Oh, Iâm cracking my knuckles. I was born for this.
So, not to appear too biased, Iâll refrain from calling PJâs movies anything like âdogwater, awful, fucking abysmal or insults to the very concept of cinematic storytellingâ. You can kind of just insert those as you go.
The first thing to note, is that @djemsostylist did not at any point recommend removing Saruman from Two Towers. At all. Not once. She voiced the same sentiments as Tolkien, which was that Helmâs Deep ought be cut if pressed for time.
To address this particular point, though, from your framing, which is to assume âcut Helmâs Deepâ is actually saying âRemove Saruman entirely from Two Towersâ, letâs actually examine the role Helmâs Deep played in both works, movie and books. In the novel, Helmâs Deep was the focus of the selfsame titled Chapter 7: Helmâs Deep. It is also only that Chapter. 12 pages of a 248 page novel. 5% of the book. This is even including them heading to Helmâs Deep, so the battle itself is even less.Â
In the films, Helmâs Deep (including the travel to it) runs for an hour and thirty minutes, or approximately half the entire runtime of the film.
The argument might be made that Helmâs Deep was important enough to elevate to take up Âœ of an entire film, except that it clearly was not, else Tolkien would not have recommended removing it entirely. Practically, it served to demonstrate the breaking of Sarumanâs forces and his removal from the board, but practically this could have been accomplished any number of other ways.
The fall of Isengard itself is important, wherein a host of uruk hai couldâve been present and drowned by the Ents, halving the forces of Isengard. The other half could have been defeated on the field by Eomer, Erkenbrand and Theoden, instead of having a fucking warg fight that drug on for almost twenty minutes. This would efficiently accomplish the purpose Helmâs Deep fulfilled, narratively, without ballooning it into this titanic boondoggle that swallowed half a film, stepped on the battle of pelennor, and ate up screen time.
This is not an all-or-nothing game. This is making an adaptation, which Jackson failed at entirely. He set out to make a âbest hits of fan-favorite moments of the Lord of the Rings moviesâ and hey, Iâd say he succeeded. But 12 hours of disjointed clipshows do not make good films or a good story.
Ironically, Helmâs Deep shows Jacksonâs inherent clumsiness at film-making. As the middle movie of a three part series, a well-trod cliche is to have the middle film be something of a suspense or low point for the protagonists. This isnât always necessary, but it can be a useful narrative tool going into the finale. Instead, Two Towers is entirely hopeful at the end. Gandalf and Eomer crushed the forces of Isengard. Saruman is defeated. Sam and Frodo broke through to Faramirâs better nature and set off, free and clear.
How does Two Towers the novel end? Frodo is captured by the Enemy and Sam is left alone. Pippin saw Sauron directly and everyone is leery about the coming war in Gondor. Even with the victory in Rohan over Isengard, the sense of celebration or success is muted.
A far better way to conclude Two Towers as a film was with Frodo taken to the Cirith Ungol and the looming battle of Pelennor over everyoneâs heads. If not potentially even having the battle already begun and the gate about to break.Â
An adaptation should adapt, keeping the intention and feel of the story, the characters, and the overall pacing.
is a bit different than⊠[âŠ] ⊠obsesed over the looming shadow and wanting to aimlessly stab things
Would it perhaps be something like turning a mature and middle aged man raised by an elven lord and groomed to be the King to redeem his family line, who was secure in himself and his purpose, ready to reveal his return to the world into an insecure, ridiculed and derided not-adopted son, who fled from his responsibilities, turned away from his purpose and, apparently, spent eighty-eight fucking years just twiddling his thumbs in the wildnerness?
That would be pretty stupid, wouldnât it?
As would making said entirely changed character into effectively the deuteragonist of the story, thoroughly supplanting the actually important characters by scraping together a half-assed character arc that got mostly abandoned halfway through the second film, even though the withered remains of it still incongruously take up dozens of minutes of screentime?
You gotta point out why and how PJ was actually better.
It would be worth doing that, if it was true.
Instead, Jackson was just as bad as RoP, but in different ways. He ripped apart the character of Aragorn to shoehorn him into a lead role, even though that was never Aragornâs purpose. He shunted Gimli into the farting charicature of a dwarf straight out of FaerĂ»n. LegolasâŠwell, Legolas wasnât really a character in the books either. Sam was turned into a simple-minded yes-man whose defining characteristic was âthe stupid, fat hobbit.â Merry and Pippin were reduced to wisecracking morons who occasionally flirted with vague seriousness but without any intentions to actually commit.Â
He turned the hobbits (both main cast and them as a people) into cartoonish buffoons that check all the boxes of diminutive, offensive caricatures of the working man, which is weepingly hilarious because jesus, that is so fucking offensive to the point of Tolkienâs works and his view of the world.Â
Jackson glorified mindless violence, he luxuriated in nonsensical spectacle and he had absolutely no regard for any of the themes or meanings in Lord of the Rings.Â
Rings of Power is absolutely no different, it just accomplishes these offenses in different ways, tricking the viewer into believing it is some new scale.Â
Let me ask you this, as a summary of how butchered on the block of eyes-wide-substanceless-shit that the Jackson films were.
What was Samâs relation to Frodo?
What was Sam to Frodo, and vice versa?
Itâs a rhetorical question. The answer is nothing. There is nothing given for why Sam is so devoted to Frodo. He justâŠis. They speak once in fifty minutes of film in Fellowship, and this is passing exchange about Rosie Cotton. They speak twice in fifty minutes of film in the extended editions, and this is still about Rosie Cotton.
Do you know when we first find out that Sam is Frodoâs gardener, a fact that makes their entire ride-or-die relationship even more confounding? Two fucking Towers. Most of the way through.Â
Jacksonâs films are absolutely barren of any character development, interactions, or motives. They are NPCs driven by the demands of the plot, shuffled from point to point as required for the spectacles to occur and then dutifully shuffled along to the next point. They arenât real people. Theyâre props.Â
If anything, Rings of Power might get credit for actually giving motives to their characters, as idiotic as those motives might be.Â
