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Saruman Completely Cut from 'Return of the King'
Dolemite_the_Wiz writes "Multiple News Sources report that Christopher Lee's Character Saruman will not appear in the LOTR: ROTK at all. From what I've been reading, the scenes total seven minutes and is a vital component of the whole storyline that the 'masses' should see in the theatrical cut of ROTK. Of course these scenes will be included in the DVD 'Special Edition' of ROTK. I've got tremendous faith in Peter Jackson's talents as a filmmaker. I've been a fan since his first movie but haven't read the LOTR trilogy books...yet. (I'm waiting for ROTK to hit the theaters) Given the fact that I haven't read the books but am a huge movie snob, how can you not have any sort of resolution of a character that has played a key component in the three movies? Articles on this story can be found at BBC, Christopher Lee Web, and theonering.net."
Jackson has said that Lee's parts were cut from the 3rd film because they should really be part of the 2nd, but he didn't want to start off with wrapping up the 2nd movie. They wanted to start off fresh. See: http://www.darkhorizons.com/news03/031110.htm
Here's Peter Jackson's take on it
Scouring of the Shire has been out for a while...
The part they're talking about is when Gandalf goes to Isengard and breaks Saruman's staff. That's gone from the theatrical release (which really should have been at the end of TTT, but wasn't).
Saruman thing you describe is a muddle of half-truths.
We have decided to save the Saruman sequence for the DVD. It's a great little scene. 7 mins long. Chris is wonderful, as usual. Brad is in about 6 shots. It was a film maker decision - nothing to do with the studio.
The problem is that the sequence was originally shot for The Two Towers, as it is in the book. Since The Two Towers couldn't sustain a 7 min "wrap" after Helm's Deep, we thought it would be a good idea to save it for the beginning of the Return of the King. The trouble is, when we viewed various ROTK cuts over the last few weeks, it feels like the first scenes are wrapping last year's movie, instead of starting the new one. We felt it got ROTK off to an uncertain beginning, since Saruman plays no role in the events of ROTK (we don't have the Scouring later, as the book does), yet we dwell in Isengard for quite a long time before our new story kicks off.
We reluctantly made the decision to save this sequence for the DVD. The choice was made on the basis that most people will assume that Saruman was vanquished by the Helm's Deep events, and Ent attack. We can now crack straight into setting up the narrative tension of ROTK, which features Sauron as the villian.
It was a very similar situation to last year when we decided to take a nice Boromir/Denethor flashback out of The Two Towers, and put it in the DVD. It was causing us pacing problems in the theatrical version, but with the Extended Cut just coming out now, fans can see this great little scene. Thank God for DVD, since it does mean that a version of the movie, which has different pacing requirements, can be released later. The Saruman sequence will definately be a highlight of the Extended ROTK DVD.
We have a lot of great DVD material this time around. As we crafted the movie, we reduced it from an over 4 hour running time, down to 3.12 (without credits - about 8 mins long). This was done by us. There were no studio cutting notes. We now have a movie with a pace that fells ok for it's theatrical release. One more week to go. We are nearly there. Will we still be standing? It's going to be a close run thing.
Cheers,
Peter J
As he describes it, it definately sounds like just One of Those Things that happens when you're adapting books to film.
Bush: He's Liberal in all the wrong ways.
Come on. All that happens is gandalf breaks his staff and expels him from the wizarding club. The only important plot element is wormtongue throwing the palantir out the window. They have to leave plenty of room for liv tyler dream sequences because that's what the fans want... am I right?
Plus the SE of the first included free movie tickets to the second. I thought that was a damn good deal, and I used them. Here's hoping the SE of the 2nd does the same!
common sense: noun
What those who are ignorant of the subject matter think; usually wrong.
You insightful post is actually wrong. Jackson has said he's not been under any pressure from the studio. See here for more info.
What appeared in frodo's vision isn't anything from the scouring of the shire, nor was it in Sams vision in the book. The visions they had were of after the shire had already been corrupted and turned to industry, Sauron had retrieved the ring in those visions. That hadn't happened in the scouring, there were no orcs in the shire, just men at that time.