Why Lord Of The Rings Feels Like Tolkien (Even When It Doesn’t)

Adapting a book means changing things.

And in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, things start to change with the very first line.

The world is changing. I feel it in the water, I feel it in the earth, I smell it in the air.

Now, the line itself isn't a change, it is a line from the books.

But it's not from the beginning of Fellowship of the Ring, it's from all the way at the end of Return of the King.

From a scene where the hobbits stopped back in Fangorn Forest one last time on their way to the Shire.

The opening line of Fellowship of the Ring comes from this chapter with Treebeard.

This kind of thing happens a lot in these movies, as Peter Jackson and his co-writers.

Wrangled Tolkien's books into manageable films, they constantly took dialogue from one character and gave it to someone else.

This line originally belonged to Legolas.

They are elves, said Legolas, and they say that the dwarf breathes so loud that they could have shot him in the dark.

This one to Faramir.

It is long since we had any hope.

And this one to Elrond.

This task was appointed to you, Frodo of the Shire.

If you do not find a way, no one will.

It's a pretty clear pattern for this trilogy.

Whenever they needed a line of dialogue, they tried as much as they could to pull one from the books they were adapting.

It turns the movies into something like a Tolkien remix, rather than a straight adaptation.

Things started to happen like, you know, lines that Elrond would say in the book were given to Aragorn to say in the movie.

You know, a line that might appear in Lothlórien was suddenly, you know, put into the Mines of Moria.

A demon of the ancient world it seemed, I have never seen before, said Aragorn.

Nonetheless, they're still talking his language, it's still his words.

Now, it might seem natural to put Tolkien's words into an adaptation of Tolkien's books.

But even for adaptations that are trying to be more traditionally faithful to a text, capturing the literal words on the page is not always a priority.

For example, Denis Villeneuve's take on Dune does keep some of the most famous lines from the book.

They have tried to take the life of my son.

Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.

But he's actually removing the vast majority of Frank Herbert's dialogue and trying to convey things like conflicts between the story's religious systems through the movie's visuals.

Turning a book's text into visuals is obviously a pretty fair way to go about getting it on screen.

Jackson did a lot of this too, like when he made Sauron's far-seeing eye an actual fiery eyeball sitting at the top of a tower.

But nearly as often, Jackson would take the book's descriptions and visuals and put them back into the movies as spoken dialogue.

Have you ever seen it, Aragorn?

The white tower of Ecthelion, glimmering like a spike of pearl and silver.

Its banners caught high in the morning breeze. Have you ever been called home by the clear ringing of silver trumpets?

The grey rain-curtain turned to silver glass and was rolled back.

And then you see it.

See what?

White shores and beyond them a far green country under a swift sunrise.

Even some of the book's chapter titles get set aloud in these movies.

Riddles in the dark.

A short cut to what?

Mushrooms!

To the Bridge of Khazad-dûm.

Now, a full list of these examples could go on for quite a while, and it still wouldn't add up to create an entire essay.

I feel all thin, sort of stretched, if you know what I mean, like butter that has been scraped over too much bread.

That can't be right. I need a change, or something.

But all of this is pointing to a fundamental reality.

Adapting a book like Lord of the Rings into a movie is very complicated.

Even though these are all Tolkien's words, the way they've been remixed and rearranged throughout this trilogy shows a lot of things had to change.

Which is why Tolkien fans have been debating whether the Lord of the Rings trilogy constitutes a good adaptation since 2001.

It's a debate that's become a little more mainstream recently because Amazon is in the middle of releasing Rings of Power, technically a Tolkien adaptation.

Technically.

Sauron lives!

Because of me!

Look, there's no point to talking about this show, except to point out that aside from issues of basic quality.

A lot of the complaints people have about Rings of Power could easily apply to the Peter Jackson movies, complaints like how accurate they are to the lore, or the characters, or the plot points of the source material.

Each of them, areas in which the Jackson movies take their own liberties.

The dialogue in these movies may be filled with Tolkien's words, but a lot of what happens in them doesn't feel like anything he ever would have written.

Oh, come on, we can take them!

Tolkien's son, Christopher, has described these movies as action movies for teenagers, and you know, he's not entirely wrong.

The movies spend way more time on scenes of combat than the books did.

And even more to Christopher's point, regularly add action beats to scenes that didn't really need them.

A sort of high-minded complaint you could make about all this is that the over-usage of action scenes starts to cheapen their impact on the story.

A more basic complaint you might have is that some of these scenes just aren't that good.

But probably the real issue is that all this fighting just takes up time that could have been spent elsewhere.

For instance, it could have been spent on the Scouring of the Shire, which was a fairly big sequence at the end of Return of the King.

The hobbits finally make it back to the Shire, only to discover that Saruman and the war have beat them to it.

Obviously, including it would have prolonged the ending of Return of the King even more, and the story of Frodo and the Ring is the focus of the movies.But still, you can't change things without changing things.

When you lose something as crucial as the Scouring of the Shire, you lose the meaning it brought to the story.

Lord of the Rings was saying something important here, and now, it's not.

And that's not the only meaning that went missing.

The skill of the elves can reforge the sword of kings, but only you have the power to wield it.

I do not want that power. I have never wanted it.

Aragorn's reluctance to assume his rightful place on the throne of Gondor is completely invented for the movies.

In the book, he's already carrying around Isildur's sword, already planning to retake the throne, and simply biting his time until the right moment to reveal himself.

Losing all of this affects the story because Aragorn is really meant to convey the traits of the perfect king, so when the movie shows him initially despising his right to rule.

You are Isildur's heir, not Isildur himself.

The same blood flows in my veins, the same weakness.

The extended editions have a more complete view of Aragorn's character, not just because they include some more of Tolkien's ideas about him.

But because they also more clearly contextualize his reluctance as a result of his feeling a greater kinship with the world of elves than the world of men.

There is no strength in Gondor that can avail us. You were quick enough to trust the elves.

And also emphasize that even among men, he's set apart.

You are one of the Dúnedain, a descendant of Númenor, blessed with long life.

Even though this whole arc has been invented for the movies, they do set it up well and pay it off in important ways.

They cannot win this fight.

Then I shall die as one of them.

Of course, well-structured or not, some of the meaning is just lost.

You can't change things without changing things.

But still, it's nice that the extended editions put some of Tolkien's textures back in, like his idea that Aragorn retaking the throne is part of a grand conspiracy woven by Gandalf.

In fact, it's illuminating to watch the extended editions because you see just how many times Jackson went out of his way to include character beats.

Bits of backstory, dialogue, and descriptions straight from the pages of Tolkien's books.

The hobbits' early encounter with the enigmatic forest being Tom Bombadil was never going to make it into this trilogy.

He's great, but taking a detour away from the tension with the Ringwraiths just as the adventure is getting started is the sort of thing that's a lot more likely to kill the pacing of a movie than the pacing of a book.

But anyway, if you watch the extended editions, you may have noticed they put some of Tom Bombadil's singing back into this otherwise frivolous scene with Treebeard.

You should not be waking. Eat earth! Drink water! Go to sleep! Bombadil is talking!

It gets some of that flavor back into the movies, even if it doesn't add anything to the plot.The way the extended editions include so much of Tolkien's poetry and songs should be a pretty solid indication of how much Jackson wanted his voice to stay in these movies.

The finest rockets ever seen, they burst in stars of blue and green, or after thunder, silver showers came falling like a rain of flowers.

And it suggests when he does make dramatic changes, it's likely not because he has some sort of problem with the books.

A great case study in how these sorts of decisions get made is a character who was arguably changed more than Aragorn.

In the books, Faramir is an extraordinarily noble man whose response when he's faced with the temptation of the Ring is to say that he would not even pick it up if he found it on the side of the road.

But in the movies, he becomes the biggest obstacle Frodo and Sam face for a good chunk of the Two Towers.

The Ring of Power within my grasp.

If you've read the book, it's jarring, and not just because the movie gets the plot wrong, but because it seems like the filmmakers are uncomfortable with the heroism written for these characters by Tolkien.

We live in an era where every hero is being torn down.And when you watch the Two Towers now, it can feel like it's just another example of someone thoughtlessly doing that.

And yet, if you listen to the rationale behind some of these changes, they sound less ideological and more simply practical.

There are things about the book that just wouldn't work on screen.

Peter knew it right from the word go, you don't intercut the huge climax of Helm's Deep with the huge climax of the confrontation with Shelob, both would kill each other, they'd cancel each other out.

In addition to giving the movie too many big climaxes, the chronology doesn't work either.

In the books, Frodo and Sam pass by Minas Morgul at the same point they do in the movies.

While the other characters are in the middle of Return of the King.

But moving Shelob's Lair to the appropriate part of the third movie.

Left the second with only half an ending.

You have the the victory at Helm's Deep, but you also wanted to have something else resonate with Frodo and Sam.

So Faramir's decision to help them was delayed until the most dramatically relevant moment.

We had to push the obstacle to the point where it becomes dangerous to our mission.

And it's worth noting that even if it takes him a little longer to get there, Faramir does wind up right back on the path Tolkien had written for him.

Captain Faramir, you've shown your quality, sir, the very highest.

The point is, the text that Tolkien wrote wasn't changed lightly.

In fact, many small scenes seemingly exist just to create a space for some of his best passages.

Like this dream, one of Tolkien's in real life, given to Faramir in the book.

And finding its way to Eowyn in the movie.

I dreamed I saw a great wave climbing over green lands and above the hills.

It was utterly dark in the abyss before my feet, but I could not turn.

And yes, it was significant that Tolkien initially gave it to Faramir, but Eowyn saying it has a certain poetry about it.

Since it was with her, Faramir initially shared it.

Something similar happened with a line about Eowyn that was originally said by Gandalf in the Houses of Healing late in Return of the King.

Who knows what she spoke to the darkness, alone, in the bitter watches of the night, when all her life seemed to shrink.

And the walls of her bower closing in about her, as if to trammel some wild thing in.

I think Peter talking that would have upset him, but the importance of that speech to me is not that Gandalf says it.

But that someone says it about her.

You see it over and over in these movies.

If Tolkien thought it was something worth writing down, it was treated like something worth saying out loud.

It's why the writing process didn't result in the movies drifting further and further from his work.

But rather becoming more and more faithful.

Every draft that we wrote, it became closer and closer to what was in the book.

It became nearer to Tolkien.

They tried a lot of different things and sometimes they thought of going in a different direction from the book.

And every time they tried to do that, gradually they find that actually Tolkien knew what he was doing.

You would hope Tolkien knowing what he was doing would be obvious to people adapting his books.

After all, isn't that kind of the point?

That great stories are worth preserving in some way because they've proven they have something important to say.

But of course, we all know that's an increasingly rare attitude.

More common is the belief that old stories need to be fixed, or to just see them as IP.

That can serve as a springboard for new and better ideas.

My abiding image is of seeing Peter early in the morning with unkempt hair, pouring over Tolkien.

Everybody was respectful of Tolkien, even at the end, the last day, you'd see copies lying around the set.

These movies are great because Tolkien's writing was great.

Jackson made changes for better or worse, but his insistence on using Tolkien's own words meant the movies could retain his voice.

And rising in his stirrups, he cried in a loud voice, more clear than any there had ever heard a mortal man achieve before.

Arise, arise, riders of Théoden, spears shall be shaken, shields be splintered.

A sword day, a red day, ere the sun rises.

Ride now, ride now, ride to Gondor.

After him thunder the knights of his house, but he was ever before them.

And he was borne upon Snowmane like a god of old, even as Oromë the Great in the Battle of the Valar when the world was young.

And darkness was removed, and the hosts of Mordor wailed in the terror of their doom.

And then all the host of Rohan burst into song, and they sang as they slew, for the joy of battle was on them.

It's hard for an artist to be humble, to ignore that voice that says adapting something means it's mine.

And that the person the world really needs to hear from is me.

As filmmakers, as writers, we had no interest whatsoever in putting our junk, our baggage into these movies.

We, we just thought we, we should take what Tolkien cared about clearly.

We should take those and we should put them into the film.

This should ultimately be Tolkien's film, it shouldn't be ours.

Thanks for watching.

And thanks for your patience.

If you enjoyed the video, you should read Lord of the Rings.

And like and subscribe so you don't miss the next one.

Hard to say exactly when it'll come.

But easy to say where we're going next.

We have our headache.

Finally.

Cast off those lines, weigh anchor and crowd that canvas.