31 March 2026 - Lord of the Rings

Have you ever been in a situation where someone is talking about a topic as if they were an expert, but in reality they are far from it. This happened to me today. I listened to someone talk about Lord of the Rings and it soon became clear that all their knowledge came from the marvellous Peter Jackson trilogy. They had obviously never read the actual books!

How would you feel in this situation? What would you do? For me, whilst they were in mid-flight telling the story covered in the films I asked a question. I asked "regarding the changes that Peter Jackson made to the films, compared to the books, which would you have preferred that he had not changed?" The response was silence, then bluster, and finally he simply turned the question back onto me. Hopefully he learned a life lesson from the experience.

My response, in case you're interested, was removing Glorfindel. It was Glorfindel that rode out to meet Frodo and ensure he made it to Rivendell. Glorfindel played a role at the scene where the the river rose up and it was here that the reader understod the awesome power of this elite elf. An elf that stood toe to toe with a Balrog in the fall of Gondolin, and defeated it at the cost of his own life to save his people. His heroism was go great that the Valar resurrected him with enhanced power as their emissary in middle Earth. Why was he replaced? Feminism basically, Peter Jackson wanted to raise the profile of Arwen. To be fair, she isn't mentioneed much in the books!

Another very big change was in the opening scene where Sauron, with his ring, was defected by Isildur by cutting the ring from his hand. It was not like that in the books. The siege of Barad-dur lasted many years and at the very end Sauron came onto the battlefield. He was engaged by two mighty warriors, the elf king Gil-Galad and the king of men Elendil (father of Isildur). These two heroes died in the conflict, but they greatly weakened Sauron to the point where we was close death (or close to his body being destroyed, as an eternal spirit he cannot die). It was then that Isildur cut the ring from Sauron, when he was defeated and unable to move.

There were other changes, such as the removal of Tom Bombadil that I guess was made due to the already very long film length. I would also have been great to see the major battle between Gandalf and the Nazgul on Weathertop, but again this was removed. Also Saruman's attack on the Shire!

In terms of what the film got right. For me they were absolutely spot on with Gandalf, Galadriel and Elrond. I also thought they did a great job on the relationship between Legolas and Gimli, although it would have been even better if they had shown a little of their travels after the defeat of Sauron and removed the excessive comedy.

The Peter Jackson trilogy remains one of my favourite fantasy films.