Plot changes -- books are still sublime, movie is still epic

Rating: 10/10 (19 December 2002)

A lot of teeth are gnashing about the changes Jackson has made to the plot in Two Towers. I feel bad for people who are upset and can understand their frustration. I myself went out of my way to find reviews with spoilers so that, instead of spending my time in the theatre obsessing about plot deviations, I could just sit back and enjoy the movie (which I truly did). I think many of these plot changes were necessary, although I might have done them some other way if I was calling the shots. So let's launch in to a few of them . . .
**SPOILER WARNING** Faramir: He's one of the more fascinating characters in the book, and he's simply given a broad stroke in the film, and not a particularly attractive one. But looking back at the book, Faramir's character occupies 50 pages, much of which is dialogue between Faramir and Frodo. No wonder he's a complex character in the book! He does lots of soul-baring. Given all that, it's understandable that some change had to be made in the film, otherwise we'd have "My Dinner With Faramir".
In the book, Faramir's plan originally was to take Frodo and Sam back to Gondor (not because of the ring, however). After all the dialogue (and after Faramir finds out about the ring), he changes his mind. There are also mentions of the book about the battles at Osgiliath. So lots of the elements that are 'changed' in the movie have foundation in the books, and Jackson (who feels his job is to make an exciting movie) did what he felt he had to do. I would've done it differently, but that's me. But there's obviously no room in the movie for the exposition that the books have.

The Nazgul confronting Frodo as Osgiliath bothered me as much as anything - part of the strategy of Gandalf for the war is to sneak the ring in to Mordor to destroy it, figuring Sauron will believe that Gondor is going to try to use the ring to challenge him. No need to announce to Sauron that the ring is somehow at mordor's doorstep.
I think the rousing of the ents (Pippin's `trick') also could've been handled better. In the books, Tolken makes it clear that the Ents are slow to anger and reluctant to get involved, but they knew what Saruman was up to and said `enough is enough.' Not sure why Jackson did it the way he did - didn't really add anything that needed to be added.
The warg battle - This is in the book, sort of. As the contingent from Rohan is riding to Helm's Deep, they skirmish with orcs on Wargs and drive them off. This is probably a couple of sentences in the book and is expanded in the movie (a la the cave troll in the first movie). No harm done here, IMHO. Aragorn's plunge off the cliff, however, could've been left out. It didn't add anything to the film, except another excuse to dip into the Arwen subplot.
Speaking of which, much of the tension between Arwen, Aragorn and Elrond is spelled out in one of the appendices in the book. Jackson took some liberties there as well, but the idea pretty much holds true. (You could've left the whole Arwen thing out of all the movies completely and it wouldn't have bothered me, but I understand how androcentric the film would've looked then.) The imagery of Arwen grieving over King Ellasar's body was nicely done, showing her dilemma. So again, Jackson is taking the story and shaping it to the film - he is not creating this stuff out of whole cloth.
After looking back through the book, I was actually pretty impressed about how much the battle of Helm's Deep matched Tolkein's descriptions of it. And the landscapes --- I cannot believe how much the scenery matched my mind's eye from reading the books (like the scrub trees in the final scene in Ithilien - a tiny detail, but absolutely perfect as it was captured on film.) Astounding. And enough has already been said about Gollum, who is a revelation. As I said before, I sought out spoiler reviews so I wouldn't be distracted from plot deviations. If I want to read the books, I'll read them. But I certainly enjoyed the film for what it was - a majestic and exciting adventure flick, well worth seeing again.