The New Inklings

My friends, John and Chris, and I got super nerdy the other night at my favorite bar. We decided somehow to start talking about The Lord of the Rings. I assume we started talking about movies and then got to that specific series of movies. Then we segued into how the books were so different from the movies. The changes that the directors made were not all acceptable to us, nor did we view them as necessary increase the ticket sales in movie theaters.
For example, one change was removing the beloved, though oft overlooked and/or forgotten character, Tom Bombadil. I understand that his is a very slow-moving part of the book, but it would not have hurt anything to add those character-building scenes with him interacting with the four young hobbits. I can honestly say that leaving out Bombadil was detrimental to my experience of watching the movies.
Another thing we talked about was how in The Lord of the Rings they overemphasized the love story between Arwen and Aragorn. The argument entailed the logic that while it was definitely unnecessary to the furthering of the main plot, Aragorn is such well-beloved character that nobody minded the extra scenes with Liv Tyler in them. However, this is not the case for the entirely fabricated love sub-plot in The Hobbit movies between the elf warrior-girl and dwarf treasure hunter-boy. That one pissed me off. I did not enjoy The Hobbit movies in their entirety as much as I like The Lord of the Rings, probably because I always liked The Hobbit book more than The Lord of the Rings. The story is shorter and more focused. The movies just didn’t have the same vibe as the book and there were too many large, unncessary changes that were very odd choices. It was a book about adventure and treasure and friendship and NOT ROMANCE! I mean, they added an extra character simply to add a romance into the script. It was a simple little slap in the face for a purist like me. Oh well. Enough ranting.