January 27, 2003

The Real Problem With TTT
Everett

Having been away from the website for three weeks, I missed the opportunity to offer a timely review of TTT, but since I've been visiting the site again for about a week, I've seen several posts regarding problems people have had with Faramir, the Ents and what not. These are all legitimate complaints, and I would tend to agree with them, but they seem to miss the underlying problem of the movie that really made most of the changes unavoidable. Ultimately, the biggest problem is not Faramir or the Ents or Frodo or any other character or plot alteration, it is more fundamental, dealing with the fact that the movie was made as more of an action movie than any attempt to translate the book to the screen exactly (which is impossible, I know). The biggest problem (and this is true of Fellowship as well) is that the dialogue suffers greatly as a result of the events being used to advance the plot much more so than they were in the books.

In the book TTT , Gondor is fairly well introduced to the plot through Faramir and Frodo's dialogue, in addition to the information provided by Boromir in Fellowship, giving us a reasonable, though by no means complete, view of Gondor and its situation. That this is never well established through the dialogue in the movies makes it essential that it be introduced through the actions of the characters. PJ apparently decided, not indefensibly, that it was essential to sacrifice Faramir's character in order to adequately establish Gondor in the movie.

Regarding the chain of events involving Merry, Pippin and the Ents, a similar situation again presents itself. In the books Merry and Pippin play a key role in getting the Ents to act, but it is much more subtle, more providing Treebeard with the information that gets both him and the Ents roused in the course of their conversation wiht him on the way to his dwelling, as opposed to basically tricking Treebeard into getting upset ("Oh, take us THIS way, where they won't expect us to sneak by and your forest just happens to be devastated."). But again, the decision to sacrifice dialogue in order to maintain the pace of the movie makes a similar scenarion impossible, and instead of showing the increase on the Hobbits' stature (in more ways than one) gradually, as in the book, PJ is forced to immediately turn them into primary movers and shakers, which they do not become until ROTK in the books.

Another area where sacrificing dialogue brought about otherwise unnecessary changes is the entire Helm's Deep portion of the movie. The preservation of dialogue would have allowed for an adequate explanation of the refuge at Dunharrow, the role of Erkenbrand, Eomer's pardon, the original reason the Rohirrim went to Helm's Deep, as well as avoiding the need to portray Theoden as the King of France.

The same can be said about Frodo. In the books, he is a character of formidable intelligence and wit, as is seen both by his first encouter with Gollum and by his conversation with Faramir, but the both were parsed and the latter conducted on the fly in order, I would guess, to maintain the pace of the movie (the former unnecessarily). As a result, te only aspects of Frodo's character we really see are his fear and the effect the Ring is having on him (overstated at this point).* However, PJ once again seems to view this as being necessary to maintain the pace of the movie, and would not be entirely unjustified in thinking so.

One area I'm not entirely sure this explains is the dropping of Aragorn off the cliff. I know they wanted to emphasize and condense the relationship between Aragorn and Arwen, but the question is was it necessary to do it this way, and did they have to turn Elrond into an S.O.B. to do it too? I suspect the preservation of dialogue could have adequately explained the nature of their relationship, but I know people, including people who have posted in this website, didn't pick up on it. Also, I can't comment one way or the other on it because the first time I read it I wasn't paying any attention to the romantic angle to the story and really still don't, but I also suspect that Tolkien or the publisher felt LOTR did not sufficiently explain their relationship, which is why the story of Aragorn and Arwen is appended to the story. I guess my biggest problem with throwing Aragorn off the cliff is that it was a somewhat ridiculous transition from the flight to Helm's Deep to once again working to establish the relationship between Aragorn and Arwen, even if it did lead to Legolas' best line in the movie.

Independant of the changes necessitated by the cutting of dialogue, some of the best lines are removed or lose their context. The conversation between Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli and Eomer being a prime example, as well as Sam's contributions to the conversation bewtween Frodo and Faramir. Saruman's treachery still has yet to be fully explained (assuming they haven't turned him into Saruman the Lackey), and little goodies like the name of Lothlorien having once been Laurelindorninan (I think that's spelled correctly) or the poem listing the races and creatures of Middle Earth.

Ultimately though, the movie was great. The Battle of Helm's Deep was the coolest battle sequence I have seen in any movie, and PJ manages to capture the broader essence of Tolkien's, even if he sacrifices too many of the characters.

*This problem is different from the problem in Fellowship, where instead of not having Frodo say anything, they didn't have him do anything (especially at Bruinen, where they made him a sack of potatoes).