One of the great things about film and TV adaptations is that they give image, movement, and voice to the scenes and characters that live primarily in the imagination, providing a shared experience of a story to a wider audience. But this is also something to be careful about as the adaptation’s visualization of a book can then affect how we perceive the original text itself.
This isn’t necessarily a bad thing when it helps us understand a work in a new way, but it can cause us to misremember events from the text, often in unexpected ways. Consider, for instance, Peter Jackson’s adaptation of The Lord of the Rings, which shows how much a good adaptation can affect our memory of the text, especially our visual memory. For many fans of The Lord of the Rings, Jackson’s images are the first that come to mind when thinking about (or even when reading) the book.
A good example of this that was used to great effect in The Fellowship of the Ring is the Black Riders. Jackson captured the look of the Black Riders so well that his depiction of them is immediately what I think of when I imagine them.
From the chase to Buckleberry Ferry to the attack on Weathertop to the race to the ford of Bruinen, Jackson captured the danger and the strangeness of the Black Riders perfectly for me. And the image of a Black Rider in the middle of a road in the forest was so iconic that it was used as the cover of the paperback one-volume The Lord of the Rings for years.
One scene that stood out to me right away, as I’m sure it did for a lot of people, is the Black Riders’ invasion of The Prancing Pony in Bree and their attempted murder of the sleeping hobbits. I remember thinking at the time that Jackson had perfectly captured this scene from the book.
So imagine my surprise when, years later, I’m listening to episode 61 of the Exploring The Lord of the Rings podcast , and Corey Olsen, discussing this very scene in-depth, says:
This is something that I think I got wrong for many years, and of course Peter Jackson has not helped this at all. The Nazgul do not enter the Prancing Pony. The Nazgul, I am not sure [they] can enter the Prancing Pony. It is not the Nazgul that stab the beds and slash the bolsters in the hobbits’ rooms. (61, 54:11)
So, where did our image of the attack come from? As Corey said, he thinks he got this wrong for years as well, so why would careful readers of the text get this scene wrong? Corey gives us an idea, explaining that readers often make that connection: the Nazgul do break into and attack Crickhollow, and here the Prancing Pony has been broken into, so many readers assume this was the Nazgul, but Strider is clear that it was probably Bill Ferny and others who did this (61, ~55:48).
Those who have only seen the films, and even many who’ve read the book, may be wondering, “What’s Crickhollow?” As might be expected, events in the films happen much faster than in the books, where it takes some 17 years between the Long-Expected Party and the Shadow of the Past, when Gandalf confirms with Frodo the identity of the Ring, and another several months from then until Frodo decides to leave the Shire.
During this time a “conspiracy” forms amongst Frodo’s friends, including Sam, Merry, and Pippin, as well as Fredegar “Fatty” Bolger, to discover what Frodo might be up to when he decides to sell Bag End to the Sackville-Bagginses and move to a house at Crickhollow in Buckland, where the Brandybucks (include Merry and Frodo’s mother) are from.
When the conspiracy is “unmasked” and Frodo reveals his plans to leave the Shire for Rivendell, it is decided that Fatty Bolger will stay behind at Crickhollow so that people, including any nosy strangers, will think that Frodo is still at home. The chapter, entitled “A Knife in the Dark,” in which the attack on the hobbits at Bree occurs, actually begins at Crickhollow, and I think the imagery here will be familiar even to those who have only seen the films:
As they prepared for sleep in the inn at Bree, darkness lay on Buckland; a mist strayed in the dells and along the river-bank. The house at Crickhollow stood silent. FattyBolger opened the door cautiously and peered out.
A feeling of fear had been growing on him all day, and he was unable to rest or go to bed: there was a brooding threat in the breathless night-air. As he stared out into the gloom, a black shadow moved under the trees; the gate seemed to open of its own accord and close again without a sound.
Terror seized him. He shrank back, and for a moment he stood trembling in the hall. Then he shut and locked the door.
The night deepened. There came the soft sound of horses led with stealth along the lane. Outside the gate they stopped, and three black figures entered, like shades of night creeping across the ground.
One went to the door, one to the corner of the house on either side; and there they stood, as still as the shadows of stones, while night went slowly on. The house and the quiet trees seemed to be waiting breathlessly.
There was a faint stir in the leaves, and a cock crowed far away. The cold hour before dawn was passing. The figure by the door moved. In the dark without moon or stars a drawn blade gleamed, as if a chill light had been unsheathed. There was a blow, soft but heavy, and the door shuddered.
‘Open, in the name of Mordor!’ said a voice thin and menacing.
At a second blow the door yielded and fell back, with timbers burst and lock broken. The black figures passed swiftly in.
At that moment, among the trees nearby, a horn rang out. It rent the night like fire on a hill-top.
…
The Brandybucks were blowing the Horn-call of Buckland, that had not been sounded for a hundred years, not since the white wolves came in the Fell Winter, when the Brandywine was frozen over.
AWAKE! AWAKE!
… The black figures fled from the house. One of them let fall a hobbit-cloak on the step, as he ran. In the lane the noise of hoofs broke out, and gathering to a gallop, went hammering away into the darkness.
All about Crickhollow there was the sound of horns blowing, and voices crying and feet running.
But the Black Riders rode like a gale to the North-gate. Let the little people blow! Sauron would deal with them later. Meanwhile they had another errand: they knew now that the house was empty and the Ring had gone. They rode down the guards at the gate and vanished from the Shire.
Tolkien, J.R.R.. The Lord of the Rings: One Volume (pp. 176-177). Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Kindle Edition.
We can see that much of the imagery in this scene made it into the film: the encroaching mist, Fatty’s terror (transferred to Barliman Butterbur), and even the Black Riders riding down the guards at the gate. What’s missing, and this is very different, is the hobbits of Buckland actually standing up to the Black Riders and driving them away. For more on this, watch or listen to Episode 61 of Exploring The Lord of the Rings.
This happens the same night as the attack on The Prancing Pony. Frodo’s sleep is disturbed by “the noise of wind and the galloping of hoofs” and “a horn blowing wildly.” In the morning, Strider takes the hobbits back to their rooms, and they see the evidence of the attack:
When they saw them they were glad that they had taken his advice: the windows had been forced open and were swinging, and the curtains were flapping; the beds were tossed about, and the bolsters slashed and flung upon the floor; the brown mat was torn to pieces.
Tolkien, J.R.R.. The Lord of the Rings: One Volume (p. 177). Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Kindle Edition.
As Corey mentioned, Strider actually explains that he doesn’t think the Nazgul will actually enter the inn, but that they may work through others: “… already some in Bree are in their clutch. They will drive these wretches to some evil work… “ (p. 174). We can see this confirmed from the forcing open of the windows, something the Nazgul would be unlikely to do, as funny as the image of them sneaking through the window would be.
But I still wondered where this idea of the Nazgul attacking the Prancing Pony might have come from. And that’s when I remembered Ralph Bakshi’s animated adaptation of The Lord of the Rings.
Bakshi’s film is interesting, if flawed, and deserves its own separate video, but it was one of my earliest introductions to Middle-earth. Unlike the Rankin-Bass TV movies, which I watched many times growing up, I had only seen Bakshi’s film once before I bought it on DVD soon after the release of Jackon’s The Fellowship of the Ring. So, let’s see how Bakshi adapted this same scene from “A Knife in the Dark.”
Here, the Black Riders don’t ride down the gate, but we do get some cool shots from below of their horses as they ride slowly through Bree to The Prancing Pony. Bakshi has them do something different when they enter the inn as well; instead of stalking past a cowering Buttebur, they do enter through the window, although instead of forcing it open they do so incorporeally, suddenly appearing in the hobbits’ room.
Here we see perhaps the best example of a direct parallel between Bakshi and Jackson, as both have the Nazgul ceremonially raise their swords before slashing up the bedding, and each have them scream in frustration when they discover Striders’ ruse.
I can see the possibility, were the scenes more different, that two filmmakers could come to similar conclusions about adapting the text. While similarities between Bakshi’s version and Jackson’s are evident, we have to consider what evidence apart from comparison do we have that Jackson was influenced by Bakshi’s film.
Jackson actually discusses this on the commentary to The Fellowship of the Ring during Bilbo’s birthday party:
My first introduction to The Lord of the Rings was when I saw the Ralph Bakshi cartoon film in 1978, and even though our movie is obviously stylistically very different and the design is different, there is one shot that I regard as my homage to the cartoon, because it did inspire me to read the book, and that’s the shot of Proudfoot shouting “Proudfeet!” where I deliberately copied the angle which Ralph Bakshi used, which I thought was brilliant.
Given that Jackson acknowledges Bakshi’s influence, it strongly suggests that, intentionally or not, Jackson used Bakshi’s scene as a template for his own. That said, several differences stand out to me that highlight Jackson’s skill as a filmmaker.
First, I think Jackson makes great use of cuts to increase the tension, more directly implying that the hobbits are still in their own room than Bakshi does, although both keep that a “secret” until the Nazgul discover the trick.
Second, Jackson greatly emphasizes the fear of the hobbits; Bakshi instead has Frodo briefly wake up and give Strider a goofy grin before going back to sleep.
Third, and this brings us back to the question of why changes are made in book adaptations, Jackson uses this scene to have Strider explain the Black Riders for the hobbits and for the audience. The book, with the leisurely pace of novels, has much more space to include situations, like Merrry’s encounter with a Black Rider while taking a walk in Bree, and characters, such as Bill Ferny, than the films do, even with over eleven hours runtime in the extended edition.
One can see how cuts like these make other changes necessary: cut out Fatty Bolger and Crickhollow, then in Bree cut out Bill Ferny et al., but you still need someone to slash the beds while the hobbits stay with Strider. This gives them a reason to go with him (to escape the immediate danger) and begin to trust him. The only choice, therefore, is the Black Riders. This has the added benefit of continuing to focus our attention on them as the immediate antagonists of the first half of Fellowship, as they are in the book.
But I think that these choices, when compared to the original text, help illustrate what Tolkien is doing in the original work.
While the adaptations do a great job of making the Nazgul threatening in a more direct way, one could argue that they go too far. By showing the Nazgul fleeing the Shire in the face of hobbit opposition and having them unable to enter The Prancing Pony, Tolkien is making his point about the power of good people standing against evil even stronger.
Not only does this make the actions and perseverance of the four hobbits (especially Frodo and Sam), later in the novel more understandable, but it also makes Frodo’s final failure of will to destroy the Ring more tragic. Unlike in Bakshi’s and Jackson’s films, Tolkien’s hobbits are shown early the novel uniting together to drive evil from the Shire, something that we see reciprocated in the Scouring of the Shire. There is a deeper thematic link involved here than is present in either of the films: that there is power in the good people of the Shire and of The Prancing Pony, where normal people join together in community.
I think that’s one of the great things about adaptation. By comparing and contrasting the two, we can gain a greater appreciation for how storytellers emphasize different themes with the same base material. And even when we view the original work as superior to the adaptation, the choices and changes of the adaptors help highlight points about the original work that we may have missed, and help us see the original in a new way.
For a more in-depth discussion of these ideas and of The Lord of the Rings as a whole, I encourage you to check out Corey Olsen’s Exploring The Lord of the Rings.
