One Tolkien Fan's Observations

Rating: Null/10 (26 December 2002)

Fellow Tolkien Fans:
Have you listened to Peter Jackson's commentaries in TFOTR DVD? In it he states that TLOTR, as it stands, word for word and page for page, is unfilmable - and he's right. While I'd gladly sit through a 36-hour marathon series that was exactly true to the book, I doubt enough other people would to make such a venture commercially viable.
PJ is also a longtime Tolkien fan. The movies are his attempt to present the essence of Tolkien in visual media. No, it isn't perfect - nothing short of that 36-hour marathon could be. With only three hours per movie he has to leave a lot of material out, and what's left needs to be significantly edited to capture the themes of the book. Keep in mind PJ had originally planned for two films and walked out on his original studio when they told him to do it in one. How fortunate that New Line Cinema gave him the budget to do three!
Tolkien himself said that TLOTR was not allegorical, but was rather intended to be applicable to each reader's life in a unique way. That is the great strength and timeless appeal of the book. Each of us who reads TLOTR takes away a different mental picture of what the book's message is, and how the story takes place, and what each of the characters would be like in person. PJ's matched mine reasonably closely in most places. In others they didn't.
Gandalf is the guide of all efforts against Sauron, and when the challenge is beyond mortal powers he takes direct action. His charisma and power to inspire others are well portrayed by Sir Ian. We see the hand of Gandalf in the background in TTT, telling Aragorn "you must hold" at Helm's Deep, and in the foreground when he heals Theoden and leads the charge that breaks the siege. In the movie, Theoden's healing is portrayed as an exorcism, which I found to be a tad thick. I feel that showing Theoden possessed by heartfelt despair, rather than by Saruman, would have captured Tolkien's message better. The situation is hopeless, so why not meekly submit? No - Gandalf reveals his power, points to a window of light in the sky and shows you there is still a chance, so hold fast. Sounds corny, but I think Sir Ian's talents would have been equal to the task.
The message of Fangorn and the rise of the forest, to me, is that you can abuse nature for a long time but eventually it rises against you in wrath like you've never seen. The film could have captured the LOOOOOOONG time it takes for Ents to act by showing more periodic cuts to the Entmoot throughout the movie. The Hobbit trick of getting Fangorn to go south so he would see the forest's destruction and be moved to act wasn't how I would have done it. However it does send an additional Tolkien message that in the struggle of good and evil, doing nothing will eventually result in evil coming to your door and burning down your house. So take action now, Treebeard.
A chance to show your quality, indeed. The scene with Frodo, Sam and Faramir is a terrific opportunity to define and shape these three characters: Sam the earnest-but-simple gardener who blurts out that his master has the Ring, Frodo the gentlehobbit, able to hold his own in words with one of Numenorean descent, and Faramir, who resists the temptation that felled his brother. I don't understand why Faramir says the "a chance to show my quality" words first in the movie, but perhaps someone will explain it to me. The detour to Osgiliath doesn't really bother me as much as the missed opportunity to develop Frodo, Sam, and Faramir. Actually, in the book, Faramir does fight a battle at Osgiliath (after leaving Frodo), and the movie portrays what it might have been like. This is an example of the little bonuses in the film - you get to see scenes that were alluded to in the book but never described in detail.
TLOTR is the greatest work of fiction of the twentieth century and ranks highly among the greatest literary works of all time. PJ's movies, however, are not the greatest films of all time. As movies, they're very good, but not excellent. They can't be excellent because they're based on a thousand-page book with too many characters and events to allow for much time to be spent developing any single character or plotline onscreen. The real worth of the films, is that they serve to disseminate Tolkien's message (albeit in abridged form) to many, and hopefully inspire some significant number of people to read the book for themselves.