MovieChat Forums > The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003) Discussion > Which character(s) did Peter Jackson rui...

Which character(s) did Peter Jackson ruin the worst from the novel?

posted 4 years ago by MovieChatUser497 (18943)
41 replies | jump to latest

For me it's either:

- Merry
- Pippin
- Gimli
- Gandalf
- Denethor
- Faramir
- Theoden
- Elrond
- The Army of the Dead (Pirate Ghosts)

I would have put Arwen on here because she was just atrocious but she's barely in the book so Jackson didn't really have a character to ruin in the first place. With her he just invented an original stupid character.

The only characters I truly think he nailed were Saruman, Sam and Gollum.

[–] NotoriousRio (12927) 4 years ago

Saruman didn’t get the death he deserved. Expertly play by Christopher Lee though.

[–] LetoAtreides (576) 4 years ago

Gimli.

He was a cross eyed clown for most of the movies. If at least he shined during battles, but all the hero moments were given to Legolas. Dwarves are supposed to be fearless fighters against bigger enemies. Gimli should have had that one on one troll fight instead of Aragorn.

The problem with Arwen is that Liv Tyler was supposed to become a huge star back then so Jackons needlessly stretched her role across 3 movies. Her name appears in third place after Elijah Wood and Ian Mckellen during the end credits which seems crazy nowadays.

[–] MovieChatUser497 (18943) 4 years ago

Exactly, they turned Gimli into a joke, Liv Tyler cannot act to save her life and she didn't even need to be there. In the novel Arwen's entire subplot was wrapped up in about a paragraph, it is so odd that Jackson would devote so much screentime to a subplot that doesn't even really matter and it's not like Arwen is even an interesting character.

[–] Moonglum9 (11340) 4 years ago

I'm sure he did it for the same reason as in most movies - you gotta have a love story for the ladies to get interested.

[–] MovieChatUser497 (18943) 4 years ago

That's pretty cheap but OK, maybe one day they will remake this and actually respect the source material.