I hang out in /r/tolkienfans, which is aggressively book-only. Anytime someone cites PJ's fanon about something, they are gently reminded that that's movie-only and we don't do that here.
I'm one of those people--I liked the casting of PJ's LOTR, but after following FOTR pretty closely, it wandered off the characterization rails. Since when is Aragorn a reluctant king-to-be? When did Elrond exchange personalities with Celeborn? Arwen is wasting away because whuh? Faramir did WHAT? What pod person replaced Faramir? Denethor is already insane with despair before anything happens to Faramir--why?
Then there's the action bits that directly contradict the books, and show PJ didn't really understand Tolkien's themes. Aragorn beheading the Mouth of Sauron at the Black Gate--nope, didn't happen. Shadowfax rearing and panicking at the Witch-King's entrance--still nope. The Witch-King breaking Gandalf's staff --absolutely not!
OTOH, if PJ had to leave out the Scouring of the Shire, Saruman taking a header off Orthanc is as good as any way to kill him off.
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I'm one of those people--I liked the casting of PJ's LOTR, but after following FOTR pretty closely, it wandered off the characterization rails. Since when is Aragorn a reluctant king-to-be? When did Elrond exchange personalities with Celeborn? Arwen is wasting away because whuh? Faramir did WHAT? What pod person replaced Faramir? Denethor is already insane with despair before anything happens to Faramir--why?
Then there's the action bits that directly contradict the books, and show PJ didn't really understand Tolkien's themes. Aragorn beheading the Mouth of Sauron at the Black Gate--nope, didn't happen. Shadowfax rearing and panicking at the Witch-King's entrance--still nope. The Witch-King breaking Gandalf's staff --absolutely not!
OTOH, if PJ had to leave out the Scouring of the Shire, Saruman taking a header off Orthanc is as good as any way to kill him off.