Editing Denethor (section)

===Peter Jackson's films===

[[File:Denethor.JPG|thumb|[[John Noble]] as Denethor in [[Peter Jackson]]'s ''[[The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King]]'']]

Denethor is played by [[John Noble]] in [[Peter Jackson]]'s film ''[[The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King]]''.<ref>{{cite web |last=Jones |first=Alan |title=The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King |url=https://www.radiotimes.com/film/fj5j2q/the-lord-of-the-rings-the-return-of-the-king/ |publisher=Radio Times |access-date=13 February 2020}}</ref> The film portrays Denethor far more negatively than the novel. Tolkien calls Denethor

{{blockquote|a masterful man, both wise and learned beyond the measure of those days, and strong willed, confident in his own powers, and dauntless. (...) He was proud, but this was by no means personal: he loved Gondor and its people, and deemed himself appointed by destiny to lead them in this desperate time.<ref name="Unfinished" group=T/>}}

Shippey commented that where Tolkien's Denethor is a cold ruler doing his best for his country, Jackson's is made to look greedy and self-indulgent; Shippey calls the scene where he gobbles a meal, while his son Faramir has been sent out in a hopeless fight, a "blatant [use] of cinematic suggestion".{{sfn|Shippey|2005|pp=409–429}}

''[[Christianity Today]]'' wrote that the films "missed the [[Christianity in Middle-earth|moral and religious depths]]"<ref name="CT 2003"/> of the book, such as when they turned "the awful subtlety and complexity of evil"<ref name="CT 2003"/> into something trivially obvious. It gave as an instance the caricaturing of the powerful Steward of Gondor, Denethor as "a snarling and drooling oaf rather than a noble pessimist".<ref name="CT 2003">{{cite web |last1=<!--not stated--> |title=The Lure of the Obvious in Peter Jackson's The Return of the King |url=https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2003/decemberweb-only/12-15-31.0.html |publisher=[[Christianity Today]] |access-date=18 April 2021 |date=1 December 2003 |archive-date=18 April 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210418203001/https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2003/decemberweb-only/12-15-31.0.html |url-status=live }}</ref>

Daniel Timmons writes in the ''J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia'' that Jackson characterizes Denethor and others in a way "far from Tolkien's text", but that the film version successfully "dramatizes the insidious temptation to evil", and that through "the falls of Saruman, Denethor, and Sauron, we see the bitter fruits of the lust for [[Addiction to power in The Lord of the Rings|power and its corrupting influence]]."<ref>{{cite encyclopedia |last=Timmons |first=Daniel |editor-last=Drout |editor-first=Michael D. C. |editor-link=Michael D. C. Drout |title=Jackson, Peter {{!}} Artistic Impression |encyclopedia=[[J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia|J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia: Scholarship and Critical Assessment]] |year=2006 |publisher=[[Routledge]] |isbn=1-135-88034-4 |page=308}}</ref>