I just finished reading Tolkien's The Fellowship of the Ring for the second time. I was in 8th grade the first time I read it, so the details were really hazy, especially because I did more skimming than reading. Now that I've read it again, I notice some subtle differences between the book and the blockbuster film adaptation (the changes in the film version of The Two Towers were a lot more extreme, but that's another post)
The first big difference that you see between the book and the movie is that there's a nice long twenty years that pass between Bilbo's birthday party and the time that Frodo leaves Hobbiton. You can tell a lot of time passed in the movie, but that's a detail Peter Jackson forgot to get around to, because Bilbo seems to have aged twenty years while everyone else aged about a year or two. I also noticed that Merry and Pippin aren't quite the troublemakers in the book that they are in the movie. Pippin doesn't even become that important until Frodo leaves the Shire.
Second big difference: In the movie Frodo just leaves Hobbiton, but in the book he sells Bag-End to the Sackville-Bagginses and pretends to move to a town near Buckland. It's not quite as big a difference as the first one, but it would have been nice to know.
The third big difference is one that fans grumble about a lot: the omission of Tom Bombadil and the Barrow-Downs. The reason I've heard for this omission is that Peter Jackson wanted to increase the tension in the audience by making the Ringwraiths a more constant threat, and the incident with Bombadil's house would compromise that tension. I agree with that, but at the same time the fact that he didn't include the Barrow-Downs means that they just got swords from...nowhere, really. They just kind of had them. If you remember in the book, they got the swords after Bombadil chased away the Barrow-Wights.
This next difference isn't too important. Remember in the movie how Arwen took Frodo to Rivendell? In the book it was an Elf-lord named Glorfindel.
The Council of Elrond was pretty spot-on in the movie, but the fifth big difference is huge. Like character altering huge. Remember how Aragorn had that whole internal struggle in the movie with whether or not he wanted to take the kingship? He was actually striving to become king in the book. I will admit that that makes his character more boring, but that's how it is.
Anduril (Isildur's sword) was re-forged and given to Aragorn when they left Rivendell in the first book, not in the third one like in the movie.
Arwen's presence in the movie is A LOT stronger than it is in the book. This is probably because most of the female figures in the Trilogy are almost nonexistent. Eowyn isn't as important in The Two Towers, and Sam just kind of marries Rosie when he gets back. She's completely absent from the first book.
After this the differences are a lot smaller. Sam is given a box of seeds from Lorien by Galadriel, they spend more time on the River Anduin (or the Great River), little things like that.
So there it is. The movie's not quite as spot-on as most people are led to believe. But it's still a darn good adaptation of a great book. You'll see a lot more differences that are huge in the second book, which I'll get around to comparing later.
Any thoughts about the movie or book? Share them if you do.
