The Lord of the Rings

Yesterday, a friend posted on Facebook that the Lord of the Rings movies did the character of Boromir dirty.  I countered that those movies did every character dirty, with the possible exception of Sam and Gollum.  The best parts of the movies are the visuals and the soundtrack. This is because Peter Jackson, Phillipa Boyens, and Fran Walsh don’t actually understand Tolkien’s work.  They certainly lack his subtlety.  (Yes, I’m going to go into some detail on what they got wrong.  Some.  Those who don’t like people trashing movies for screwing with the source material might want to stop reading now.  Because I’m not going to stop, because it’s my blog.)  And every character change they made watered down the character. First of all, Aragorn didn’t need an arc, where he agonizes and broods, worried that he shouldn’t be king because wanting power is bad.  Because The Lord of the Rings isn’t the entirety of his story.  It’s the culminating chapter of a long life of hardship, toil, and duty, that has led him to this point, where it is time to take up the mantle left to him.  He’s got the experience, he’s got the hard-won wisdom, and he knows that