One of the most remarkable aspects of Peter Jackson’s The
Lord of the Rings trilogy is its faithfulness in spirit
and detail to the J. R. R. Tolkien novels on which the films are
based. Books and movies tell stories in vastly different ways, and
one of their primary differences is length. Novels often tend to
contain more information than a two- or three-hour movie can possibly
cover, and short stories are frequently used as the basis for film
adaptations instead. When a director chooses to turn a novel into
a movie, he or she must often eliminate or de-emphasize important
subplots. Clocking in at over nine hours, The Lord of the
Rings trilogy is much longer than the usual feature film,
but Tolkien’s trilogy, plus the related novels The Hobbit and The
Silmarillion,is itself long, spanning
thousands of pages. Jackson’s ability to capture the diversity and
richness of Middle-earth’s lands and peoples is therefore a substantial
achievement. Jackson is evidently a reverential reader of the original
books and did not want to deviate too much from Tolkien’s vision.
In a sense, Jackson’s faithfulness to the books was necessary for
the trilogy’s success. Dedicated readers of The Lord of
the Rings are the book world’s equivalent of Trekkies:
they are archivists of obscure, trivial details, even protective
of these details. If Jackson had disappointed them, he would have
lost a crucial audience and perhaps even caused a public relations
mess. Tolkien fans, however, generally love the films.
Despite Jackson’s careful dedication to the novels, some
differences do exist between the books and the films. In order to
turn thousands of pages into roughly nine hours of film, Jackson
had to simplify the original story by eliminating or changing certain
characters. For example, Tom Bombadil, a significant character in
the novel version of The Fellowship of the Ring, is
absent from the movies. As a hard-to-classify godlike creature,
he may have required more explanation than a fast-paced film could
make time for. Crucial scenes involving Bombadil are therefore missing,
including one in which the four hobbits come across a cache of elf
weapons, weapons that prove important when Merry uses an elf sword
to slay the witch-king, which cannot be killed by a human, in The
Return of the King. Jackson works around Bombadil, however,
to get the same information across. He gives the hobbits their weapons
more directly: Aragorn gives the hobbits a sack of weapons on the
hill called Weathertop in The Fellowship of the Ring.
The book-to-movie adaptation also affects the elf princess Arwen,
but instead of dropping out of the film altogether, she actually
takes on the characteristics of two characters from the novel. Arwen
appears in the novels but plays a less significant role than she does
in the films. The movie Arwen is a combination of the novel Arwen
and an elf warrior named Glorfindel. In the film version of The
Fellowship of the Ring, Arwen rescues Frodo after he’s
been stabbed by a wraith and whisks him safely on horseback to Rivendell,
with the wraiths in close pursuit. By giving Arwen this role, which
Glorfindel carries out in the novel, Jackson does much more than
simplify his story: he portrays Arwen as a heroine. This rescue is
our first impression of her, and her bravery and strength in this scene
balance out the more subdued role of delicate princess that she plays
later, as she idles in Rivendell wondering whether to choose a mortal
or immortal life. Her courage in saving Frodo puts her in the same
league as the warrior-princess Éowyn.
Despite these changes, the essence of Tolkien’s novels
remains intact. Jackson’s decision to forgo the obscure, extra details
that round out the author’s trilogy didn’t lessen the thematic and
narrative meat of Tolkien’s work, and the conflation or elimination
of characters from the novels ultimately does not change the story
very much. The films and the novels are not interchangeable, but
the films prove as faithful as they can be to the novels without
testing the limits of viewers’ patience and attention.
