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I agree about Treebeard, and would throw in Faramir. My wife and No. 2 son are really upset about Faramir - Leo refuses to see TT a second time... ...He could have portrayed the Ent's decisions, and Treebeard, differently within the same time limit. Ditto for Faramir.

And isn't it a shame? It didn't have to be that way. I've got a FReeper who's mad at me beacuse I've poked some fun at the film. Sam's speech at the end really got to him and my fun is tearing down the movie. Jackson and Co. have decided to trim out and re-invent all sorts of things that sincere fans of the book love and, well, we "purists" just have to accept that we're not going to get that.

I think it's pretty raw that after acceptinging cut out segments, doubled characters, line switches, and whole-cloth fabrications, we must now also accept smart characters being stupid and good characters being bad.

Seems to me that the gripes being aired here are about the editing department of New Line. Now, let's be patient, they shot about 18 hours of film for this movie right? Chances are they will release it all at some point, because there are dollars to be made. Lot's of coins had to be flipped to compress this thing into a trilogy in the first place. And really, aren't they really five books compressed into three anyway?

I was never so disappointed in a movie as I have been with The Two Towers. Perhaps it is because Fellowship of the Ring was so well done. I'll only see Two Towers once and I'll wait to buy the extended version of the DVD just to see their reasoning for deviating from Tolkien's book so much.

My son's favorite character is Faramir. In fact, he gave him a nickname, Five Day Faramir. Because he admired Faramir's ability to turn a certain young maid's heart from the king in so short a period of time. The Faramir of the book has the gentle honesty, wisdom, guile, and insight to look into a woman's heart and say what she needs to bring her back to life. One could easily see the book Faramir as a prince. The character of Jackson's movie hasn't shown any of these qualities. I could go on with Faramir but there is just too much wrong.

Faramir is the biggest disappointment. Other disappointments are the Ents, the Elves at Helms Deep, all the extra added unnecessary scenes, the exorcism of Theoden, Osgilliath -- otherwise known as they've taken Frodo and Sam where? A Nazgul nearly taking the ring, being shot with one arrow and going away without the ring? There is just too much wrong. I don't think I could sit at the computer long enough to share all the reasons for my disappointment with this movie.

But, I've finally realized why I'm so upset by the change to Faramir; the demeaning and downgrading of his character is the most glaring evidence of the problem they have with some of the characters. Most are somewhat different from the book, but I could live with many of the changes because I believed that they would somehow be "corrected" in later movies. Besides, Fellowship was such a good movie that I suspended my cynical side and I felt that the changes were minor compared to what was on the screen.

But in the Two Towers, there was not enough good to overcome all the bad. Even what I thought I could live with before, now begins to concern me. For example, Aragorn should be acting more kingly by now and where's Anduril? The shout that he makes holding that sword at Helm's Deep was a turning point for me in the book. Yet his behavior is still that of a Ranger. By the time he takes the Paths of the Dead he has to appear as a leader of men, not a mere ranger. Why else would they follow him? Leaving the bulk of that transformation for the last movie and leaving Anduril to show up until the last movie points to something I'd hoped never to see -- a He-Man, hold up the sword, say the magic word, transformation. I'll laugh out loud in the movie theater if I see it in Return of the King. I don't think they'll mean that scene for comic relief though.

I'm sorry. I know that many people just love seeing something of the book finally reach the screen. I just feel sorry that so many will miss seeing the absolutely wonderful characters and events Prof. Tolkien originally created. They are masterpieces.