Subtlest Homage to Tolkien in LoTR Movies Only True Fans Will Notice
Although not all of the book's storylines fit into Tolkien's adaptation, Peter Jackson has managed to hide in the movie touching evidence that the movies were made with great respect for the original.
One cannot deny J. R. R. Tolkien's contribution to the fantasy genre and his innovations in building a fantasy world.
While these concepts apply to the movie, the pacing of original the story doesn't quite match the dynamics of the adaptation.
Tolkien's dialogues are very lengthy and sometimes fanciful, as are his descriptions of Middle-earth.
Therefore, it is natural that some plot elements were removed from the movie, but instead, director Peter Jackson gave fans some comforting Easter eggs.
A good thing that Peter Jackson had done was reworking the text of the book while staying true to the spirit of The Lord of the Rings.
However, the writers knew which lines in the book had the most impact, so they wisely kept some of the book's most iconic speeches, such as Gandalf's thoughtful reflection on how we "have to decide on what to do with the time that is given us."
The care with which Peter Jackson's trilogy was made shows how much the director respected the great writer's legacy.
In The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, for the final battle scene, he even put people from the set who had read the novel in the front rows in addition to the main actors.
According to the director, they understood the importance of the battle like no one else. But that's not the director's only quirky nodding to Tolkien's work.
Reddit user Russian_Bagel noticed that the title of one of the book's chapters is hidden in the dialog between Pippin and Sam in the first movie:
"After the hobbits fall down a hill, Merry says 'That was just a detour, a shortcut.' Sam asks 'A shortcut to what?' and Pippin says 'Mushrooms!' In the original book, chapter four is called "A Short Cut to Mushrooms."
Such a seemingly insignificant detail shows the filmmakers' attitude toward the original source, which was carefully reworked so as not to harm the author's legacy and to justify the hopes of book fans.
Books and Jackson's adaptations are two different works of art, and each is beautiful in its own way.
No matter what you think of Jackson's movies, it is hard to deny that it is a wonderful piece on which the best professionals have worked investing all their skills.
This adaptation is loved not only for the great story, but also for the fact that everything in it is done at the highest level of skill – cinematography, editing, sound, costumes, a great soundtrack, as well as those little details described above that make the atmosphere of the movies truly magical.