LotR1-FotR-Seq07

[Boromir88]

This is probably one of the scenes I picture Tolkien not liking. In his rant against Zimmerman, Tolkien seems to criticize the same things that Jackson ends up doing:

11. Aragorn did not ’sing the song of Gil-galad’. Naturally: it was quite inappropriate, since it told of the defeat of the Elven-king by the Enemy. The Black Riders do not scream, but keep a more terrifying silence. Aragorn does not blanch. The riders draw slowly in on foot in darkness, and do not ’spur’. There is no fight. Sam does not ’sink his blade into the Ringwraith?s thigh’, nor does his thrust save Frodo’s life. (If he had, the result would have been much the same as in III 117-20:4 the Wraith would have fallen down and the sword would have been destroyed.)

Why has my account been entirely rewritten here, with disregard for the rest of the tale? I can see that there are certain difficulties in representing a dark scene; but they are not insuperable. A scene of gloom lit by a small red fire, with the Wraiths slowly approaching as darker shadows until the moment when Frodo puts on the Ring, and the King steps forward revealed would seem to me far more impressive than yet one more scene of screams and rather meaningless slashings.....

I have spent some time on this passage, as an example of what I find too frequent to give me ’pleasure or satisfaction’: deliberate alteration of the story, in fact and significance, without any practical or artistic object (that I can see); and of the flattening effect that assimilation of one incident to another must have.(Letter 210)

Now grant it this is Tolkien going off on Zimmerman, however I can see a lot of similarities between Tolkien's rant against Zimmerman, and what Jackson did. Because, he did turn it into a scene of "scream and slashings." Where to Tolkien that's not the significance of the scene, the significance is the quiet, suspense, and terror of Nazgul closing around. Where Jackson turns this Weathertop scene into a fight to appease to pleasure and satisfaction.

I bolded the last paragraph specifically, because Tolkien says he can see and atleast accept artistic license, but he hates seeing his story changed for the purposes of "pleasure." With this scene, I'd say Tolkien would not have liked seeing if he watched the movies.

For me, I'm kind of mixed. Because, I think there's just way too much fighting throughout the movies. At many points I felt like characters and meaning was sacrificed with large-scale fight scenes. As an old-timer (and yes I know people will disagree) I'm not too big onto fight scenes and special effects, I like the old movies. So, for me, I'm not too happy seeing Weathertop turn up into "screams and slash."

However, the problem still remains as to how to solve this scene, and get the Nazgul to go away without all the slashing? Because, I do agree with Essex in shouting "Elbereth Gilthoniel" and having the Nazgul run away, not only would most be confused, but I think a lot of people would view it as humorous...and think...Nazgul are afraid of words?