Literary Corner: Why the Lord of the Rings Books Are Better than the Films

Hey Reader!

So as Tiberius noted in his last Thursday post, he's of the mind that the Lord of the Rings films are better than the books. And I want to say two things upfront: 1) he makes some very good points, especially in the realm of pacing: a movie paced like the books would not sell. And 2) this is a lot of pressure, because I feel like most people have OPINIONS on this subject and might be angry with me if I botch this up, :P

So I'm going to present a few arguments, but I don't feel like I need to give every reason why the books are better stories/portrayals of the story than the films. So if you have additional points to add, feel free to add those in the comments below! And if I'm off-base, you can add those too, :P

I.  Developing Minor Characters Is GOOD

Perhaps the biggest issue with taking a book that was written over decades and putting it to screen is that it will, invariably, have more depth than you can fit into a cinematic work, especially if you want it to be a masterpiece. Even if you were to adapt it to a TV show, it would be hard to encapsulate it effectively because of the visual medium.

An incorrect portrayal...

While I love the movies, the movies often have to cut corners with characters, and that sometimes means cutting out people that you love, or wholesale changing them because there just isn't time to develop them properly. We see this in The Fellowship of the Ring with Farmer Maggot, who is reduced to less than 20 seconds of screen time, and in that time his character is completely changed. Instead of cowering before the Black Riders and telling them where to find the Bagginses like we see in the movie, this is what the encounter looks like in the books (and I paraphrase sections for brevity, which will be in red):

“This lane don’t lead anywhere, and wherever you may be going, your quickest way will be back to the road.” The wraith asks where he can be found, and Maggot tells him, “Be off! There are no Bagginses here. There are no Bagginses around here. You’re in the wrong part of the Shire,” and when the wraith offers him gold if he’ll tell him when the Baggins passes by, Maggot replies by telling him, “No you won’t” (which is probably true) “You’ll go back where you belong, double quick. I give you one minute before I call all my dogs.” 

He then deftly darts out of the way as the wraith charges, and Maggot calls his dogs and readies to fight as they leave. This type of Giga-Chad encounter is something that won't make the film because it takes too long to show, but also because Tolkien is coming from a deeply sympathetic perspective on the simple common country man of England, and Hollywood isn’t interested in that. For Tolkien the “Salt of the Earth”-type people are among the best, and he paints them that way. And you lose that in Hollywood, because to them they’re country yokels. And I guess we can’t have those be the admirable characters in a story?

Okay, salty part over. Back to your regularly scheduled literary criticism, :P

And Maggot is not the only one to get this treatment. We have to skip over Glorfindel – both because they didn’t want another character, and because they wanted to give Arwen more of a part. And I don’t mind that – it’s fine. But it means you lose the cunning and might of Glorfindel, which most people forget about if they haven't read the books in a while. As laid out in Many Meetings (more on that chapter later): 

“When the Ringwraiths swept by, your friends ran up behind. Close to the Ford there is a small hollow beside the road masked by a few stunted trees. There they hastily kindled fire; for Glorfindel knew that a flood would come down, if the Riders tried to cross, and then he would have to deal with any that were left on his side of the river. The moment the flood appeared, he rushed out, followed by Aragorn and the others with flaming brands. Caught between fire and water, and seeing an Elf-Lord revealed in his wrath, they were dismayed, and their horses were stricken with madness. Three were carried away by the first assault of the flood; the others were now hurled into the water by their horses and overwhelmed.”

And of course Glorfindel is not the only character that had to be cut from the movie; Fredegar Bolger, Beregond and Bergil, Quickbeam, Mablung and Damrod (and other rangers), Halbarad (and all the Rangers), Fredegar Bolger, Gloin, Erkenbrand, Elfhelm, Lugburz the Orc (that's right: there should be another named orc in the game, but we don't have one, because he wasn't in the movies!), Tom and Goldberry – lots of characters had to be cut. And others get severely curtailed, including Hama (no glorious death at the gates of the Hornburg for him), Gaffer Gamgee (he just sits in a pub and drinks: no heroism from him in a Laertes-style display of valor), and dare I say Gimli (the errant knight turned into a comedic character)? 

And I don’t think that’s bad for the movie (I don't even mind the Gimli change: it makes him stand out more than he does in the books), but what the book “lacks” in pacing it makes up for with depth: the characters are very real, and they get that because they talk so much.

And as people who play MESBG, this is critical for us: can you imagine how few heroes we'd have if we were relying purely on the movies? The reason our game exists as it currently does (heck, the reason that the Fiefdoms army and the Rangers exist in the first place) is because the books have far greater depth in minor characters than the movies.

II.  The Action in the Books Is GOOD

An image you can hear!!!

I don’t actually disagree with Tiberius about the action sequences in the movies – they are all very well done, and lend gravitas and an epic feel to the movies. And it's true: if you read the books, the battles are quite short, and thus can feel underwhelming by comparison to the gravitas they are given in the movies.

I will note in passing, though, that they are actually very well-written in the book for a book: it’s not a Hollywood-style blow-by-blow of action, and I think a lot of modern books struggle by trying to paint an image in your mind like you're watching a movie, and I think that can actually hurt the writing by making some descriptions overly long so as to lose the intensity and energy of the moment (see the general decline of action descriptions as you go through the Hunger Games trilogy, as Ms. Collins tries too hard to describe too many things that are on a more grand scale than a few teens fighting each other as one example; you could also look at the length of my last sentence as an example of something that is probably too long to be wieldy, but we need not dwell on that). 

But what the books do communicate - and quite effectively - is the intensity and ferocity of what is happening, and maintain the pace of the action very well. We may not get blow-by-blow commentary, but we do get detailed casualty reports for named characters (useful for the game in determining who only gets 1 Fate Point), and we know enough details to picture it in our minds.

So as far as writing goes, it’s very good – it’s not a multi-million dollar Hollywood visual masterpiece, but that's because it’s a book. And it shouldn't do that. It's written like the action sequences of epic poems and sagas of older times, which is where we turn next.

III.  The Books Are Epic Poems, Not Airplane Page-Turners, Which Is GOOD

Beowulf and the Dragon: one
of the oldest Germanic tales

This is an epic poem – Tolkien set out, at the bidding of his dead friends who served with him in World War I, to write a mythos for Britain. He’s channeling Snorri’s Poetic Edda, Homer’s Five-Part Trojan Saga (fun story: most people only know Part 3 and 5, The Iliad and The Odyssey, but it's actually five parts), Virgil’s Aeneid, Beowulf, and other similar works. 

This is not (and I mean no disrespect to this modern author, though he has made one objectively horrible sci-fi movie which I watched recently on a lark) a Stephen King page-turner thriller, or the kind of book you read on a plane and then throw away when you’re done. The language is rich, deep, and it sounds like it’s written from another time (in the midst of battle who says things like, “Well struck for the Shire! Well struck, Frodo, Son of Drogo”? Nobody – nobody except those who live in a time where you can soliloquy upon a great feat of bravery without repercussion, as is true of the old epics). 

It’s an “Age of Heroes” story, to borrow from Hesiod, and so we shouldn’t expect it to sound like (and again, I mean no disrespect with this, even though I'm going to mention her a second time) a Suzanne Collins book that you read once and don’t really need to read again, because it lacks the depth that warrants and encourages a second read. Or a twentieth read, in the case of some of you (and Eru bless you for coming back to it every year!). 

The battles are intended to show that the heroes are moving from smaller dangers to larger dangers as their quest continues, and the books do that quite effectively. Their dangers also contain, in the proper order, the challenges that the heroes should face (the katabasis, or "underworld adventure," that changes them forever, the unbeatable foe of the Scylla/Charybdis variety, the climactic battle to save the hearth and home of a grateful ruler, and ultimately the triumph of the heroes that leads to times of peace).

So we shouldn’t expect this to play out like a Hollywood movie (which, whether the writers are on strike or not, aren’t that well-written unless they’re borrowing from a book with very few exceptions): we should expect an epic saga. And those include lots of talking, and they take lots of time to get there. But we should also expect grand fights that show the scope increasing as the story progresses, and it does do that, Scouring of the Shire included. But I'll forego that discussion for a future post if you want it, because 1) this post is already getting long, and 2) we have a mind to do the Scouring of the Shire campaign in the future, and it may be better to talk about Scouring and its importance when we do that.

IV.  Cleaner Archetypes Are GOOD

Controversially, I don't mind the changes they made to Aragorn, Gimli, or other major characters. It's fine - not better, but fine. I don't mind the lack of the Scouring of the Shire, because I can understand the anti-climactic feel it would have following the grand fight of the Pelennor Fields and Cormallen Field. I think Jackson made some very judicious decisions on what is necessary and unnecessary for the story, and the changes that had to be made to bring it to the silver screen.

Epic character, but not the same as the books

That being said, having clean and clear archetypes to drive the hearts of each character is extremely useful, and these are compromised in the movies. Gimli is perhaps the best example of this: instead of an errant knight much akin to Sir Gawain of Arthurian Legends, Gimli is portrayed very differently in the movies, save for a short scene (in the extended edition) with Galadriel, and of course his chivalrous acts in battle (as the code of chivalry is about 90% combat-related, for those who don't know). 

But to say they changed his character, and thus had to fill it with other things that don't deepen the character, is a generous way of phrasing it.

But perhaps even more strange is the treatment of Legolas: Legolas is a showoff and far more cocky in the books than he is in the movies (shield sliding and mumak-slaying included), and even borders on being a punk at times. He's rustic, unrefined, and this helps to keep him distinct from Gimli in the books. In the movies, one of the most consistent critiques is how flat and placid Legolas is: he lacks depth of character, because they cut a lot of it.

Archetypes help build characters because they provide direction for their arcs, and the books do this very well.

V.  Poetry Is GOOD

Great, but REALLY RUSHED

As someone who used poetry from The Lord of the Rings to woo his now-wife (and it WORKS, PEOPLE!), I think it's a fair criticism to say that the movie lacks the poetry of the books in so many places. We only see a glimpse of it in the movies (mostly one really good speech in each movie, plus the natural poetry that Viggo and the late Sir Christopher Lee bring to their lines), but there is so much more in the books, and it adds a beauty and elegance to the books that you don't see in the movies.

As one example, in The Steward and the King, we get the romance of Faramir and Eowyn, and the poetry here is just breathtaking. If you were a gal who read The Lord of the Rings, and a dude that you respected and could reasonably be attracted to you came up to you and said:

"You are a lady high and valiant and have yourself won renown that shall not be forgotten; and you are a lady beautiful, I deem, beyond even the words of the Elven-tongue to tell. And I love you."

...or if he said:

"Then, Eowyn of Rohan, I say to you that you are beautiful. In the valleys of our hills there are flowers fair and bright, and maidens fairer still; but neither flower nor lady have I seen in Gondor till now so lovely.... It may be that only a few days are left ere darkness falls upon our world, and when it comes I hope to face it steadily; but it would ease my heart, if while the Sun yet shines, I could see you still."

...Like, you'd totally give him a shot, right?!?!?! That's been my experience: that's the line I used on my now-wife, then-good-friend, and now, four years of marriage and two kids later, gotta say: Tolkien's a genius when it comes to writing poetry. And this kind of writing you just don't find in movies, unless they're taking from a book (as a general rule).

And even when we find Tolkien's beautiful poetry in the movies, we don't really understand it like we do in the books. The song that Aragorn sings upon his coronation is translated and given context for us in the books (also in The Steward and the King - can you tell that this is one of my favorite chapters in the whole series?):

"And those were the words that Elendil spoke when he came up out of the Sea on the wings of the wind: 'Out of the Great Sea to Middle-earth I am come. In this place will I abide, and my heirs, unto the ending of the world.'"

And this adds a second aspect of poetry that Tolkien does so well: it's not just romantic poetry that he writes. For many years I've kept a sticky note on my screen to guide me through tough times: "You and I, we must endure with patience the hours of waiting." This is also from The Steward and the King, and it's an eloquent articulation of a deep truth through poetry: the virtue of fortitude.

And there's more we could discuss, but suffice it to say for now, the poetry in this book is phenomenal, and we don't get that translated to screen nearly as much as it deserves.

Conclusion

So to sum up, if you're looking for a faster paced epic adventure, the movies are great, and you'll enjoy them! And if you're looking for a deeper, richer experience, read the books. But either way, you're in for a treat.

And this is a huge part of why our game has been going for over 20 years: most games go through dramatic changes in that time, if not end completely, but there is no shortage of content for our game because of how rich the source material is, and how epic the visuals are in the movies. So I'm glad we have both: it is a story that is now deep in the public's consciousness, while always leaving more "scope for the imagination," as Montgomery would put it (my other favorite author).

So until next time, you know where to find me,

Watching the stars,

Centaur

"I watch the stars, for it is mine to watch." ~ Glenstorm