whafrog wrote:
I don't recall that. He certainly thinks about it and talks about what could happen if he did take it, then rejects it because he swore an oath. I think that's one of the keys, different people find different ways to reject the insidious "offer".
No he doesn't. He deduces that Frodo is the Hafling from his dreams and thus he is carrying the weapon of the enemy. And then he tells him not to fear for he has no desire for it. There's no way about it, we never really know why he was that resilient, because as is written, he just is. I'll comment more on his lack of character development in the book later.
whafrog wrote:
I'm also not sure why you single Faramir out as unreasonably stoic, yet three Hobbits, an Elf, a Dwarf, and Aragorn managed it. As Gandalf explained, the blood of Numenor ran more truly in Faramir than in Boromir, hence his relative mental strength.
I'm singling him out because he is the ony character that makes no sense to the rest of the lore that Tolkien laid out with regards the Ring. It is established that certain races are more susceptible to the power of the Ring than others. Men are shown to be weakest. Dwarfs are said to have a natural resistance to its magic, and Hobbits are surmised by Gandalf to be incredibly resistant due to their heart knowing no true evil. Elves are never really focused on but are in the middle there somewhere it seems.
More importantly to that, Merry, Pippin, Gimli and Legolas are never presented with the Ring, so we have no idea how they would respond. Sam takes it and struggles with it greatly. Both Gandalf and Aragorn feel a strong temptation from it. Yet Faramir doesn't feel that temptation and denies it straight off the bat pretty much.
You've even stated above how Gandalf mentioned Faramir had the blood of Numenor run truer in his veins than in Boromir, and so he had a better resilience. By that logic Aragorn, who is a direct descendent of Numenor, should have a greater resistance than Faramir, and yet Aragorn is affected more than Faramir is. I'm not sure how you cannot see that, all of this is laid out clearly for us throughout the books. When all the lore tells us that this Ring is so evil and that this guy should be more tempted than the others in the example above, where is the logic in him undermining all of that?
whafrog wrote:
PJ's change wasn't necessary for the story, since in the book the reader doesn't know who Faramir is nor what he might potentially do, there is plenty of tension there that can be translated to film.
And what tension is that? It was necessary for Faramir's story on film, because in the book he has no character development, he is just a good guy who doesn't really change. This is not something that can be done on film, as the viewers will not relate to a character that they do not see develop. Knowing who he is and what he does has nothing to do with it, what matters is that if nothing changed within Faramir over two films viewers would grow tired of him and wonder by the end what he was doing in there in the first place. Plus if we saw in film two that Faramir was just the epitome of goodness as he is in the books, then by film three we have a reasonable speculation as to what he will do, as he would seem to have a clear pattern, which makes that point fall apart even. As Beowulf said earlier, maybe it is just because in the modern age we relate to flawed characters who have to overcome that, but regardless of the reason that's how it is, and if the audience don't relate to the character than the film maker has failed.
whafrog wrote:
Nor is PJ's change somehow more true to Tolkien than Tolkien, which seems to be part of your rationale.
I never said that nor implied it, and it's a ridiculous thing to say. What I did say was that I thought PJ's Faramir was a better character than Tolkien's, and that opinion has nothing to do with how true he was to the book. And besides, why would that be part of my rationale when the whole point in an adaptation is to adapt? The exercise is in retelling the story in a way that suits the new medium better, not to try and transfer it as closely as possible for faithfulness sake alone.
Tolkien himself said in letters that he wanted his works to be altered and expanded through different mediums long after he was gone, and that's what has happened. There's this fallacy that most people seem to have in their mind's and that's that the original of anything is automatically better. They react bady to change (a natural human imperative) and this is where purism in adaptational review comes from. But just because something is different from the original doesn't automatically make it worse. Just because Tolkien wrote the original story does not make him infallible, nor does it mean that others will never best him. Part of loving a piece of work is being able to acknowledge when it has a flaw.
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you've got it right in that I think when you adapt a character for a film you are doing something different than when you adapt it to a game, or when you change it during an individual game you are playing. This is because I think games and films are driven by different things, games rely on turns and dice but films on characters. So what I'm saying is, to change a character in a film alters a fundamental aspect of the film, while changing a character in a game is a secondary issue. 
