Is it LOTR or isn't it?

I have just finished rereading the Lord of the Rings trilogy. The last time I read it, Peter Jackson probably hadn’t started school yet.

In the interim, I have seen the filmed version in theaters and watched the extended version on DVD at least six times. By now the scenes and images are so firmly embedded in my brain that it was impossible to read the books without them.

So it was with some surprise that I noted that the script changes to the film “version” seem to go far beyond what one might consider an adaptation. I have seen many film adaptations that make liberal changes, but usually there is at least a core of key scenes and a fidelity to the main characters. Not so here.

Sure, the general plotline is the same: a company representing the various peoples of Middle Earth sets out to carry a powerful ring into the heart of the enemy’s domain and destroy it before the enemy takes over their world. But scene for scene and character for character, almost nothing of the movie is the way it is in the book.

Places are beautifully realized—Hobbiton, Rivendell, Lothlorien, Isengard, Mordor. But otherwise I find that everything is different, every single scene and character, with only a few exceptions such as these:

the character and appearance of Gandalf
the character of Sam
the character of Pippin

Let me say it again: scene for scene, not one thing in the movie occurs the way it did in the book. And virtually every character is a different person, and his or her words, when quoted, are used at a different time and sometimes in a different way (and sometimes by a different character) in the script. Even Gollum is differently realized: in the book, he is black.

So, then, my question: in what sense is this a film of the book, and does it bother you, LOTR fans, that there is such dramatic difference between them? Or if you feel that the film after all does capture the essence of the book, what is that essence, and how does it survive shedding nearly every particular that made it up? Is the story somehow transcendent with respect to its components?