Adapting "The Lord of the Rings" properly: an introduction

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.
Book I of The Lord of the Rings starts with the assumption that we know of Bilbo Baggins and the adventures recounted in The Hobbit, most importantly Bilbo's becoming lost deep in the caverns underneath the Misty Mountains, his accidental finding of a "magic ring" that made its wearer become invisible, and his encounter with and escape from Gollum. Knowing the importance of these facts Tolkien wrote a lengthy prologue for The Lord of the Rings that summarizes these events from The Hobbit but it's unfortunately safe to assume that most readers skip prologues. Let me emphasize that Tolkien does not expect us to know anything about Bilbo's ring except that it confers invisibility. The gradual discovery of the true nature of the ring--or, rather, the Ring--drives the plot forward for two chapters.

What do we learn of the Bilbo's ring and how do we learn it? That the ring is something more than just a useful magical tool is effectively conveyed by the confrontation between Bilbo and Gandalf in the first chapter, "A Long-Expected Party". Bilbo had promised to pass on his ring to Frodo along with the rest of his estate but, when pressed on the matter, he becomes defensive and angry, even threatening to use his sword against Gandalf. He also describes the ring as his "precious", echoing Gollum's habit of addressing the ring as "my precious". Again, a knowledge of The Hobbit is assumed. Gandalf had, as we find out later, already suspected that there was something amiss with Bilbo's ring but it takes Bilbo's rage at the prospect of giving it up to prompt Gandalf into researching what the ring is and how Gollum came to possess it. We do not learn all the aspects of Gandalf's research until many chapters later.

What Gandalf learns, however, is more problematical to explain. Tolkien tries in the second chapter, "The Shadow of the Past", which is mostly a thick slab of exposition. It is difficult for me now, with decades of intimate familiarity with The Lord of the Rings and with much of the supporting "History of Middle-Earth", to approach "The Shadow of the Past" as though I were a new reader, even a new reader who had already read The Hobbit. One thing is clear: by the end of this chapter we are meant to understand that Bilbo's "magic ring" is extremely powerful, evil, and must be destroyed.

How much do the details matter? The Ring has somewhat the quality of a MacGuffin or what Nick Lowe called, in his entertaining essay "The Well-Tempered Plot Device", a "plot coupon". A MacGuffin is any object in a story of vital importance to the characters but of little importance to the readers, except that the task of finding the object (or getting rid of the object, or chasing after the object, or transporting the object from one place to another) is what gets the plot rolling. The microfilm that the spies are after in North by Northwest is a perfect example: everyone wants to get hold of it but what's actually on the microfilm is of so little importance that the film never bothers to reveal it to us. Tolkien's Ring isn't quite so crude a device; all the same, what's chiefly important about it at this early stage of the narrative is that it supplies Frodo with a quest--he has to destroy the dangerous Ring--and it supplies the quest with an ultimate destination--the Ring can only be destroyed in one particular place, Mount Doom. Many fantasy stories have started with weaker excuses than that.

All the same, some understand of just why Bilbo's magic ring is so dangerous would be good to have. "The Shadow of the Past" tells us the following things, in order:

1. There is an Enemy rising to power in a distant land called Mordor, whose name is laden with fear. This enemy used to dwell in Mirkwood; in fact he is the same as the "Necromancer" mentioned a few times in The Hobbit but never seen. This is the only, tenuous connection between The Hobbit and the backstory of The Lord of the Rings.
2. Bilbo's magic ring is a "Ring of Power" forged by the Elves of Eregion, one of many. Aside from conferring invisibility it also prolongs life indefinitely, signs of which were already visible in the "well-preserved" Bilbo.
3. Heating the ring in a fire causes letters to appear that, in the language of Mordor, reveal that the ring is none other than the "One Ring", the Ring with a capital 'R', created by the Enemy to control all the other Rings of Power. It should be noted that Sauron has yet to be mentioned by name; he is only alluded to with such terms as "the Dark Power".
4. With the Ring, Sauron (finally named) will gain power enough to conquer Middle-Earth.
5. Sauron lost the Ring long before the events of the story in battle. Names are mentioned without context, particularly the names of Elendil and his son Isildur, which will become more important later. It was Isildur who took the Ring, only to be waylaid by Orcs and killed in a place called the Gladden Fields near to the River Anduin, whence the Ring disappeared from history.
6. A people akin to the hobbits eventually came to dwell in the Gladden Fields. Sméagol was one of them and, as already mentioned, he got hold of the Ring after murdering his younger brother, who had found the Ring while fishing in the River near to where Isildur had been killed long before.
7. Like Bilbo, Sméagol never knew that the Ring was anything but a convenient tool for making oneself invisible; unlike Bilbo, Sméagol used the Ring to spy on and steal from his family and friends, and he was ostracized and given the derisive nickname of "Gollum". He sought refuge under the Misty Mountains and, because of the life-prolonging effect of the Ring, he was still there (albeit much aged and withered) when Bilbo stumbled upon him.
8. Gandalf learned of Gollum's part in the story from Gollum himself, after he and a great hunter and tracker named Aragorn tracked him down.
9. After losing the Ring Gollum began to travel far, seeking Bilbo and his "precious". His search took him to the borders of Mordor, where he was captured and questioned. Sauron therefore almost certainly learned that Gollum's ring was the One Ring, that a hobbit named Bilbo Baggins possessed it, and that he lived in a land called the Shire.
10. No force will destroy the Ring aside from the heat of the fire where it was originally forged, in the "Cracks of Doom" leading to the central fire of the volcano Orodruin or "Mount Doom".

This is a lot to digest all at once, with little context. "The Shadow of the Past" presents a bigger wad of exposition than even the lengthy chapter "The Council of Elrond", and I can only guess that it's a difficult chapter to chew on for many readers. How much of it is necessary to the further development of the plot? How much, if any, can be elided?

I've considered this knotty problem from time to time but, at the moment, I don't have any solid answers. But I do have some thoughts.

First, is it necessary for Frodo to know all this information about his ring? A portion of it will be retold in Rivendell at the Council of Elrond in better detail. After all, the purpose of the Council is to settle for once and all the question of the Ring's identity as the One Ring and then to discuss what should be done with it. Let me suggest that Frodo should be supplied only with enough information to get him to leave the Shire and travel to Rivendell.

Second, a better idea should be conveyed about just who Sauron is and what Mordor is. The assumption pervades the chapter that Frodo--and, by extension, we readers--already knows something about Mordor and Sauron, if only as "a shadow on the border of old stories". Maps could be deployed without too much artifice; I like the idea that Gandalf, in the course of his explanation, refers Frodo to the maps in Bilbo's "Red Book".

Third, effectively establishing Gollum's part in the story requires much thought. He and his backstory become central to the plot, yet in the text the bulk of that backstory is either assumed to be known from The Hobbit or delivered in the form of masses of exposition. There must be some more elegant way to weave this information--or, at least, enough of it to keep the plot moving--into the narrative.

I've run out of ideas at the moment but I will be returning to this topic again soon. I'm rather enjoying returning to The Lord of the Rings with an analytical eye.