Hey folks, Harry here... The dear Ian Mckellen has gone and done a remarkable thing... amongst all the work he is doing in New Zealand, he still finds the time to right with his thoughts and activities in Middle Earth.... In his latest update, he details a fairly major / minor change to how the film will open.

Originally in the LORD OF THE RINGS scripts the film was to open with the great war... the cutting of the ring from Sauron's hand... and going all the way through Hobbit-form Smeagol (GOLLUM) swimming down towards the ring... (if memory serves it even continued through to Smeagol killing his friend... but I may be wrong... it has been so long since I read those ancient drafts)

This was going to be Peter's way of telling those that were unfamiliar with the books... "Ahem... WE'VE GOT THE MOST AMAZING SEX EVER, and stay tuned for more like that!" So that the uninitiated would give the story a chance to breathe in the beginning when we'll be getting our bearings in the world of Middle Earth...

The way it was going to happen was rather abruptly... THE PRE-STORY... then... the film starts... Well from what McKellen seems to be saying, Peter decided he wanted to make it work a bit more organically... So they are filming to bring Gandalf into telling that story (which we see visually) to Bilbo or Frodo or someone (undetermined) and thus it feels a part of the narrative as opposed to a pasted on thing. AHHHHHH.... Narrative flow... isn't nice to have a filmmaker thinking about narrative flow? Sigh....

One click to read it all!