I fail to see why you can't just take it straight off the page.

Because the poetry would bore us to tears. Because people *actually* speaking is vastly different than *writing* people speaking. Because thoughts in a person's head do not transfer to stage and screen without a lot of confusion or hoop-jumping. Because it would take too damn long.

whatever happened to the idea of having, you know a *plot* that makes sense, that you maybe have to engage brain just a little bit to understand

On this point I concur. In Pirates of the Carribean, it's not explained that contact with the ocean activates the medallion and makes it "audible" ("The gold calls us.") again to the pirates, you just have to get that. It's not explained that the reason that Barbo

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Goddamn inability to edit comments! Stupid me hitting the button too soon!

What I was trying to say was that Pirates allowed you to be slightly confused about some points, while offering deeper insight if you saw what they were trying to get at. But people go to movies to relax after a hard day's work, and that means turning one's brain off. Action movies (LOTR, in it's entirety) and romantic comedies are most common for this. I don't disagree with turning your brain off after a trying day - working the Christmas season at a photo studio (people yelling at you because you haven't met their every need in the last four seconds, who are completely oblivious to the ten thousand other people you're trying to help) makes glazing over in front of a movie or television so very appealing. So studios trim the movies of the intellectual stuff, making them appealing to the least common denominator. I'd like to see stuff be a little less blatant, but I mostly don't want to have to think too hard. Sad, maybe, but true.

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Oh, yes, cut for length by all means, but don't then go and add bits in that weren't in the book and that make no sense... (obviously with a book that long you have to remove sections)

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