Peter Jackson’s ‘The Lord of the Rings’ trilogy: The changes which made the movies
More often than not, when the topic of books and their film adaptations arises, books tend to come out as the favourite among the fans, particularly where beloved franchises are concerned. A lot of the time this is due to an illusion, owing to the fact that we tend to forget about the crummy books that were made into stellar films — looking at you, The Bourne Identity — whereas great books that were ruined on screen tend to be quite hard to purge from memory — looking at you, The Golden Compass. Other times, knee-jerk reactions to changes unfairly damage the reputations of decent adaptations (I maintain that The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, while nothing close to its source material, is still a good film).
Once in a blue moon, both versions are loved and appreciated for what they are — 2001: A Space Odyssey, Fight Club and Heart of Darkness/Apocalypse Now being some of the best examples. Still, there’s always one who feels the need to say “the book was still better.” In regards to Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy, that one person happens to be none other than J.R.R. Tolkien’s son, Christopher Tolkien, who has had nothing but criticisms for the films since their release. An extract from one of his rare interviews on the subject comes courtesy, originally, of Le Monde magazine:
“Tolkien has become a monster, devoured by his own popularity and absorbed into the absurdity of our time. The chasm between the beauty and seriousness of the work, and what it has become, has overwhelmed me. The commercialization has reduced the aesthetic and philosophical impact of the creation to nothing… They eviscerated the book by making it an action movie for young people aged 15 to 25.”
While Christopher Tolkien’s completion and publication of his late father’s unfinished works remains a praiseworthy task, his limited understanding of the films is immensely frustrating. It’s the exact same thinking as the crowd of people who blindly rag on The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy for its changes towards a more traditional narrative structure in place of the film’s humorous and whimsical non-plot — which, by the way, all initially came from Douglas himself.
When moving from prose to screen, one must accept these changes, since very few novels are written to be cinematic. The changes don’t always have to be drastic — often it is a case of adjusted pacing or a closer focus on plot points rather than the journey between them. In the case of The Lord of the Rings, yes, all three instalments have a great focus on the action, though rarely is it mindless: the battle at the end of The Fellowship of the Ring exists to give an emotional climax to Boromir’s end that doesn’t exist in the books; the Nazgûl attack on Osgiliath in The Two Towers foreshadows the Ring’s subjugation of Frodo’s will in Mount Doom; the sub-plot with the King of the Dead in The Return of the King serves as the climax of Aragorn’s own character arc, in which he embraces the burden of rule which he dreads.
Thus do the films preserve the scope of the story and its morals, and develop its central characters to fill the empty spaces left by the absence of the book’s numerous inconsequential side characters. The inclusion of characters like Tom Bombadil, for example, who serve the plot very little, would actually disrupt the fluent pacing of the films more than it would add to the story. Remember that a film is not a part of an in-universe ‘history’ of Middle Earth, as in the novel, and cannot easily capture the jovial, musical poetry of Tolkien’s prose while also remaining serious and dark. Tone and atmosphere are extremely delicate in film; to expand the opening ninety minutes of Fellowship with characters like Bombadil would only serve to make the shift towards the more serious second half all the more jarring.
Likewise, the threat of an evil army is ultimately very little in film without showing that army’s power or its malice — both of which the films elaborate upon hugely through its action sequences. The changes see that the tale isn’t just about how Frodo and Sam get from the Shire to Mordor, but why they do and how they manage to succeed in spite of the odds against them. With a novel that exceeds 1000 pages and a film trilogy which exceeds 11 hours, there are obviously far too many changes to examine in a single article — however, I’ve chosen a selection of micro and macro edits that really brought together Jackon’s brilliant trilogy.
(As an aside, while I refer to the films as ‘Jackson’s trilogy’ for the sake of clarity, I obviously can’t attribute all of the changes to him alone. 1 in 160 New Zealanders worked on the film, not one of whom deserves to be insulted by Tolkien’s base misunderstanding of their achievement.)
1. Arwen actually exists.
Let’s start with a bang. I shouldn’t even mention this in the current sociopolitical climate, but I’m going to anyway: Jackson’s films pretty much invented Arwen’s role in the films. Or, rather, they amalgamated a few minor characters from the books into one, and then gave her an additional character conflict of her own. In the books, she only appears twice: once in Fellowship, to turn up to a meeting and charm everyone with her elfin beauty, and once in Return to marry Aragorn. Even Galadriel gets to show off her powers of would-be-future sight on top of just being one of those beautiful elf women — but Arwen unfortunately isn’t so lucky.
Now, I’m not even going to try to argue the egalitarian standpoint for the benefits brought by this change. I know there are those who will simply never agree that representation is important, or who will claim that a fantasy novel based on a patriarchal era of history must follow the same rules for its characters. Frankly, the article doesn’t have room to tackle a fraction of this debate.
Instead, you should care about the improvement to Arwen’s character because she brings a conflict to the films that just doesn’t exist in the books: the choice between an easy end and a fulfilling end. The Fellowship take on the hopelessly difficult task of destroying Sauron’s One Ring because they know they must in order to survive. There is no easy way out for them. Certainly, it would be ‘easy’ for them to sit at home and accept doom — but in order to live, they must stand and fight the forces of Mordor.
Arwen on the other hand, gifted with immortality, has to make a much more meaningful choice: to leave Middle Earth to its fate by taking the one-way trip to the Grey Havens and eternal peace, or to stay and accept mortality, for the sake of Aragorn, their future child, and herself.
Sure, those of us taking a feminist standpoint could also find something to complain about this dilemma being family oriented — but the message runs deeper than the surface level of women in love: sometimes it’s worth taking a leap of faith, not just because it’s right, but because you just won’t be happy unless you do. The goodness in Arwen triumphs when she chooses not to run from death, but to stand and face it with Aragorn for the sake of her better life — an arc that more than fits with Tolkien’s story of fighting evil no matter what.
2. Bilbo doesn’t offer to take the Ring.
It’s easy to understand why Bilbo takes up so much of our time in Tolkien’s Fellowship. Bilbo had grown as a character throughout The Hobbit and it would have felt seriously unjust to have cast him aside without a second thought after the Ring is passed to Frodo. The films, having predated the adaptation(s) of The Hobbit, aren’t obligated to stick around with him as much, and while he still pops up at the start, end, and somewhere in the middle in Rivendell, some of his content had to be cut.
Most notably among these cuts is that Bilbo isn’t present at the Council of Elrond, the meeting called to decide upon the fate of the Ring. This means he doesn’t volunteer to take the Ring to Mordor himself prior to Frodo’s offer — an act which seriously devalues Frodo’s sacrifice.
In the film, it’s pretty clear that Frodo feels backed into a corner — the Council devolves into bickering between the “higher races” over who should be trusted with the Ring, and Frodo understands that none of them really are capable of handling its temptation. He’s still under no obligation to volunteer, but he makes the sacrifice to bear the burden of the Ring anyway in order to ensure its destruction, much to the dismay of Gandalf. Having Bilbo do the exact same thing beforehand — even though it might not be quite as valiantly done as with Frodo — rather diminishes the effect. It seems to turn out more like a happenstance or an inevitability as opposed to a very explicit and noble choice, since Gandalf states that Bilbo “cannot take this thing back. It has passed on.”
3. Who wants to go to the Mines of Moria? Not Gandalf.
If the most well known rule of storytelling is ‘show, don’t tell,’ then the easiest mistake to avoid is to state that a journey or event was difficult, when we should show the journey itself instead and allow our audience to decide for ourselves that that is the case. The difficulty is that in a novel, showing a journey can take a long time, and an author needs to make sure that this time is secondarily used to develop characters and tension. Film, by contrast, is automatically at an advantage when it comes to condensing story, because the medium is entirely about atmosphere — we can infer a great deal more from one short sequence than we sometimes can in even a whole page of prose.
In Tolkien’s novel, it takes a long time for the Fellowship to really get started on its journey. On Aragorn’s advice, they head across the high path through the Pass of Caradhras. They soon find that it’s too cold, and spend literally days debating whether to continue or head to the Mines of Moria. It’s a fiasco that might give Brexit a run for its money — at one point they decide on a vote, only for Frodo to insist they sleep on it first. They get attacked by wolves, and eventually they do decide to go through the Mines instead. There isn’t really much leadership displayed, which I suppose is really the point, but the film works much harder during these scenes to develop its individual characters.
After the famous montage through various mountains (thus showing and not telling the tiresome journey) the film version of the Fellowship makes camp, where Gimli and Gandalf shortly debate the path ahead. Gimli wants to go through the Mines, but Gandalf refuses:
Gimli: “If anyone was to ask for my opinion — which I note they’re not — I’d say we were taking the long way around. Gandalf, we could pass through the Mines of Moria. My cousin Balin would give us a royal welcome.”
Gandalf: “No, Gimli. I would not take the roads through Moria unless I had no other choice.”
Already, it couldn’t be more clear: Gandalf thinks the Mines of Moria are dangerous, and not at all what Gimli expects. The Fellowship are then forced to hide from a flock of crows (Saruman’s spies) but Gandalf still refuses the route through the Mines. Instead, he decides they must take the route through the Pass of Caradhras (Aragorn’s idea in the book). It isn’t until Saruman summons an avalanche that Gandalf relents to go through Moria — and even then he can’t bring himself to make the decision, but asks that Frodo, the Ring-bearer, do it.
This may not seem like a drastic change, but consider Gandalf’s role in the story — he is the guider, the wandering wizard who seems (at least to a Hobbit) to know everything there is to know about the world outside of the Shire, as well as being the bearer of magical fireworks. In other words, he is a knowledgeable and trustworthy figure to Frodo, and as an audience we adopt a pretty similar attitude. So when Gandalf adamantly refuses to take the Mines of Moria — preferring even to walk through a blizzard on a mountain — we know there must be some dark, dark shit down there. It’s quick and easy tension building — if the smartest character in your crew thinks a particular path is dangerous, it probably is.
It’s not just the film’s atmosphere that benefits from this change; Gandalf as a character does too. Paradoxically to what I already said about his intelligence and trustworthiness, he hasn’t really done anything right by this point in the story. He misjudges Saruman and gets himself caught, escapes and turns up at Rivendell, leads the Fellowship into the clutches of the Balrog, and then dies to said Balrog so they can make their escape. Except, in the film, because he does at least make the right call about the dangers of the Mines of Moria, this last mistake becomes less of a mistake and more of a noble sacrifice.
The consequence of this is that later, in The Two Towers, when he informs Merry and Pippin that he was sent back to finish what he started, we have a lot more faith in the powers that be that they made the right call to return him to Middle Earth in order to defeat Saruman. It’s little bit like watching your friend lose a bunch of boxing matches, and having to still believe in them when they sign up for yet another. With each failure, it becomes a little more difficult to believe they have what it takes to win. The Gandalf of the films perfectly achieves the balance between success and failure; there’s still room for him to grow after his return, but he starts out strong and wise enough for us to believe that he actually can.
4. Boromir’s redemption.
As I mentioned earlier, Jackson’s Fellowship ends with the Uruk-hai assault on the companions, but it isn’t mindless action. Boromir falls heroically to save Merry and Pippin, a fact which occurs ‘off-screen’ and is merely mentioned later in Tolkien’s novels. Not only does the scene carry great emotional weight for the first film’s climax which is missing in the book, but it also has some of the film’s most meaningful and cinematic shots in which Boromir is overcome physically by the orcs, only minutes after having been overcome mentally by the temptation of the One Ring.
Add in the earlier scenes in which Boromir’s conflicting desires of glory and righteousness are elaborated from the books, and you have the foundation of a genuinely touching death; Boromir feels like he’s been cut out from his own story before it’s even begun — it’s a really gutting feeling.
Of course, it would be difficult to write any prose as spectacular as Boromir’s on-screen death, where the music, sound (mixing? editing? I never know) choreography and camerawork all come together perfectly. Still, it’s a shame we didn’t get to read about him going down fighting to try and protect the Hobbits. After all, he wasn’t an evil character — just susceptible to temptation — and he deserves the valour of the ending he was given in the films.
5. Faramir’s temptation.
If Boromir’s character arc was transformed during the process of adaptation, it is still nothing compared to that of his brother, Faramir. In the books, Faramir’s character serves very little purpose, other than to add a splash of conflict between Sméagol and Frodo when the latter saves the former from Faramir’s men, although Sméagol interprets it as a betrayal. In the films, Faramir aims to forcibly take Frodo back to Gondor to deliver the Ring to his father, Denethor, a plan that he eventually gives up on once he sees the Ring calling to the Nazgûl and understands its unwavering loyalty to Sauron. He turns from an incidence of the journey to an impediment — and because this misstep gives him room for growth, he turns from the good man he is in the books to a hero.
The Faramir of the films is probably the best character in the entire trilogy, period. He isn’t just on a tough journey to destroy the Ring and be done with it; he’s approaching the climax of a lifelong struggle for the approval of his father. There’s both ambition and meekness in him, a desire to please and to succeed, all of which makes him a prime target for the Ring’s dark magic, just as with his brother. Faramir embodies the vulnerabilities of the race of “Men” in general and in particular; it preys on his fear of being a living disappointment to Denethor and thus shows us for the first time why the idea of the Ring is so dangerous — not because it inexplicably manipulates the minds of the bearer, but because it preys on their weaknesses as individuals.
It’s a nice extra layer that the book never quite explores, and transforms the Ring from an obstacle to a tangible and horrifying psychological weapon. You can see also the subtle differences in the temptations of Boromir and Faramir — the former seeks glory and surety for his men, and the latter seeks to gain approval from Denethor. No matter how much Faramir despises his father, he wants his approval so badly that he tries to force himself to become like Boromir (whom Denethor loves) by taking the Ring. This elaborated struggle makes Faramir and Denethor’s confrontation all the more heartbreaking in Return:
Faramir: You wish now that our places had been exchanged. That I had died and Boromir had lived.
Denethor: Yes. I wish that.
The changes also make Faramir appear stronger and more righteous in the end when he overcomes his temptation to take the Ring from Frodo. Not also is there an explicit valiance in his rejection of the opportunity to please his father, but even without the motivation behind it, the very act of overcoming this temptation portrays bravery and resilience in place of the generalised benignity of the book character. The words of Skyrim’s Paarthurnax have scarcely been more relevant: “What is better — to be born good, or to overcome your evil nature through great effort?”
6. A struggle of self: Sméagol vs Gollum.
To be fair, the films didn’t change much about Sméagol/Gollum. As far as I can tell, the exact same plot points all occur, albeit in a slightly different order, and the inner conflict isn’t changed much either. Mostly it’s the incredible motion-capture acting from Serkis that really brings this conflict to the front of the action, to the point that I probably cared more about the consequences that Gollum’s eventual victory would have for Sméagol than I cared about the consequences for Frodo and Sam.
In the books, it’s much more difficult to relate to Sméagol’s inner conflict, because it’s mostly only brought up during Sam’s musings on a conversation he overheard between Sméagol and Gollum. We understand that there’s a conflict there, but it’s almost impossible to make it feel as real as it does when you can see Sméagol’s physicality morphing in front of you along with his persona. Not only that, but his reactions to everything else that happens around him can be shown as well (this generally being a feature of film, if the director chooses to utilise it). For example, you can clearly see the guilt in his face during Sam’s “Something worth fighting for” speech at the end of The Two Towers, because Gollum has already won him over and he has resolved to betray the hobbits.
What’s more, the film focuses on Frodo’s failures: the times where he allows Sméagol to come to harm, particularly at the hands of the soldiers of Gondor after Sméagol has entered the Forbidden Pool. Even though Frodo knows this is the only way to spare his life, we can see the reasons why Sméagol turns against Frodo later on — it’s not just a convenience of the plot because Sméagol is a “bad guy,” but a consequence of the betrayals he has been subjected to throughout his life. As with Faramir, the Ring preys on his personal weaknesses.
Hence when Gollum finally does convince Sméagol and to betray Frodo and Sam (this also happens later in the film than in the books) it doesn’t feel quite so inevitable. Sméagol losing the battle becomes a loss in itself, because we are invested in him turning towards the light, no matter how unlikely it seems. It’s entirely debatable whether this is a good change — it’s just a matter of which portrayal of Sméagol you prefer, the hopeless villain or the tortured villain, rather than one being more effective than the other at achieving the same goal.
A more explicit editing choice is the inclusion of a flashback to Sméagol’s past, before he was poisoned by the Ring. Return opens with a scene that is only alluded to in Tolkien’s novels, in which Sméagol is seen committing his first murder to acquire the Ring from his friend Déagol. Entirely unnecessary for the plot, this scene serves the narrative by foreshadowing Gollum’s betrayal of Frodo later in the film. The film doesn’t really need it since we already know it will happen but it makes for an effective opening nonetheless. The scene then cuts to a shot of Frodo himself ogling the Ring in the present, showing that its power is growing over him, and foreshadowing his betrayal of Sam. And none of this comes from dialogue — it’s all in the power of structural editing.
7. Aragorn develops a proper character arc.
This is the big one. In my opinion, it’s the one real flaw of the books. I can live with characters like Faramir and Glorfindel popping in and out without developing character arcs. Aragorn on the other hand is as much of a protagonist as Frodo, in as far as the book really has a protagonist. Yet, he doesn’t have any development at all. He’s assertive, strong, compassionate, incorruptible, intelligent — a leader and king in all but name — and there’s really nowhere to go from there because he’s already reached his destination from the moment he steps onto the page.
In Jackson’s films, kingship is something Aragorn has to earn. He still has all the qualities that make him the person he is, save for one: leadership. He’s good at it, but he doesn’t like it. In fact, he fears it. He is all too aware of the power of power to corrupt, and it is this fear which he must overcome to claim Gondor:
Arwen: “Why do you fear the past? You are Isildur’s heir, not Isildur himself. You are not bound to his fate.”
Aragorn: “The same blood flows in my veins. The same weakness.”
Arwen: “Your time will come. You will face the same evil. And you will defeat it.”
It’s in this way that Aragorn really appeals as a leader — nobody wants to give power to those who seek it, although rulers of history and current affairs alike have all too often come from this pot. Through his struggle to accept his role as the leader of free men, Aragorn overcomes the prejudice of those who, like Boromir, insist that Gondor “needs no king.”
His journey begins in stride (no pun intended) at the end of Fellowship, after the companions have been broken up. His choices are to give up or to press on — not with Frodo, but in pursuit of the captured Merry and Pippin. It’s an easy decision for him to make because of the compassion that refuses to let him abandon the hobbits and yet it also serves as the first drive towards his end goal. The throne of Gondor, for all the fears and responsibilities it holds for him, is only another step in the same direction: a righteous path and a refusal to abandon those in need while his strengths may serve them.
Legolas: “You do not mean to follow [Frodo and Sam].”
Aragorn: “Frodo’s fate is no longer in our hands.”
Gimli: “Then it has all been in vain. The Fellowship has failed.”
Aragorn: “Not if we hold true to each other. We will not abandon Merry and Pippin to torture and death. Not while we have strength left.”
Another great piece of structural editing is the decision to bring the chronology of the reforging of the fragments of Narsil (into the sword Andúril) into the events of the books. In Tolkien’s Fellowship, this event has already taken place and marked the start of Aragorn’s journey to the throne of Gondor. By moving it chronologically to the events of Return, the films turn the event into a symbol. Once Aragorn sanctions the reforging of the sword, he is more or less bound to accepting rulership. He is left with little choice, and not only through birthright — it’s something he has earned through his righteousness and reckless, unselfish bravery bordering on Todestrieb. The ‘return of the king’ is not just a physical return of a man to a throne, but the return of the spirit and drive which make Aragorn a great leader.
8. The Eye of Sauron.
I’m tacking this one on at the end because admittedly it has nothing to do with editing of any kind, least of all towards the story or structure of the films. It is, however, a great example of a film making the most of the strengths of its medium.
The Eye of Sauron that sits atop the tower of Barad-dûr is so iconic that most have probably forgotten that it doesn’t exist in the books. There are references to Sauron’s all-seeing Eye, mostly in relation to visions or a metaphor for Sauron’s will, and the image of the Eye does crop up in Tolkien’s own drawings, but there’s no mention of it physically existing.
As I mentioned earlier, in a film it’s difficult to get away with creating a threatening force of evil which never manifests fully on-screen, and the same is true for Sauron as well as his armies. I think a good balance was achieved with Barad-dûr more or less hosting Sauron’s physical presence, without taking away from the fact that it is an incomplete presence — Sauron can never fully recover without the Ring. This balance is important because it increases the stakes tenfold; failure doesn’t just mean losing the means to defeat Sauron but will actively serve to make him stronger.
An epic poem and an epic film.
Of course, not all of the changes can be perfect. One particular gripe I have is that one of the titular two towers doesn’t actually appear once in the film The Two Towers. Why, Peter, why?! (Okay, I get why — running times are a hard thing to manage, especially when you cut out half of Return.)
Mostly, though, as far as narrative goes, Jackson’s trilogy gets as close to structural editing perfection as any book-to-film adaptation ever could, particularly in the extended versions. Again, that’s partly because they packed so much content into 11 hours of running time, but mostly the editing was just extremely efficient. Very little feels like it was lost in the cuts, and quite often there was something to be gained in the changes that more than made up for it all. Honestly, what’s the cutting of Tom Bombadil (may he live forever in our hearts) compared to a fully fleshed-out Arwen, Aragorn, and Faramir?
In certain ways, Christopher Tolkien’s assessment of the films is valid. The films, for all the brilliant pieces of music in the score, never manage to capture the musicality of the books , for example — nor do they try to. Off the top of my head, the only film that has ever really captured the very musicality of a written text is O Brother, Where Art Thou?, the Coen Brothers’ very loose adaptation of Homer’s epic poem The Odyssey, which itself would likely have been intended to be sung rather than read.
My use of the word ‘epic’ in this article is no accident — for Tolkien, who himself had translated the Anglo-Saxon epic poem Beowulf amongst uncounted other studies of their history and literature, was immensely interested in the power of poetry and song. In many ways, The Lord of the Rings itself can be read as both a novel and an epic poem in prose, given that it often follows the same historical style of narrative. Yet the translation from an epic poem to a film trilogy of the same epic proportions by no means diminishes the moral or the magic of Tolkien’s story, not least just because there is a lot of action in it. Little is dumbed down; much more still is elevated to greater heights of cinematic storytelling.
It’s hard to say which form of the story I think is ‘better,’ but I absolutely believe that the screen version of The Lord of the Rings which Jackson gave us is better than any hypothetical alternative version of which Christopher Tolkien might have approved. It’s a shame he can’t see the beauty of the films, but if his attitude towards change is so inflexible, I’m definitely not sorry he didn’t have a hand in their adaptation.
