MovieChat Forums > The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003) Discussion > Rank the books

Rank the books

posted 3 years ago by MovieChatUser497 (18943)
3 replies | jump to latest

And no I don’t mean Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, Return of the King, etc. I’m talking about the movie adaptation of the structure that JR Tolkien intended. There are six books in Lord of the Rings and they are as follows:

- Book I: The beginning of Fellowship of the Ring up to the point where Frodo makes it to Rivendell
- Book II: The Fellowship leaving Rivendell up to the end of Fellowship of the Ring
- Book III: The Aragorn/Gimli/Legolas/Theoden/Gandalf/Merry/Pippin segment of The Two Towers
- Book IV: The Frodo/Sam/Gollum segment of the Two Towers
- Book V: The Aragorn/Gimli/Legolas/Theoden/Gandalf/Merry/Pippin segment of Return of the King
- Book VI: The Frodo/Sam/Gollum segment of Return of the King along with all of the falling action of Return of the King

I realize that the movies end in different places than the books, I am judging this ranking based on the movie so therefore The Shelob segment is part of Book VI and not Book IV, Pippin looking in the Palantir is in Book V not Book III, etc. These rankings are based on the Peter Jackson interpretation of the six books and Peter Jackson put Shelob in book VI instead of Book IV where she belonged.

Here are my rankings:
- Book VI (I love everything they did with Sam’s character. He went from a background character to the one who became the true hero)
- Book III (The buildup to the Battle of Helms Deep I’ll admit was epic although I wish they didn’t make Theoden such an idiot)
- Book II (Overall pretty solid but I wish they didn’t turn Merry and Pippin into cheap comic relief, they were a lot smarter in the book)
- Book I (I kind of wish they didn’t edit out the part where they find the swords in the Shire, seeing how it kind of matters later, but whatever)
- Book IV (by not getting the Hobbits to Mordor there wasn’t much for them to do and I HATE what they did to Faramir)
- Book V (It just went way too over the top goofy and I will never forgive Jackson for what he did with the Army of the dead, also editing out Saruman is a crime against humanity)

[–] [deleted] 3 years ago

It's been a long time since I last read the books, I'm guessing right before the films came out. That said I won't comment to much but to say that:

Fellowship (I&II) were easily my favorite part of the trilogy version of the book series and very much in that order. Two Towers then Return last.

I don't recall having any serious investment of like or dislike about Two Towers.

I will agree that Return started off pretty badly but redeemed itself by the end. I nearly stopped reading about half way through the first time I read them.

[–] R_Kane (15828) 2 years ago

*sigh* This is a misinformed topic. There is ONE BOOK that Tolkien wrote whence this movie series derives, and it is The Lord of the Rings. The publisher chopped the ONE BOOK into 3 equal-sized pieces with a meat cleaver, not with an editor, because he was afraid it wouldn’t sell, and wanted a “test printing” to see if folks would buy the first third of the story. The book is more important than the movies. The book is the source. The movies are the mere reflection by a director and writing staff that could not produce a literary work of genius if you held a gun to their children’s heads.

From The New York Review of Books critique of the complete Lord of the Rings: “There are few works of genius in modern literature. This is one.”

The book dwarfs the movies.

[–] MovieChatUser497 (18943) 2 years ago

Call it whatever you want numb nuts, the purpose of the topic was to rank the parts of the book as Tolkien subdivided it.