Since the goal this week is to spread hope, I'd like to find something to celebrate in Jackson's trilogy, rather than something to be annoyed by. If earlier, I wrote about changes to the source material that I thought changed the theme in ruinous ways, this time, I'll write about good changes made that were appropriate to the medium of film, changes that either preserved the original themes or even advanced them in new ways.
Here are the rules
I'm only dealing with new material on a dialogue level, meaning I'm looking for best lines that are in the movies that aren't in the books. Of course, with Jackson's movies, "not in the books" is a little bit difficult to decide upon. A characteristic of all three movies is that they often include dialogue that is in the books somewhere, but not in the place where it appears in the movie, or even in the exact words or spoken by the same character.
One example is the very opening lines of the movie. There is a voiceover by Galadriel that begins, "The world is changed. I feel it in the water. I feel it in the Earth. I smell it in the air." In the book, these lines are spoken almost exactly like the ones in the movie, but they are spoken TO Galadriel, not by her. It is the Ent Treebeard who says them. And he isn't saying them near the beginning of the story, but near the very end, after the ring has been destroyed.
A second example is spoken by Gandalf to Pippin to comfort him as he is afraid during the battle with Mordor in Minas Tirith. Pippin says he didn't think it would end like this, and Gandalf says:
"End? No, the journey doesn't end here. Death is just another path, one that we all must take. The grey rain-curtain of this world rolls back, and all turns to silver glass, and then you see it....White shores, and beyond, a far green country under a swift sunrise."
Part of this is invented whole cloth, and part of it is taken from narration, not spoken dialogue, that occurs early in the books. Frodo is in the house of Tom Bombadil (a section that I think was wisely excised from the movies), and Frodo has a dream. In the dream, he sees a pale light..."growing to turn the veil (of rain) all to glass and silver, until at last it was rolled back, and a far green country opened before him under a swift sunrise." Much later in the book, we realize that this was foreshadowing Frodo's journey across the sea to Valinor, because once he is away, he recalls the dream, only now he adds "white shores" to it. So in the movie, Gandalf is making explicit what the books only ever hint at darkly, which is some hope of a destiny beyond death for humans and hobbits.
It's sort of a subjective call, then, to decide whether lines from the movies are "not in the books" or they are. I don't aim to be consistent. If it feels to me like the line is new enough, I'll count it.
As far as criteria for best, that is subjective, too, obviously, but I'm looking for something that stands on its own as good enough dialogue that it was worth inventing it. The line should reveal character, move the plot, or develop the themes of the story. I will also be awarding bonus points if the line in question has become a fruitful source of LoTR-related memes. I'm not a huge meme fan for the most part, but the memes from LoTR are still top-notch twenty-five years later, and I will honor some of the lines for having created their own secondary art form.
The list
These are in no particular order, except for the last two, which I consider the best.
What about second breakfast?
This line, spoken by Pippin before he has quite processed what it means to have agreed to accompany Frodo on his flight from the Shire, does a great job of establishing both Pippin's pre-heroic-journey priorities as well as developing our understanding of hobbit lives. The list he enumerates after second breakfast of other hobbit meals often forms the backbone of the menu during LoTR watch parties. The line is loveable and funny and comes with a good sight gag from a mildly annoyed, mildly amused Strider. Sadly, the expression "second breakfast" is not in the books at all, although you could easily infer its existence from both LoTR and The Hobbit.
One does not simply walk into Mordor
The king of all meme-creating lines. The king of all lines from the movies that one ends up twisting into other sayings in real life. The king of lines that show us the temperament of Boromir, who is brave and noble, but who thinks that everyone not from Gondor just doesn't know shit about what it's like to face real fucking combat, man, so fuck all you civilians.
...and I'm coming with you!
Ah, Sam. Such a familiar character from the moment we meet him, and yet so true and faithful that by the time the story is over, he's taken the archetype he fits into and broken it and remade it into his own image. When Frodo tells Sam that he is going to Mordor alone, Sam's response, "Of course you are, and I'm coming with you," tells us many things about Sam. One, it tells us that he had already guessed Frodo's mind, which he usually does. Second, it tells us everything we need to know about what Sam's core principles are and where his head is going to be at for the rest of the movies.
I've said before that one thing I don't like about the movies is that they switched many characters from having a flat arc to a positive one, because that's what movies usually do. Aragorn is the biggest example. But Sam is the one character whose pre-adventure character is the same as it is at the end. Except for maybe getting up the courage to ask Rosie Cotton to dance.
I would have followed you....my captain, my king
I used to be kind of indifferent to these lines, but they've grown on me. It's important that Boromir isn't just a throwaway character who is only there to convince viewers that the ring really can corrupt and that maybe not everyone will get to live to the end of the story. Boromir deserves to be mourned, and it's worth taking a beat to acknowledge that he was a worthy man done in by evil. In the books, the three walkers Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli take an insane amount or time, under the circumstances, to sing a funeral song for him. I think the movie is right to redeem him fully in the eyes of the audience by telling us that if it had come to it, he would ultimately have welcomed the return of the king.
Those without swords can still die upon them
This is one of those lines I'm taking liberty with, because Eowyn does say them in the book, but in a very different place. She says these lines while in the houses of healing in Gondor after she awesomely slays the Witchking of Angmar because he is the absolute baddest of bad asses in Tokien's supposedly misogynistic story. She wants to go out and join those assaulting the Black Gate, and she is frustrated that her healers will not allow her to go. I think the movies needed to leave out most of the houses of healing scenes just for time purposes, but it was important that they include this line somewhere. Having Eowyn say it to Aragorn allows us to know her mind before and during her fateful decisions, rather than after.
I have been working on and off for a while on a long paper concerning disobedience to orders in LoTR. There are at least five times in the story where someone disobeys an order and if they had not done so, Frodo's quest would have failed. Eowyn is as good an example as any, and this line shows that she has the clear, internal moral vision that is necessary to make the incredibly difficult decision to follow one's internal orders over those of authority.
Elrond's warning to his daughter that Aragorn will still die
Holy Jesus, if you want to read something sad, read the full story of Arwen and Aragorn's love from the annexes to Return of the King. In the movie, Elrond is borrowing from that part of the annex. I was glad that it was worked into the movies in some way, and I also love the use of some of Tolkien's archaic, noble language here, the reference to the enormous past that Middle Earth has had, as in "splendor of the kings of men undimmed before the breaking of the world." I'm not a huge fan of a lot of choices the movies made with Aragorn and Arwen, either individually or as a couple, but I was fine with adding in Elrond's resistance to their marriage mostly because it led to this insertion.
There won't be a Shire, Pip
Of the three movies in the trilogy, Two Towers is easily the weakest. There are some questionable choices of manufactured conflicts meant to give arcs to characters. One of those conflicts is the one the two "other" hobbits, Pippin and Merry, face. They stumble across Ents, who are very strong and could be powerful allies in the war. They try to convince the Ents to join the war, but the Ents originally aren't interested. They eventually change their minds, but in the space between the Ents' decision to sit out the war and the decision to get involved, Pippin thinks that maybe he and Merry should just hightail it back to the peaceful Shire. Merry rightly observes that unless evil is stopped, the Shire will soon be as bad as everywhere else.
I've said this line about a million times, every time someone brings up leaving the U.S. now that Trump is president again. The fires of Isengard will spread unless they are stopped where they are. This isn't quite explicit in the books, mostly because the Ents never actually reject the notion of going to war, but I was fine with making it more of an explicit theme in the movies. I think Tolkien would have agreed with the sentiment. With confronting all manner of evil, there are times to "fly, you fools," and there are times to turn and confront the evil.
So it begins
This isn't an especially good line. It's kind of boilerplate action movie fare. Chosen for its extreme memeability alone.
Share the load
Also chosen mostly because of the memes it has inspired. I’m not a terribly huge fan of how the Smeagol/Sam/Frodo relationship is made into a love triangle in the movies. This line is part of that whole indulgence, but at least it’s one that leads to funny comments.
I give hope to men/I keep none for myself
I'm not the only person not crazy about how Aragorn is changed in the movies from a guy who knew he wanted to be king to a guy with a crisis of identity because he doesn't want to be one. So I don't really like that one scene that many people love where Elrond comes to Aragorn to give him the sword (that he had already had for two whole books in Tolkien's version) and convince him to "put away the ranger" and "become the king you were born to be."
However, that scene does contain another reference pulled from the appendices. It's actually Aragorn's mother who said she kept no hope for herself, although she had given it to men by bearing Aragorn. (Aragorn's name as a child is Estel, meaning "hope.") I said above that LoTR is more about hope than any story I've ever thought about a lot, and it is, but part of its message concerning hope is that a realistic appraisal of the world will mean having to carry on without hope sometimes. I just can't think of a better message for this week.
Pippin's "Home is Behind" song to Denethor
If you've read the books, you know they're just crammed full of songs. It would have been impossible to put even a quarter of them into the movies, but the movies do want to reassure viewers who love the books that yes, they're aware that it's sad to leave all of that out. There are a few moments when the songs and poems work their way in, even if in shortened form. Aragorn sings part of the Lay of Luthien, and he also sings of the ancient story of how his ancestors arrived upon the shores of Middle Earth. Treebeard sing-songs about the lost Ent-wives. Maybe the best use of the musical/poetic material from the books is when Pippin sings for Denethor, who has lost most of his mind and is about to lose the rest. Once again, the writers of the movies wove the song in from other places in the books. In the books, Pippin still sings the lines heard in the movie, but in a very different context. He sings them while the hobbits are traveling and still in the Shire, not yet fully aware of their peril.
The song in its full version from the book concerns a traveler who is thinking about all of the places in the world he hasn't gone yet, and the traveler decides for the moment to delay seeing them and to head home to fire and lamp and meat and bread. In the movie, using only that one verse from the song, it takes on a different meaning. Tolkien used some songs repeatedly in his work, changing them slightly as the context of the story changed, and the movies did the same thing. "Home is Behind" was the best example of it, and so I single it out here as an example of something the movies do well throughout.
The journey doesn't end here
I wrote about this one in the introduction above. I'm okay with making the movies more overtly Christian-ish and marginally less pagan-ish. It's there in the books, just not quite so confidently stated. If anyone is going to tell humans and hobbits that there is a chance they survive death in some way, it's Olorin-Gandalf, who learned mercy from Nienna herself. Although Tolkien's legendarium is pretty vague on the fate of men beyond death, I think it's possible Gandalf actually knows what he's talking about. Nienna was the sister to Mandos, sort of the Hades of Tolkien's world, and she lived on the borders of Mandos' kingdom. It's possible Gandalf wasn't just making that up to make Pippin feel better.
That still only counts as one
Most of Gimli's D&D dwarf yuk-yuking in the movies annoys me. This one doesn't.
Aragorn's inspirational speech at the black gates
Almost none of this is in the books. The one line that is, "Stand, Men of the West," has a totally different meaning. Aragorn isn't saying "stand your ground and fight," he's instead saying, "Look, Frodo just finished the quest, so quit fighting and stand still." I don't find this speech all that great, and Viggo Mortenson's voice sounds a little funny in parts, but I think it was probably important to show Aragorn being, I don't know, kingly in battle or something. Since they had to write a speech from scratch, they did a good job of at least making it sort of within Aragorn's character, understanding the weakness of others and trying to reason with them rather than order them.
Okay...now the two best ones
Second place: A wizard is never late, nor is he early; he arrives precisely when he means to.
Wait...this isn't in the books? The line feels so natural in the movie, it seems like it must be in the books, but it isn't. When I heard this line in the movie way back in the day, I felt like I was home, and I enjoyed the ride for the next three hours. But it's not in the books. Check me on this.
There are some observations in the books on how Gandalf comes and goes as he pleases. Maybe the closest the books come to the pith of what Gandalf says is when Gandalf arrives in the nick of time at the Battle of Helm's Deep. Aragorn, meeting Gandalf at last, says to him that "Once more you come in the hour of need, unlooked-for." Gandalf replies that it shouldn't be "unlooked for," because he had said that he would return and meet him here. In other words, you should have trusted that I would show up when I was needed.
I'm not sure what made the movie's writers put this line in. Maybe after reading and re-reading the story, they themselves were struck by how many times Gandalf seems to arrive just in the nick of time. It's certainly true in The Hobbit.
It's also sort of a foreshadowing. Gandalf is NEVER late, but later on, he's not going to show up when he promised Frodo that he would. He 'broke tryst" as he will say at the Council of Elrond, and that has never happened before. So it's setting up what happens later, which Tolkien does all the time. Oh, yeah, and it also establishes that Frodo is one of the few people close enough to Gandalf to be able to trade banter with him. Great addition.
First place: My friends! You bow to no one.
I get angry in the books when the hobbits go back to the Shire and nobody seems to understand that Frodo is the goddamn savior of the planet. I know, I know. It has to be that way. Frodo even says so, in some of the most poignant words of the whole trilogy: "I tried to save the Shire, and it has been saved, but not for me. It must often be so, Sam, when things are in danger: some one has to give them up, lose them, so that others may keep them." But do all those dumb hobbits really have to go about not realizing who Frodo is? It angers Sam, and it angers me, too.
Frodo may be stoic about not fitting in around the Shire when he comes back, and of course, he never wanted to be treated like a hero. But he is a hero. He's the hero of heroes.
The book does grant him a good deal of being treated like the hero he deserves, just not in the Shire. When he awakes after nearly perishing in the fires of Mount Doom after completing the quest, Frodo is told of the honor he and Frodo will be held in: "The clothes that you wore on your way to Mordor...even the orc-rags that your bore in the black land, Frodo, shall be preserved. No silks and linens, nor any armour or heraldry could be more honourable." There are festivals in honor of Frodo and Sam, and minstrels write songs about them, and the people go so far as to use quasi-religious terms about them: "Praise them with great praise!"
The movie was never going to include a long segment on the Scouring of the Shire or all the other things that happened in the books to the hobbits when they returned home. It wasn't going to have a segment with a minstrel singing "Frodo of the Nine Fingers" (although the much shorter animated version did include this song). But you know what? Frodo suffered for our salvation. He deserves his moment. So does Sam. If Merry and Pippin happen to get honored along with them, fine. They're kinsmen of Frodo. His kinsmen can have my praise and thanks, too, just for having been related to him. It's a necessary scene, not so much for the movie, but for me to feel whole. There is a moment when everyone recognizes that in spite of all the heroism that went on, the only two real heroes are the ones who slogged it out to the finish line in a land far beyond hope.
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