Did Jackson Take Liberties Too Far? 5 LotR Scenes That Weren't in the Books
Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings movies are often praised for being as faithful an adaptation of a notoriously difficult to adapt book, as realistically possible.
Certainly, they take less liberties with their literary source than many, many adaptations.
But that doesn't mean they are free from criticism for changes and additions, which can be considered completely unnecessary, or even detrimental to the story. Some of those are brief, some fairly long. Let's choose five, presented chronologically.
The briefest but one of the cringiest was the moment of Bilbo's ghoulish transformation, as he gets tempted by the Ring's proximity and tries to lunge at Frodo at Rivendell.
Whether the change was supposed to be literal, or only existing in Frodo's mind, it substituted CGI and a jump scare for actual acting.
Another brief but dumb moment that never existed in the book was Gimli trying to cut the Rings with his axe at the Council of Elrond, obviously in vain.
While probably most of what Gimli does on the screen never happened in the book, this moment can be taken as the first demonstration and the symbol of the movies turning him from a serious, dignified, warrior, into a clown, whose cluelessness is routinely used for jokes.
A much longer scene of character derailment involves appearance of Faramir in The Two Towers.
In the book, Faramir decides to let the hobbits go as soon as he learns of their mission, proving both his nobility and wisdom.
He might have been exaggerating, saying that the Ring does not tempt him at all, but after all, it only had a few hours to try getting hooks into his mind. In the second movie, alas, Faramir is a shadow of his brother, and attempts to bring the Ring to Gondor, before changing his mind in a rather contrived fashion.
The Two Towers also featured another big character derailment: Frodo sending Sam away.
Even if you interpret this scene as Frodo only pretending to believe Gollum, and trying to keep Sam from going to almost certain death in Mordor, it severely undermines Frodo's character, even if in a different direction.
And finally, there is another brief but dumb moment in the final movie: Gandalf literally knocking Denethor out cold.
Once again, just a few seconds are emblematic of extensive character derailment, in this case, turning Denethor from a noble man, corrupted by pride and overwhelming despair, into a cartoonish villain.