[HairOfTheDog]

I understand (intellectually) that Saruman and "The Scouring of the Shire" had to be removed for time - but what a thing to carve out....

I don't miss the scouring... but Saruman could have been handled better instead of that long Smeagol/Deagol thing at the beginning of ROTK...If that needed to be shown, (and I am not sure it did) it could have been somewhere else as exposition about Gollum. Or Saruman could have been done instead of Gollum's teaser scene about leading Frodo to Shelob at the end of TTT. That was anticlimactic and would have been better as an opener to RoTK.

I hardly ever criticize PJ, I love the stuff, but I can't stand the Smeagol/Deagol thing with the fight and the strange portrayal of Smeagol becoming Gollum as if it was some kind of werewolf-like metamorphosis instead of just the slow decay of years.

< /PJ Bash >

[The Flying Dutchman]

Now me, I personally liked the schizoid conversation between Smeagol and Gollum in TTT. I thought it was a wonderful device!

I agree that we could have done without the Deagol/Smeagol scene. Time better used on another chapter.

Pippin and the palantir was okay! It was the proper unseen dread that the book had.