LogFAQs > #886179394

pinky0926 posted...

Nah, I feel like that's a bit redundant after the hobbits literally save the world and all of Gondor including the king bow in gratitude.

I wouldn't say it's redundant. You've defeated the evil fantasy overlord, and you expect to go home to your quaint little Shire and rest on your laurels... but you can't, because your quaint little Shire was also destroyed in the conflict. And it didn't take an evil fantasy overlord to do it. Just a scummy wizard.

Basically, defeating Sauron wasn't the auto-win button you thought it was. Life is more complicated.

In the movies, the Shire always remains this untouched paradise. So you lose that message, which is arguably the main message in the book.

However, I get why they cut it. The way the movies are structured, it would've been a giant hiccup in the pacing. At the very end too, when audiences think everything's over! If they wanted to feature it, they would've had to rearrange the plot to set up an expectation for something like that. The approach they took worked well. I have no complaints about them leaving it out.
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The owls are not what they seem.