Thanks, DOK and you are right as I do remember how I fiercely resented the changes to Frodo in FOTR, and that totally daft passage where Frodo sends Sam away.
But now I am just not so sure....
Take our falling down Frodo. Yes I hated that. He falls flat on his back when beset by the Ringwraiths at Weathertop, despite the fact that in the book far from trying to crawl away he ATTACKS the lord of the Nine.
Then Jackson parachuted Arwen into the action to 'rescue' Frodo and take him to Rivendell despite the fact that in the book this is one of his most heroic actions, fleeing the Wraiths on Asfaloth then challenging them from the bank of the Bruinen. Remember the words?
'You will have neither the Ring nor me!' I hated the fact that line got cut.
But the strange thing is, within the parameters of the film, Frodo does not suffer much from these changes as a character. He doesn't come across as a wimp. His bravery is recognised by everyone from Bilbo to Elrond and the pathos of 'the wound he will bear for the rest of his days' is probably stronger because it was seen to put him completely out of action.
In Rivendell Frodo tells Sam he is ready to go home; he has taken a hammering and Jackson plays on the horror of the flight to the Ford and does not console us with the heroics of the book. In the book Frodo is brave at the start as at the end but maybe Jackson felt he needed to show some development, to show Frodo growing from a carefree hobbit who steps back from horror to a hero who accepts his role as Ringbearer even though he now has no illusions about just what it will entail.
In the book the Council is a very long talking shop in which Frodo offers to take the Ring quietly. In the film it is the climax to a stormy meeting and a turning point in the story. That is the difference between book and film. The book can take as long as it wants to build up layers of meaning and allow a hero to stay in character. But a film only has three hours at most and has to prune its source material ruthlessly and above all it must have pace. It must build to a moment of drama that will encapsulate the whole meaning of the story with such power the audience stop gnawing popcorn and get the message.
The banishment of Sam in the film made me wince too. Daft and unnecessary. But in the book there is a scene where Frodo turns viciously on Sam. Only it happens later, when Frodo is rescued by Sam from the orcs;
'No, no!' cried Frodo, snatching the Ring and chain from Sam's hands. 'No you won't you thief!'
He panted, staring at Sam with eyes wide with fear and enmity...Sam had changed before his very eyes into an orc again, leering and pawing at his treasure, a foul little creature with greedy eyes and slobbering mouth. But now the vision had passed. There was Sam kneeling before him, his face wrung with pain, as if he had been stabbed in the heart; tears welled from his eyes...
'Oh Sam! cried Frodo 'What have I said? what have I done? Forgive me!'
This is the essence of the scene we get in the film on the Stair. I don't know why Jackson puts it where he does but he keeps the spirit of the violent onslaught Frodo makes on Sam in Return of The King. And Gollum whispers to Frodo to make him see Sam as a nasty little thief, just as in the book Tolkien tells us Frodo sees him as a'foul little creature with greedy eyes'
So although at first I thought Jackson just made up that scene on the Stair, he didn't. He has based it on a later scene in the book. There Frodo does not actually send Sam away but perhaps Jackson needed to send Frodo into Shelob's lair alone to heighten the horror and terror. On film, two people walking through a labyrinth are not half as scary as one alone in the dark.
The scene where Sam rescues Frodo from the orcs and returns the Ring is in the film, but it is a scene of happy reunion, clouded just by Sam looking a bit dazed when he is asked for the Ring. There is not the intensity of the scene in the book. But once again there might have been issues of pace; it was not the place for a major falling out between the heroes, as the story is by now rushing to its conclusion.
The stairs incident too allowed Jackson to bring in something very important relating to the character of Sam. In the book, when he thinks his master is dead, killed by Shelob, Sam vows revenge on Gollum. He goes further and yields to a positive ecstasy of rage and hatred, vowing to search every corner of Middle Earth till he finds Gollum and kills him. The film gives us this vision of Sam when we see him reach the bottom of the stairs and find the lembas that Gollum threw off the cliff. Oh boy is Sam mad. It is the very rage that Tolkien shows us in the book in the later scene.
DOK I understand that these changes really annoyed you, as you are a book Tolkien fan. They annoyed me a lot too, at first.
But I am a book
and film Tolkien fan and I don't think these changes are arbitrary but serve needs relating to how to tell the story in a film. I must concede to Jackson that knocking Frodo down on Weathertop and taking his heroic lines at the Ford did not damage him as a hero, much to my astonishment. Nor was the friendship of Frodo and Sam much dented by the episode on the Stairs, because these element existed, in other scenes, in the book.
These are daring and you might say impudent liberties to take with a beloved text. But slavishly following every written word was never going to be possible in a film of that length, so Jackson did the next best thing - put in everything of importance, sometimes in scenes created from elements found elsewhere in the book. Once I got over my initial horror, I found it worked. For me
About Game of Thrones, I am interested in what you say about the characters but I can't discuss it as I have not read it. Discussing a book you haven't read is even worse than chopping up and making a film out of one you have
Thanks
Varda
