I’ve finally gone and seen The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. Retail doesn’t leave you with a whole lot of down time from work during the Xmas season. I’ve been reading the various threads posted in here regarding the movie, and rather than try to post in all of them, I’m condensing into my own new thread.
The theme of this rant: the film made adaptations totally unnecessary to the filming of the story.
In my opinion, there are three legitimate reasons to change a story line when filming a book. The first is in order to keep the length of the film manageable. An example would be the exclusion from the first film of the meeting with Bombadil. The second is to avoid having to show something you can’t film within budget. As an example, you might drop out of a movie outdoor scenery that would require taking a film crew half-way around the world, when failing to show it won’t change the basic plot. The third would be to avoid showing offensive scenes not basic to the plot of the movie. One might delete gratuitous references to the “inferiority” of blacks in a filming of an early nineteenth century American novel if the story didn’t hinge on such characterizations.
I do NOT consider it valid to change a plot merely to try and make the plot “better.” For goodness sake, if you’re going to do that, then write your own damned story; don’t piggy-back off someone else’s success. After all, presumably the story as written is pretty good, else why are you making a movie of the book in the first place?
With that in mind, there are some very jarring “adaptations” of The Two Towers for which none of the above reasons seems applicable.
WARNING: Don’t read past this point if you don’t want the movie experience spoiled! I’m not bothering to hide everything in some damn box everyone else has to click and drag to uncover.
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Faramir. This is the most obvious of the gratuitous changes. I’ve read how some think this enhances the movie. Baloney. In the book, this scene is one of the most powerful scenes! Faramir, a man, a member of the race that will inherit the whole of Middle-Earth as a result of what Frodo and Sam are tying to do, has the chance to grab the Ring and take it to Daddy, or use it himself. Instead, and completely at odds with the choice his brother eventually makes, Faramir rejects the temptation and sends Frodo on his way. All of which makes the whole effort by Frodo worth-while. Mankind IS worth saving, if it still breeds people like Faramir. And don’t hand me that whimpy nonsense about Aragorn needing distinction; Aragorn has spent 87 years living a life devoted to trying to overthrow Sauron; his whole damn love-life depends on his success. He’s gone places and done things no one else of humankind could have attempted; he doesn’t need to be distinguished by his own refusal to “take” the ring. Indeed, the extent of his difference from the rest of humankind is evidenced by the fact that Tolkein doesn’t even have him undergo a “test” on this; he never even thinks about taking the ring from Frodo. Nothing is added to the plot by Faramir’s capture of Frodo, other than a silly and inconsistent scene where the chief Nazgûl confronts Frodo in Osgiliath, thus alerting Sauron to the presence of the ring just outside Mordor and undoubtedly causing him to issue a horde of orcs in search of all of Ithilien for the damn ring, which thus never has any chance of sneaking into Mordor via Kirith Ungol. Sure, you could have written the story this way, but the point is, Tolkein DIDN’T. So why change it??
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Entmoot. I’ve got to agree that the most boring part of The Two Towers (book) is the Entmoot. Walking through the forest with Quickbeam for three days while the Ents make up their mind is not exactly high drama. I expected it to be cut from the movie.
But for the Ents to meet and reject the concept of helping in the war makes them out to be totally selfish creatures, LESS than men and elves and dwarves! And how silly is it that, when “duped” by Pippen into seeing the devastation of the southern eaves of Fangorn by the orcs, one bellow from Treebeard brings them all out ready to march to war??? I mean, come on! That part of the movie seemed like any stupid fantasy movie, with poor plots, bad writing and insipid acting. All to make Merry and Pippen look “better” by inspiring the march of the Ents? Hell, that could have been done by having them address the Entmoot, which would only have involved making a speech up; something Jackson showed early on he didn’t mind doing with these movies.
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Aragorn falls off cliff. Ok, I can’t quite figure out what this adds to the movie, other than a chance for Éowyn to react to his dissapearance and his appearance. The whole showy thing about the choice of Arwen could have been put in even with out Aragorn’s fall; heck it even would have made sense, in a way, to have something in there, given that Elrond sends help Aragorn’s way in the book, after receiving messages from Galadriel, along with the banner made by Arwen. Why invent a battle that never happens in the book, a fall that never happens, and a hokey rescue via the influence of Arwen and the intervention of Hasufel?
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Rohan. Éomer meets Aragorn on way back from destroying orcs against Théoden’s orders. Éomer gets clapped in jail at Gríma Wormtongue’s suggestion. Théodred dies in battle and is brought back to rest before the king. Gandalf arrives with Aragorn, Gimli and Legolas, and manages to overcome the evil counsel of Wormtongue, exciting the King to action and getting him to release Éomer from jail. King, Éomer, Gandalf, Aragorn, et al. leave Edoras with a strong troop of horsemen, all told about a thousand, to ride to the ford of the River Isen to meet up with the main army. On the way, they find out to their dismay that the army is already defeated; they must turn instead to the fortress at Helm’s Deep, and hold it against the untold legions of Saruman’s army, which they manage to do successfully, helped in the end by the arrival of the remainder of the army lead by Gandalf. The women and children stay in Edoras, of course, which is, after all, some 100 miles from Helm’s Deep!
Now, it simply puzzles me to figure out what part of this excellent tale needed to be changed. Specifically, what in the world required Jackson to banish Éomer, take all the people of Rohan (apparently a fairly smallish place given that its capital, Edoras, looks to hold some couple hundred people at best) on a march to Helm’s Deep, have Théodred die in Edoras, have Théoden argue with Gandalf and Aragorn about how to fight the war, insisting on going to Helm’s Deep, etc. It doesn’t shorten the movie, it doesn’t avoid filming something that would be difficult to film, it doesn’t really add anything to the plot, it simply changes it.
The most bizzare part about these changes is that Jackson stayed quite faithful to the story as written of the battle of Helm’s Deep! So much so that one could hardly quibble with it at all! The only change of note was that the culvert only gets attacked once, by the prepared explosives of Saruman. But Aragorn’s defence of the gate through the postern; the culvert blast; the retreat into the keep; and, of course, the great ride forth by Théoden and Aragorn at dawn are all quite well done. And the battle is probably the one part one might have expected the movie to change, in an attempt to show off the graphics, shorten the story, etc. It’s almost as if Jackson saw this battle as the focus of the movie, the one thing he wanted to film faithfully, and the rest of the book as merely filler on the way to the battle and the next movie.
In the end analysis, I maintain that none of these four plot changes was necessary, nor did they add anything truly important enough to tinker with the tail. The hubris of the writer is evident, unable to simply leave the story as it was, insisting on imprinting the movie with the writer’s own stamp. Anyone can do that; to have stayed true to the movie AND made it exciting would have shown some TRUE genius.
