Lord of the Rings Characters: Screen Time vs. Mentions in the Books

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submitted a week ago by Blaze (he/him)

Lord of the Rings Characters: Screen Time vs. Mentions in the Books

Source: old.reddit.com/…/lord_of_the_rings_characters_scr…

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criitz a week ago

Looks like they mostly did a good job matching up

Yeah, I saw the image and thought it was going to be bad, but it’s not like you’d expect any of them to be exactly on the line. They all generally track - I don’t see any giant outliers.

IMALlama 6 days ago

Tom Bombadil is probably the biggest omission - both the character and all tge activities that take place around their house. I remembered that sticking out to me when I watched the films for the first time, but at that point I last read the trilogy at least five years prior.

Understood, but if you did this same graph for most books made into movies, they’d look vastly different. I mean, think of The Shining.

Cochise a week ago

The Legolas-Gimli discrepancy is astonishing.

MoonManKipper a week ago

Gimli was turned into the comic relief dwarf, which was a bit sad

jlow (he/him) a week ago

Is it, though? Conventionally attractive, blonde dude vs grim, beardy dwarf? I’d rather look at the latter all day but I doubt I’m in the majority there.

maegul (he/they) a week ago, edited 6 days ago

Similarly, heroes are emphasised in the film more and villains under emphasised. Sauron, Saruman and Denethor all having less screen time than mentions.

That Sam is relatively underplayed is interesting also. Pretty sure Tolkien is on record saying Sam is the actual hero of the story. Which is there in the film, but clearly with a preference for focusing on Frodo more.

metaStatic a week ago

Honestly surprised Legolas is over represented considering how much of a boner Tolkien had for him. But I guess everyone did, right.

Deceptichum a week ago

Can’t say no to that face.

morphballganon a week ago

… Glorfindel was in the movies?

hemko a week ago

In The Fellowship of the Ring, Glorfindel’s role in guiding Frodo Baggins to Rivendell is filled by Arwen, though he does appear during the prologue when Sauron is defeated. In The Return of the King, Glorfindel is seen walking next to Arwen as she is having her vision of her son Eldarion during the journey to the Grey Havens. In his last appearance, he is seen at the crowning of King Elessar, behind Legolas and in front of Arwen. In all appearances in the movies he has no speaking lines

zorro a week ago, edited a week ago

I hink that’s the 0 line. There with good old Tom bombadil

EDIT: nvm I’m blind

BowtiesAreCool 6 days ago

I wonder if this is off the theatrical or extended and what the other might show.

adj16 6 days ago

The duality of fan

shalafi 6 days ago

“I think I was trying to suggest something about the duality of fan, sir. The Jungian thing, sir.”

Biggest surprise to me is that Faramir has more mentions in the books than Boromir.

mindbleach 6 days ago

He’s around longer.

trolololol 4 days ago

Are you saying Boromir should have died earlier? Dude!

Not at all, I really like Boromir’s story, but that’s why I’m surprised. I feel like his development got a lot of attention, and even though Faramir was around for longer in the story, he never seemed quite as prominent to me. I guess that duration made up for the attention boromir got early on, though.

JackGreenEarth 6 days ago

Tom Bombadil was my favourite part of the book, and I was so disappointed when I realised that that part had been taken out of the film.

Cyclist 6 days ago

Was there a point to Tom Bombadil? All I really remember was that he helped the hobbits escape the. And I’m not even 100% sure about that. Also that Gandolf said he might go visit him at the end of the book. Was there some important part about it I missed?

RuBisCO 6 days ago

He could wear the one ring and remain unaffected by it, laughed at it even. Then he could make the ring vanish and bring it back at will.

He seemed unconcerned by the war, almost as if he knew of and had seen wars greater and far more terrible. Yet he had chosen a side and was willing to provide what aid he could.

He was Doolittle to all lifeforms, his songs tranquilized ancient evils, and he could be called upon at long range to swiftly respond.

His very existence suggested fundamental mysteries about the world; old and powerful.

Bombadil, moreso than Strider, was the embodiment of strong, old roots not withering, remaining out of reach of the frost. Old roots that could reason with willows and wights.

Cyclist 5 days ago

Thanks for the response. I remembered that he was older than time it seemed.

IMALlama 6 days ago

Not that I remember, which is probably the reason why it was cut from the film. There is a lot of activity around him and the area around his house in the books, but it’s more side quest than main quest.

JackGreenEarth 6 days ago

It was just a relaxing, peaceful section of the narrative, which the film could have done with more of.

This got me confused

Why didn’t just Tom wear the Ring as he makes passionate love with his wife, so he can force Sauron to watch.

Sauron, who is a virgin, who never had a gf and was dismembered and reduced to a giant eye by a fucking human would realize he is nothing compared to Tom, whose girth is beyond even Eru Ilúvatar’s comprehension.

Wishing to die but unable to kill himself as he doesn’t even have a fucking hand to pull the trigger, he would order his orc armies to piss on him, so that the flames of his eye can be extinguished and his mind can be set free of Tom’s all encompassing girth. His spirit would be released to the boundless void that ripples and contorts with Tom’s mighty thrusts and he would find no solace.

Edit: When Tom thrusts his final thrust and shoots a billion Bombadillos deep into Goldberry’s loins, the impact would shatter Sauron’s soul into a billion Saurodillos and he would be free. When this happens, not even the wisest can tell.

Taako_Tuesday 6 days ago, edited 6 days ago

Gothmog gets screen time?

Edit: nvm that’s the uruk general. I was thinking of Morgoth

Evil_Shrubbery 6 days ago

I’m actually fairly ok with this, more or less what I would expect from a mainstream movie(s, and the fact that they are good is just a nice bonus).

The scale is neither linear nor logarithmic. What?

mindbleach 6 days ago

I think it is logarithmic, it’s just marked linearly.

ChaoticNeutralCzech 6 days ago, edited 6 days ago

Logarithmic cannot start at 0 and would have equal spacing between 500, 1000 and 2000.

I am confused because the font seems to be Aptos, the current default in Micro$oft Office, but Excel does not allow any other type of scale on X-Y plots.

mindbleach 6 days ago

That’s not equal spacing - 1000-1500 is a bit longer than 1500-2000.

The graph is almost certainly logarithmic. Only the markings are stupid.

ChaoticNeutralCzech 6 days ago, edited 5 days ago

Every time a number doubles (or increases 10×, or 𝑒×, whatever), it moves a constant distance on a log scale because its base-whatever logarithm increases by a constant amount. Hence my expectation of equal distance from 500 to 1000 and 1000 to 2000. I am ignoring 1500 here because it does not form a geometric sequence with any two other numbers so it can’t easily be used for this check.

bramkaandorp 6 days ago

How else can you make it look like a linear grouping?

make it look like

Data processing isn’t about making it look like something unless you are purposefully manipulating it.

Honytawk 6 days ago

Because the point isn’t to compare 2 characters, but to see how one character performs in the books and in the movies.

And for that, it doesn’t matter. But they could have used a bar graph instead.

Well, I’d like to know if Arwen’s screentime/mention ratio is 2x or 3x that of the Frodo baseline. This arbitrary scale makes it impossible. It would not hurt to add more values to the axes, and perhaps a faint grid.

bramkaandorp 6 days ago, edited 6 days ago

A mention is not the same as an appearance, so the discrepancy for some characters could be even greater if you take that into account.

Neuromancer49 a week ago

Good riddance, Tom Bombadil. I don’t care how merry a fellow he was, those were my least favorite chapters of Fellowship.

lud 6 days ago

That’s disrespectful! He also had a bright blue jacket, and his boots were yellow.

gasgiant 6 days ago

The balance of this doesn’t surprise me. The shift between book and film is quite heavily based on gender.

The books were certainly much more male character based and the films evened it up a bit more. Although obviously still not even.

trolololol 4 days ago

How can Sauron be under represented? Who do you think the Lord in “Lord of the rings” is??

It’s like saying the book on Tom Bombadill doesn’t have enough mentions of Tom.

DarkSpectrum 6 days ago

Not surprising considering the hours of “Oh Frodo!” “Oh Sam!” “Oh Frodo!” “Oh Sam!” Hobbitses are little girlses