The other day, I opened Facebook and saw a Boromir meme. You know the one. Fingers and thumb forming a circle, golden light about him, the words “One does not simply [something something]” embossed over the image. This one has the Center for Disease Control logo below that, with the PR announcement, “Fully vaccinated people may now simply walk into Mordor.” Below that, Boromir rubs his temple in frustration. Twenty years on from the debut of The Fellowship of the Ring, and that line from Sean Bean’s Boromir, and I think we can safely say that the “One does not simply” meme is, like the Eldar, immortal.
As befits their popularity, J.R.R. Tolkien’s works are full of lines and turns of phrase that have embedded themselves in our collective consciousness. The Hobbit’s first sentence is among the most famous opening lines in English literature. I don’t even need to write it out for you: you know what it is. Gandalf’s sage wisdom about what to do with the time that is given to you has graced countless email signatures and Facebook bios. My wife Ayako is particularly good at sneaking up on my son and me, and then menacingly whispering, “My precioussss.”
As I mentioned in my previous review covering the first half of the film, Peter Jackson, Fran Walsh, and Philippa Boyens used this to their great advantage in writing their Lord of the Rings film trilogy. Rather than write entirely new dialogue, they often take it from the mouth of one character and put it in another’s when it suits them. It’s an effective strategy, especially since Tolkien isn’t the voiciest of writers, and the cast of the movies is superior. A line originally written for Gandalf could well come from Wormtongue, especially if Wormtongue is played by a master like Brad Dourif.
So it’s slightly ironic that the most famous line from the entire film trilogy isn’t in the book at all. In fact, I’d wager many people think it is a line from the book, given how ubiquitous it is (compounding the confusion, the image usually associated with the image, of Bean making a circle with his fingers, is from slightly later in the monologue when he says, “the great eye is ever watchful.” Cultural memory is a slippery thing).
Of course, a lot of the line’s popularity comes down to the skill of Bean’s acting. He puts so much frustration, quiet rage, and an edge of sorrow into the line that it seems natural that it became a meme. Here’s a beleaguered warrior, desperately worried about the fate of his country, who’s just been shown a miraculous sliver of hope, and then told that hope has to be thrown into a volcano. Boromir’s weariness tells us everything we need to know about this world and this war, and his eventual fall into treachery, due to his desperation and despair, feels real and heartbreaking. There are a few moments here and there, like Boromir’s “One does not simply walk…” monologue, when the movies manage to even outdo the book in conveying Tolkien’s themes and message about the corruptions of power and the necessity of hope. Then again, it also has Elrond spouting lines like, “Men are weak,” to add conflict and tension to a plot that has plenty of that already.
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The touch of realism from the casts’ performances is especially important in the back half of The Fellowship of the Ring, when the movie transforms from an intense chase into a true fantasy quest. Whereas before we mostly had four hobbits and Strider on the run from terrifying horsemen in black robes, now we have Dwarves, pontificating Elves, octopus monsters, fire-demons, and a whirlwind tour of multiple realms with their own deep histories and cultures: Rivendell! Moria! Lothlórien! The later movies will keep us more firmly grounded in the lands of Men, but “The Ring Goes South” as Tolkien titled it, is Lord of the Rings at its most fantastical.
If the Shire is the home we must leave behind in order to save, the lands of “The Ring Goes South” are the places that are fading away as the Age of Men dawns. The plot of Lord of the Rings cleverly mimics its own conceit of the magical giving way to the mundane as the realms of halfings, Elves, and Dwarves give way in the narrative to the lands of Men. It’s not a perfect overlap (obviously, we end back in the Shire and at the Grey Havens) but it’s part of the story’s power. Tolkien and Jackson lead the characters—and readers/viewers—on a grand tour of all that our world has lost. And what a tour! Rivendell is an autumnal wonderland, Moria a terrifying labyrinth, and Lothlórien a heavenly and potent vision of Elven power.
We begin in Rivendell with the mother of all fantasy exposition scenes, the Council of Elrond. Jackson’s impulse to ramp up character conflicts works well here, as we speed through the scene and quickly establish the stakes for the world, and most of the characters. Frodo’s volunteering to carry the Ring is beautifully done, with the little hobbit, his face full of both determination and anguish, interrupting the arguments of the Wise and powerful to offer his life to save the world. Not to mention the fact that “You have my sword” is nearly as iconic a line as “One does not simply walk into Mordor.” The scene falls a little flat with the climax as the music swells and Elrond gives them a team name, though I do enjoy Pippin taking the wind out of the affair with, “You need people of intelligence on this mission…quest…thing.” It’s maybe a little too comical, but it’s also very funny.
Jackson also shows off his horror chops again as we get a legitimately terrifying jump-scare out of Bilbo Baggins of all people, as he briefly turns Gollum-like and tries to snatch the Ring from Frodo. The films do a remarkable job of seeding the idea—one that will really come to the fore in the next two movies—of Gollum as a twisted image of Frodo: a vision, like Galadriel’s mirror, of what may yet come to pass for a hobbit in possession of the Ring.
Then Jackson shows off his helicopter budget with a number of lovely aerial shots of the Fellowship weaving their way across the gorgeous New Zealand countryside, with a few superimposed ruins here and there for good effect. We get a nice scene with Boromir teaching Merry and Pippin to sword fight before they’re interrupted by Saruman’s crows, and so head to the Redhorn pass to cross the Misty Mountains. Saruman sends a storm to bury them, knowing they’ll have to take the path through Moria as a last resort and come face to face with the Balrog, “a demon of the ancient world.”
After barely escaping the monstrous Watcher in the Water (an exemplary and horrifying creature), the Fellowship are trapped in the “long dark of Moria.” They find the tomb of Balin (a tragic end for the lovable, wise character we’ll meet in the Hobbit movies) and are attacked by Orcs with a cave troll. The Fellowship manages to kill the attackers, but even after its brutal assault on Frodo (giving Elijah Wood his second of many “anguished face after being stabbed” close-ups), the cave troll’s death is given genuine pathos. It groans and stumbles, and pulls at its lips as it falls over and dies. The film goes quiet. Here again, Jackson has invested the film and the world with depth. It’s hard to watch that scene and not wonder more about the troll: what motivated it? What intelligence level did it have? Did the Fellowship just kill an innocent creature that maybe didn’t know any better? The sense that there’s more than meets the eye is underscored by the reveal that Frodo survived the troll’s spear thanks to his mithril shirt, gifted from Bilbo.
Then there’s a creature I can only describe as My Favorite Goblin. After fleeing Balin’s tomb, the Fellowship are surrounded by goblins that come shrieking and scurrying out of the floor and down from the ceiling like spiders. The camera cuts to one goblin with big cat-like eyes who cocks its head, bulges its eyes, and hisses. That image has been in my head ever since I first saw it twenty years ago. I love that goblin! Its image is so distinct, with its ugly face and beautiful eyes, and its movement so menacing and yet, like the troll, childlike. In only a second of camera time, we get all these suggestions of a deeper personality and world. The goblins are more than mere fodder. They’re a horde, but not a faceless one.
The Fellowship are saved by the timely arrival of the Balrog, and where Bakshi’s Balrog fell flat, Jackson’s soars (well, not literally, despite the wings). It’s perfect, a volcano made flesh, and ornery. It’s here that we find the movie’s other much-parodied and copied line, one that marks the high-water mark of High Fantasy on film. While Sean Bean brings a weary realism to his lines as Boromir, Ian McKellan outright roars, “You shall not pass!” and brings his staff down on the Bridge of Khazad-dûm with the power of a billion 20-sided dice rolls. It’s pure cinematic catharsis.
The line is still a useful pop cultural shorthand. A few months ago, we rented a cottage near a beach in Michigan. At a small cafe nearby, my son spotted a sign that read: “No mask? You shall not pass!” with a drawing of a gray wizard underneath. It’s been parodied countless times, not the least by McKellan himself in Ricky Gervais’ Extras. Whereas the Boromir meme is endlessly mutable to express the sense that a task is harder than it looks, the Gandalf one delights in the iconic, unapologetically Genre nature of the scene, and the power that brings with it. There’s no winking here, no “once upon a time…” narrative distance, no meta commentary, no subversive smirk—that came later. No, there’s just a wizard, a demon, and a pit, and a moment of raw power, imagination, and emotion that perfectly sums up why people love the genre. This is Fantasy! It’s that moment that marks the dawn of the Golden Age of the Geek. There’s no going back now: the bridge is forever broken.
After Gandalf’s fall, the music and action slow down, and there’s a beautiful, quiet scene where the Fellowship mourns. Aragorn wisely urges them on, even as Boromir begs them for a moment to grieve, “for pity’s sake!” It’s a terrific exchange, letting Boromir be the voice of compassion, even as Aragorn is the voice of reason, and showing that character conflict can come from more than clashing egos or ideologies. Sometimes everyone is right, and all choices before them are wrong.
Jackson’s horror background shines through again as the Fellowship comes up against the two powerful, magical beings set against each other in their regard for the Ring: Saruman and Galadriel. Saruman, in his lust for the Ring, breeds Uruk-hai soldiers out of the mud, and their birth scenes give Frankenstein and Alien a run for their money in images of pregnancy and childbirth distorted into abject horror. This imagery is original to the movie, but here again Jackson gives us a startlingly unique scene that also underscores and serves Tolkien’s themes. Saruman corrupts the earth, Mother Earth, with his industrial furnaces, in order to give birth to monsters. It’s Jackson’s own moment of true mythopoeia.
Galadriel, meanwhile, refuses the Ring, but not before turning a distinctly Wicked Witch of the West-ish green to show what would happen if she didn’t. Cate Blanchett rose to fame playing Elizabeth I, the allegorical model for Edmund Spencer’s Faerie Queene, and here she plays Tolkien’s rendition of the Fairy Queen perfectly, a vision of power and wisdom that is beautiful, but remote and ancient and not a little scary: “tempestuous as the sea, stronger than the foundations of the earth.”
Galadriel sends the Fellowship on their way with a few gifts, and they paddle down the Great River, past the colossal Argonath, to the ruins of Amon Hen and the borders of the realms of Men. Boromir succumbs to the Ring, but Frodo manages to escape. The Uruk-hai attack and kidnap Merry and Pippin, but not before Boromir is able to redeem himself by becoming a pin-cushion. Frodo and Sam set off alone for Mordor. Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli vow to save Merry and Pippin from “torment and death” and set off after the Orcs.
The film ends with Frodo and Sam seeing Mordor for the first time, and then walking towards it. It’s a fitting end to the film, with Frodo and Sam again on a perilous quest into unknown lands, with only each other for company. The story has come, in a way, full circle—only the characters are now wiser and sadder, perhaps finally truly aware that one does not simply walk into Mordor. It gives me chills every time I watch it.
The Fellowship of the Ring is one of my favorite movies of all time. It’s a triumph of adaptation, and an enchanting masterpiece full of memorable scenes and moments, as evidenced by how many are quoted and meme-ified today. To my mind, the staying power of “One does not simply walk into Mordor” and “You shall not pass!” in the cultural firmament reveal the ingredients in the film’s particular magical spell: its combination of lived-in performances and unashamed fantasy. It’s a spell that still has a hold on Hollywood, and our imaginations, all these years later.
Austin Gilkeson has written for Tin House, McSweeney’s, Vulture, Foreign Policy, The Toast, and other publications. He lives just outside Chicago with his wife and son.
The first time I saw Fellowship in the theatre as we faded out on Frodo and Sam walking towards Mordor I heard another member of the audience cry, But what about the ring! Judging by the empty shelves in the B&N adjoining the theatre a large segment of the audience promptly bought the books to find out what happened next!
Great article Austin, although I’m surprised you talk about Jackson’s horror chops (which I agree really shine through, especially in this first film) without directly mentioning the masterful building of tension throughout the entire Moria sequence. From the shock of how they enter to find the corspes, to the attack of the Watcher, the long, quiet dark – is that something moving in the shadows, in the depths? To the discovery of Balin’s tomb, and then Gandalf begins reading from the book giving us the full unhappy story of Moria.
The crash of Pippin’s messing around interrupts our slow burning tension, then a moment of relief as we think our heroes have got away with it.
And then we hear the drums in the deep.
Those drums. It strikes at something primal within me. It’s so wonderfully evocative. Even today having seen this film countless times I still get goosebumps in anticipation. Tremendously effective filmmaking from a director and team at the top of their game.
Great article and a great reminder of so many of the things I love about this movie.
If we’re discussing Fellowship memes, I’d like to add “Second Breakfast (I don’t think he knows about second breakfast)”. Gets at least as much repetition around my house as the other two big ones.
* Also “They come in pints!?”. Basically Pippin and Merry are meme machines
Everything about the Moria sequences is so perfect.
There’s a trick that Jackson* pulls at the end that gets me every time, and I’ve never been sure if it’s intentional, or just a weird thing for me: after Gandalf’s stand-off and sacrifice our party is fleeing up the stairway and out of Moria back to the bright world outside. After spending so long in the dark underground my eyes have adjusted to the darkness, and suddenly we are blasted with a bright white sky – the real-world shocking contrast always forces my eyes to wince and, combined with the emotion of the previous scene, gets me to start crying (and I’m not one to usually cry for this type of scene). It’s a truly masterful use of lighting and the all the tools of cinematography.
*(or the DP, probably many people, Jackson gets the credit)
@2 Another masterful horror trope that Jackson uses is the balrog’s whip coming to ensnare Gandalf and drag him into the abyss. It’s one used many times before: “we think the horror is dead/has been defeated, but it lashes out one more time.” What makes it work so well here, is, for me, even though I knew going in how the scene would go, and even after seeing the movie multiple times, because of the way it was staged it still feels like a shock.
I read THE HOBBIT and LOTR in the Sixties, long, long before nerd culture became mainstream. If anyone had asked me back then if my nerd stuff would ever become mainstream, I’d have laughed in their face. We’ve come a long way, baby!
Of course, the “You cannot pass!” line itself derives from the World War I slogan, “They shall not pass!”
This is a really enjoyable review. It does a lot to bring to mind the real magic the film creates. I was already a somewhat nerdy 14 year old when my dad took the family to see Fellowship, but it was this movie that launched me face-first into fantasy as a staple of my formative years. It captured my imagination like I think nothing had before, and few things have since. Thanks for bringing me back there for a moment.
Discussions of the movies inevitably bring to mind what I call The Tragedy of the Theatrical. Full disclosure: I tend to prefer extended cuts. I won’t even watch Watchmen (and I can’t resist Juvenal here: “Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?”, which I picked up by reading P.G. Wodehouse, lest you think I’m showing off) without Tales of the Black Freighter, let alone the other added scenes. Because I’d been hugely skeptical of the entire project, the extended version of Fellowship was the first cut that I saw, on DVD, natch. When I later saw the theatrical, I was appalled at what was missing. The theatrical The Two Towers is damaged the least relative to its extended cut, with Return somewhere in the middle. But Fellowship is absolutely gutted. The trigger for all of this babble is The Ring Goes South. One huge thing missing from the thearical is Haldir showing Caras Galadhon to the Fellowship from a hillside and calling it “The heart of Elvendom on Earth.” That invariably brings tears to my eyes, and is a perfect exemplar of what you talk about with The Ring Goes South. The trilogy streams a lot, and, as with The Millennium Trilogy (Swedish), it pains me greatly that people streaming them have absolutely no idea what they’re missing. It’s like Citizen Kane without the Rosebud scene.
@8: I’d have been more moved by that scene if the actor weren’t visibly trying oh so very hard to be expressive. The first time I saw it, I laughed. For me, it’s the perfect example of “show, don’t tell.” He was telling me to be in awe, but it was seeing the incredible vision PJ and Weta brought to life that actually moved me to awe. But YMMV.
Yeah, I always watch their extended versions. They are short enough as it is… (not being sarcastic)
The Mirror of Galadriel is (I think) my favorite scene in the entire trilogy. I love her transition to the “Not dark but Beautiful and terrible as the dawn” and then when she resists the temptation and the sickly green light fades and for just a moment, you see Galadriel have a moment of humanity (for lack of a better word) and for the only time seem off-balance. I also love the extended edition gives her a moment to show Frodo the Ring of Adamant.
Both the article and a few comments have mentioned Peter Jackson’s skills with horror. There’s something to it, particularly in the Fellowship. For instance, near the beginning he rendered the approach of the Black Rider searching for the hobbits very well.
But we shouldn’t forget that PJ was beholden to the material. Tolkien had a gift for horror in my opinion. He didn’t lean on it constantly, he wasn’t interested in writing “A horror novel”, but scary bits were very well done indeed. And so for instance, that whip curling up and pulling Gandalf down at the last moment was, after all, in the book. From the account of the wail of the Black Riders in the Shire, to the feeling of exposure when Frodo put on the ring at Weathertop and, far from concealed, was suddenly as it were in the same world as the ringwraiths, elements of horror add bite throughout LoTR.
Unfortunately, I also think Peter Jackson dropped the ball precisely on the horror elements in the later movies. I almost felt it was his horror background that betrayed him–eager to show Tolkien’s horrific material, he insisted on showing everything, in bright lighting. So we had three key horror moments seriously undermined by the cinematography. The first is Shelob’s Lair. The book has the heroes stumbling around in the dark, and glowing eyes coming out of the darkness as they struggle with un- or barely-seen webs. The movie shows us Peter Jackson’s menacing giant spider in loving detail, in caverns which apparently have a good deal of ambient indirect lighting–how thoughtful of Sauron to provide it. Admittedly, Shelob is gorgeous, but nonetheless I felt a lot of potential fear was lost. Worse was the Paths of the Dead (perhaps the worst, but it’s not that important a scene). The book conveys a spookiness of things you shouldn’t see around the edges of vision; the dead themselves are grey, gloomy, indistinct, distant from life. Not really talking entities, they are only held to this world by the force of their broken oath. In the movie they’re that stereotypical horror-spook glowing green, they add a contrived little near-combat scene and a personified leader who makes threatening remarks . . . and again, they light the whole thing up, in the case of the dead themselves lighting things up with their own glow. It’s just rancid. There’s nothing frightening about it, nor any pathos, I really felt like a little chunk of some B-movie had been spliced in.
Finally, worst was the Siege of Minas Tirith. Leaving aside the terrible mishandling of Denethor as a character which in turn damages Gondor as a culture and its significance in the story, the ludicrous bathos of Gandalf hitting him upside the head with his staff, the writers’ response to Tolkien repeatedly adding menace by saying, after small victories, “But it was no brigand or orc-chieftain that led the assault upon Gondor” by putting front and center a brigand/orc-chieftain leading the assault upon Gondor . . . leave all that aside and let’s talk about the siege as horror. So, in the books, the whole big deal about the siege was that Sauron made an artificial night for his forces to attack in–both because that was helpful for orcs, who don’t like the daylight much, and for its morale impact. Much was made of Sauron’s weapon–terror. The defenders couldn’t really see the attack developing overall, but they could see files of torches flaming red, and great pits being made full of flame. Orcs and trolls and “fell beasts” loomed, shadowy, in the torchlight. The Nazgul swooped out of the darkness, their cries leaving the defenders cowering and thinking only of hiding and of death.
So, what does Peter Jackson do with this? Well, he’s got to show off the flying Nazgul and the trolls and the siege engines, doesn’t he? So he makes Sauron’s manufactured night into a mildly overcast day, so we can see all the beautiful details and it won’t be remotely scary at all. This also means that when the wind changes, the smoke of the false night is blown away and the sun comes out, it isn’t really all that dramatic. Then later, after what in the book is a hard fought battle won by human (and hobbit) valour, PJ has the dead just swarm the battlefield in a deus ex machina, still glowing green in a tribute to third rate horror aesthetics.
PJ did an excellent job with the horror elements of the Fellowship of the Ring. There were fewer such elements in The Two Towers, but I don’t think he really hit any false notes. But in Return of the King his horror instincts really failed him; mishandling horror created some of the worst parts of the movies.
A good article and discussion. I will agree that Fellowship is my favorite of the movie trilogy and PJ handles the horror elements the best there (though with a few missteps, the Weathertop scene were Strider drives off the Nazgul is comical in the keystone cops nature of the Nazgul, who are overall depicted too much as merely threatening guys in black cloaks and swords with laryngitis).
I will agree with Purple Library Guy @12 about some of the excesses in the later movies. PJ had a colossal task and did a remarkable job in most respects, but those were some questionable choices. I would add the Mouth of Sauron at the Black Gate to the list. Turn him into some schlock B-movie horror creep and add short term cathartic beheading? Denethor, (and to a lesser extent) Faramir’s characters are really shortchanged here. Even Frodo’s nobility and wisdom is undercut by having him constantly being manipulated by Gollum to such an extent, though Sam gains from it a little in the movie adaptation.
Fellowship is my favorite part of the whole story, movie AND books, for all the wonder and possibility. There were a lot of changes made for the films but the only ones that really annoyed me were in characterization. Aragorn was a lot of things, but he was NEVER the reluctant hero – heck, he had been working for half of his Numenorian lifetime to learn what he need to know about the kingdom and how to run it before becoming king and doing a proper job of it! So the scenes showing him effectively pushed into it just didn’t ring true. Worse, Jackson managed to ruin one of my favorite scenes in Two Towers – when Frodo and Sam after much weary and hazardous travel fetch up with Faramir and his men in their hideout for a brief rest in the book, Faramir guesses about the Ring, knows exactly what it is, but is made of sterner stuff than his brother and refuses to even look at it, assuring them he would not take it if he found it in the road. It made a much needed and almost unique break in the seemingly endless journey. I had been looking FORWARD to that scene, dang it…
Bean gets to show his chops again with the single line “They have a cave troll.” The look on his face and the way he delivers it struck me instantly as “This guy has faced these before, knows exactly what they’re capable of, and is Done Thank You.” Plus, that character delivering that line with that expression tells the audience that cave trolls are Nope even before we see it in action.
It’s nice to know I’m not the only person who was captivated by My Favorite Goblin.