Long they laboured in the regions of Eä,

[snyprrr]

NERDS!!

[North Star]

And at GMG, of all places...

[chasmaniac]

I am really in awe of the subtlety with which Tolkien sets up the grand tragedy of the Silmarils.  When Melkor destroys the Two Trees, the Valar cannot simply "do over";  likewise a terribly tough choice is given Fëanor, who is loth to unmake the jewels, even before the awful Oath.

Loss is piled on loss here. That of the Trees is irrevocable, an original and organic aspect of the created world is gone forever. The theft of its likeness, a visible memory of original light alienated in crafted artifacts, provokes in turn the oath and hopeless war. I find most telling the fact that, in Tolkien's world, stepping outwards and downwards into the mundane other is a diminution, a falling away from original unity. The exiled Noldor will have been grievously aware of this metaphysic, hence their extraordinary efforts to preserve every good from the effects of time, the greatest alienator of all in a mortal world.

[Karl Henning]

Even little touches such as the matter of throwing the stone which disturbs the pool by the west wall of Moria, Jackson alters.  This one, begging your pardon, Davey, seems purely gratuitous ... there's no reason to have changed it from Tolkien. The interior of Moria just inside the door, when it opens, is not as Tolkien clearly describes it.  I do not think it is for any particularly good reason.

Something else, which one could argue they do to conflate the storytelling, and reduce screen time, which they change is Pippin making a noise at a well.  One unnecessary IMO change is, Tolkien has Pip deliberately (IIRC) cast a pebble down, in curiosity about the depth. Jackson makes it an accident, probably because he changes it to a point where everyone is awake together. The ill-considered change, though, is that Pip does this while they're in the Chamber of Mazarbul ... and then enemies appear practically instantaneously.  That's ridiculous.

[kishnevi]

Even little touches such as the matter of throwing the stone which disturbs the pool by the west wall of Moria, Jackson alters.  This one, begging your pardon, Davey, seems purely gratuitous ... there's no reason to have changed it from Tolkien. The interior of Moria just inside the door, when it opens, is not as Tolkien clearly describes it.  I do not think it is for any particularly good reason.

Something else, which one could argue they do to conflate the storytelling, and reduce screen time, which they change is Pippin making a noise at a well.  One unnecessary IMO change is, Tolkien has Pip deliberately (IIRC) cast a pebble down, in curiosity about the depth. Jackson makes it an accident, probably because he changes it to a point where everyone is awake together. The ill-considered change, though, is that Pip does this while they're in the Chamber of Mazarbul ... and then enemies appear practically instantaneously.  That's ridiculous.

I'll have to go back and watch the entering Moria sequence to see what you mean.
Other changes I didn't like:
replacing Glorfindel with Arwen as the rescuer of Frodo from the Nazgul
having Elrond appear in place of Elrond's sons after the battle of Helm's Deep--and then he returns to Rivendell, leaving Aragorn, Gimli and Legolas to ride the Paths of the Dead with no Elven companions. 
Practically deleting Farmer Maggot
and most important of all, entirely skipping the Scouring of the Shire, which is really a very necessary coda to the whole adventure, showing exactly how Frodo's quest actually saved the Shire.

Some of the other changes I can accept in the name of dramatic condensation, and some, like skipping Faramir and Eowyn falling in love,  I think actually improved on the original.

[eyeresist]

Snyppps beat me to it

And I thought I was a nerd : http://brunching.com/images/geekchart.pdf

[chasmaniac]

Re. the movies, I do my best to ignore the altered details whilst thrilling to the spectacle. Just seeing  Moria, Rivendell etc justifies the winces I endure. (Yet the winces do endure.)

[Karl Henning]

Re. the movies, I do my best to ignore the altered details whilst thrilling to the spectacle. Just seeing  Moria, Rivendell etc justifies the winces I endure. (Yet the winces do endure.)

You've got the right idea; though with the winces, there is the regular question of just how tough a swallow.  Jeffrey's point viz. Glorfindel/Arwen is especially well taken.  I am richly enjoying re-reading the book even now, and so I am reminded at firsthand that in fact, Glorfindel puts Frodo on his horse, and the wise beast races on his own bearing Frodo to safety.  Instead, Jackson makes it a workaday horse-chase, with the added Grrrrl powerrr angle;  the spurious invention of Arwen confronting the Nine across the Bruinen is near ghastly.

And going back to the Source has me ever less patient with how obnoxious a character Jackson has made Gimli — utterly undwarflike (without even getting to matters like use of the word "regurgitation," which betrays a pathetically ill-tuned ear for the tone of the work, or cutesipoo touches like "nobody tosses a dwarf").  But it may be that my patience for this re-make of Gimli is especially low, in light of how dissatisfied I am with how Jackson treats Rivendell/the Council.

Jeffrey is spot on, too, viz. Elrond — Master Elrond, if you please, scuttling like any errand-boy to Rohan.

Visually, not sure I quite like the realization of the Balrog, but it's a thrilling sequence, and let's call that one a minor quibble . . . .

[Karl Henning]

Saruman:  Is anyone else as bitterly disappointed as I, with what Jackson did to him?  I'm not crazy about Gandalf learning that Saruman has the Palantír as early as his imprisonment in Orthanc.  Worst of all, IMO, is how Jackson makes of Saruman just a Sauron stooge right out the gate; a flagrant change to Gandalf's observation that Saruman fancies himself an independent agent.  Not at all happy with how Jackson makes Saruman responsible for the weather which attacks the Fellowship on Caradhras.  And — while I should happily entertain arguments to the contrary — meseems that none of these changes (exactly none) was necessary in a film adaptation. The project reaches a point where it strikes me that the self-besotted screenwriters actually exult in altering the source, just because; and possibly convinced that, after all, they are much better writers and storytellers than Tolkien could ever have been.

[Karl Henning]

(I'll go ahead and say, too, that I thought the Battle of the Wizards scene struck me as a bit tawdry. And that, arguments that this or that arguably essential element of the story had to be cut, in order to make a movie, grow weaker with each superfluous addition, like the B. of the W.)

(Oh, and Théoden's "exorcism"; roughly equal parts inauthentic, gratuitous, and disgusting.)

[North Star]

Spot on, especially regarding the Saruman-related things, and Elrond, too, Jeffrey and Karl.
But the good thing is, since the movie is filled with imperfections, it doesn't intimidate others from making better film adaptations. (Yeah, right...)

[chasmaniac]

Don't forget this one:

One of the oddest changes from the book is that Sauron doesn't have a body; Saruman tells Gandalf that he isn't yet able to 'take physical form'. It's hard to see how this could be true - what use would the Ring be to Sauron, if he didn't have a finger to wear it on? The book makes it very clear that he does have a physical form - 'He has only four [fingers] on the Black Hand, but they are enough', says Gollum in The Two Towers, and this is confirmed explicitly by Tolkien among his letters. Actually, this does seem to be a misinterpretation rather than a deliberate change, because Peter Jackson has himself described Sauron in at least one interview as being no more than a floating eyeball.

[Karl Henning]

And he must have been possessed of a fresh physical form as early as his repossession of Dol Guldur, ahead of the events of The Hobbit.

[chasmaniac]

And he must have been possessed of a fresh physical form as early as his repossession of Dol Guldur, ahead of the events of The Hobbit.

Hmmm. What's that going to look like in the new flicks?

[chasmaniac]

Sauron should resemble a very tall, very powerful and very terrible man. Retaining, moreover, the scars of his few defeats in combat, the missing finger and whatever marks, presumably about his neck, that remained from his tangle with Huan.

[Karl Henning]

Hmmm. What's that going to look like in the new flicks?

Well, Dol Guldur is "off stage" in The Hobbit. Not that that would prevent Jackson from . . . doing that voodoo that he do . . . .

FWIW, I think that if I had seen the Jackson films in the cinema, I should have been turned entirely against him, for good.  I've come to them via DVD, at probably minimal cost, and there's a good deal about them that I do genuinely enjoy.

The fundamental sadness about the whole affair for me, though, is that more than one friend of mine has said (in effect), "When I tried to read the books, I didn't like Tolkien at all. But now that I've seen the movies, he's great!"  Hard not to feel that what they like is Jackson, and not Tolkien, at all.

[Karl Henning]

Sauron should resemble a very tall, very powerful and very terrible man. Retaining, moreover, the scars of his few defeats in combat [....]

Zis is Mordor: Ve don't "ring a ding dillo" here!

[chasmaniac]

I was young and green at the time, but the cover of the first edition of LotR that I read entranced me. I still like it for its suggestiveness, rather than outright depiction. O tempora!

[North Star]

FWIW, I think that if I had seen the Jackson films in the cinema, I should have been turned entirely against him, for good.  I've come to them via DVD, at probably minimal cost, and there's a good deal about them that I do genuinely enjoy.

The fundamental sadness about the whole affair for me, though, is that more than one friend of mine has said (in effect), "When I tried to read the books, I didn't like Tolkien at all. But now that I've seen the movies, he's great!"  Hard not to feel that what they like is Jackson, and not Tolkien, at all.

I can't really understand how one could like the movies but not the books.
And yes, it's stupid that Sauron doesn't have a body in the movies. The evil person is somehow changed into an evil spirit, instead of something much closer to Saruman.
Let's just hope the Hobbit will be better.

[kishnevi]

You've got the right idea; though with the winces, there is the regular question of just how tough a swallow.  Jeffrey's point viz. Glorfindel/Arwen is especially well taken.  I am richly enjoying re-reading the book even now, and so I am reminded at firsthand that in fact, Glorfindel puts Frodo on his horse, and the wise beast races on his own bearing Frodo to safety.  Instead, Jackson makes it a workaday horse-chase, with the added Grrrrl powerrr angle;  the spurious invention of Arwen confronting the Nine across the Bruinen is near ghastly.

There is a good dramaturgical element in Jackson's use of Arwen for that scene--it makes you know that Arwen is endowed with her own Power, as a Lady of the Elves, and why Aragorn loves her--instead of the book, in which she's more or less a stock figure.  But Jackson did not need to come up with the little sequence in which she's dying and sent off to the Grey Havens, and then turns back just before it's too late....
Nor (I reminded myself of this after I posted last night),  did we really need to see Legolas skateboarding along the Oliphant fighting Southrons and Orcs for ten minutes.