Quote:
Originally Posted by Archaic Elf
I haven't seen the Lord of the Rings live action films yet, but we've all heard insults about the LOTR involving nothing but characters walking endlessly across Middle Earth. Obviously that's an exaggeration, but couldn't the story of the Lord of the Rings have been expanded to include more action to show just how destructive the entire ordeal was?
After reading the Unfinished Tales, there is quite a bit of material (and not just action sequences, although that's what I'll focus on here) that could have been added to the main story:
1. The battle between the rangers and the Nazgul
This could have been one of the earliest battles in the LOTR. It would add tension by showing just how deadly the Ringwraiths are capable of being...who else could defeat a band of rangers while outnumbered?
2. The battle of Dale
Where the Dwarves of the Lonely Mountain and the Men of Lake-town fought against an army of Easterlings
3. The fall of Osgiliath, Pelargir (to the corsairs), and other cities
There are two cities in particular that Aragorn thought were secure, but he was surprised to have heard were fallen to the forces of Mordor. I'm pretty sure Pelargir was one...does anyone remember what I'm talking about here???
4. The battle of Mirkwood (the battle between orcs and Thranduil/the elves of Mirkwood)
5. The battle at the Fords of Isen.
This would really explain why Rohan was at such a disadvantage while defending Helms Deep...many of their soldiers were killed while holding off the Uruk-Hai at the Fords of Isen.
Personally, I think the LOTR is fine as it is, but I suppose that a few more chapters depicting some of the scenes listed above might add to the excitement. The battle at the Fords of Isen as it appears in Unfinished Tales is a startling omission from LOTR. It looks complete to me, but would it have disrupted the flow of the story? I don't think so...
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Hmmn. I think the same question applies to fight scenes as to any other type of scene: what you have to ask is not "is it cool?", but "what does it
do for the story?"
So, regarding the first four, I'd say Tolkien was right to leave them out, as they're pretty extraneous, and would have been hard to work into the (mainly) Hobbit point-of-view narrative. Also it's a matter of balance–
too many fight scenes can become quite dull to read about (or watch– you see this effect in action movies quite often).
The Battle of the Fords of Isen, now– that, as you point out, does have a function, in that it gives the reader fairly important information; also you actually get to "see" Theodred in it. So I'd agree that it could well have been included. I think, though, that, to fit into the novel's structure, it would have had to be related through dialogue flashback (Eomer's?). That needn't have been a problem, as a lot of events in LOTR are described in just this way.
However, people who don't like a lot of description also tend to flip past long passages in quotation marks, so I'm not sure that including the Fords of Isen would have satisfied them anyway. (I'm sorry if I sound like an intellectual snob there, but you know what I mean.)