Peter Jackson's films of J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings are a disgrace. Let me get that out of the way at the start.
Jackson's failings pertain more to characterization and theme more than with plot. His condensation of the basic plot is marred with odd transpositions of plot elements, bizarre interpolations, action scenes prolonged to embarrassing length and thus giving shorter shrift to quieter but more important scenes, and one or two inexplicable omissions, but for the most part the abridgment isn't too unreasonable. He didn't get much else right but that is a matter for a different essay.
Jackson made a hash of it, but how could he have done better? After all, the task that confronted Jackson and his writers was a formidable one. The Lord of the Rings comprises six books, not to mention a lengthy introduction and an even lengthier appendix, totalling over a thousand pages. They had to compress this material into about ten hours of film at maximum. How can this be done without doing too much violence to the original and without lapsing either into confusion or into lengthy exposition?
In order to answer this question, it's worth considering just how the plot of The Lord of the Rings is organized and what its various parts are intended to accomplish. I should add that The Lord of the Rings isn't without its flaws. Maintaining maximum fidelity to the original is vital but this shouldn't prevent us from considering workarounds or corrections to the weaker parts of Tolkien's narrative.
