After reading the books, I felt like the movies were rushed (yes, even the extended editions). You just didn’t get a sense for how long and arduous their journey was. It took Sam and Frodo a month just to get to Rivendell alone, and you truly felt like you were out hiking and camping with the hobbits for all that time.
In the movies, they just bump into friends and allies, spend a night at Bree (plus a couple nights out camping in the wild), run from the Nazgul, then they’re magically there at Rivendell. Doesn’t seem like it took more than a few days tops.
The whole journey to Mordor and back took a whole year. Imagine spending a whole year walking and camping across America and you might get a sense for how long it took them.
Honestly, The Lord of the Rings should’ve been a miniseries to properly flesh out the long journey. Even the extended editions cut lots of story and rushed the pacing to keep the story moving forward.
One way Tolkien adds tension and time is to end with a cliffhanger for Sam and Frodo in book 4 (part 2 of Two Towers) you then start following Merry and Pippin in book 5 (part 1 of Return Of The King) and have to read all of that before returning to Frodo and Sam in book 6.
Yes! The Two Towers novel ended with Frodo supposedly dead from Shelob, and Sam picking up the ring to finish the journey. It was almost halfway into Return of the King that we find out Frodo is still alive and Sam needs to rescue him!
That was such a great plot twist. I was kind of sad they didn’t follow that chain of events in the movies. The whole Shelob thing was resolved really quickly, about halfway into Return of the King.
Narration is boring. Montages have the potential to overstay their welcome. Exposition in dialogue is dumb. There’s already so much going on in the movies that adding more set pieces would actually generate the opposite effect. Busy movies feel like they rush and a lot happens in a short span of time (think what if tom bombadil). The only way was to actually cut more stuff to focus even more narrowly on fewer plot points, to gain time where to insert set pieces that illustrated the time passing, with slower pace. When a movie has very few things going on in a long time span, it feels like it’s illustrating a very long span of time. This is a balancing act that all screenwriters and directors have to face. For example, look at interstellar vs. Castaway, which one objectively is about a longer period time, which one actually leaves you feeling like the characters experienced a lot of time?
I didn’t mean explicitly “narration” when I said narrative exposition since that isn’t it’s definition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exposition_(narrative). Regardless I agree with all your points in isolation and when taken to an extreme. But a well crafted script that includes ALL possible methods of helping the audience appreciate the passage of time is the goal. No movie, except a literal 1:1 real-time story, can ever communicate the passage of time in any way OTHER than some form of exposition.
Your interstellar vs castaway example is exactly my point. If they had tried harder with LOTR they could have made it clearer to the audience the length and duration of their travels. As it stands, and as you said, it was a balancing act to stay with-in acceptable movie run time, hit all the hard plot points, include some exposition (again to hit important plot points), and create a movie that didn’t bore people to tears.
They already did all the incluing exposition they could. Only infodumping was left to do (the examples I gave). They actually did infodump at the intro of the first movie. They could’ve cut more plot points. But people would’ve complained it wasn’t loyal to the book even more, as they did at the time. Unless you turn it into a dozens of episodes over 9 seasons series, you won’t have time to convey the passing of time. Then you run the risk of it being boring. What we got was already a miracle. Look at what they did with The Hobbit, they butchered it for exposition.
Fair points. I guess it just comes down to opinion on how effective they were at, and how important it was to, make the audience appreciate how long the journey was. I actually don’t have an opinion per say if they did it well or not. Like you said, it’s sort of a miracle they accomplished what they did, and as a movie I think it was great and a damn good book adaptation.
After reading the books, I felt like the movies were rushed (yes, even the extended editions). You just didn’t get a sense for how long and arduous their journey was. It took Sam and Frodo a month just to get to Rivendell alone, and you truly felt like you were out hiking and camping with the hobbits for all that time.
In the movies, they just bump into friends and allies, spend a night at Bree (plus a couple nights out camping in the wild), run from the Nazgul, then they’re magically there at Rivendell. Doesn’t seem like it took more than a few days tops.
The whole journey to Mordor and back took a whole year. Imagine spending a whole year walking and camping across America and you might get a sense for how long it took them.
Honestly, The Lord of the Rings should’ve been a miniseries to properly flesh out the long journey. Even the extended editions cut lots of story and rushed the pacing to keep the story moving forward.
Depending on how well the Harry Potter show goes, I won’t be surprised at all if we see this eventually
One way Tolkien adds tension and time is to end with a cliffhanger for Sam and Frodo in book 4 (part 2 of Two Towers) you then start following Merry and Pippin in book 5 (part 1 of Return Of The King) and have to read all of that before returning to Frodo and Sam in book 6.
Reference: A bit about the 6 books https://screenrant.com/lord-of-the-rings-tolkien-6-books-why/
The other R. R. tried that too, except he still hasn’t finished the book where the cliffhanger should resolve.
Yes! The Two Towers novel ended with Frodo supposedly dead from Shelob, and Sam picking up the ring to finish the journey. It was almost halfway into Return of the King that we find out Frodo is still alive and Sam needs to rescue him!
That was such a great plot twist. I was kind of sad they didn’t follow that chain of events in the movies. The whole Shelob thing was resolved really quickly, about halfway into Return of the King.
The Hobbit cartoon does a great job of that with some montage scenes that go on for a while.
That or just some other more effective narrative exposition to give the viewer a better sense of time.
Narration is boring. Montages have the potential to overstay their welcome. Exposition in dialogue is dumb. There’s already so much going on in the movies that adding more set pieces would actually generate the opposite effect. Busy movies feel like they rush and a lot happens in a short span of time (think what if tom bombadil). The only way was to actually cut more stuff to focus even more narrowly on fewer plot points, to gain time where to insert set pieces that illustrated the time passing, with slower pace. When a movie has very few things going on in a long time span, it feels like it’s illustrating a very long span of time. This is a balancing act that all screenwriters and directors have to face. For example, look at interstellar vs. Castaway, which one objectively is about a longer period time, which one actually leaves you feeling like the characters experienced a lot of time?
I didn’t mean explicitly “narration” when I said narrative exposition since that isn’t it’s definition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exposition_(narrative). Regardless I agree with all your points in isolation and when taken to an extreme. But a well crafted script that includes ALL possible methods of helping the audience appreciate the passage of time is the goal. No movie, except a literal 1:1 real-time story, can ever communicate the passage of time in any way OTHER than some form of exposition.
Your interstellar vs castaway example is exactly my point. If they had tried harder with LOTR they could have made it clearer to the audience the length and duration of their travels. As it stands, and as you said, it was a balancing act to stay with-in acceptable movie run time, hit all the hard plot points, include some exposition (again to hit important plot points), and create a movie that didn’t bore people to tears.
They already did all the incluing exposition they could. Only infodumping was left to do (the examples I gave). They actually did infodump at the intro of the first movie. They could’ve cut more plot points. But people would’ve complained it wasn’t loyal to the book even more, as they did at the time. Unless you turn it into a dozens of episodes over 9 seasons series, you won’t have time to convey the passing of time. Then you run the risk of it being boring. What we got was already a miracle. Look at what they did with The Hobbit, they butchered it for exposition.
Fair points. I guess it just comes down to opinion on how effective they were at, and how important it was to, make the audience appreciate how long the journey was. I actually don’t have an opinion per say if they did it well or not. Like you said, it’s sort of a miracle they accomplished what they did, and as a movie I think it was great and a damn good book adaptation.