The change to Faramir’s character in The Two Towers was by far my biggest disappointment with the movies. I discussed it with other fans back in the day, watched and rewatched the BTS features and listened to the commentary tracks, and ended up mostly defending the filmmakers’ decision in online debates. But it was always a little (or more than a little) sad for me that they did that.
I know the arguments on both sides. I know why they felt they had to do it. No one is giving me hundreds of millions of dollars to adapt a sprawling, multi-book epic to the big screen in a way that will justify its enormous budget and satisfy everyone from lifelong lovers of the source material (*waves*) to new fans and casual “eh, sure; I’ll watch it” types.
But I’ll always regret that they couldn’t find room for the actual character from the books, the one who wasn’t going to undercut Aragorn or his struggle just by existing, but also wasn’t going to beat up Gollum or send the Ring to Denethor, because those things were wrong, and he saw himself as bound by that.
There’s a clip of David Wenham describing how he went to Jackson/Boyens/Walsh (or maybe it was just a story recounted by one of the latter trio; I can’t remember now) after he’d read the books (which he hadn’t when he was cast), and saying hey, you know, this actually seems like a significant change to my character. And them telling him yeah, we know, but we need to for all these reasons (*enumerates reasons*) and anyway he ends up in the same place, right?
Yeah, no. I mean yeah, he ends up having made the same decision. But he’s not the same person. How he gets there matters.
I want to believe a movie could have been made that didn’t sacrifice his character in the name of storytelling. It wouldn’t have been the same movie; might not have been as successful a movie. But I would have loved it.
I’ve mentioned that I’m reading the books again, out loud with my co-conspirator at night, the way we used to do. We just finished the Council of Elrond, and it was a thrill to realize that the brother Boromir referred to (though not by name) was the real Faramir, my Faramir.
I can’t wait to meet him again.
I have a Grand Unified Theory of LOTR that I created to reconcile the books and the movies; it satisfactorily resolved the Faramir issue for me, among other things.
The basic idea is that the books and the movies are two different histories of the same events created by different cultures with different sources and agendas. (Inspired by Tolkien’s conceit that the books were translated from the Red Book the hobbits wrote.)
Book-LOTR is mostly drawn from first-person hobbit accounts, with added accounts of things the hobbits didn’t see from other people. Movie-LOTR is a Gondorian history made several centuries after the events, with a clear cultural bias toward humans and Gondor.
Thus, in the movies: the humans are more prominent, the hobbits are younger (because they look like children to Gondorians), the romance of Aragorn and Arwen (their legendary king and queen) gets a lot of screen time, and Faramir… well, he’s no more comprehensible to later Gondor than he was to his contemporaries. He’s a great hero of their history, and it’s on record that he let the hobbits go, but how do they reconcile that with their cultural values? By making his story all about loyalty to his liege lord and his emotions about his father, rather than letting him be the ethical intellectual (with considerable grasp of the lore and history of his world) that the hobbits met. Movie-Faramir is written to make sense to people with a worldview and priorities more like Boromir’s.
According to this theory, Frodo’s Red Book account of his philosophical conversation with Faramir about war, Gondor, the Ring, etc. is a much better historical source for the “real” Faramir than the stories people tell in Gondor centuries later about one of their ancestral heroes. This pleases me, since I too am attached to book Faramir.
“the same events told by different people with different biases” might be the solution to every book-movie problem ever, every character continuity problem ever … so many things.
Am I the only person who thought this was really fucking funny
A lot of the really funny moments in Lord of the Rings come from Tolkien playing with language like this, where we have relatively formal, archaic, “high” language responded to with informal, modern, “low” language.
another hilarious example:
my absolute favorite example of tolkien switching registers in this way is
and like, not that I don’t love Boromir & love his love for his hobbit friends, consider: Treebeard, who knew Merry and Pippin for like 2 days, thought of him as his children, and wrote a sweet & touching poem about them, DEEPLY relatable
also consider, Denethor, who took Pippin into his service in large part bcos he found him Very Funny
also consider, GIMLI
‘Well, farewell, my hobbits! You should come safe to your own homes now, and I shall not be kept awake for fear of your peril.’
this is Theoden-and-Merry-bonding-over-herb-lore erasure and it’s Not Okay
I never claimed it was an exhaustive list but yes, also: Theoden knowing Merry for like a minute and being like ‘I love my tiny son’
It’s only just now struck me that Merry caught Theoden on Son Rebound
“Son rebound”
THANKS I HATE IT 😭
Eowyn and the entire freaking Rohirrim adopt Merry by the Battle of Pelennor. Faramir gets emotionally attached to Frodo, Sam, AND Pippin. Aragorn and the Dúnedain (Rangers) spent a large chunk of their time and manpower protecting the Shire more or less for the same reasons one would shelter a happy child from the harsh reality of the world. And that’s not even remotely mentioning how literally everyone Bilbo ever met on his journey “there and back again” treats him like a kindly adorable old friend throughout the main series.
Conclusion: Everyone loves Hobbits what the heck
it’s like I’ve been saying, hobbits just activate people’s ‘baby, must protect’ instinct
Pointless LOTR headcanon of the day: Frodo & Merry both take after their mothers, meaning Frodo looks more like a Brandybuck than a Baggins and Merry looks more like a Took. This is a constant source of petty contention.
(Pippin meanwhile absolutely takes after his father & is the most Tookish looking)
Merry: call me a Took one more time
Gandalf: if it looks like a Took and acts like a Took it’s a Took
Merry: I will END you
Gandalf is the only nonhobbit in the fellowship who understands the minutiae of Took Vs Brandybuck Vs Baggins rivalry & he delights in it, everyone else baffled
Frodo: look it’s perfectly simple. The Brandybucks don’t like the Tooks because they play golf and think they’re better than everyone because they occasionally go on adventures. The Tooks don’t like the Brandybucks because they live on the wrong side of the river and like boats. And nobody likes the Bagginses because they’re annoying.
Aragorn: are you… Including yourself in that
Frodo: I said what I said.
Frodo: now the Bagginses don’t like the Brandybucks OR the Tooks because they’re highly disrepectable but also richer than they are. And as far as a lot of the Bagginses are concerned I’m a Brandybuck because I grew up in Buckland and I have the Brandybuck Profile
Merry: which just means he’s not pug-ugly
Frodo: quite.
Aragorn: this is all ridiculous. Keep going.
Gandalf: Hm now I wouldn’t say UGLY but… every Baggins I’ve ever met has been perfectly Round or perfectly Square… There is no middle ground.
Gimli, baffled: Frodo isn’t round OR square
Merry: that’s because he has the Brandybuck profile
Gimli: so… Is he a Brandybuck…
Merry: ABSOLUTE not
Frodo: slander!! I’m a Baggins how dare you
Pippin: was your father a Round Baggins or a Square Baggins
Frodo: my father… Was the ROUNDEST Baggins who ever lived… A perfect Sphere of hobbit…
Gimli: What about your uncle. Is he round or square.
Frodo: Please tell me you’re kidding my uncle is the most Tookish Baggins to ever live and that includes physically
Bilbo ‘looked… exactly like a second edition of his solid and comfortable father’. He’s a round Baggins imo
This is right after Gandalf says, “A balrog. A demon of the ancient world.”
I just love how PJ chose to cut to Legolas’ face because he is exactly who you should cut to at this moment. You need an elf to show what it really means. Other than Gandalf, the rest of the Fellowship can sense something is gravely wrong, but they don’t understand just how grave. Like Gandalf, Legolas knows the terror. He understands the gravity of what lies around that corner. He’s got a piddly little bow and he is mere steps away from a demon of the ancient world. This frame shows a kid coming to the realisation that he is way out of his depth, that this mission will take him to places he only knew to exist in legends of the Elder Days, a time long gone, barely history.
He’s probably one of the youngest elves in Middle Earth at this point. He probably grew up on stories of the balrogs, slaying the ancient High Kings of the Eldar and tearing Middle Earth apart, thousands and thousands of years ago. They are legends in old crumbling books, read illicitly by a little elfling who was kept up at night by the terrible tales.They are the monsters under the bed and the shadows in the heart of the forest. They are the beasts behind the winged hordes of hell, that older elves, who’ve seen the worst that Arda has to offer, always assured him were no more than distant nightmares, stories relegated to dust and ancient memory. Except now they are real. They are here. They are coming.
The best part is that in the books he just starts screaming when he lays eyes on it
In its right hand was a blade like a stabbing tongue of fire; in its left hand it held a whip of many thongs.
‘Ai! ai! wailed Legolas. “A Balrog! A Balrog has come!’
Legolas can be relied upon to have the correct reaction to everything.
It is not necessarily normal, or socially appropriate, or sane, but it is always 100% correct.
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