Greetings, reader!
In honor of The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies (2014), the final film in Peter Jackson's Middle-Earth franchise, turning 10 years old this month, I'm taking a look at both the Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit trilogies - speficially as adaptations of J.R.R. Tolkien's books this time. Re-watching the six movies time and time again has caused a lot of reflection on the changes Peter Jackson made from the beloved source material, and how some of these changes landed better than others. In an admittedly slightly arbitrary fashion, I used my self-proclaimed Tolkien expertise to rule what the 'biggest' individual changes from book to movie are (it was easy to draw the line at the 21 selected candidates - every other change would veer into nitpicking territory) - and ranked them from worst to best.
A spoiler alert is in order for people who haven't read the books and/or watched the movies!
21. Alfrid (The Desolation of Smaug & Battle of the Five Armies)
Yeah, this guy sucks.
20. The whole thing with the dwarves trying to kill Smaug (The Desolation of Smaug)
I mean, I understand the reasoning for this - the second film needed some sort of climax, instead of just a cliffhanger, and the source material doesn't have a natural climax around the 2/3 mark. Arguably this is the best possible choice for the situation they were in, and the slight cruddiness of the film's climax is just (a part of) the cost of the decision to split the story into three films. It's not terrible, but it is a bit clunky.
19. The warg attack and Aragorn's side quest (The Two Towers)
Yep, not all of the worst changes came from the overall worse trilogy - even the Lord of the Rings movies have a few questionable ones (this is coming from a person who puts all three Lord of the Rings movies in his top 15 movies of all time). Yeah, The Two Towers is an overall masterpiece, but I never quite bought this particular escapade. The fake-out death comes across in a cliché manner, the Arwen (Liv Tyler) dream sequences go on for too long, and the whole thing doesn't add very much to the end product.
18. Cutting several side characters while creating new ones (The Lord of the Rings trilogy)
I would get the need to have a few films-only characters to complete Peter Jackson's vision for his long-ass films - but at the very least, those films should then also include beloved side characters like Tom Bombadil and Beregond from the books. Similarly, I would understand cutting some of the semi-iconic book characters due to the runtime, but that would be more understandable if the film's wouldn't use a lot of screen time for characters created for the movie (such as the villainous Uruk-Hai Lurtz (Lawrence Makoare)).
17. Azog as a major villain (The Hobbit trilogy)
We're still in the low-tier territory of changes where the book is overall better than the movie, but slowly getting to ones where I understand the film's reasoning for the change better. Azog's (Manu Bennett) role in the films is and easy target to criticize - a character who is literally mentioned once in the book, as a deep-cut lore villain, is turned into a major villain with his own storylines and a bunch of screentime across three films? Yeah, that sounds bad.
But I've honestly warmed up to this upon re-watching the films. In the Hobbit book, there's no need for the enemy to have a name and face, as the mysterious build-up of a faceless orc/goblin army and their eventual emergence into the battle of the five armies works. But on the big screen, it is inescapably more engaging to follow this build-up when they have a clearly defined leader, a personification of the enemy. It's a bit weird how much time we spend following Azog, but I still think the films are better with him than they would be without him (in either case, the films aren't as good as The Hobbit book, but that's okay).
16. The existence and storylines of Tauriel (The Desolation of Smaug & Battle of the Five Armies)
Yeah, I'm definitely not a full-on Tauriel (Evangeline Lilly) hater like many fans, but I do agree the character could've been done better. Among the reasons for the existence of this non-book character are the complete lack of female characters in the source material, and the lack of agency for the Elves (they just show up in masses, which works in the book but would've been boring and less personable on the big screen).
So, I do get why Tauriel needs to be there, and she definitely has her moments. This is still fairly low on the list, though, because the character's overall execution isn't on the level of the other characters (and who can blame the filmmakers for this - a character originally created by the J.R.R. Tolkien is likely to be more interesting than a character created by filmmakers who are not Tolkien). Some of Tauriel's storylines are on the boring side, and they get a bit too much screentime.
15. Everything in general being expanded (The Hobbit trilogy)
I'm still more on the "I understand why The Hobbit was split into three movies" team, as I do enjoy watching and re-watching all three, and one film would've been too rushed. Still, the split had its price, especially as Jackson wanted the films to be closer to three hours long (to feel more like the epicness of The Lord of the Rings, I guess).
A big tactic in this was taking all of the key events from The Hobbit, and expanding them in various ways - an average turn of events that merely happens in the book is given more backstory, more context, and more phases as it unfolds. In some cases, this works quite well - the extra dialogue and tensions in moments like the troll encounter makes the moments feel more dramatic, making the viewer invested. But in many cases, it feels unnecessary, making many action scenes feel "sigh, I already know how this is going to shake out" to people who read the books, and likely just as predictable to viewers who haven't.
14. The Elves being at Helm's Deep & Haldir's death (The Two Towers)
This one always felt slightly extra to me, as it doesn't contribute all that much to the plot, but I also don't mind it - I've watched the films so many times that they are just as nostalgic to me as the books, and the moment where the Elves arrive with its cool score is always one of the many scenes one looks forward to, as it is quite well-done and memorable.
Sure, the battle would've worked without the Elves as it does in the books, but it's a nice extra moment of alliance. I feel similarly about Haldir's (Craig Parker) death in the battle - he didn't need to die, and it's objectively a bit weird that Jackson killed him off as it doesn't happen in the books, but now that the decision was made, I can't help but admit that the death scene does add extra emotion to the battle, so I have no special quarrel with it.
13. Bard's lore and destiny (The Desolation of Smaug & Battle of the Five Armies)
I have mixed feelings about this one. In the book, Bard of Laketown (Luke Evans) is a cool guy with not much of a backstory, and when he ends up becoming the unlikely hero to kill Smaug, it's delightfully unexpected - he was in the right place at the right time, and utilizes the mysterious Black Arrow in the right way. For the movies, as a means of the expanding-everything that I discussed at #15, Peter Jackson builds this moment up across multiple scenes in two films, with Bard and the Black Arrow having a whole lore-riddled backstory.
I can't quite decide what I think of this - a part of me feels like it makes the moment too predictable and thus less of an exciting turn as it is in the book, but another part of me sees exactly why Jackson went with it, as Bard's arch in the book could be argued to be a bit too random and coincidental, and the movie integrates him into the story while giving him an arch. In the books, Smaug's death is a payoff just because it's Smaug's death, but in the movie it's also a payoff for Bard and his story. It wasn't exactly needed, but it does make the movie-Bard more of a character than the book-Bard.
12. Legolas being in The Hobbit (The Desolation of Smaug & Battle of the Five Armies)
This is one of the many changes that the hater-fans were all up in arms about when the Hobbit movies came out, claiming that there is no reason to include Legolas (Orlando Bloom) in the movies, as he wasn't in the book, and that this is merely soulless and superficial fan service. I disagree with this view, and this is why: the book includes the Hobbits traveling through Mirkwood and encountering the Elves there, and Legolas is an Elf who comes from Mirkwood and lived there as its prince during the events of The Hobbit, and the only reason why he isn't in the book is that Tolkien wrote The Hobbit before he wrote The Lord of the Rings, so he likely hadn't created the character yet. Story-wise, it makes perfect sense that Legolas would be there - so really, why not do this logical bit of fan service and let us see this beloved character again?
This might be even higher on the list, but I'm keeping it around the halfway mark because I do admit that Legolas doesn't add all that much to the quality of the films, although it is fun to see him again and he has some neat moments. I fully agree with the choice to include him (and I'm convinced that the fans who complain about his presence are those fans who went into the movies with a strongly pre-conceived attitude that they don't want to like the film and won't give it a chance), but it's not like his presence makes the films massively better.
11. Storylines like the flooding of Isengard and the Paths of the Dead being on-screen (The Two Towers & The Return of the King)
This was such an obvious change to make that it would be a bit weird if they took the books word-for-word on this one. In Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, there are a few storylines where a character goes on a side quest, we don't hear from them for a while as the side quest isn't followed from their POV, and eventually the character returns in a surprising manner and they later tell other characters what happened in order to fill in the blanks.
This happens with the flooding of Isengard (after the Ents decide to attack Saruman's (Christopher Lee) stronghold, we don't hear from them until Gandalf (Ian McKellen) and company find Isengard flooded and it's left to Merry (Dominic Monaghan) and Pippin (Billy Boyd) to explain how it happened), as well as Aragorn's (Viggo Mortensen) journey to the Paths of the Dead (he leaves with the Dunedain, and what went down there is revealed in a dramatic manner when he arrives dramatically in the midst of the battle in the Pelennor fields). It's pretty natural that for his big-budget big-screen films, Jackson wanted to show these massive events, instead of merely including them in dialogue or even doing a cliché flashback.
So, it's a well-reasoned change and works in the medium. I'm still not putting it the top 10, because even though the way both versions do these storylines works just right for that medium, I do have to say that the Return of the King one is objectively even better in the books - nothing beats that feeling when a first-time reader thinks that the arrival of the Black Ships means certain defeat in an already dire situation, only for the Aragorn reveal to act as a major injection of hope.
10. Where TTT ends and ROTK begins (The Two Towers / The Return of the King)
This was one of the hardest ones to get used to as a kid - the structure of the story in the books was so deeply etched into my mind, that it felt a bit wrong how the second instalment ends at such a different place for the first few times watching the movies. Once I got used to it, I had to admit that it makes sense in the context of the films. Like all of the changes that I've ranked here around the middle, above the simple 'this thing was worse in the movies than in the books' ones and below the simple 'this thing was better in the movies than in the books' (yes, those exist, come for me you literature elitists) ones, this is a case of the grey area where the way Tolkien does it works for the books, but the way Jackson does it works for the films.
The Two Towers (the book) ends with Gandalf and Pippin on their way to Gondor after Pippin's Palantir vision, Aragorn and company on their way back to Rohan after taking care of Isengard, and Sam on his way to rescue a captured Frodo from the tower of Minas Morgul. The Two Towers (the movie) ends a little over halfway through the events of the second book - with the battle of Helm's Deep and the attack on Isengard only just being over, while Frodo (Elijah Wood), Sam (Sean Astin) and Gollum (Andy Serkis) are still on their way to the stairs of Cirith Ungol. That means that the first one and a half hours or so of The Return of the King (the movie) are adapted from the last chapters of The Two Towers - but hey, it works, so what's the problem?
The reasonings for this can be analyzed and debated to an endless degree, but here's my take: Jackson wanted the final film to be the longest and most epic (including events like Shelob's lair helps with the escalating dramatics), and turning a few events from the middle of The Two Towers into more climactic versions of their book counterparts (namely Helm's Deep and Frodo&company being in Faramir's (David Wenham) custody; more on both of these later) helps give The Two Towers its own personable climax so that it works better as an individual film and not just a middle instalment concluding on a cliffhanger.
9. Cutting Tom Bombadil and the surrounding mini-adventures (The Fellowship of the Ring)
Oh man, I have mixed feelings on this one. Some fans are devastated that we never got to see Tom Bombadil in the film, and I get that - he's an iconic character in his own right, just like the misadventures and sidequests that the four hobbits get into around that part of the first book are very entertaining pieces of adventure literature and worldbuilding. But at the same time, the more I have matured, the more I have grown to understand and accept the decision to cut them from the films, simply because they don't add anything necessary to the plot.
Essentially, the film skips four consecutive chapters from the book - we cut from the hobbits escaping on Bucklebury Ferry to them arriving in Bree, while in Tolkien's text, the way to Bree includes a whole bunch of wacky hijinks like the Old Forest, the protagonists hanging out in Tom Bombadil's home, and the myserious Barrow-Wights being a thing. Those are fun to read in the book, but the story doesn't also lose anything when cutting that part, as they don't contain much character development, important lore or game-changing events.
8. When Boromir dies and how it's told (The Fellowship of the Ring)
This is an interesting one: the largely same event takes place in both book and movie, but the manner of how it's told narratively is different. In the books, Boromir's (Sean Bean) storyline is left wide open at the end of The Fellowship of the Ring, as we last see him despairing after he betrayed Frodo, and hoping for a chance at redemption. We don't follow his POV in the following events - but in the first chapter of The Two Towers, Aragorn finds him fatally injured, and we find out from their dialogue that he had heroically fought off the Uruk-Hai to save Merry and Pippin. He passes away at the end of their discussion.
Event-wise, the same things happen in the movies, but with these major changes: A) we see Boromir's sacrifice happening on-screen before Aragorn finds him, and B) it all happens at the end of The Fellowship of the Ring, not the beginning of The Two Towers. This is well-reasoned, as it gives an emotional climax to the first film. It's largely one of those cases where the book version and the movie version both work in their own medium, but it's above others of that sort because it could be argued that the movie does it even better. Yes, Boromir's death is emotional in the books, but the dramatics of the death scene on screen are hard to beat.
7. Arwen's bigger role (The Lord of the Rings trilogy)
Yeah, I'm glad that the fandom seems to see eye to eye on this one. I don't exactly blame the books for handling Arwen differently, because Tolkien writes what Tolkien writes and his versions of the storyline worked - but I'd be lying if I didn't say that this one is a bit of an improvement on some level. In the books, we don't spend very much time with Arwen, or learn too much about her despite her being an interesting character.
The movies give her more of a spotlight, especially with the clever call of replacing Glorfindel with her - in the books, it's Glorfindel who rescues Frodo on the way to Rivendell, but in the movies, we never meet him and the protagonist is saved by Arwen instead. It works on many levels - a female character is given more screentime and agency because they have so little to do in the source material, Liv Tyler gets to kick ass in a career-defining role, and let's face it, cutting Glorfindel was smart because he doesn't do anything for the rest of the books so it would've felt like getting to know another face in a crowded ensemble without it leading to anything.
6. How both stories start / when we learn the lore (The Fellowship of the Ring & An Unexpected Journey)
In Tolkien's literature, the beginnings of both The Hobbit and The Fellowship of the Ring are low-key introductions to a story yet to unravel - as is fitting for such books. But, as is fitting for large-scale cinematic adaptations, Jackson's films went with a more bombastic approach with his opening acts. And it works like a charm both times.
The first Lord of the Rings movie opens with an epic, massive-scale prologue, narrated by Cate Blanchett's Galadriel, filling us in on the origin of the One Ring (details that are learned only later in the book, which begins with the Hobbits vibing in the Shire). As this worked, Jackson repeated the narrative choice and opened the first Hobbit film with a similar lore-blast concerning the history of the Lonely Mountain, the Arkenstone and Smaug (again, something we would only learn later in the book that starts with a Hobbit vibing in the Shire). It's a neat trick, and while the openings aren't necessarily better than the beginning of each book, they certainly aren't worse either.
5. Following Gandalf's POV during The Hobbit (The Hobbit Trilogy)
This one was a no-brainer: in the Hobbit book, Gandalf often disappears on mysterious side quests, and they are left largely unexplained with always just a quick and cryptic answer on where he was. It's likely that Tolkien himself didn't have the exact answer in mind when writing The Hobbit - but years later, when he wrote The Lord of the Rings, he added appendices where he explains in detail just what was up with Gandalf during the events of The Hobbit.
This White Council storyline ties into iconic LOTR characters like Saruman, Galadriel and Sauron - so of course it made sense for the movies to include these side-quests on screen. Today's top four is all The Lord of the Rings, which means that out of all the changes to the source material that The Hobbit trilogy made, this one is my favorite.
4. Cutting the Scouring of the Shire (The Return of the King)
This choice was a tad bold, and one that split the opinions of some deep-end book fans when the films came out - but it seems that with the passage of time, more and more fans agree that this was the right thing to do. For those not familiar with the source material, believe it or not, Mount Doom isn't the all-evil-has-been-defeated climax in the books that it is in the movies. After events like Aragorn's coronation, we find out that leftover Isengard troops have taken over the Shire, with Saruman (still alive at this point, unlike in the films) calling the shots. Thus, those of the main characters who have returned to the Shire must vanquish this foe before all is well.
This final battle works well in the context of the book, but oh man, it would've totally broken the rhythm of the film, and undercut the dramatic nature of the bombastic Mordor climax. I will forever defend the decision to cut the Scouring of the Shire storyline from the films - I mean, they even took its best part (Grima (Brad Dourif) dramatically killing Saruman) and adapted it into a different context!
3. Helm's Deep being an overall bigger deal (The Two Towers)
If you watch the films first and only then read the books, this is bound to be one of the most confusing revelations: in Tolkien's Two Towers, the battle of Helm's Deep takes place across one chapter, a little over halfway the first half of the book. When making the films, Peter Jackson took a slightly different route: via a combination of telling the narratives of the book's first and second halves simultaneously instead of one after another, the decision to leave some post-Helm's-Deep events out of The Two Towers and into the beginning act of The Return of the King, and generally stretching out events from the book with good taste, Jackson turns this one-chapter mid-book battle into the massive, film-defining climactic event of the second film.
This works on many levels: the middle instalment gets more of a climax than it does in the books due to Jackson's genius combination of showing the Ent attack (see #11), a certain speech (see #1) and this battle, and just on a cinematic level, what is merely an interesting chapter-long battle in the books becomes one of the greatest and most iconic battle sequences in movie history. So, while I mean no offense to the battle of Helm's Deep in the books, the movie version does kick its ass.
2. The storyline of Sam leaving (The Return of the King)
This is a small-ish addition compared to some, but it makes all the difference in the world. Every time I re-read the books, I'm a bit sad that this storyline doesn't happen there - it feels sacrilegious to suggest that anything should be changed from the works of the arguably best storyteller of all time, but with all the possible respect to Mr. Tolkien, I'd argue that this genius addition from the movies would've worked as well in the books and made an already semi-perfect trilogy even a tad better.
Yep, the storyline of Gollum turning Frodo against Sam, Frodo eventually telling Sam to leave, and Sam leaving until he has a change of heart and arrives to save his friend at the nick of time (no, I'm not crying while writing this, you are) never happens in the books. Sure, similar themes are implied and Gollum definitely does try his best in manipulating Frodo against Sam, but it never goes nearly as far. This storyline was a magnificent addition from Peter Jackson and company: it gives the story even more despair, drama and heart at the eleventh hour, and Sean Astin's delivery of "You don't mean that" is probably the most heartbreaking moment in the movie.
1. The added speeches (The Two Towers & The Return of the King)
Yeah, this one takes the cake. I'm counting the combination of two speeches as the best individual change to the franchise, as both were similar writing choices with similar goals and consequences for the end result. One is Sam's "the stories that really mattered" speech from The Two Towers, the other is Aragorn's battle speech at the Black Gate from The Return of the King, and both of them kick the utmost ass.
Granted, Sam's speech isn't entirely a cinema original, as it draws inspiration from certain Samwise Gamgee lines in The Two Towers. But the way that it's shaped into a full dramatic monologue in the film, and the way this ties in with imagery from the unlikely victories at Helm's Deep and Isengard, is a work of genius - not to mention Sean Astin acting his heart off with his delivery, and parts of the monologue (emphasizing the 'great stories' and how amazing it was that they ended happily despite things looking so bleak in the process) really feels like Peter Jackson paying tribute to Tolkien and telling on a meta level how much his stories - the ones that really mattered - meant for him and so many others.
Aragorn's speech is an entirely original creation, and oh man, it makes an already great part from the book even better. The whole sequence is so fist-pump-worthy, lifting the trilogy's emotional core off the charts, and making for one of the most memorable scenes in the saga. So, out of all the major changes made from source material to adaptation, these two speeches are my pick for #1 favorite.
Thank you for reading! Tune in next week for my last post of the year: naturally, it'll be the top 10 best movies of 2024.
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