am (04:00) Monday morning AET]

ET = Eastern Time, USA’s East Coast
CET = Central European Time, Central Europe

Questions? Topics? Send ‘em here.