[Vast Buffalo Wing Conspiracy]

1) Peter Jackson said so. It would add too much time for what is already going to be a very tight cut for ROTK, and it creates two ending climaxes instead of one; ie, you destroy the ring, months pass, you eventually wind up back in Bree and then the Shire, and then you finally have your second ending with The Scouring, then you finally end with Bilbo going to the Gray Havens. Very bumpy and anticlimatic, and far, far too long.

2) Peter Jackson said that the scenes of The Shire, which Frodo sees in Galadriel's Mirror, showing what would happen if Frodo should fail, were intended as an homage to The Scouring of the Shire, since Peter Jackson would not be including it in the film. Hence, you sort of have already seen The Scouring of the Shire, in Galadriel's mirror.

[BradyLS]

...And I can accept all those things to make a good adaptation of LOTR. Mr. Jackson doesn't radically change the story that's being told, or recast the characters to make a fit, and he isn't inventing something out of thin air. He is using material already supplied by Tolkien to create a tailor-made fit for film.

In other words, I can accept: "That happened, or will happen, but not quite that way." Much tougher to accept is: "That didn't happen. At all."

[artios]

Do you think it may be possible that it could end up in the released DVD?