Did Peter Jackson Get It Right? - The Fellowship of the Ring Movie Reconsidered

Hello everybody and welcome to MythMakers. MythMakers is the podcast for fantasy fans and fantasy creators brought to you by the Oxford Centre for Fantasy. My name is Julia Golding and I'm an author and director of the Centre. And today I'm joined by Jacob Renica. Jacob why don't you introduce yourself. Hi thanks Julia thank you so much for having me. My name is Jacob Renica and I work kind of in the intersection of education and storytelling. My kind of educational background is bachelor's degree in ancient near eastern studies master in comparative, master's degree in comparative religion and a PhD in religion. So looking at different storytelling strategies of different religious texts ancient mythology and traditions and even contemporary texts and traditions and creating essentially kind of creating dialogues between different stories, different authors, different ideas including J.R.R. Tolkien. Yeah and actually today we're going to do a really deep dive into the films the Peter Jackson films of Lord of the Rings because we're we're now 20 years on or more from when they began filming when they the first film came out and anybody who follows this on the internet will see there's been quite a lot of chatter about the difference between the films and the books and we thought we would devote some quality time to looking at the choices that the script writers that's Peter Jackson, Fran Walsh and Philippa Boynes the choices they made when they were adapting and and to think through what that meant for those films and I suppose we're also thinking if future filmmakers are going to come along and have another go which they probably will at some point maybe as a mini series or whatever these days what you might do differently this time round and Jacob as well as those wonderful list of qualifications he gave he also qualifies as being a fan of Tolkien so it is also two fans talking to each other so first of all we're going to look of course at the fellowship of the ring I don't know about you Jacob but actually of the three films this is my favorite are you yeah it's tough it's tough to say yeah it's tough it's it's tough to say because it's really you know all one continuous story in my mind it's just one long you're one 11 and a half plus hour and narrative I love the beginning I so I love fellowship yeah yeah it's it is it is it is a lot more your pastoral you're kind of eased into the story um whereas if you kind of start with two towers or turn of the king then things are a lot darker and heavier so it is a nice kind of stroll into the world of middle earth so I do appreciate it for that I think I like it most because it feels as though it got the book best you know it really did live up to what I was hoping for um but anyway it's just a personal choice that's the one that if if anyone was saying which is my desert island one that's the one I'd take I'd also better point out that Jacob and I are both people who watch the extended edition so if we refer to scenes you haven't yet watched people that may be because you're watching the theatrical cuts but anyway so but let's go on so first of all let's look at before they even actually started filming anything what do you think about some of the changes that were made in fellowship of the ring particularly in terms of casting what strikes me most is the decision to make Frodo really young whereas in the novel he's in his 50s right yeah it's yeah that's it's interesting choice so I'm maybe kind of backing up a little bit my first exposure to uh Lord of the Rings was the film was the Peter Jackson cool that's interesting so you'll be a different way around to me yeah yes yeah exactly so yeah and then from different people that I've spoken with right so I'm and so I'm in in in in some senses you know not appear it's not pure enough I'm not a I'm not a pure blood uh no no I'm sorry I'm not intellectually pure blood I guess when it comes to Tolkien's world it's somewhat considered but it was it was my entry point so that was essentially I only think of Frodo that was my initial exposure to Frodo was Elijah Wood as you know a I don't know he's kind of in the film seems to be a early 20s or so kind of Frodo so it makes sense to me and at the time when I saw it when it came out I was in my very early 20s so I connected with him so it was easy for me to see myself in Frodo because of the similarity in age and I'm sure that was absolutely a marketing and storytelling strategy from the Hollywood end of things for which audiences you're trying to attract how do you make it as successful as possible to as broad of an audience as possible so having a main character whose age is is right in there you're going to pull in younger audiences as well as the older audiences where most of the cast is you know are more adult right that they're you know 40 30 40 50 year old that's easy but how do you get a younger audience age down some of your characters so yeah I think it's it was a natural and I think an inevitable choice um and I'm I'm fine with it because it got me into Lord of the Rings I do appreciate the difference what so yeah so Julia what do you see is that so maybe some of the differences in his character by shifting his age in the film to yeah it does shift everything because if you re if you re run it and say put Martin Freeman in as Frodo instead because Martin Freeman was more age appropriate for the Hobbit it's still a really good casting um but in the book Frodo has a certain authority and maturity um that he doesn't in the films the films are a coming of age story I can get make arguments for why it's appropriate so I always think of Frodo in particular as very much a first world war recruit you know someone too young who's asked to sacrifice his life for everybody else so that element definitely works and there's also the argument that Hobbits at 50 are not as old as us lot at 50 because of the they've got a longer lifespan I don't think it's a mistake I can see exactly why it was done but it is an area where another go at the film it would give the next generation of filmmakers a different place to go if they wanted and that would be really interesting um it makes the Hobbits less at less idiotic less what idiot that's a bit too strong less um brand bugs just yeah it makes them a bit more sort of sorted if it's a slightly older group who are going I think yeah so if you see oh go ahead and that's going to say there is a little bit they do seem completely clueless in a way which I think is beyond the clueless they are little people in a big world but they play up the humor and the fact that they don't quite make the right calls at some time which isn't quite the same as the book yeah I was just thinking when you were saying you know casting somebody who's more age appropriate and how that would provide a different angle for filmmakers and storytellers in the you know film visually and in terms of kind of tropes you could have you know photos journey as midlife crisis right essentially that's a very different take on why you're going out on this journey and what you're having to prove to yourself right what you're trying to understand about life it's kind of a looking back you know kind of a retrospective where have I been what have I done with my life and what do I actually want to be now that I'm part way along and I'm now on the downhill slope what do I really want to be doing and so seeing the journey of the ring as kind of yeah him taking his life into his own hands instead of sitting complacent in the shire and then kind of being thrust in in one sense but then also choosing to enter into like the last half of his life into this this you know life changing and world changing adventure so yeah that's a completely different angle from the coming of age you know where it's just kind of this continual you know kind of upward trajectory to then coming up completely fully a well-rounded realized adult so now if you start there at the adult starting point rather than the you know somebody fighting the inevitable decline into you know mediocrity complacency uh so I that that's a completely there so I think that's fascinating and I would love I would love to see uh somebody have that take yeah the danger would be feel a bit too similar to I mean because that's really the hobbit is like that isn't it he's um yeah right um but I think looking at it from the positive side what that casting choice did do is it you Frodo is beautiful he's got the beautiful in a it's like angelic almost isn't he he's big blue eyes there's a beauty to him which I don't think there's quite a few jokes in the actual book about the fact that he's put on a bit of weight you know there's you need to get in shape um so it has a there is a difference there's just a difference feeling from Frodo the film version from Frodo the the book version but it does mean that there is a different I mean it's always good if there's new pleasures when you go to the book or go to the film I mean I think this gives us two bites of the cherry we can have one version of the story which is the film and another which is the the book version okay so um going into the actual um the way the script is written before we talk about the sort of structure of it but the the register and the diction do you think they captured in how they approached the script the right sort of talking-esque language you're a language expert yeah yeah that's a good question again because my first exposure to the to the world of talk talking in middle earth is the films so as I'm reading it it's hard for me to divorce the voice inside my head from the different actors who were portraying those those voices um but yeah it is it is really interesting right with the difference so I think one of the things that works well is having yeah different yeah diction for different areas of the shire right so oh yeah so you can see we have these different instead of just you know saying you know we're just going to have randomly chosen different kind of a hodgepodge of different you know British addictions used by the different different characters that you can that can actually be in your favor if you kind of consider different areas of the shire as you know being different kind of linguistic areas where they're they're staying in the same place they're not moving around and so of course they're going to develop a certain you know cadence and different different styles of speaking so in that sense I think it does I I didn't when I was first watching the films I didn't see that but now in retrospect I know that could have been a accident of casting that actually could upon reflection prove to be fortuitous in saying that the shire isn't a monolithic culture right that or the you know that these are people who have geographically interconnected but distinct areas so maybe I might be giving them too much credit for what they're doing but I'm happy to do so well if you watch the make you off which is one of the pleasures of the extended edition is I think Billy Boyd says it was almost like it is an accident of casting in that sense in that he's Scottish and so the tukes get to be Scottish even the name tukes feels that it should be could be you know sounds good and there was a slight problem about just it's not then it's not very big the shire so to have mildly different accents within a short space I suppose might be a bit funny really right there's a couple of in the hobbits obviously you've got Dominic Moynihan who's a Brit so he's accents fine and there are a couple of times when just a few tiny moments as a British person when Elijah Wood drops it is right at the beginning when he says to Gandalf you've only just arrived the accent isn't quite there and that's a shame because it jails yeah and then there's the Sam accent is kind of Mama's which is that it's fine it's fine yeah it's fine but the funniest of all the accents is of course Boromir because Sean Bean just does Sean Bean and Sean Bean is speaking his natural northern accent but nobody else seems to do so but the most delightful thing has happened since Andy Circus read the Lord of the Rings the entirety of it is that he has given everybody in Gondor a Sean Bean accent it's brilliant wow they should have everybody in Gondor should have gone that way so yeah I think on the whole saying it's a cast from many different English speaking places and also some of the actors are not first language English speakers I think they did pretty well and the actual rhythm of what they wrote and how it was some of the lines are really beautiful and it is very well I think they've got a good ear the script writers okay so in the Fellowship of the Ring what are your perfect moments yeah so in terms of like visual imagery right so in film right the visuals are what are our primary and the sound scape right behind it so you know Howard Shore's score is inseparable from the visuals right they're all kind of working together in concert to provide this kind of overwhelming soaring perceptive experience so for one of those I think for me is Erigorne's introduction right the first time you see him that image you know just like the illumination from the little bowl of the pipes are then illuminating his face in this shadow and you know the hood and in the the dark corner and just the sound of the fire right kind of like crackling to life and the light so the illuminating his face is just yeah striking haunting almost right and especially for somebody who didn't know who wasn't familiar with the story going in it was it provided there's ambiguity there right so I didn't know going in exactly what the character was going to do or what the character was going to be so that that was it was it was kind of awe inspiring with perhaps some ominous quality to it and I couldn't you know you didn't know exactly what to take because of course you're you're looking at this the camera is looking at it kind of from the hobbit's perspective right they don't know who this character is right so you're kind of seeing it as they see this shadowy figure in the corner who's just kind of creepily staring at them so I thought they they captured that well but you know on on rewatching and knowing this character I still think it's incredible character introduction for somebody who's coming from the darkness and then in a sense is going to be illuminated right who's going to step into the full light in this like dazzling brilliance so yeah it's great how about yeah yeah that is that's my that's my moment of all the films and it's actually based on a line in the book about the embers catching his eyes in the when he lights his pipe so Tolkien provided the camera angle on that one so as you pick that one I think for me the ballrog sequence is one of those where the acting the visuals the tension the drama the music everything is like a perfect set where both the book and the film are meshed and it just feels really really good yeah yeah that's it's striking yeah it's it's striking do you have any what before we talk about the bigger structure things are there any moments for you which are fails no I have I have a I have a few more perfect moments okay you'll still allow me yeah yeah so again with with with Eric Warren I think they do so much and I can't like Vigo Mortensen is just you know impeccable I can't imagine anyone else there yeah exactly which is right which yes I which could have been divine intervention I don't know but he so you just how the and one of the things that I think yeah then we talk about you know because some maybe some of the changes in characters a little bit further down in our conversation but you know when when he's when Eric Warren is singing part of the lay of luthian right about barren and luthian just kind of you know kind of like humming singing that softly as he's taking the hobbits right they're stopping and Frodo asks him you know what do you what are you singing and you know he's he's explaining the story and then you know Frodo asks him you know what happens to this you know it's this elf maiden who gives herself you know to this human man and he just says you know she she died and just like that moment kind of capturing the melancholy of aragorn as a character and kind of caught between different worlds himself I think that sets the tone really well and builds his his character in in a in a very uh not just visual but like auditory way and you just kind of get a sense of feel for it so anyway that's that was something I just I've seen just to put that in brackets I think that's a wasn't in the theatrical cut I don't think oh okay yeah yeah yeah yeah I think you're right I mean I I've there's a long time since I saw the original version yeah it's been so long for me too um okay so is there anything where you think it doesn't quite work yeah we'll get hate mail probably for this but I know I know let's be critics yeah yeah yeah it's from the script point of view as opposed to that sort of primarily yeah yeah yeah yeah so something that's difficult is the wizard's duel um between uh Gandalf and Saruman um so one of the things so the things that does does well and doesn't do right so that's kind of that's not something that you're really seeing depicted in the books is the like the full on you know a wizard's duels is different right from you could have gone well you you know it's coming out at the same time that uh Harry Potter films right so they're in generally the same time so different approaches to magic right depicting magic I think they're too interesting kind of foils right so um Harry Potter the world of Harry Potter magic is a tool that people use right to accomplish certain ends and so a wizard's duel is going to be this kind of gun fight battle with magic being used uh as as as a weapon and the kind of the precise weapon or maybe even just throwing everything you know throw it all against the wall and see what sticks it hope that you'll find some one of the spells that you've memorized by that point has can can do some sort of damage um but with Tolkien his magic here is kind of baked into the world uh in the sense that magic to me it seems that magic is more of a tone than it is a tool for to for Tolkien so it kind of pervades the world itself um and so I don't know you there isn't kind of a clear description of how magic works in Tolkien's world it's just kind of the supernatural force almost kind of like more star wars ask in this something that's kind of pervasive and there's some way to tap into it but that's not Tolkien isn't concerned about explaining the magic he's just taking that as a given that the magic magic exists magic is uh and that's you know embodied in the elves and just like their demeanor so like the elves are magic kind of just walking in that embodiment of Tolkien's view of magic and so this wizard's duel kind of come back to that that you know it's seen is it's not a shoot-em-up gunfight um like you do have in Harry Potter with wands as essentially your projectile weapons but there's something the you know there's there's a force that they're dealing with they're kind of almost fighting with ideas and ideals uh which I find really fascinating um but how do you depict that visually especially with two actors who are not you know I don't think either of them would have described themselves as action heroes or action actors um so you're you're left kind of and so I think they instead of showing you projectile CGI braze beams of light shooting at each other you have kind of you know they're they're they're using force that you're kind of left to the imagination to like what exactly is happening there so and so I think conceptually that that works I like that approach but visually it is difficult when you have older actors uh and they're trying to depict some sort of fierce kind of physical competition uh it's hard it's hard to capture that so there's some moments that are difficult to take seriously especially in light of contemporary filmmaking uh and action sequences so that's one it's a it's a mixed it's a mixed bag for me that sometimes it's easy to take me out of the film experience I can see I can see why it was done because it's trying to what is it's action uh speed things up you know but it's also a sense of I think in the book it's it's really much um the doors are closed and you've got to stay here tough there isn't uh he's constrained but not in the way that it happens in sort of a physical battle it's more the spider speak you know the web closes that's more the feel yeah I hadn't thought about that really um you're right it is quite odd to have magic used in more of a replacement for a punch-up um there are a couple of times in the book where of course Gandalf does use magic in a more showy showy way you know like lighting lighting a flame but he always he always says it costs and he doesn't want to do it he's very reluctant so there's a bit of a step outside yeah oh it's interesting I have to think about that I'm not sure I hadn't really he hadn't bothered me before but now I'm going to think about it um for me the one of the uh scenes that doesn't work it's in the extended edition um and it did get cut from the main thing is as the approach moria um Gandalf takes Frodo aside and basically says look out um Boram is going to try and take the ring and it's one of the scenes where there's bit too much bit too much exposition and I think that's probably why it was cut from the theatrical edition um we know we get it um and so it's also just feels a bit odd bit jarring that that scene um so I pleat I think that was one of the ones that perhaps didn't need to go back in the extended edition and there's another scene which jars um for me which is the one when um they're on weather top and arrogant says I'm going to go off and look for black riders basically and Frodo drops off to sleep and the other three hobbit start cooking uh and Frodo wakes up and says what are you doing yeah that is not in the book they're a bit more they know that they're being pursued they know that they're in danger in fact I think um Frodo and maria is or is it fit in anyway Frodo and they're with arrogant searching and then see the black riders moving about and fear they've been spotted it's much more they're much more sensible much more aware that it's a life and death situation and that's one of the changes to make the the hobbits a bit more um I was saying they they sometimes come across as being a little bit idiotic that's one of the moments um and you can see that maybe that's in order to show the distance they go because they're they they're the guys frying up sausages in the face of danger and then they become the heroes and the the you know heroes of the battle it's a journey thing but me I just think really I think um I'm not going to listen I have problems with that scene okay so on the whole uh not that many problems with many scenes so that's too bad the only there's some visually there's some I mean with CGI they're working as difficult with casting different actors who size-wise are in relation to each other different so I think they did a great job with what they had to do right so you know John Reese Davies is a dwarf who is not my my my exposure and you know first love for him was in the Indiana Jones film he's right so it's on him yeah he is right he's and so let's have them I think right having having to depict these people who are normally tall and you know in the hobbits right when they're in scenes with you know humans uh and wizards and elves and and sometimes you know just because of the constraints of computer generated imagery it's super you know imposing different people into different scenes sometimes it does seem a little a a little off you can you can tell that there is one actually there together yeah after the council of everyone there's one moment where it's that yeah that bit I think probably the CGI was just attached behind there is a feel of it's like two people sort of two two layers of people anyway I mean tiny mind but that's we're being finicky aren't we here if that's the worst point then yeah oh yeah I mean it needs our favorite films we should we should say that okay so let's talk about the sort of the larger script decisions now um and there's the issue of pacing and cuts so let's start with where it starts for those of you I'm sure you all know if you read the books it starts with a long prologue concerning hobbits um by Tolkien which you don't actually have to read you can skip to the first chapter and then it goes into a quite a slow build up to the party and in the film you of course get the montage of the history of the ring with um colladriel cakeblancet with the voiceover explaining quite a long setup actually in terms of film time so what do you think of that particular script decision to um not start in the show in fact but you start the prologue with the history of the ring good choice bad choice um I think from a a filmmaking a filmmaking perspective and keeping in mind the audience that it was a good it I think it was a good decision to appeal to as large of an audience as as possible right so you're setting the table you're kind of building the frame that the story is going to sit inside um you know of course that's so there's different audiences uh are interested in different parts of the story and so like in the books one of the within rearrangement of of scenes and things right so pulling that section from the council of l-ron so that's when the hobbits first learn of this so uh we're in so in in the books we're more in the from the perspective of the hobbits as they're so we're learning things as the hobbits are learning them as they go along right so we're just as much in the dark as they are and these things are a revelation so we know why they're making the decisions that they're making they make sense whereas if you put it against that larger backdrop from the outset then you're not going on the same journey that they are you're kind of in the third person kind of omniscient narrator setting you have the information before the characters have it so you're not going to empathize as deeply with the characters um because you're judging them based on the bigger picture and why they're doing something why they're not doing something and you can judge them in a different way than you could if you were actually learning the information at the same time so i understand from from a filmmaking perspective it makes complete sense i think it's a good i think it's a good decision to get the audience up to speed um because it's a different type of film than like a discovery film so um for instance you know just a a recent one uh that is kind of like discovering as you go uh uh you know Christopher Nolan uh films uh tenet i don't know if you saw no tenet okay so his a lot of his are kind of like puzzle box stories right so you're never given an explanation that that that from the outset part of the joy um of those movies is kind of working through the labyrinth that he's creating and discovering what is actually happening and then it kind of becomes self-referential and you're having to then go back and rewatch the films having this you know revelation of information and seeing it again so that's that's one type of you know cinematic um audience experiences learning about these ideas as you go learning facts learning about characters other people as the main character is or setting everything up or a lot of it you know giving a big you know large amount of background at the beginning so i think uh i think with the type of film the the sort of audience that they needed to appeal to putting that sort of prologue a historical prologue uh works well there yeah i agree i think yeah i think it became a very popular tool that's been copied in other films since so it may be that um in a way we've almost become too used to it but actually i think what it did do is it it it kept the audience so it promises this is actually big battles this is actually big bad is this is great beauty um whereas some people I know have been defeated by the book because it does take a while it feels quite childish because it was started life as a bit more in the theme of the hobby it took Tolkien a while to make his mind up that he was actually making an adult book and so there is an elements of the more childish childlike world which if you don't hang in there you could mistake for being the tone of the film so i think it was a very good choice and we don't we're not expecting the book and the film to be the same product it's one of the ones where yeah good decision i think okay what about um the the cuts that were made in order to i think they were made really for pacing and and just so that you don't you know you've got to get in uh in and out of a theater within a reasonable length of time so the major cuts are of course um tom bomberdale and the barrow downs which is like a connected set of incidents it happens in the old forest between leaving the shire and arriving at brie and the prancing pony um there's also what else is cut there's um quite a there's quite a lot in the shire that's cut things like the visit to farmer maggot is cut um there's quite a lot of the journey is only just touched on um i bet they did quite well with the journey actually but there's a whole series of events before they get to moria um which they they don't do in full that they just sort of they cut they they touch on the crebine and they climb up the mountain but that sequence is more extended um but i think probably in terms of people listening to this the big ones are missing out on the uh yeah missing out on tom bomberdale what's your view on that yeah so i yeah again having seen the films first i had no idea that tom bomberdale was i think so when i first read the book i was very surprised on who who was who was this character who just keeps his rhyming uh and kind of bouncing along uh and the yeah so i i mean i i think it's i think it works well works fine for creating a story for a film that if there were things that you needed to cut i suppose that's something that you could do without if the main thrust of the story is following Frodo and his journey and the you know kind of the the the fellowship itself um then tom bomberdale doesn't really play a a huge role in their individual transformation so if you're we're more concerned about the character transformation and character arcs sure it absolutely plays a part in that development but cinematically yeah that the your i i think i think it was a wise a wise choice to kind of condense things there so yeah i was i was less sad to see tom bomberdale go than the barrow down bits yeah and you can't the thing is you can't do one without the other but the thing that's particularly good about the barrow down is it's where they get their swords from they don't you know a carregal isn't just by chance carrying a load of swords around right um and also it links to the past so there's an element of the the world building this is and you know in the day where somebody does a mini series Lord of the Rings you know in the future this is i'd really be interested to see what someone does with this on a larger canvas where they don't have to worry about packing it all into three hours or two hours um because i think it particularly the barrow down we really spooky the mist and the confusion uh that would be great i'd love to see that yeah yeah yeah absolutely and i think yeah so Peter and what i would love to see Peter Jackson take on that because he started you know his career in film was beginning with kind of horror films so i bet he would be you know uniquely qualified to kind of catch that because some of the some of the scenes that he does the scary scenes are very scary uh they're they are terror scenes right it's horror yeah so i'd love to see that too but i i think i agree with you that it's you know it's it's it's the thing that has to go um and it and he's discussed briefly at the council of Elrond and they basically say if you give him the ring he'll forget about it he's not a safe pair of hands he has no power over him but he has no power over the ring so he is completely separate um from it's from its fate and it is about the ring this this story so yeah i think that's a good choice um another thing that's missing is the songs and the poems so they do get some of them in but not as many as Tolkien has are you happy with that um um yeah i mean the the the poems are delightful and moving uh in in the in the books and so you know because like you said you know that there's a different experiences the film experiences different so in terms of you know some of the extended poetry that you have there that is really melancholy that captures the you know kind of pervasive sadness uh that exists in this world uh of middle earth that's going to be hard to keep you know the attention if you're wanting to attract a broad audience uh you know your younger audience is not going to want to sit through uh you know recitation of uh you know eldish poetry they're going to that's there yeah and then it's not going to come at first it gets wheeled out right right so younger audiences yeah the the the cow jumping over the moon uh the extended point there there's a line do you remember they so great uh i love i love i love that just what what Tolkien does with you know with it with a traditional kind of you know you know english uh rhyme and just kind of spinning it out and doing some really fun things with it yeah so it would be a different film i mean if if you're looking at again if you're recasting Frodo as in his fifties then i think you could include if your target audiences kind of shifted dem- you're the demographic is shifted to uh firm adult uh audience then including some of those the those poems uh i think would would be a delight to include and i think you know compelling for an older audience yeah yeah because the reason he puts on the ring in the book in um or granting ponies because he's very awkwardly singing a song then he gets a bit carried away and and so it's actually funny but terrible it's it's got one of those um is a particular tone that Tolkien has uh which i would be lovely to see that i because in i can obviously that these choices are made because they've got to make cuts somewhere but the way that the reason he puts on the ring is sort of Pippin's fault um in in in the novel it's Pippin starts to say something Frodo decides he's got to add a distraction gets up on the table and starts singing which is like the worst thing he could do i think it's hilarious anyway um so there is yeah uh just pointing out some areas which a future script writer can have a go at um so coming towards so much we could discuss but coming towards the end of what we're going to talk about on the first ship of the ring i think one of the biggest things there were two things really i wanted to talk about one is the swapping of characters um and the other is how how places are imagined and personified so on the swapping of the characters there's a big change which is in the book um after Frodo is injured the elf who comes to help is in fact an uh a man called oh i don't know a man an elf uh called Glorfindel who's a very uh sort of from the old lineage who's a friend of arrogant and in the film memorably you get our win coming so Jacob have that what can think of that change i think it's yeah and again from the uh so that wasn't something initially seeing it first that i noticed until i read the book and i saw that it was a different there's a different person so from the the story that the filmmakers wanted to tell her what they wanted to emphasize it makes it makes complete sense to me because you wanted to have our win as a larger part in the story of the film than she was uh in the book and so Glorfindel doesn't show up later in the books right so it's kind of we're further later in two towers and uh and return to the king um so if you have a character so one of the tip for screenwriting is if you can combine two characters do because you're able to have that one character do more um and carry more narrative weight um rather than splitting it up and having just kind of proliferating uh characters because in filmmaking it's an art of kind of simplification right minimalism maybe not simplification but minimalism right you're trying to get the the the greatest impact out of the fewest amount of lines out of character choices out of scenes you're trying to get as much as possible into each scene um so it so it makes sense from um from a filmmaking perspective uh to combine those characters and let our win kind of save the day there because that's our introduction to her is as this you know active uh character um so i think you're able to maybe have patience later uh with her as she's kind of mostly in the rest the other two films is mostly just kind of sitting around and pining and is sad for most of the rest of the film yeah at least gives her a well a better rounded character we know that she can write a horse really fast and she can be heroic she's just choosing to sit around and read elf poetry and pine over arrogant and and kind of wrestle with that so i so i like that for what it does for her as a character and streamlining the story what do you think i think it's an improvement so i think one of the problems that lord the rings is the passiveness of well with the honourable exception of erwin who will get to a non um yeah there's not much roles and you are as a modern filmmaker going going to be saying where can we leave her open up the chinks and this is a really good one yeah i they did actually think and making her active all the way through but they rode back from that um in this i think they even filmed her being um helm steep helm steep yeah in our yeah armor i think there are photos of her uh in armor and then i think due to in part due to fan kind of uh pushback on that they'll be real back a bit so it would definitely be for those of you who are about to write the next version of this i think it's definitely the the kind of thing to do more of without without breaking the spirit of the of the book i noticed it on the new amazon series they've also made um collateral the young collateral into very much a warrior even that teams the trailer she's you know very badass um right right but i think that 20 years on they wouldn't have been forced to row back from putting her in a more active role so yeah so the final thing i wanted to ask you about Jacob is the the places because i think that in many ways those films are defined by what each place feels like so you go from the shower which is green and rural like countryside where i live um to um the muddy road then to uh the kind of alpine feel of it's a sort of italian eight stroke or alpine feel of rivendale then you got the mountain you got more here with the dark mines then you've got uh lotlorian with its silvery sort of tones and blues then you've got the great river and my favorite of all the argonath the statues of the argonath what did you feel about that version of how they realize the book well um uh i was amazed that it was all shot in the same physical place right so who zealand has all of those different uh different climbs right those different uh different types of settings um so i'm eager to make a pilgrimage there at some at some point um so it's yeah i thought yeah again visually they did an incredible job differentiating the different areas again with not just the terrain but also yeah the kind of color palette for each of those right so um yeah uh you know lotlorian uh looks different visually than rivendale that's right that's what i like i don't likelorian i think it's too dark it's too too twilight yeah in the book described as silver and gold right right i would have loved you know the elinol flowers i think they need to turn the lights on exactly yeah and i can see why they did that right so they're compressing they're you know compressing time right so if you you know you you think as an audience member essentially you're you think that maybe this took a few days maybe maybe a week uh but it was a pretty fast week whereas yeah in the book these things are spanning over and right when when they stay in uh right in uh forced lorian uh and lothlorian they're you know the moon is different from you know when they when they go into uh the forest then when they come out of it there's some immeasurable amount of time has passed in there um so i think you know as a film they're trying to say that they're only basically staying they're sleeping over at having a sleepover in lothlorian and then they're uh moving on so it is dark i would have loved to have seen in the books that's one of the things that Tolkien does best um is in his nature writing right his description of the natural world is my most recent reread which i just finished of the month ago or so just that was one of the things that stood out to me um this time uh was just his his prose specifically about nature and so how he describes that forest and you're right like the silver and golds and the you know just the leaves and i can't know i i can't even paraphrase it because it's sacrilege to do so like how how beautiful the phrases um that he uses it how clearly perceptive Tolkien as a person was to the surrounding world and nature uh in general so he in a sense is able to kind of reenchant the ordinary world um through his description of these you know elvish forests uh that definitely had uh you know an impact on me and my perception as i was listening uh to this to his words as i'm out in nature you know on on a on a walk with with my little almost two-year-old child i'm looking at the world differently right and i'm seeing it as magic and so yeah i think you definitely lost that in the film setting it at night you can't see the beauty there's kind of an evening kind of twilight beauty of sorts but yeah that was symbolic isn't it i mean i can see why they chose to do that but it was just the place where sometimes they picked a landscape where it was better than my imagination but my imagination of lorian is better than what they did he felt too much like being in a studio there wasn't enough fresh air um so it's again we're thinking about possibilities for future adaptations that's one place where i think you could really have a go at doing a different take uh and then surprise the soul and enchant the soul yeah and differentiate that from Rivendell because they're different right they're different kind of elvish cultures in a sense so i thought the Rivendell the set design was that was good phenomenal that's really good um but doing that same sort of treatment in right our other forest uh in our other kind of elvish miniature kingdom but yeah kind of develop that and give it the same sort of care that you did to Rivendell i would like to see that there's probably people shouting at us you know when they're listening to that that's my favorite scene anyway it's just personal place these these are these beautiful it's beautiful if i want a nighttime forest yeah great love it i would go there i would stay the night there i would stay more nights there than one yeah on the cushions under the tree right yeah i'm not up with tree that looks a bit i'm a bit worried about rolling off the edge so um Jacob we've done a quite a deep dive into fellowship with the ring and i always finished the podcast by asking my guest where in all the world is the best place for something and as we've talked about John Reese Davis and the dwarves um where do you think in all the all the fancy worlds is the best place to be a dwarf um we're talking here obviously of the folkloric um dwarf characters like Gimli and you know his um brethren elsewhere yeah i would say i would have to say Narnia um in part because there's such a variety of characters and creatures there that are active that i i feel like dwarves don't seem as much as outsiders as they do say in lord of the rings right so for when in a world that only has where kind of men and elves that are kind of the same stature are kind of given the focus um that you know hobbits and dwarves are kind of seen as lesser right they're kind of played up for comedic relief um whereas in narnia you have if you have talking animals right uh a person who's a different shape in size than a you know homo erectus like isn't that that's that doesn't that doesn't seem out of place uh it just seems like another character alongside this this beautiful variety of creatures and characters with different personalities and rich cultures so i think if if i was a dwarf um i think i would uh enjoy the world more and probably feel feel more at home and be happier in narnia than even similar possible yeah i i actually totally agree i i've been struggling to think of somewhere better i don't i think of lots of faces i wouldn't like to be one there's actually many more of those i don't want to work down a mine singing hi ho hi ho that's really off that's really off the agenda um and as you say very often wolves aren't given the respects just it's just a size difference get over it right and i think narnia does get over it so i agree with you on that thank you so much Jacob we'll be back to talk about the two towers next but thank you very much for listening thank you for having me thanks for listening to myth makers podcast brought to you by the oxford center for 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