At last, we have reached the end of the trilogy. I won’t keep you on tenterhooks. My lukewarmest take is still that these books need brutal editing. These books are boring much more often than they are interesting.
Still, you’re not here for warm takes. You’re here for hot takes, and I am here to deliver.
I first owe Peter Jackson an apology, since Eowyn’s feminist cry was just in the last book rather than in Two Towers. But not a big apology. Tolkien seems to have been a proper feminist grappling with the desire to protect the women in his life with his desire for them to be fully actualized human beings with the freedom to take risks. The whole exchange between Eowyn and Aragon where he tells her she has to stay because she’s the last line of defense and she comes back to him with thanks so much for letting me stay in the house to watch it burn from inside is the sort of feminist representation I would be applauding in a contemporary story. Jackson’s Eowyn is closer to a teenager’s version of feminism. Man things good, woman things bad! It’s also really incongruent with the LORT’s narrative of good people being those who are both willing to face danger to protect people and also being kind, compassionate, and tender. Knowing when to pick up a sword and when to put it down, as it were.
Of course, Jackson also gave Arwen literally anything to do, unlike Tolkien, so I guess it comes out in the wash?
Then there is the elimination of the fight for the Shire. There are, conservatively speaking, one quintillion stories about war. There are damn near none about what happens after the war ends. There’s no glory after the Big Dudes are dead, just a return to much diminished lands, with ravaged communities, cratered economies, crime, poverty, prejudice, distrust, and a catastrophic shortage of long bottom leaf. This is the time, as Tolkien puts its, of planting seeds for trees you will never see grow. And that’s not as exciting as a battle where you chop a flying monster’s head off, so we got an awkward good bye scene at the docks instead.
The Mouth of Sauron is a Numenorian who has bought into Sauron’s thing so hard he’s forgotten his own name? That’s metal as hell. I have no idea how that would have been integrated into the movies but I’m mad about its exclusion anyway. Also, did you know the guy who played the Mouth of Sauron in the movies is best known for being the manic pixie dream engineer from Mad Max 2?
Perhaps the greatest offense against the movie-going crowd in the film version is actually Merry. I now see why Pippin is friends with a pile of unsalted mashed potatoes like Merry. Getting into a slap fight with Saruman over the last of the Isengard’s finest weed is something I never knew I absolutely needed. That we didn’t get to see this in the movies and people are bitching about losing stupid Tom Bombadil is why we can’t have nice things.
Last thoughts in no particular order:
- On book boyfriends, I remain entirely unmoved by Faramir. Boy is a wet blanket whose flirting amounts to “it’s so hot how sad you are”. But Gimli is welcome to delve as greedily and as deeply as he’d like.
- Gandalf? He’s definitely just bored. He finishes our saga by acknowledging that there are a lot of problems left, and he can definitely help, but he’s not going to. Not for any specific reason. Middle Earth is just not the vibe anymore. His Fourth Age starts with a threeway with Tom and his supernaturally hot wife before going to get faded in the east.
- On Sam and Frodo – I am thoroughly convinced Sam is bi and genuinely loves both Frodo and his wife. Frodo strikes me as a very nice ace boy who deeply appreciates the dude that literally carried him to Mount Doom and back.
- Relatedly, Sam is so much more nuanced in the books. I actually understand movie Sam so much better now – without the context you get in the book, Sam came across to me as something of an overbearing drama king, but when you see what’s going on in his head, follow Frodo’s much more spelled out deterioration, see his far more sensible interactions with Gollum and Frodo, the drama is far better earned. Sean Astin did our boy right.
- I don’t buy for a second that *everyone* is happy that some random dude showed up and was like “btw I’m your king now”. Funny how people can be so thoughtful in some ways but have massive blind spots too.
- This book could also have been 50% shorter.
