S02E09 — The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
SPOILER ALERT: This episode and transcript below contains major spoilers for The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King.
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Featuring hosts Timothy Haynes, Donna Haynes, Rebekah Edwards, and T. Josiah Haynes.
We’re wrapping up the original LotR trilogy today, and we have just… so many thoughts! Find out how we feel about the book-to-film adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien’s final book in The Lord of the Rings.
Don’ t miss our other episodes from The Lord of the Rings Saga!
Final Verdicts
If you haven’t listened to the episode yet, we recommend waiting to read our verdicts. (But you’re probably grown, so do what you want!)
The book’s ending keeps going (and going), adding an entire battle in the Shire that never made it to the film, while the movie streamlines the finale for emotional impact. The film ramps up the drama, expands battle sequences, and makes Aragorn’s journey to kingship more conflicted, while the book dives deeper into lore and Tolkien’s signature world-building.
Tim: 51% Movie, 49% Book
Donna: The movie was better
Rebekah: The movie was better
Josiah: The movie was better
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Full Episode Transcript
Prefer reading? Check out the full episode transcript below. It’s AI-generated from our audio, and if we’re being honest… no one sat to read the entire thing for accuracy. (After all, we were there the whole time.) 😉 We’re sorry in advance for any typos or transcription errors.
[00:00:00] Donna: A fallen angel with a jewelry obsession hunts a four foot tall man across a continent.
[00:00:24] Rebekah: Hey, welcome to the book is better podcast. We are a family of four. We review book to film adaptations. And today we are covering the final in the trilogy, the epic story of The peep, the, the hobbity people and the wars, the Lord of the
[00:00:45] TJ: Rings, the
[00:00:46] Rebekah: Return of the King, no, I, what did I say? I was trying to make it like epic fantasy.
And then I turned into like, um, you know, WWE announcer. And I don’t know where it went wrong. I’m so sorry. The Lord
[00:01:01] Tim: of the Rings,
[00:01:02] Rebekah: Return of the King. Uh, spoiler warning. We are going to news. Spoil the return of the king. We will probably mention stuff from the previous books and films. I don’t know why you would be listening to this if you were worried about spoilers from the previous books and films, but hey, there you go.
We may spoil some stuff from the hobbit. So just, you know, this is a big old. Spoilery episode. So as we begin, we like to introduce ourselves and answer a little fun fact so you can get to know us a little better. Today’s fun fact is, thinking of the many bad monsters in this trilogy, what real monsters are you afraid of?
More specifically, do you have any phobias around certain Creatures or creature types. Uh, I’ll go first. My name is Rebecca. I am the daughter slash sister of the family. And while I do not have lots of major critter issues when it comes to larger animals, I am deathly terrified of all creepy crawly things.
smaller than my fingertip. So I don’t know why, but the smaller the thing, the scarier they can be. But you can kill them because they’re bigger than your
[00:02:17] Donna: fingertip.
[00:02:17] Rebekah: That’s true. See, here’s what happened though. We lived at this house like up in the mountains last year and Josh was cleaning out a thing for one of our lights, like one of the, one of the fan lights and it was like a little bowl and he opened it up.
And there was a spider in there that was literally like four inches across just the body, not the legs. And it was bigger than your fingertip. It is bigger than my fingertip, but it was the scariest thing that, no, it was the scariest thing that ever happened to me. I don’t know why. It was in the bedroom.
I was sleeping. And it was
[00:02:48] Tim: not scared.
[00:02:50] Rebekah: That’s true. You should have been more scared than I was. So we did kill it. It was dead by the time we threw it into the trash.
[00:02:57] TJ: It was eventually dead. Well, you know what Paul said, We killed it with, Thou shalt have a spirit of fear.
[00:03:03] Rebekah: Well, that sounds scriptural to me.
So who else wants to introduce themselves?
[00:03:08] Donna: Uh, my name is Donna and I’m the wife and mother of this fellowship. Mine’s not too hard. I hate birds. I do not like them. I don’t like them at all. I can see one. If I see like a blue jay or a little cardinal out on the deck, it’s real cute, but there’s a mirror or there’s a window between me and the bird, but.
I don’t want to be around. I don’t know even why no bird, no bird has ever attacked me or come at me or anything. Did you just watch the birds? I think it, I think it did it. And I’m not like that triggered person, but boy, gosh, that kills me. And where I work, where I work, there are these random. Um, I mean, they’re pigeons and geese that are around and like, there’s a couple of birds that sit up on top of the building where I walk in and I literally think they’re staring at me waiting to attack me if I say something bad about them.
[00:04:15] TJ: I’m Josiah. I’m the brother and the son. Of this cohort, and I am not a fan of frogs. I haven’t really had many recent run ins with the ribbiters, but a, as a child I forgot
[00:04:30] Rebekah: about that, that you were afraid of frogs, but I knew that.
[00:04:33] TJ: Well, it’s just like, you know, my ex girlfriend Brittany, she would always just, she would make fun of me and she would say, you know, they’re, they’re just as afraid of you as you are as of them.
Like, no, no, they’re not afraid of me at all. You stomp like right next to their face and they don’t move at all. I’m going to jump on your
[00:04:54] Donna: leg
[00:04:55] TJ: or they jump on your leg. They jump on your shoe and stuff like that. It’s just. They’re unscared of humans, and they seem like they’re covered with disease, and they can get up your shorts, and I haven’t had a lot of run ins with frogs recently to test my old fear, but I do not like them.
Him, I am. I do not like frogs that go ribbit him.
[00:05:21] Tim: Like them. Yeah. Well, my name is Tim. I am the husband and dad of our fellowship, and I have, I have a couple of them that are related actually. Um, I do not like snakes as far as I’m concerned. Snakes are poisonous. You can tell me how to tell them apart. The best way I can tell them apart is stay away from all of them and.
I don’t have to worry about it. Um, but very similarly to that, I know why snakes bother me. It’s the same reason that lizards bother me. They move erratically and quickly, and I don’t like that. And so not a fan of lizards, small lizards, especially, um, and snakes, because I just, you know, stay in your lane and your lane is out in the woods where I’m not.
And if I’m coming around, I’m making noise so that you can find another place to go.
[00:06:19] TJ: And
[00:06:19] Tim: Lucifer. Well, there is in between, there is enmity between the seat of the woman. What you’re saying is that
[00:06:27] Rebekah: you feel that enmity.
[00:06:28] Tim: Yes, I feel the enmity. What a classic man.
[00:06:32] TJ: Mmm.
[00:06:33] Donna: What a man. You know, I wish that scientists
[00:06:37] TJ: would take your approach to trying to tell the difference between different snakes.
I think we’d know a lot more. Stay away All. Yeah, just stay away from them. Save a
[00:06:48] Donna: lot of money, save a lot of grant money too. What
[00:06:50] TJ: saved, what sort of, uh, advances to human, uh,
[00:06:55] Tim: benefit. You may be surprised. Weed. This fact may surprise you. I’ve said it. Before, but I actually have handled lots of snakes when I was a boy scout and we went to camp and things like that.
The person who was in charge of the snakes and they knew what they were talking about and they would say, this one’s not poisonous. You can hold it. And I would hold the snakes. If somebody told me that. And I, you know, had every reason to believe that, that they knew what they were talking about and these people did.
I’ve actually held snakes before, so it’s not like I’ve never held them. It’s just like, if I don’t know, they might as well be poisonous. Yeah. So. They just
[00:07:34] Rebekah: are. It’s easy. Well, this is all quite fascinating.
[00:07:39] Tim: It’s not trolls, but still.
[00:07:42] Rebekah: Next, Mom, why don’t you walk us through a summary of what happens in this story?
The final chapter
[00:07:49] Donna: of the Lord of the Rings unfolds in epic battles and personal struggles. Frodo and Sam push toward Mount Doom, battling exhaustion and enemies, while Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli march with the riders of Rohan to Minas Tirith, the last stronghold of men. King Theoden leads his forces, unaware that Eowyn and Merry secretly ride among them.
Meanwhile, Gandalf and Pippin race ahead to prepare the city for war. In Gondor, the grieving steward Denethor pressures his son Faramir to defend Osgiliath, while Aragorn ventures into the paths of the dead to rally lost warriors. As the siege of Minas Tirith begins, Denethor, in despair, attempts to burn himself and his wounded son alive.
Pippin warns Gandalf while on the battlefield, the Witch King fells Theoden. Eowyn, revealing her true identity, slays the Witch King with Merry’s aid. Just as hope fades, Aragorn arrives with reinforcements, turning the tide of battle. Believing Frodo dead, Sam carries the ring, but soon rescues his paralyzed friend from the orcs.
With Sauron’s darkness spreading, Aragorn and the leaders of men launch a diversionary attack at the Black Gate, giving Frodo and Sam a chance to reach Mount Doom. At the volcano’s heart, Frodo succumbs to the ring’s power, but Gollum intervenes, biting off Frodo’s finger before falling into the fire, destroying himself, the ring, Ann So’s Power with Victory Secured.
Aragorn is Crown King and Weds Arwin. AMI and AO one Foreman Alliance. And the fellowship members return home years later, Frodo, Bilbo and Gandalf Departmental Earth on an Elvin ship, leaving Sam, Mary and Pippen to carry on in the world. That they saved.
[00:09:47] Tim: How nice. Farrah, Miriam, and Erwin don’t form an alliance, but that’s okay.
[00:09:51] Donna: They do. Yeah, they form an alliance. They get married. It’s a love and a political, but it’s also a political alliance.
[00:09:56] TJ: It is political. Also in the importance of being earnest that I’m directing right now. Lady Bracknell refers to a potential marriage as forming an alliance with. Marriages are only for political gain.
Wow.
[00:10:10] Donna: Now that you have an overview of the story that we’re covering, let’s move into some plot and timeline changes.
[00:10:17] Rebekah: For those of you who like to follow, we are doing our standard breakdown of these, the major differences divided into plot timeline changes, setting changes, and finally, a lot of character changes, um, that we will review.
So, first of all, the timeline of the film, uh, again, I think this is true with all three of them, is greatly reduced than in the book. Uh, it adds a lot more urgency, lacking in the original epic. At the same time, the first 30 minutes. of Return of the King, in which we learn Smeagol’s backstory is from the Fellowship novel.
This story is actually in the second chapter of the entire epic, which I thought was really interesting. I really loved the change of adding Smeagol’s backstory to this film because I feel like it was interesting as a movie watcher, where this was unfolding for me over time throughout these three films, to kind of have this mystery.
character, Smeagol slash golem, and not really understand where he came from. And to me it was actually like some huge reveal, like, Oh my gosh, he was kind of a hobbit, like he, you know, he was similar to these others. And so I thought that was a really interesting, um, place to put it. Whereas like, honestly Having it at the very beginning of the books threw me off when we were reading, um, Fellowships.
[00:11:30] TJ: I think that the way the books are set up, Smeagol is not a huge part of Return of the King except for in one chapter. Right, he’s much more absent. And so pushing back the movie, the third movie, to include Morgul, uh, through Shelob’s lair. Which all has Smeagol there with them. Makes Smeagol a much more important part of the story, so it wouldn’t have even worked in the book.
[00:11:57] Tim: I think it may have even been a change that they made based on the fact that the actor that was going to play Smeagol was initially just going to do voice work, but they liked his acting and all, so they could actually use him to portray Smeagol from the beginning, so. Isn’t
[00:12:15] Donna: that interesting? What a game changer that was.
Andy Serkis had done some stuff. I mean, it’s not that he wasn’t completely unknown, but I think this like changes the trajectory of the rest of his career. Oh
[00:12:29] Rebekah: yeah, absolutely.
[00:12:30] Donna: No doubt. He’s incredibly talented. Like he didn’t trip into it and all he’s not really that good. He’s amazing, but this will be.
with him forever. I think that’s, that’s so amazing. Well, Aragorn travels into the paths of the dead with Legolas and Gimli in the films. There are no Dunedain with them as in the book. Aragorn does not summon the dead at the Stone of Errik in the film. Instead, Aragorn has a sword fight with the dead general who insists that ghosts can’t be forced to follow Aragorn.
Initially, Aragorn doesn’t think the ghost armies will follow him. After the trio escapes a visually stunning avalanche of skulls in the caves, they see the corsairs of Umbar sailing up the river. At this, the ghost general appears and agrees to fight with Aragorn.
[00:13:25] Tim: Well, in the book, the Army of the Dead does not go to Gondor.
They defeat the Corsairs of Umbar at the Battle of Pelargir and are then released from their oaths by Aragorn. In the film, just as the armies of men are facing certain defeat at the Battle of the Pelennor Fields, the Army of the Dead Cascades from the black ships and sweep over the armies of Sauron.
It is a dramatic conclusion to their story.
[00:13:51] Donna: I will note here that Jackson did not want to use the army of the dead. He wasn’t going to include it and he got so much pushback from the screenwriters as well as just like people as he would get opinions and stuff. They were like, you can’t not do he did. He didn’t like it.
He didn’t like the, um, you don’t like it.
[00:14:14] TJ: Big deus ex machina, they win the battle of Minas Tirith because a big ghost army came. And then Aragorn, oh, he’s so honorable that he releases them from their oath before. I don’t know, going to Mordor. Hey, go to Mordor with us for five more days and then I’ll release you from your oath.
[00:14:32] Donna: Well, Gimli tried to tell him. He was like, are you sure you want to let him go?
[00:14:35] Tim: Yeah, Gimli’s the worst. But in the book, they wouldn’t have even gone to Minas Tirith.
[00:14:43] TJ: In the books, Denethor shows more sanity than he does in the films. He, for instance, calls for the beacons of Gondor to be lit. to summon for help in the battle in the book.
But in the film, this beacon of Gondor plot, it must be accomplished by trickery and subterfuge, Gandalf and Pippin. The scene in the film is an epic addition to the plot of the book. I, I like giving Pippin more stuff to do. I think when I was, you know, as a kid when these came out, and I remember in the trailers, there was a, and I wouldn’t have been able to put it like this as a kid, but I feel like in the trailers there was a promise That Mary and Pippin would have more to do in this movie.
I feel like, you know, they were in the background for the first movie. In the second movie, they did have their own plot, but it was largely, they were brought every brought places by orcs, and then brought places And so, although they did kind of have an effect on the Treebeard plot, I thought that this was an example of the filmmakers giving Pippin some things to do, some heroic things to do that contribute to The main plot, and to heroic things happening.
I
[00:16:00] Tim: love
[00:16:00] TJ: it.
[00:16:00] Tim: Don’t you think that scene was, was a beautiful scene though? As the fires. On the mountains.
[00:16:06] Rebekah: Yeah.
[00:16:06] Tim: The fire towers, the beacons, yeah, on the mountains. And it just kept going. Because of Gondor are
[00:16:11] Rebekah: lit! I also wonder, Josiah and I would be curious of your thoughts, do you think that they make Denethor show up as like, just straight up crazy in the films because it’s clear that you’re not supposed to be rooting for or supporting him?
Like in the book, there’s more nuance. to his grief and all of those things, but in the film, it’s like clear to the audience that might be a little dumber, like he wouldn’t have even have lit the beacons. Like he’s, you know what I mean?
[00:16:39] Tim: Just make it clear. He’s been looking in one of those orbs. Right. And he’s been seeing the things that the enemy, Sauron, wants him to see, allows him to see.
Um, and so he knows that it, that all is lost. I think he’s kind of a pseudo good guy, bad guy. They do some more things with his character in the movies, um, you know, when he insists that Boromir be the one to go to the council of Elrond and that Faramir has to save the city and I can’t send Faramir because he let, he let the city be destroyed or taken over and you get a good bit more Denethor is On the edge of sanity.
Yeah. By the time, you know, you get to this part
[00:17:22] Donna: on the edge of sanity. Yeah. Yeah. Huge. What? And fallen off of it. Well, I think too, all the other leaders have been good. Mm-hmm . Except for Saron. You, you’ve got, uh, dent, you’ve got Thein. Mm-hmm . Good. Gandalf. Aorn. Elron. Mm-hmm. Riel.
[00:17:43] TJ: Thein was bad for a second.
[00:17:45] Donna: Th that’s true. And then, but then he becomes, he, his nobility comes back. It was the guy. It’s guy that’s Galadriel the other elf. The
[00:17:54] Rebekah: man Elf.
[00:17:54] TJ: How Deer is the captain of the guard, right? Yes. Her husband That is hella born heor.
[00:18:00] Rebekah: That’s who I was trying to remember.
[00:18:01] TJ: Really?
[00:18:02] Rebekah: Yeah. What do you mean? Really? Two other people?
[00:18:06] TJ: I don’t know. He doesn’t really have any roles. I don’t know
[00:18:09] Rebekah: why he’s there with her. That was not bad. Oh, he was a ruler. That was another
[00:18:13] Donna: reason I asked. I mean, you actually, it’s funny because you bring in this other female, strong female person, lead, right, or, or, you know, whatever, cast member, and you don’t have many.
And then she can’t even be by herself. She’s still gonna have her husband there with her. It’s like feminism dies in the movie. Um, I still love it. I’m not speaking against or anything, but
[00:18:35] TJ: yeah, because you typically love feminism. Yeah, we’re big feminists here.
[00:18:39] Donna: I do. I’m so for all the feminists. Okay,
[00:18:42] TJ: here’s my bra.
Burn it.
[00:18:46] Rebekah: I mean, I
[00:18:46] Donna: wouldn’t you
[00:18:47] Rebekah: hang a bra on something in college. Tell me about
[00:18:50] Donna: we, um, okay. The last, the day before finals, my second year, he wasn’t there the year before finals. My second year. From the second floor of my dorm across a road to the second floor of the dorm across the street, we clipped, we snapped bras together and the founder of our denomination is named Phineas F.
Brazee. We hung a sign on the bras that said Phineas F. Brazeer Boulevard. I may have figured out part of, um, Tolkien’s thinking though. Maybe he died in the, on the funeral pyre because he hadn’t had an idea so clever as to hang bras across the street. Oh, okay. Right. That makes sense. Now we, now we got it.
Okay. Though visually impressive. Legolas valiant effort to take down the Oliphant single handedly is a film only edition. I mean, they had to do some, they had to give Legolas some things to do, right? The first movie, he hopped across the top of the snow, and the rest of them were digging down in the snow, you know.
But, and the second movie, he stares on, on, uh, mountaintops a lot. What do your Elf Eyes see? Um, so they gotta give him something, right? He hops up the elephant’s, you know, whatever, trunk. Just say it, it’s his butt. I, I never said that. A little bit of trivia around this scene with the Oliphant. It took a full day of shooting to complete it, and it is a pretty cool scene.
Him jumping. I mean, it’s a pretty awesome thing, I will just say. But he actually filmed it standing on a pile of sandbags. Like some of this stuff I want to know, I love to know the behind the scenes stuff of what they did. And then I think, did I really want to know it? Because now I’ll know he did not hop on top of a giant elephant or not even
[00:20:55] Tim: just an elephant standing still.
[00:20:56] Donna: Yeah. Even a standing still regular size elephant.
[00:20:59] Tim: It is amazing to me at the, at the practical special effects that they did for this movie. The things that, that are just practical and then, you know, on top of that, all of the The visual special effects, computer generated and all that kind of stuff. But you know, the things to make, make the normal sized people seem like small people, the hobbits and the dwarves, uh, and the tall people in comparison seem like.
You know, regular sized people, they did so many different practical effects to make all that happen, and it’s just, it’s just quite a, quite an interesting thing to think about, all those things that they did. Well, after the battle at the Pelennor Fields in the book, Aragorn heals Faramir. Eowyn and Merry from the fever that they’ve developed after being touched by the black breath from the witch king.
This healing at the king’s hands fulfills an old prophecy. The hands of the king are the hands of a healer and so shall the rightful king be known. Faramir awakens to recognize Aragorn as the rightful king. The film omits this scene entirely in the Houses of Healing, instead having Aragorn’s return to Gondor focus on the military battle and his coronation.
While he does use Athalas to tend to Frodo in The Fellowship of the Ring after the Morgul blade wound, his healing role in Minas Tirith is absent from the Return of the King movie.
[00:22:25] Rebekah: I thought it was really cool that Like there was this prophecy that called him who he was and it’s,
[00:22:33] Tim: it’s recounted by, by one of the women there, by one of the nurses, the healers in the houses of healing.
[00:22:39] Rebekah: And I, I just, I like that. I understand why they didn’t keep it in here, like keep it in the movie. But I do think that it was interesting to see more of that development. Cause I think, correct me if I’m wrong, and we may have talked about this on former episodes, but Aorn in the book seems more ready to take on his role as king when the time comes.
Whereas in the movie he like is actively avoiding it. It feels like he’s trying to avoid it altogether. Would you say that’s fair? I I think that’s fair.
[00:23:06] Tim: Yeah, I think that’s fair.
[00:23:07] Rebekah: So I like this in the book though.
[00:23:09] TJ: Fair Amir.
[00:23:10] Rebekah: Far? Amir?
[00:23:11] TJ: I think that’s fair. Amir Fair? Not, you guys are not. I did not, I
[00:23:17] Rebekah: was not catching what you were.
I’m so sorry. In the book, Frodo does not forbid Sam from continuing with him to Mount Doom. Sam has ample reason not to trust Gollum, uh, and Frodo would think nothing of, you know, Sam’s mistrust. In the film, On the Stairs of Seareth Un’Gol, Gollum’s deception tricks Frodo into thinking Sam has eaten the last of their food.
Sam attacks Gollum for lying. Frodo nearly collapses and then tells Sam to go home. Sam leaves. Rebecca cries. It’s a lot. It is the saddest thing that ever happens. I cried with Sam. Um, it’s also here in the story on both ends where Frodo then gets captured by orcs pretty quickly after that happens. Uh, the sequence of him getting captured is much shorter in the movie than it is the book.
Sam does manage to procure the ring before Frodo’s capture, but in the film, unlike the book, he does not use the ring to hide from orcs. Uh, in the book, he actually uses it twice. I think, uh, to hide from orcs and disappear, which is completely different. I’m glad that they left that out. I think that’s confusing because it just seems like he has such utmost respect for Frodo and like, I don’t know.
I just see, it seems out of character that he would use the ring in that way. So I’m glad that they cut that.
[00:24:33] TJ: And also there, he’s in Mordor. Yeah,
[00:24:37] Tim: he is so it would be the worst place to put the ring on but
[00:24:41] TJ: he does in the book I think the is iron is more explicit in the movie So maybe it’s I don’t know exactly what it does in the books.
You don’t necessarily see the Tower of Barad door
[00:24:55] Tim: Focus on where you are. Well, it’s generally not an actual eye in the In the book, the eye of Sauron is, is less literal in the book.
[00:25:06] Donna: There’s something super satisfying though, for me, when Sam kills Shelob. Oh my gosh. And then that, that whole thing, because up to this point.
Yeah, wounds her, gets rid of her. Um, up to this point, Sam is heroic and he’s faithful, but you don’t see him like as a fighter. And where Mary and Pippin, you got to see them fight in the first movie, they were throwing rocks and fighting, uh, fight when they came after, just before Boromir died. And, and you see a couple of different, you know, see some opportunities for them to fight.
But then this was like. Sam was like fearless and physically strong. So I just kind of thought that was,
[00:25:49] Tim: I think in the book, this is a, this is a beautiful sequence of things that take place. You know, Sam knows that Frodo’s dead. And so he, he’s going to take the ring and he’s going to destroy it. And then he realizes, you know, he was wrong.
He was just paralyzed. And so he has to follow him into the dark cave. He has to use Frodo’s gift from Galadriel, the, the vial that has the light in it. It’s a, it’s, It’s fairly lengthy, I think, and they cut all of it out of the film, which was a little bit strange.
[00:26:19] Rebekah: So, Josiah, in the last episode, you told us you were so impressed by the relationship development between Frodo, Sam, and Gollum, and you wondered if Tolkien would impress you in Return of the King.
So, did he? Were you impressed?
[00:26:32] TJ: I was pleasantly surprised how quickly Book Six got to Mount Doom. Like, it was a full length book, Book Six. Yeah. But That included all of the quote unquote epilogue stuff. And so, you know, I think there were nine chapters in book six. And I feel like Mount Doom might have been chapter four.
And so, that was pacing wise a pleasant surprise that, you know, we didn’t have to wait very long for that. We weren’t, we weren’t meandering through Mordor quite as long as I thought we would. Nice. Did you still like the development? Of their relationship. I just don’t think anything is as powerful as, as stuff that happens in the two towers with them.
Yeah. In book four. I mean, it was be I will say, yeah, it was beautiful, the stuff between Frodo and Sam. When Sam was saving Frodo from the tower. Uh, yeah, so I, I got a little emotional about how much Frodo and Sam loved one another. But, yeah, two towers. That, that book four really I think had the most literarily satisfying, uh, character arcs in it.
It,
[00:27:45] Tim: I thought it was sad as well when you see Gollum, excuse me, you see Smeagol begin to talk to Gollum again and you realize that although he got rid of him before, he’s invited him back in. Yeah. That’s sad to see.
[00:28:01] Rebekah: I know we’ve already passed over it because it’s similar in the book and the film. But I do think that the battle at the Pellinor Fields, that’s where Eowyn Kills the head of the the witch king.
That’s the same. Yeah, I Really loved this in the films I just wanted to point that out because I thought it was really satisfying to watch her Figure out how to become a warrior and like to hold her own. So I thought that was really beautiful. Yeah So in the book, the mouth lies to the armies, claiming Frodo is dead and convincing them of this film excludes this scene altogether, except in the extended version and Aragorn of the film in the extended version scene beheads the mouth of Sauron, by the way, that character, the, the like costuming and the gross stuff with his teeth and stuff, man, that was nasty.
Also the beheading was really satisfying.
[00:28:52] Donna: Yeah. And honestly, If you haven’t seen the extended edition, get it just to see what they do with this character. It’s disgusting, but it’s satisfying.
[00:29:05] Tim: It would be pretty difficult to be the actor for that knowing. We, we did this part. It’s the only scene I had. It was really good.
Oh, you cut it from the movie. And when he opens his mouth, uh,
[00:29:18] Donna: and those teeth, I’m like, oh, like vomit inducing gross out. I mean, that’s not why I want you to watch it. So you’ll vomit. But I think anyway,
[00:29:28] TJ: yeah, I hope he has plenty of money from his. Acting career. You know what? That’s
[00:29:32] Donna: true. Same.
[00:29:33] Tim: It was another very literal choice for Peter Jackson for something that was, you know, the mouth of Sauron was a messenger and he chose to make it very literally mostly a mouth.
Yeah. Well, okay. The film plot takes a significant turn when Saruman is killed by Wormtongue on top of the Tower of Isengard. Yes, that is not at the end of the book. That is much farther. That’s like at the beginning of this film. But it has to
[00:30:03] Rebekah: do with the end of the film, which we’re getting to.
[00:30:05] Tim: It has a lot to do with the end.
Um, in the books. Saruman is defeated, but not killed. Saruman eventually meets the Fellowship on their journey home. Wormtongue is his faithful and still harassed servant. Uh, they depart to places unknown. And ultimately, the Hobbits find that Saruman’s been meddling in the affairs of Hobbiton and the Shire, forcing them to battle his cronies to return the Shire to the peaceful home that they left.
This scouring of the Shire was seen in the films. Only in Frodo’s vision in the Mirror of Galadriel in Lothlorien in the first film. In this book only plot, Wormtongue does actually kill Saruman, but not until after he’s exiled from the Shire by Frodo, who refuses to kill the ancient wizard.
[00:30:53] Rebekah: Even after the wizard tries to kill him and is stopped by the
[00:30:57] Tim: Mithril.
It’s one of those plot changes that happens really early, but it changes. The ending right of of the book,
[00:31:05] Rebekah: I mean, I’m so grateful that this is not something in the movie as I was reading over this. I thought like this would have been so unsatisfying to go through all of that and all the victory and we, you know, in the ring is being unmade in the fires of Mount Doom Frodo nearly dies after turning on Sam.
Like it’s so intense and it’s And whatever. And it’s like, also they come back and they have to literally liberate the Shire again. Like that feels like, okay, in a D and D campaign, sure. I can see, Hey, we want to keep going to keep playing and then, oh, there’s more enemies to defeat. But in terms of a movie that would have been the most frustrating way to get back to the Shire.
[00:31:44] Tim: I agree.
[00:31:45] Donna: Yeah. And there’s the, the dramatic effect of Christopher Lee falling off that tower onto that spike. Yeah. It was like,
[00:31:54] Rebekah: it was good. It felt like his story was like, it felt like his story was resolved before we move on to all these other things. I liked that.
[00:32:01] TJ: Now, first of all, I want to say, I was pleasantly surprised by the scouring of the shower.
This read through, I’ve already read it a few years ago and been through that process of like, wow, really? This at the very end of the book? But this time through, I was more aware of how long all of the endings were. And you know, we are about to talk about, I think, how the film endings just go on and on.
And I think the scouring of the Shire breaks up the monotony and adds some action at the end of the book. I’m not saying it’s all, it’s all good, but I think that it does solve a problem that’s present in the films. It might introduce other problems. But then I think we would also be remiss to not mention that the theatrical release of Return of the King does not include Saruman’s death.
Simply says, oh, age of Saruman has ended and Christopher Lee and Peter Jackson fell out over that. And they, uh, and Peter Jackson barely convinced Christopher Lee to come back as Saruman in the Hobbit movies. Wow. It was a, it was a huge thing. Cause he
[00:33:07] Tim: did like the ending with Saruman dying there at Isengard?
Cause Christopher
[00:33:12] TJ: Lee felt like, I’m Saruman! I, he was a huge fan of the books. Yeah, I think it was more, more than being selfish. I think he was just such a fan of the books. That he didn’t understand why Saruman was robbed his death. Now, I think that Peter Jackson in the theatrical releases was trying to create stand alone movies.
And Saruman was the main villain of the second movie. Yes. And killing him in the third movie was, yeah, absolutely insane to take out Saruman’s death.
[00:33:45] Tim: Yeah.
[00:33:46] TJ: And Wormtongue as well. It
[00:33:47] Tim: was so satisfying. It was a very satisfying thing. I agree. And although it is very different than the book, it is a very satisfying end to that story.
[00:33:55] Donna: Speaking of endings. The film reduces the number of endings from the book. The Ents, Treebeard, and Quickbeam make an appearance at the end of the book, but not in the film. There is no encounter with Saruman and Wormtongue, like we were just discussing, since they were both killed earlier. There is no meeting with Butterbur at the end of The Prancing Pony.
There is no encounter with Tom Bombadil since his part in the books is entirely removed from the films. And there’s no retaking of The Shire by Mary, Pippin, Sam, and Frodo.
[00:34:31] Tim: And yet, in the film, you think that it’s never going to actually end. There’s ending after would add to the list of
[00:34:40] TJ: things that were, that were taken out of the Of the, of the film, I would say, yeah, the endings, you don’t specifically say goodbye to Legolas and Gimli like you do in the books.
[00:34:56] Donna: You just see them there at the, at the white tower and that’s it.
[00:35:00] TJ: Uh, Faramir and Eowyn fall in love for. Uh, it, uh, even though this is a weird thing, this, this is a, I don’t think you would do this in a lot of modern books, but yeah, I think the battle for Middle Earth has already been won. I think the ring has been destroyed, and then we go to Faramir and Eowyn, who don’t know that the ring has been destroyed, and that’s when they fall in love.
That’s what I was getting from it. So I’m going to count that as an ending because it was after the ring was destroyed. And it was like a lengthy, it was half a chap, it was like 30 minutes maybe that we spent on Faramir and Eowyn, uh, meeting and falling in love and stuff like that.
[00:35:41] Donna: Before, before this watch, this, this viewing, I would always say, Oh, it’s, you get to the end and you’ve had so much conflict and so much pain and so much suffering.
It’s nice how they wrap everything up and they show you all these, but this time, for some reason. I just thought, it’s just nice after nice after nice, nice. Everything’s nice. It’s just wrapped up all nice. The closest thing to a negative. Which I bet Rebecca and
[00:36:11] TJ: dad loved.
[00:36:12] Donna: Well, I think the closest thing to a negative was like when they rode back into town and the one neighbor hobbit and his wife, he kind of scoffs at him when they ride by like whatever in the film.
[00:36:25] Tim: Ooh, look at you. Yeah. I’m talking about you’re riding a
[00:36:28] Donna: horse. Yeah. I’m talking about the, in the film for sure. I just felt this time I thought it just ties everything up too nicely. And I think that’s why. Ending after ending after ending gets a little weird.
[00:36:43] Tim: I’m curious. And of course, this is something we can only make conjectures about, but I’m curious what Tolkien was thinking with all of the endings.
And then with, you know, them having to take the shire again and all of that. I wonder if there was some experience that he had coming back from war. Cause he was in world war one and world war two, uh, coming back from war and. They’re being problems. I do know that, um, the prime minister of England, Churchill, had been the prime minister during the war, and as soon as the war was over, he was replaced, you know, kind of thanklessly replaced, and then he would eventually come back again when the country was you know, had kind of dived into depression and all that kind of stuff, uh, financial depression.
So I was wondering if maybe, maybe all of the things that happened in the endings and going back to the Shire and finding it’s not the same place, I wonder if that had something to do with his own experience coming back from the war. And it’s like, I was fighting for this, for my land, and I come back to the land and it’s, That’s not what I left.
[00:37:49] Donna: So I guess that’s possible. And I think to, to me, I just see this as him. He’s just continuing to flesh out the lives of these people like that this story in your mind would just play on that. You would just imagine in your mind, how did they live after that? What did they do in the shire that rather than just having hard stop, this is the end of it.
Everything’s done. And I don’t know, that could be completely out.
[00:38:16] TJ: Of course, authorial intent. is not everything, and I think that Tolkien does not know everything that’s happening inside of his subcontinent. But, uh, first of all, Tolkien disliked allegory, in all its forms, is what he said. I believe he discussed in the foreword of the second edition of Lord of the Rings, he says, It has been supposed by some that the scouring of the Shire reflects the situation in England.
At the time when I was finishing my tale, it does not. It is an essential part of the plot. Foreseen from the outset, though in the event modified by the character of Saruman as developed in the story without, need I say, any allegorical significance or contemporary political reference whatsoever. It has indeed some basis in experience, though slender for the economic situation was entirely different and much further back.
But, that’s all from the foreword of his book, where he’s talking about the scouring shower. Now I think that he’s insane, because he would also argue that the War of the Ring is 0 percent an allegory to World War II, and obviously he’s not right. He’s incorrect about that.
[00:39:26] Donna: It’s good that you know that about him.
That’s good. I like that.
[00:39:30] Tim: Well, we have a few setting changes as well. There were a f only a few though, they’re not the largest changes.
[00:39:36] TJ: You know, in Minas Tirith, there was there were houses of healing in the book. That’s where Faramir and Eowyn recover and they build a relationship. It’s mostly missing from the film, but it’s a it’s a significant part of the book.
I think, uh, Faramir and Eowyn recovering and meeting and falling in love. is heavily, heavily involved with the Houses of Healing.
[00:39:56] Tim: Definitely, because they, they both stay there in the Houses of Healing and they walk out of, you know, and But in the film, the little piece that we see of them in the Houses of Healing and then they’re better seems, um, awkward.
It’s awkwardly placed. When we saw it the last time, it’s like, okay, they’re riding off to go and fight at the Black Gate of Mordor. And Faramir is laying almost dead, and then he’s starting to heal a little, and Eowyn is there. She too is almost dead, and then she is restored, and then they’re walking together, and it, it just looks like in the, those few seconds, and it’s probably not more than a minute, it looks like weeks have passed, maybe months have passed in their relationship, and just that little tiny bit of time.
But they, the army’s still haven’t gotten to the black gate of Mordor. And it’s like, it’s just strange to me when we watched it this time, it was the one spot that felt like this doesn’t look like it fits.
[00:40:59] Donna: Almost a Christopher Nolan time change, like we’re here and then,
[00:41:05] Tim: you know, one is an hour, one is a day and one is a, you know, like I
[00:41:09] Donna: want to go ahead and wrap these two people up.
Now I need to go back and finish up what we’re doing over there. You just looked.
[00:41:15] Tim: Strange, to me, this time. I really noticed it this time, because I’ve read the book again. Gotta wrap this stuff up. Yep, apparently. Well, when they get to the gates of Minas Morgul, uh, the battle against the forces of Sauron fares somewhat better in the book than it does in the film.
Uh, all seems lost in the film version, while there is a hint of victory in the book. Uh, the unmaking of the Ring of Power causes the Tower of Sauron in the Eye to crumble and fall as his power fails. Bit of trivia, Jackson brought in a few hundred members of the New Zealand army to play extras at the battle at the Black Gate.
They were so excited during filming battle scenes, they kept breaking their wooden swords and spears. So the entire New
[00:41:59] TJ: Zealand army, I presume. Ha, yeah,
[00:42:02] Donna: possibly, I don’t know. But I also read in this scene where Ring is unmade and we see the tower, uh, fall, they, they very specifically and intentionally made it break from the bottom and explode or, or, or crumble the way it did so they would not have any likeness to the 9 11 towers.
Oh, I never even thought about the timing of it, but it was the two towers, right? We were talking about, oh
[00:42:36] TJ: yeah, we’re talking about the two towers came out in 2002.
[00:42:39] Donna: Yeah. And so, uh,
[00:42:43] TJ: yeah,
[00:42:43] Donna: yeah. So they, they wanted to make sure there would be nothing that looked like it exploded from the top, which you would kind of think it would cause he had died up there, but they, they fixed it so that it went from the bottom and it kind of crumbled.
I found that interesting and kind of Peter Jackson, who isn’t American. So you know, bag End. Frodo’s home is not sold to the Sackville Baggins in the films. Consequently, it’s not given back to Frodo after Liberia. Sackville Baggins is released from prison and goes back to her ancestral home. In the film bag end appears to be the home in which Sam and Rosie, little Rosie Cotton in that suite, Rosie Cotton Gaji.
where they, it looks like this is where they have, uh, they have and they raise their family. I do think it’s interesting. I know Lobelia and I know they can’t be, he couldn’t put everybody in there. I did think it was kind of an interesting little, that weird aunt that everybody has somehow, you know, some weird aunt or cousin that you have in your family.
They couldn’t put that in there, but I thought that change was fun.
[00:43:49] Rebekah: The Shire, in general, is never involved in the War of the Rings throughout the films. Supplies from the Shire, like tobacco and produce, are seen in the ruins of Isengard, but this tenuous connection is never explained. In the books, obviously, as Saruman and Wormtongue go back to the Shire and take it under their control, it’s a lot more involved, like in the actual war efforts.
So that is a change.
[00:44:15] Tim: And it’s a, it’s completely wiped out all the trees. The party tree is, is torn down. Most of the trees in the shire are torn down. So it’s a big deal in the book. Well, there are some characterization changes. This is the big part. Yes. Okay.
[00:44:31] Rebekah: A lot of these have to do with. some plot stuff, but mostly things that happen in the wrap up and a lot related to like the Shire and things like that.
So we left them in characterization rather than the main plot area.
[00:44:43] Tim: Throughout the series, several characters play a different role from book to film, such as Gimli, the dwarf takes on a more comedic role in the films than the more serious one in the book trilogy. Arwen, the elf princess is a motivating memory in the books while the films portray her as a more active mover of events along with her father, Elrond.
Sauron is a faceless mover of events in the book, books until the end, while he becomes a secondary villain to Sauron in the films. Aragorn is the only ranger of the north that we meet in the films, although there is a contingency of them that show up to help fight Sauron’s forces at Minas Tirith, along with Aragorn in the books.
Haldir, the elf, leads a company of elves to fight with King Théoden of Rohan at Helm’s Deep in the films, but is mostly absent in the books.
[00:45:29] Rebekah: Yeah, so that’s, ooh, that’s quite a lot all back to back. Fredegar Fatty Bulger is absent from the films, although he does play the role of fellow conspirator with Mary Pippin and Sam in the first book.
His jovial yet thoughtful nature contrasts with the hasty and reckless natures of Mary and Pippin. He is instrumental in securing Frodo’s new home as cover for their trip to Rivendell, choosing to stay behind to complete the ruse. Following the Scourge of the Shire chapter in The Return of the King, he is released from prison after serving time for leading a rebellion against the dark powers corrupting the Shire.
So, he’s a character that got cut from the films entirely, but had a significant role at the beginning and end of the story in the books. Yeah, we’re
[00:46:12] TJ: fatty.
[00:46:13] Rebekah: That leads us
[00:46:15] Donna: to Halbarad Dúnedain, Ranger of the North, and his contingency of other Dúnedain who are descendants of Númenóreans. Well, they do not arrive to speak to Aragorn about taking the paths of the dead.
Instead, they had Elrond come and, and speak to him and, Call out to him on behalf of his daughter who is dying, and blah, blah, blah. It’s a good scene. Don’t get me wrong. They do not join the battle of the Pelennor Fields in the films, either, as they do in the books.
[00:46:46] Tim: Well, there’s another character, Gonbury Gon, the leader of the Druidain men who live in the forests.
They have a distinct culture from that of the other men. Uh, their connection to nature and disdain for many of the rules of the other kingdoms of men make them very suspicious of alliances. Yet, in the book, they join forces with Aragorn in the Battle of the Pelennor Fields. Uh, they are absent entirely from the films.
[00:47:10] Donna: Did Peter Jackson just sit, he, did he have to just sit down with a whole character list and say, Oh, you have to. Can’t do these guys, can’t do these guys, can’t. Cause we’re just getting started. This list is pretty long.
[00:47:22] TJ: Yeah. It’s crazy. The thing that I would personally do is. Is there a set up and a pay off?
For that person, right. Honestly, most of these characters are words on a page. So for, like, this, in the book, Prince Imrahil, brother in law to Denethor, and prince of the city of Dol Amroth. Is one of the allies of Minas Tirith, who leads a company to fight with Gondor at the Battle of the Pelennor Fields.
And also at the Battle of Morannon, outside the Black Gates of Mordor. He does not appear as a named character in the films. He has no payoff, you know?
[00:48:00] Tim: I wonder too, I wonder too, if Peter Jackson decided, We want to make it look desperate. And if, oh, that’s interesting. Gundry gone and Dior’s brother-in-law.
If all of these other people groups were saying, sure, we’ll join you. It’s not quite as desperate as it was that its Gundo and Rohan and even Rohan was, oh no, they probably won’t come. So by ourselves
[00:48:25] TJ: book in the, in the book. I feel like chapter two began with, okay, here are all of the peoples who came to help Gondor fight.
Yeah. Like, oh, okay.
[00:48:37] Rebekah: Yeah.
[00:48:37] TJ: Cool. That’s great.
[00:48:39] Rebekah: Another, uh, set of characters who get cut from the films, Eladon and Elrahir, sons of Elrond, do not meet Aragorn on his way to Minas Tirith with a message from Elrond that basically says he must take the paths of the dead to summon an army of ghosts that had betrayed their oath to Elendil and Isildur if he is to face the armies of Sauron.
Makes sense, like, again, not really a payoff, just unnecessary added characters. Um, Elrond shows
[00:49:06] Donna: up in Dunharrow with the important ancestral sword, Aragorn, left in Rivendell. It has been reforged and renamed Anduril. Also, Arwen’s fate is suddenly bound up with the ring. If it endures, she will die. These changes are film only additions.
[00:49:27] Tim: How did she get involved with the ring? What is that? Bound up with the fate of the ring. That was really weird. It just was.
[00:49:33] Donna: Yeah. Maybe it was just, maybe Elrond is just ticked cause he didn’t want her to go with him and he just made it up. I’m going to make up a bunch of crap.
[00:49:42] Tim: In the book it was just the message from Elrond that was sent by his sons and it wasn’t the, the, the sword.
And
[00:49:49] TJ: so I like that Elrond brings the message. We like this character. We know this character. Reuse characters.
[00:49:57] Rebekah: Definitely. The rest of it is confusing because it’s like you don’t need to give. You don’t need to give them some, like Arwen and Aragorn, some reason to act like Romeo and Juliet, like, I don’t know, it just felt weird.
[00:50:11] TJ: Now I will say, all of these characters, I think it’s mostly fine that they’re in the book, where you can have more characters, you know, Elrond’s son’s showing up, I guess that’s It’s kind of fine. It still would be better with Elrond showing up, but you’d have
[00:50:24] Donna: to establish who they are instead of just showing them banging on the sword.
There’s
[00:50:28] TJ: no payoff. I mean, Elrond showing up at Dunharrow is like a payoff.
[00:50:34] Donna: Yeah. Yes.
[00:50:35] TJ: Instead of a payoff in the book, it was a setup that had no payoff. So,
[00:50:39] Donna: right. It’s also a huge poster moment to when he pulls the sword out. Oh, yeah, definitely.
[00:50:44] TJ: Big trailer moment. Well, you know, Bergil, a captain of the guard in, uh, Minas Tirith, does not appear in the films.
Baragond, a captain of the guard from Minas Tirith, does not appear in the films. This is probably the biggest character taken out. He’s only the third, he’s only in Return of the King. In the book, he is the initial guide for Pippin. And then, during climaxes, during the, the Battle of Pelennor and everything, he kills the guard at the door to the Tombs of the King.
For which he will be punished even though he did this to save Faramir from being burned alive by Denethor So that is a character who has a setup and a payoff where he’s set up as Oh the initial guide for Pippin whenever he joins the house of Denethor and then he helps save Faramir which is the payoff and then after everything is done, I think Aragorn or Faramir I think it’s Aragorn who who forgives him who pardons him
[00:51:44] Tim: Yeah, but he still can’t be a guard.
He still can’t do what he once did.
[00:51:50] TJ: So it kind of shows Aragorn saying, I’m forgiving, but I’m also like a leader. You know, I won’t necessarily punish you, but I won’t allow you to serve in this position anymore, but there’s other positions for you. So I think that is one character who does have a setup and payoff.
That is, uh, removed from the film.
[00:52:08] Tim: Well, his son, Bergl, is the youth who befriends Pippin and helps him learn about Gondor. He’s one of the only, of only a few youths that are allowed to stay in the city in the book. In the films, it appears that the city is still populated with women and children. There’s been no evacuation to safer places.
I, I think this has a lot to do with, um, what happened, the book I think has a lot to do with what happened during World War II when children were taken from their families in cities and taken to country places where they would be safer, though it’s not an allegory.
[00:52:44] Donna: But I will say it was cute reading that section where he and, he and Pippin were friends and he would take him around, but it really didn’t go anywhere.
That is true. It was just, you know, kind of a, maybe kind of a light, kind of a light story there in the midst of all the darkness and the war, maybe.
[00:53:05] Rebekah: So we’ve talked about some of this in this episode and previous ones, but the visit of Arwen at the crowning of Aragorn is absent in the book. The love story of the film finds it satisfying.
And in this addition to the movie, the love story of Aragorn and Arwen, like we just said a moment ago, It’s only part of the appendices in the final book, um, not the other books. And, uh, we had discussed in the first episode, we did the Arwen’s race to save Frodo after he was stabbed by the Morgul blade.
And then in the third film, uh, her attendance at Aragorn’s crowning were parts played by the elf Glorfindel in the books. Did we determine Glorfindel is actually not in the films?
[00:53:45] Tim: Yeah, I think he’s one of the background people at the at the Council of Elrond. I think he’s one of the other elves. Okay.
[00:53:52] TJ: Do we see Arwen and Aragorn get married in the
[00:53:54] Tim: books?
[00:53:55] Rebekah: Like is that part of what’s in the appendices?
[00:53:58] Tim: And the appendices. Yeah, I think so.
[00:54:01] TJ: And I feel like the film combines their wedding with the crowning
[00:54:05] Tim: probably, but, but
[00:54:07] TJ: he’s trying to save time,
[00:54:09] Donna: but listen, this, but this whole scene at the end where he comes down, look at all the stuff, it wraps up. You get to see all of the fellowship restored and they’re healthy.
You get to see
[00:54:20] TJ: last we see. Legolas and Gimli.
[00:54:22] Donna: That’s right. And then you see Eowyn and Faramir and they’re obviously together. And then, you know, then of course you got to give Legolas the little moment there. And he. Reveals Arwen, and there’s the beautiful kiss you’ve got to see
[00:54:37] TJ: Faramir sitting, standing there.
And they obviously are together.
[00:54:41] Donna: I will just throw out that my, my teary scene is when they bow to the hobbits. I lose everything there. I can’t, I keep saying every time we watch it, I’m not going to cry here. I mean, it’s beautiful, but I, and I sit and cry like a stupid, big, blubbering, ugly baby. Because it’s just.
A big, ugly, ugly, ugly, ugly. I wasn’t trying to say buggly, but then you said it. Now I’m a big, buggly baby. You know
[00:55:14] TJ: who else is buggly in the book? Buggly, Barlow and Butterbur. No, Barlow and Butterbur. It’s the owner of the inn of the Prancing Pony.
[00:55:22] Donna: Oh my gosh, the repeating consonants are drowning
[00:55:25] TJ: me. And he meets again with the hobbits in hurr ee as they are traveling back to Hobbiton.
This meeting does not take place in the film. Probably for the best. Definitely for
[00:55:40] Rebekah: the Bagginses, uh, are also absent from the final film. In the book, Otho has died. After buying Bag End, Lobelia and Otho’s son, Lotho, tries Hahaha! Otho
[00:55:53] TJ: and Lotho.
[00:55:54] Rebekah: Lotho, son
[00:55:55] Tim: of
[00:55:56] Rebekah: Otho.
[00:55:56] TJ: No Lotho. Those are correct. Hey, what is Aragorn’s father’s name?
[00:56:04] Rebekah: Probably
[00:56:04] TJ: Aragorn’s son of Arathorn. Oh
[00:56:10] Rebekah: my gosh! Oh yeah, that’s right. I didn’t know
[00:56:12] TJ: that.
[00:56:12] Rebekah: No, I forgot that. That’s insane. He has patterns. Okay. So after buying Bag End in the books, Lobelia and Otho’s son, Arathorn, was born. Lotho tries to take control of the Shire. Lotho falls prey to Saruman and Wormtongue, who ruled in his name even after his murder.
Lobelia is shown to be a hearty woman who powerfully survives the imprisonment she endured at the hands of Saruman and Wormtongue in the Shire. Her exit from incarceration is proud and defiant.
[00:56:44] TJ: Obviously there’s great female care. Yeah, but obviously
[00:56:47] Rebekah: there’s no way to put this in if you don’t have the scouring of the Shire in the movies, but it is a powerful story.
[00:56:52] Tim: Well in the book, Mary and Pippin become leaders in the Shire and their respective families by scouring the Shire to remove Saruman’s influence and dark deeds in the film. The hobbits, quote, set out to save the Shire and so they did and that kind of ends their story. Hobbiton of the film had no taste of the war.
Uh, the residents of the Shire had no idea what the four hobbits had actually endured. And a bit of trivia, uh, in the scene where the four heroes returned to the Shire, Elijah Wood had issues controlling his pony. Sean Astin was miserable due to an allergy to the ponies and Dominic Monaghan was in a bad mood because of some technical problems with the same pony this left Billy Boyd struggling not to laugh throughout the shoot at the plight of the other three.
Can you imagine
[00:57:42] Rebekah: when we go back to Um, when we go back to the Shire at the end of the movie, that was another spot where I just, I wanted to cry and not necessarily cause it was sad, but I remember just like pondering watching them go back and this idea in the films, because obviously there’s no like no takeover of the Shire.
I was just so taken with how in the films they come back and it’s like. You have no idea. Like I, I was at war crazy. Like I went to war and I’ll never be okay again, but like you don’t get it. And it, I mean, there’s a lot of like real life comparison to that for people who, you know, serve in the military and those, yeah, tons of
[00:58:25] TJ: trauma.
[00:58:26] Donna: So not to get too emo, but I’m going to for a second, you’ve, I’ve said before, we talked about this in previous episodes. I grew up in a poor home and my dad was an alcoholic. So it was not, I do not tell anybody I had a great childhood. So I had the opportunity to do a lot of fun things when I was, you know, some, some pretty cool things when I was a teenager.
But then the year after high school, I went to a big church conference, like a big global conference in Mexico. And I, we traveled, I’d never been out of the country. It was a week long and there were speakers or like 7, 000 people there. And there was, it was an incredible week and all kinds of really cool things happened.
And it was kind of a bigger than life. thing. And then I got back home and it didn’t help it. This didn’t help the ambience of the, of the whole thing, but we got home in the middle of the night. Right? So I get home. It’s like two in the morning and mom had waited up for me and I walked back into my little poor house and everything was the same.
And there I was, and I think about that when they ride back into town, how, or if, you know, even if you had a, even if you have a good childhood or a good life, you, when you go to something that’s a big event, something that’s kind of, you know, larger than life for you or something you’ve worked hard at, and you’ve done this great thing and you’ve achieved this thing.
And then you go back to your house and it’s your bed and. Your pillow and just nothing changed about your life.
[00:59:55] Tim: I remember feeling that way when I came back from teen camp. It’s not quite as big as what you’re talking about, but it was the same kind of thing. I was the only one in my house that went and I got back and, Oh, here’s Saturday morning.
Yeah. So I thought it was
[01:00:11] Donna: fitting the way they handled the scene of them riding the horses back in and everybody, they just, people look at him like, Oh, whatever.
[01:00:20] TJ: In a much less crazy way, I feel that way because I go to church where I also do a lot of theater. So whenever I go to a Sunday morning after we’ve had an entire tech week, opening night, second show, and then I go to church, and everything is just like it was a week ago, 95 percent of the church, uh, hasn’t seen the show, 90 percent of the church probably won’t see the show, I don’t want to say doesn’t care about the show, but like, I’ve gone through this harrowing experience that I’ll remember for the rest of my life this week in this room where we’re all worshiping together.
But, oh, it’s just, and it’s nice that we’re all worshipping together, but it’s like, oh, this is just the same as it was last week.
[01:01:03] Donna: Yeah,
[01:01:04] TJ: and it’s not that, and it’s not
[01:01:05] Donna: that, it’s not that people don’t appreciate what you did, or any of those things, like, I understand what you’re saying, it’s not that they just I don’t care at all, but it’s not a part of their life.
It wasn’t a part of their week. It was
[01:01:17] Rebekah: even, I was just going to say mine, mine is more about, we left, you know, we were really, really close to a lot of people at churches we had gone to that we stayed close to and all this stuff. And then we left there. And when we left that first church in Nashville, you know, we’d never had kids.
And then we, uh, fostered our first child and adopted him during some of when we were at a second church and then we moved here and adopted the second child and then had this all like all this crazy stuff happened with him. That’s, you know, obviously not something I need to discuss on the podcast, but it’s crazy because occasionally I will connect with somebody I knew from that first church and like the fact that I have spent the last five years fostering and adopting these kids is like completely unknown to them.
And I’m like, Oh my, like it’s just my whole life feels like a completely different experience. It’s a big deal to them. It is just, Oh, that’s cool. You know, it’s just kind of a passing note. Yeah.
[01:02:13] TJ: You know who I want to hear about Senator Tom Cotton,
[01:02:16] Rebekah: Tom Cotton, eventual father in law to Sam Gamgee is one of the hobbits in the book who fights alongside Mary Pippin and Sam as they clean up the corruption in the shire.
In the book,
[01:02:28] Donna: Sam helps rebuild the Shire and even turns the ruined paradise into a gigantic garden with the soil he had been given by the Lady of Lothlorien, Galadriel.
[01:02:40] Tim: Soil?
[01:02:41] Donna: Hmm, I know. Soil we never saw in the movie because he never got it. He wanted A rope. In the films, he is given a rope. He makes a big deal of the rope as they travel toward Mount Doom before meeting Gollum.
He even laments its loss, supposedly, when a knot he tied to get them down couldn’t possibly come loose. But when he tugs on it, it comes untied easily and returns to him. And Frodo says, real elvish rope, for a little laughter. In the dark middle of the epic saga. That is a very funny scene. Because Sam is so torn up, he’s going to lose that rope.
And it goes to the
[01:03:24] TJ: extended edition. Yeah, I think you’re correct.
[01:03:26] Donna: Look, I only watch the extended
[01:03:28] TJ: edition. I know everyone does, don’t they?
[01:03:30] Rebekah: We’ve never even owned the regular edition. Yeah,
[01:03:33] Donna: I think we watched it. I think we watched it once on maybe prom or some streaming or whatever, just we pulled it up and watched it and I was like, we’re such and such a part.
What’s that part? It’s like it’s missing something. It’s the theatric. Yeah, it kind of ruined me. So,
[01:03:49] TJ: you know, to finish this off, Sam Gamgee himself. In the book and movie, Frodo goes off into the Greyhavens, Sam is kind of the most main character left in these lands in the final pages of the book. He is husband, father, Sam is, and long serving mayor!
So he has political aspirations. Eventually, just like Cotton. However, the weight of carrying the ring Causes him to seek refuge west. He’s the last of the bearers of the ring to leave Middle Earth. Is that true? That’s in the book. What happened to Tom Bombadil?
[01:04:21] Tim: Tom Bombadil didn’t have the ring.
[01:04:23] TJ: He held it.
Well, he
[01:04:24] Tim: didn’t wear it. He didn’t
[01:04:26] TJ: wear it. I’m very wary of Tom Bombadil. I
[01:04:28] Rebekah: don’t know what your problem is with my guy.
[01:04:32] TJ: He just holds a
[01:04:33] Donna: ring. She found a character she liked is not even in the movie. Bombadil
[01:04:38] Tim: and Faramir, neither one are overcome by the ring.
[01:04:44] Donna: You know, when Peter Jackson hears these podcasts and he comments on them, that he listened to them, I’m going to tell him, how dare you, Peter Jackson, not put Don Bombadil in the movies.
[01:04:56] TJ: You’ve made wonderful movies. Great job, Peter Jackson. Withstand the haters. There are a lot of haters. Although I will say that, I think we mentioned earlier, that Sam Wears the ring in the book. He only carries the ring on a necklace. Yes, that’s
[01:05:17] Donna: correct. He doesn’t put it on. We’re going to dive into some statistics and let me just say, I have a minimal number of statistics on this because the money and the, uh, the production stuff that went on.
I mean, there’s just endless lists of stuff. That’s amazing. to to read all the things this movie broke and exceeded and things like that. Uh, the book release was on October 20th, 1955. The movie release was December 1st on, uh, 2003 at the Embassy Theater in Wellington, New Zealand. 48 years later. And then on December 17th, 2003 in the U.
S. and December 18th. Uh, 2003 across New Zealand and a little bit of political maneuvering here during their promotional tour. Peter Jackson kept saying that there’d be a big surprise for New Zealand fans and he kept throwing that out at their different interviews and it forced Mark Ordeski, who was a, one of the producers to arrange for an opening in Wellington, uh, then before anything else happened.
So he would honor Jackson’s word to their fans and um, there were,
[01:06:34] TJ: Peter didn’t have any plans. Well, no,
[01:06:37] Donna: he just, he, he just wanted to premiere it there and I think that they suspected Odetsky wouldn’t really want to go to the issue of all that. But the night they premiered it, there were a hundred thousand people in that area around this place in New Zealand.
It was like a quarter of the country. Was in this, was out in these streets and all this stuff for this thing. It was crazy. It appears to have been a big
[01:07:04] Tim: deal.
[01:07:05] Donna: Yeah.
[01:07:05] Tim: Yeah. Little movie. I do, I have a question before you move, move on from when, from the when it was released and all that kind of stuff. Do you, do you think that most books that are adapted to films today are made from books That are much more recent than this.
This, this is really strange. You know, the book was 1955, 48 years later, they release movie. A lot of the ones we’ve done, it seems, it seems like three, four, five, six years, maybe. But not very many more than that. Josiah, what do you think?
[01:07:41] TJ: I think that there’s a finite number of books made in the past. And we’ve been making movies for a hundred years.
If we were going to make a movie of it, of an old book, then we would probably have made it before. Have already done it. Yeah, we have already made it. Um, of course, we were making movies when Lord of the Rings came out, but I don’t think fantasy was A thing that anyone was making movies about, other than like, for kids.
[01:08:12] Donna: I know that the movie did not come out until 2003, however There were talks about producing the Lord of the Rings film, like a theatrical release, beginning in 1967. So, on Goodreads, our book was 4. 57 out of 5, which I think is good. So, Movie ratings on Rotten Tomatoes were at a 94 percent fresh. IMDb, 9 out of 10.
Uh, Flixster audience score, 86.
[01:08:47] Tim: I wonder if some of those may have fallen some over the years because people will re watch it and it, it, even the, even the films move more slowly. Then, then story of the movie today sometimes. Yeah.
[01:09:01] Donna: Yeah. Production cost of this film, 94 million. And they’ve all been, I think they’ve all been listed at 94 million, but they were filmed in like a 15 month block.
They just did them all together, but they do still separate them with. with their own production cost. Um, opening weekend in the U. S. brought in 72. 6 million and then the USA Canada gross was 377 million. International gross was 742 million. This broke the international box office receipts record at nearly 250 million.
Uh, and they total brought in total box office of the first run. Now it ran from December until June of the next year. So, uh, but the, the total box office from the first run was a family.
[01:09:56] TJ: Yeah. Watching the theaters three times.
[01:09:58] Donna: Yeah. We made very well. Um, but it totaled out worldwide at 1. 1 billion. It is rated PG 13 and it again was filmed in New Zealand.
So I added some, uh, overall, Trilogy facts and figures and I thought I’d have read through some of those you’re ready for a few more facts Yeah, a little lightning round here.
[01:10:21] Tim: Okay over six million feet of film was shot during production 48, 000 swords, axes, shields, and makeup prosthetics. There were over 20, 600 background actors cast.
Wow. 19, 000 costumes made by the wardrobe department. So
[01:10:44] Donna: a thousand people were naked?
[01:10:47] Tim: Maybe. 10, 000 crowd participants at a New Zealand cricket game who made the Orc Army grunts. Uh, 2, 400 behind the scenes crew members at the height of production. 1, 600 pairs of prosthetic hobbit feet were created. 250 horses were used in one scene.
180 computer visual effects artists employed. 114 total speaking roles, 100 real locations in New Zealand used for backdrops, 50 tailors, cobblers, designers, and others in the wardrobe department, 30 actors and actresses trained to speak fictional dialects and languages, seven total years of development for all three movies.
That’s some interesting stuff.
[01:11:38] Donna: Yeah, it’s just, when you start thinking of the scope of that, it’s just mind boggling to me. I guess if you work in this world, you look at that and see that that’s a possibility, but still, uh, well, most of the stuff we covered wouldn’t get anywhere near anything like this, so.
[01:11:55] TJ: Anyone, uh, at the time, what, what was the ranking of Lord of the Rings Return of the King? Grossing movies of all time. You need to guess? Yeah.
[01:12:04] Tim: Oh, I think it’s eight. I think at the time it may have been the top grossing. Number two after Titanic.
[01:12:12] TJ: Titanic. Okay.
[01:12:13] Rebekah: Interesting.
[01:12:13] TJ: Second highest grossing ever.
Second movie to break a billion.
[01:12:17] Rebekah: Wow. I do want to also point out it is the top of the three movies, which we’ve done several series and that’s not always the case. The last movie’s not always the top grossing. For sure. And so of the three, it was significantly more. Um, then the other two,
[01:12:32] Tim: I was surprised to find that the first movie won a number of awards and the last movie won a lot of awards record.
Oh, there’s
[01:12:42] Donna: lots of little records.
[01:12:45] Tim: It’s
[01:12:45] Donna: hard. It was hard. It’s like they were
[01:12:47] Tim: waiting for the third movie.
[01:12:49] Donna: Yeah, for sure.
[01:12:50] TJ: So it swept. So yeah, for sure. Oscars coming up. Oscars might have gone by by the time this comes out. But uh, yeah, Lord of the Rings Return of the King holds the record for most Oscars.
One out of the amount of Oscars it was nominated for. So it was nominated for 11 Oscars and it won all of them.
[01:13:10] Donna: So one thing there’s a couple of follow ups to some things that we discussed in the episode on the two towers. And so I wanted to make sure we kind of. You know, when I continue and be faithful to what we said, right, uh, we, I asked about Peter Jackson’s cameo appearances in the first two movies.
In the first movie, um, he is a drunken man and actually had a, he had a, his character had a name. Yeah. His name was Albert Drury. He also plays the same character in the Hobbit. And then in The Two Towers, he is a Rohirrim warrior and a Dunlunding. And he
[01:13:50] Tim: throws a spear, did you say, in the second one?
[01:13:53] Donna: Yes, he’s at, right, he’s there at Helm’s Deep.
So what is, what do you think his cameo is in the third movie? Just take a, you know, some wild guess. My
[01:14:03] Tim: wild guess, and I really don’t know the answer, is that he was That he was among the people in Gondor on the streets of Gondor when the Nazgul were flying around throwing things. I bet that he was the horse
[01:14:19] TJ: that the mouth of Sauron rode.
[01:14:20] Rebekah: I think he was one of the hobbits in the background when the hobbits return after Everything happened at the very end.
[01:14:27] Donna: Those would be so cool if any of them are right. Um, he was a Corsair pirate.
[01:14:34] TJ: Oh, so he was on the ship. Oh, I was going to say Oliphant, which is close. Yeah,
[01:14:38] Donna: he waves his weapon. Uh, he stands behind the ship’s bosun.
And he’s, and he’s shot in the chest by Legolas Arrow in the extended edition. in the theatrical release, you just, he’s just there for a brief moment there on the, on the ship. And there’s also one other little shot of him when Sam holds Sting, the sword Sting out towards Shelob. That’s Peter Jackson’s arm.
I don’t know. I don’t know why. It just is. Sam
[01:15:12] Tim: didn’t have an attractive enough arm.
[01:15:13] Donna: Yeah. There you go. Okay.
[01:15:15] Tim: Poor Sean Astin. His arm was not sufficient.
[01:15:18] TJ: The original cut of Return of the King was 4 hours and 15 minutes long. Jackson cut it down for a final theatrical release time of 3 hours 12 minutes.
And then the extended edition was four hours and 23 minutes or longer than the original part of the film.
[01:15:33] Donna: Why not? Throw a couple other things in there. Man,
[01:15:37] Tim: I am absolutely amazed though at how you would cut an hour and three minutes knowing that when he did the extended version he actually added a few more minutes into it.
So it’s like he wanted all of that plus a little bit more and somehow he had to cut over an hour. Well, he cut
[01:15:54] TJ: Saruman’s death was one of the things a few minutes.
[01:15:57] Donna: Okay, another little question for Oscar, uh, winner trivia. Well, for anybody can guess, but there’s 35 letters in the title, The Lord of the Rings, The Return of the King.
This is the longest title of any best picture Oscar winner in history. Josiah or you other two. Any ideas which movie it unseated and if I say the year, he’s going to know it.
[01:16:25] Tim: The first movie didn’t win. No, the, no, one
[01:16:27] Donna: movie, it did not. His first movie,
[01:16:29] Tim: The Lord of the Rings, because that title is longer.
The Lord of the Rings, The
[01:16:32] TJ: Fellowship of the Ring is longer. It did not
[01:16:35] Donna: win.
[01:16:35] TJ: One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. I hate typing that into Sporkle.
[01:16:39] Donna: Oh, no.
[01:16:40] TJ: That’s not it.
[01:16:41] Donna: No, I, that’s, how many letters is that?
[01:16:45] TJ: One flew over the cuckoo’s nest. I don’t know, 20? 25?
[01:16:50] Donna: Well, there’s the, the trivia I found was it’s around a world in 80 days, which is 26 letters.
But one flew over the cuckoo’s nest, so it almost seems like it’d be close. Seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen,
[01:17:05] Rebekah: fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen. It is eight zero. 22, 23, 24, 25. One flew over the cuckoo’s nest. Oh, I’m
[01:17:13] TJ: so smart.
[01:17:14] Donna: Very good. That’s great. From so, so around the world in 80 days, held it in from 1956 until 2003.
Ooh, what an important piece of trivia. That’s one of those little things that I think is really cool to know, but most people go, why the crap? Come on.
[01:17:31] Rebekah: I love random garbage. Right. Wow. Calling something your mother thought was interesting. Garbage. No wonder. I think I love
[01:17:39] Tim: no wonder.
[01:17:42] Rebekah: In a previous episode, we did mention that the severe allergic reaction that Davies suffered from his makeup, uh, was Was that Gimli?
[01:17:50] TJ: Yes.
[01:17:50] Rebekah: Yeah, it was, it was quite the, the production issue. It made such an impact on him that on the last day of pickup photography that the makeup department asked if he wanted to throw his Gimli mask Into the fire, he chucked it in without hesitation.
[01:18:06] Donna: Who cares that that could have made a lot of money later and been a good little inheritance for your children?
[01:18:12] Tim: Sick and tired of it. Yeah, I can imagine. Nod to one of my favorite movies. The novel, The Lord of the Rings Return of the King, was in the bedroom of Timothy Hutton’s character, Conrad, in the movie Ordinary People from 1980, which also won the Best Picture Oscar for that year. Also starring Mary Tyler Moore, who played a terrible mom.
A break from her normal. I’ve
[01:18:41] Donna: never seen this movie, but I could tell you Mary Tyler Moore was a terrible mom in this movie. It, she triggers them real bad. Um, so in the nod to one of my favorite movies, which genuinely is one of my favorite movies, Return of the King is the first sequel since The Godfather Part II in 1974 to win Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Screenplay Oscars.
It was only, it was the only third movie in a set to win Best Picture. And it was only the second time a third movie was nominated for Best Picture after The Godfather Part 3. What movie? That’s not even a movie. Godfather Part 3?
[01:19:26] Tim: Uh huh.
[01:19:27] Donna: You guys, that was a given. I think they just said, hey, we did the other two, we better do this one because it wasn’t good.
So, I’m just saying. But that’s at least sure what I think as a side note, a little, little connection here, which it kind of seems like these are in two completely different time zones or something. Marianna Hill, who played Fredo Corleone’s wife, Deanna, the actress, uh, Marianna Hill was married to King Theoden.
Who was played by Bernard Hill
[01:19:58] Rebekah: in the final scene in The Return of the King, which involves Sam returning home to his wife and children after saying goodbye to Frodo, who has departed for the Gray Havens. Sam’s daughter, Eleanor, is played by Aston’s real life daughter, Alexandra, who was seven years old at the time of the film’s release.
That’s so sweet. Why
[01:20:15] Tim: wasn’t she cute?
[01:20:17] TJ: For all our super nerd baby listeners, there’s a super baby easter egg on the extended edition DVD disc one that the book is better podcast put there. That you can find on your appendices, go to the scene selection menu on the last page. Press down until a ring icon appears next to the new scene phrase.
You’ll find a satellite interview of Elijah Wood given by the book is better podcast. The interview is given by Dominic Monaghan using a German accent. Oh, I’ve seen this. If you do the same thing on disc two, you’ll uncover an MTV skit featuring Ben Stiller and Vince Vaughn pitching the Lord of the Rings sequels to Peter Jackson.
[01:21:07] Donna: Who would find those?
[01:21:08] TJ: I love looking for Easter eggs. How would you know so much time?
[01:21:13] Donna: How would you know? Oh, let me let me go over here and hold this down and see if an icon pops up.
[01:21:20] TJ: Oh mom, I should show you video game stuff like that.
[01:21:23] Donna: Yeah, gotta keep that PG 13 rating. One scene cut from the final version of the film showed Eowyn stripping away her regular clothes to then dress herself in the armor of a Rohan warrior.
They just didn’t give women any breaks in this trilogy. I just thought it was funny. It was such a weird thing to read and I was like, what did they mean by that? And I’m sure it just meant It was just showing her transforming into a warrior, right? But I just found it so funny. I was like, okay, okay.
[01:21:56] Rebekah: A1, let’s take it.
Take it easy here. Billy Boyd, who plays Pippin, got another chance to sing in the Middle Earth franchise. All be it in a much different context, he performed the last goodbye over the closing credits of the film, the Hobbit, the battle of the five armies, despite not appearing in the film.
[01:22:14] Donna: It is interesting.
Some of the music or some of the, um, poetry and the songs in the book. And I get a little lost in some of that too. I know Rebecca, you said that you, you would, there were some of the poetry and the singing that would come up and it would be like, Oh no, I can’t do it. And I would get, I knew that. I know there are beautiful meanings to a lot of it, but it’s, that’s not, that’s not easy for me to, to keep up with either to really engage in or whatever.
In our last podcast on the two towers. We revealed that the sound of the Beasts of the Ringwraiths ride was that of a donkey. Eehaw! In Return of the King, some of the orc sounds were recordings of elephant seal pups living at the Marine Mammal Center in Sausalito, California. Isn’t that sweet? They wouldn’t have been able to be in any Harry Potter films.
Because they weren’t from Britain. Ha
[01:23:09] TJ: ha ha ha! In other fun beastie facts, the Weta Visual Effects crew admitted to feeling challenged by the creature Aragog seen in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets in 2002. Between this challenge and Jackson being a huge arachnophobe, they based the model of Shelob the spider on the New Zealand funnel web spider.
Oh, Rebecca, you should include a photo in the episode notes somehow.
[01:23:36] Rebekah: Yeah, if I can not throw up because it’s on my screen right now. It’s
[01:23:40] TJ: disgusting. Oh my
[01:23:41] Rebekah: goodness.
[01:23:42] TJ: It’s completely and utterly frightening. Her, uh, her shrieks, Shelob’s shrieks are a combination of several sounds. The sound of A plastic alien toy.
[01:23:53] Donna: What sound does that make, by the way? I don’t
[01:23:55] TJ: know. Steam hisses.
And the shriek of a Tasmanian devil. That’s all, folks.
[01:24:08] Tim: Nope, different character. Um, just a few weeks before the theatrical release, Andy Serkis was still filming his last scene effects. At Peter Jackson’s home, they shot the facial reactions of Gollum as it dawns on him that Frodo is planning to destroy the ring.
The video was then emailed to the Weta Digital team to replicate in CGI and insert into the film. Just a few weeks before the release. Then Vigo estimated that during the course of filming, he killed every stuntman on the production at least 50 times.
[01:24:49] Donna: I love that.
[01:24:49] Tim: Yeah.
[01:24:50] Donna: Got a question for our little fellowship?
It’s for Josiah, let’s be honest. Come on, come on now. I’m gonna let
[01:24:56] TJ: you guys guess first. Sure. Yeah. I’m fairly certain I know the answer.
[01:25:01] Donna: Mm hmm. What 1959 And 1997 movies also won the same number of Oscars, which we’ve determined was 11. And there are movies that you would have heard the titles of, so it’s not the
[01:25:17] Rebekah: obscure I mean, I know one of them because I know what the Oscar winner was in 97, but
[01:25:23] Tim: 97, so was that Titanic?
[01:25:25] Rebekah: Yes.
[01:25:26] Tim: So, 59, was it around the world in 80 days, or did we decide that one was a little later than that? Or was it all about Eve?
[01:25:35] Rebekah: Yeah,
[01:25:35] Donna: it was 56.
[01:25:36] TJ: Josiah,
[01:25:37] Rebekah: what’s
[01:25:37] TJ: the
[01:25:37] Rebekah: correct answer?
[01:25:38] TJ: I want to say Lawrence of Arabia. Oh.
[01:25:41] Donna: Similar Or
[01:25:43] Rebekah: Ben
[01:25:43] Donna: Hur?
[01:25:44] Rebekah: Ben Hur. Oh, Ben Hur. I
[01:25:45] TJ: get them mixed up. I don’t know the difference. Yeah, it’s I haven’t seen either of them.
[01:25:49] Rebekah: Let’s give our final verdict. I’ll go first this time too. I, I think I mentioned this a little earlier, if not, I was not able to finish the book. I got to a point where it felt too much of a labor and not enough of a love. Like, yeah, it’s really, I rarely stop reading books, but like I look up what I’m going to read in advance pretty significantly early.
Like I try to only read things I’m going to be interested in in the first place. But, um, it was just hard for me. We’ve talked about that. I don’t want to get, you know, too bogged down in that again because I’ve said it before. However, what I will say about this is, the film has so many moments that just make me, like, sob.
Sam’s relationship with Frodo, and the speech that Aragorn gives, and honestly, the speech that Théoden gives. Um, when Sam and all of them are, honestly, Sam is like my favorite. I prefer him to Frodo as just a character in general. Um, when Sam is back in the Shire and you realize he and Frodo’s plights and Miriam Pippin, obviously, but the two of them in particular, you know, nobody really understands them and, and all of these things.
I mean, it’s just the, oh, and when, um, Eowyn stabs the Witch King, like there’s. So many moments where I wanna cheer or cry or whatever. I do remember watching the film for the very first time, and I think I looked at Mom and I was like, okay, wait, is it over now? No, it’s not over yet. Wait, is it over yet? Oh, it’s not
Oh, okay. No,
[01:27:14] Tim: it’s
[01:27:15] Rebekah: not over. And so I, I would say like. While those things are true, it didn’t stop the fact that I still kind of felt like, Oh, this is really extensive. So I think verdict in terms of film or book, I definitely think the movie was better for me. I think, you know, trying to read all three of them in a row, trying to prepare for the episodes that we’re recording here and all of that, you know, maybe I will try to reread them one day when it’s like not, there’s no pressure on it.
But in general, I definitely would say the film was better for me. And it is a movie that is truly fantastic. Like I liked it. I, I liked watching it quite a bit.
[01:27:53] Donna: I, I did finish the book. I did not read the appendices. Um, not for any. particular reason other than I just thought, okay, I finished the book and I knew you guys would be bringing in things about them.
And so I know I wasn’t trying to like shirk responsibility, whatever. Uh, but I did not read the appendices. I enjoyed the book. I think the disconnect that I had with the book was there were so many other storylines that he had in the world building that were not in the movie. I think Along the lines of what Rebecca said, kind of agreeing with that, if I could listen to the book where I didn’t have a time frame.
involved, and I could take a little more time to get into something and pick up what happened in this character arc, or this story arc. Um, it might have meant a little more to me. I didn’t mind reading it. I enjoyed it. I loved Andy Serkis reading it. Um, but I am gonna definitely go with the movie as far as what I would choose.
It’s Just beyond a masterpiece. I can’t, just cannot say enough and I’m always amazed at at what this all put together in the Scope of the whole thing over the three movies and all that and I’ve enjoyed talking to you about it I know Rebecca’s kind of apologized for it not being her genre, but that’s okay It doesn’t have to be I’ve still enjoyed getting all of your perspectives about it and hearing You know, what, what tripped this memory or what sparked this emotion I thought is, I thought it’s been fun, but I’m definitely going to give it to the movie on this one.
[01:29:41] TJ: I think that as far as iconic goes, the book and movie are bonnick and without the return of the king book, wouldn’t have Harry Potter. You wouldn’t have game of wheel of time. You wouldn’t have the things that I don’t read, but are still popular. I don’t know. Outlander, I feel like is popular. Oh, you wouldn’t have Skyrim.
You probably, you wouldn’t have Dungeons and Dragons. So without Return of the King and the whole trilogy, you would not have a huge, huge parts of culture. But the movie is an improvement on the iconic book. So, the, I think it’s an interesting telling piece of evidence. In the movies favor that I was watching a video where do you know what letterboxed is?
It’s where users rate movies and there was a YouTube video where it said What if letterboxed decided the best picture of the year and it went from? 1927 when the Oscar started and it showed Every year, what the top rated movie on Letterboxd currently is. And there were about four years in total, in out of ninety six.
There were about four years where the top rated movie on Letterboxd won the best picture. And Lord of the Rings Return of the King was one of them. So it’s like I think it’s pretty universally just agreed that Return of the King is one of the best movies ever made. That the Lord of the Rings trilogy is one of the greatest cinematic achievements.
Uh, and as far as we know, it being one of the greatest cinematic achievements. of humanity means that it’s one of the greatest achievements period in the entire known universe. You know, there’s not another sentient species that we know of. So Lord of the Rings, uh, book trilogy is also iconic and responsible for a lot of stuff we love today.
But the, the movies are even better somehow.
[01:31:40] Tim: Well, I am going to give my, my opinion. I think that this was, um, the best of the three movies. Although the first one was probably the, the surprising, Oh my goodness, they’re able to do this. How can they do this movie? Uh, but the. This third one was the best movie, I think, but I liked the book, and, um, I think without the book, so many of those things that you talked about, Josiah, wouldn’t have happened.
They, they happened because of it, uh, and so I would say, excuse me, I would say, really, really like the book, and I really, really like the movie, I’m gonna give the movie 51. percent. So, wow. Fair enough.
[01:32:34] Donna: Gollum calls the ring precious 17 times in the return of the king. And so we’re hoping you, our precious baby listeners, will be as excited to listen to our Precious upcoming episode on Mickey 17 as Gollum was about the ring.
[01:32:55] Rebekah: Let’s go. So if you enjoyed this episode, please go ahead and leave us a five star rating or review. We love reading reviews within the family. It’s like such a fun little thing to just do together. Uh, it helps us a ton as well to be found. And you can find us on X Instagram, TikTok and Facebook at book is better pod to send us feedback, ask questions to answer on future episodes, or just have fun with the hosts.
You can join our free discord server at the link in the episode description. And, uh, you know, the men, the, the courage of men is not going to fail today. And so we wish you all. Courage. Not this day.
[01:33:39] Tim: It is not
[01:33:40] TJ: this
[01:33:40] Tim: day.
[01:33:41] TJ: This day we ride.
[01:33:44] Donna: What about the famous quote? I am? No man. I thought she was gonna say, I am gr
[01:33:55] Tim: famous. That’s
[01:33:56] TJ: it. I am. I am Man. Tolkien quote.
[01:33:59] Rebekah: Yes, that famous. Stoking quote. All right. That’s a good place to leave it. Okay. Bye.
[01:34:03] TJ: Love you guys. Love you.
[01:34:09] Rebekah: Start that sentence over. It’s secreted. Secreted means when something oozes.
[01:34:15] Donna: They did not ooze within their company. I kind of liked it. I knew I said it wrong. I kind of liked it. And so I was just going to go on. Uh huh.