The disappointing news of Saruman’s removal from the Return of the King has been confirmed by none other than Christopher Lee himself. On his official site he commented that his evil character, Saruman, was taken out of the last part of the trilogy. Mr. Lee was understandably shocked at this event because his character should have been part of the climax of ROTK. My first impression was “wow”. Saruman has been part of the trilogy since Fellowship so why remove him now?

Nonetheless, this event has caused an uproar among the many fans of the movies, books and of Christopher Lee himself. Questions of how it will affect the storyline of the movie have run from one end of the spectrum to the other. How will Peter Jackson explain the missing wizard? The last we saw of Saruman was during the attack of the Ents upon Isengard. The wizard was quite visible standing in the doorway of the door and then slamming the doors shut. Won’t viewers wonder what happen to him? Are we to assume that the Ents were the ones that destroyed him? What happened to Grima? The last shot of him was also in the tower. Common sense tells us that Saruman’s removal will disturb the logic of the storyline. How will it explain how Pippin winds up with the palantir? It’s not something the Fellowship happened to pick up on the way. For those fans that have not read the books they will have no idea how they came to have it.

What it all boils down to is time. Peter Jackson’s thought was that The Two Towers couldn’t handle a 7 minute “wrap” after the scenes in Helm’s Deep so it was set aside for the opening of Return of the King. But because Saruman plays no role in the events that occur in ROTK the decision was made to remove it and save it for the DVD release. It will be assumed that Saruman and Grima were destroyed by the Ents. Now in a movie that is rumored to be more than 3 hours long why is 7 minutes going to make that much of a difference? To me, the time decision is rather weak. The FOTR had a lot of pointless scenes such as that Troll in the caves of Moira. What was the point in that? In TTT it is Aragorn’s supposedly “plunge to his death” scene. Come on, we know he’s not going to die. There wouldn’t be a Return of the King had that happened. So, again…what’s the point? Saruman’s scene is a memorable one. It brings to an end a part of the movie that has kept us spellbound through the first two. It provides a way of forwarding the plot of the movie regarding the aforementioned palantir and how the Fellowship came to have it. Surely the absence of this scene will cause some head scratching and some wide eyed confusion among viewers who will ask themselves, “where did that wizard go?”

People will miss this scene. Even those of us that are not big Saruman or Grima fans will notice their absence. Peter Jackson has not led us astray so far. Granted, some of his decisions and actions have been questionable but New Line has done a remarkable job so far. I, for one, will reserve judgment until I have actually seen Return of the King. We might all be in for a surprise or two. It’s happened before.

by LadyCeleborn

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