The movies could have been worse (esp. Eowyn)

[Tuor of Gondolin]

I haven't found much in threads dealing with movie/book Eowyn so...
(Excerpts from TheOneRing.com interview of Miranda Otto)
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12-11-03 Latest News

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Warrior Woman

By Nazz

Can we talk about your preparation and training even your sword work as it will play such a big part of this film.

"Well, I originally found out about the sword-fighting from Liv. In the original script that I read, there wasn't as much. And then the script started to change to go much more back towards the original book, for both my character and Liv's. It was Liv who warned me saying, you're going to have to be able to sword-fight and all these other things.' So then I went out and sought out the swordmaster and started to get some training......

Many were waiting for you to break out the sword in The Two Towers.

"I know! It's kind of a big lead-on isn't it? I heard that from a few people, that they were disappointed it didn't happens but just you wait. Originally there was a little bit of sword-fighting in The Two Towers [Miranda shot a scene where Eowyn defends the women and children hiding in the Glittering Caves from some marauding orcs who've broken through the defenses at the Battle Of Helm's Deep. It was deleted], but that wasn't taken from the books. In the books, she really does have to wait until The Return Of The King and the Battle Of Pelennor Fields to get to do it."

"If you saw some of the scenes that were in the original script, you would just die because they're so different to what we ended up shooting. But they told me that from the moment I got the part. They said, forget about the script for your character because we're really changing it.' For other people it stayed much the same but mine had gone a fair way from the book in the original draft that had been done.

"Basically, Liv's character was more action-based and that meant that mine wasn't as much. Then her character became a lot more like more like the Arwen of the book's appendices much more of a strong feminine presence and less of a warrior princess. I suppose they had thought, at one stage that was the way they'd have to go to integrate her. So we both changed to become closer to the way our characters were in the book."
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That is, the original script plan seems to have been to
radically alter the characterization of both Arwen and Eowyn, in the interests of dramatizing Arwen's role. You have to give them credit for at last realizing the error of altering two major characters when it was clearly unnecessary to deviate from the book, but you wonder at what other "changes" were contemplated.

One change that still irritates me is replacing "By Elbereth and Luthien the Fair you shall have neither the Ring nor me" (book Frodo) with "If you want him come and claim him." (movie Arwen)
But PJ and helpers did also put in positive changes (such as, generally, featuring Arwen more and amplifying Boromir's character).