pedanther

I believe one of the reasons for Tolkien's maps was so that he could keep his travel times straight (and that they were one of the things he went back and revised for consistency, certainly in "The Lord of the Rings").

It's probably pretty difficult to show a journey taking weeks via the medium of films at the best of times, unless you're dealing with something like "Red River", where the entire storyline is the course of the journey. 'They travelled for a long time during which nothing much happened' is never going to amount to more than a quick montage.

I vaguely remembered being surprised on my first reading at the difference in perception of times of different parts of the trip during Frodo's and Bilbo's (in "The Hobbit") respective journeys to Rivendell, which is of course entirely related to how much happened at which stage in each case -- though from a story-external perspective it's an interesting demonstration of how to write the same trip twice without repeating yourself!