The White Council

Re: Will "this little expedition" be in the movie

Tolkien and Inklings Discussion

: The discussion of the ending of the Fellowship book and movie brought up a question (another!) about the plans for the movie: I haven't seen it mentioned in the plot summaries I've seen: will Merry and Pippin's rather hurried tour of North Rohan, under the care of Ugluk's Uruk-hai touring company be in the film. : It's a natural, the kind of thing Hollywood loves to do, a chance for actors to ham it up as villains, and our first close glimpse of just what kind of chaps the bad guys are. (Actually, we see more of the bad guys in Two Towers than in the other two: Ugluk, Grishnakh, Saruman, Shelob, Shagrat, Gorbag, and the sustained character study of Smeagol.)

: So I hope it's in there, but it does pose a problem of presentation: Tolkien does a very tricky thing, which threw me the first time I read the books: he has Aragorn and co. pursue the orcs all the way to Fangorn, leaving them with no clear idea as to what happened to the Hobbits, then, in the next chapter, shifts back in time a few days to give us the answer. The usual Hollywood cross-cutting of scenes would rob the chase of its suspense, but presenting it as Tolkien did is awkward, unless some cheesy narrative voice over says, "To find out what heppened to our two young Hobbits, let's go back four days, to that tragic morning at Parth Galen." I trust that won't be done....

Hopefully not!

No, I think the interspersion of the hobbits with the orcs, and the hunters can be done quite well. In the first instance, if the chapters dealing with the three were left as is without anything else to break it up, the audience would fall asleep bored (me included). They don't do much other than run a lot. Tolkien does a wonderful and amazing job with this in the novel. He throws in mysteries (the dead orcs, the brooch, the hobbits escaping) to keep the suspense up. he also uses this time to flex his descriptive powers, talking about the green grass and rolling hills, and such. But a screenplay that films this exactly would be a disaster... laughable even.

Intercutting M+P's ordeal with the hopeless yet valiant quest of the three hunters will work quite well on screen, and move the story along at (literally) a galloping pace.

Do I know how PJ is going to do this? No. But it can be done well... by *not* following Tolkien directly and literally. Some of the suspense is lost, true. But other things can be emphasized that underline the themes of the story as a whole, like honor, struggle even in the face of hopelessness, friendship, loyalty, terror, fear, ingenuity, and plain old luck in the darndest of places.

cheers.

Dave C-Q