It is often tempting to imagine the potential outcomes in the world of blockbuster Hollywood filmmaking. What if directors were free to go against the norm and use unconventional techniques instead of relying on tried and true screenwriting methods to captivate their audience? For instance, what if Harrison Ford’s character Han Solo had not met his end in Star Wars: The Force Awakens? While his death added intensity to the film and ensured its memorability, in hindsight, Ford’s presence may have grounded later sequels. It may have even made the director reconsider the questionable decision to resurrect Emperor Palpatine in the disliked Rise of Skywalker. After all, Ford was known for criticizing George Lucas’ writing, leaving one to wonder what he would have said to JJ Abrams for even contemplating such absurdity.
What if Ripley had not been killed in the end of Aliens 3, or if replicant Roy Batty had not met his end in Blade Runner? What if Dumbledore had not died in Harry Potter, or if Bambi’s mother had survived? These stories could have taken completely different paths, and may have even been improved without the predictable death of a character. However, let’s be realistic, it’s unlikely. It is gratifying to hear that Peter Jackson opposed killing off one of the four hobbits in The Lord of the Rings, despite pressure from producers.
In order to promote their new podcast, The Friendship Onion, actors Dominic Monaghan and Billy Boyd, who played Merry and Pippin in the film adaptation of The Lord of the Rings, spoke about director Peter Jackson facing pressure to deviate from J.R.R. Tolkien’s original story and include scenes of hobbit violence. However, Jackson ultimately stayed true to the source material and ensured that all the hobbits survived until the end of the story.
“I’m relieved that didn’t happen, because I would have been the one. Without a doubt,” Monaghan shared with IGN. “There’s no chance they would have killed off Frodo and Sam, leaving only Merry and Pippin. Pippin’s story with Gandalf is too significant. It would have certainly been me.”
He stated that Pete’s decision to adhere closely to the original text was appropriate and he is grateful that it was not changed.
To give Jackson the benefit of the doubt, there are many events taking place in the latter part of the Lord of the Rings that do not require any additional deaths – Frodo and Sam fighting Orcs in Mordor, Denethor’s outburst on top of the white city of Minas Tirith, and Merry and Éowyn’s defeat of the Witch-king of Angmar. However, The Hobbit takes a different approach, incorporating extraneous elements like an elf-dwarf romance, Thranduil’s ability to conceal his scars with magic (which is not mentioned in the book), and a large number of goblin subordinates who seem to serve no purpose other than to lengthen the story into a trilogy. Despite this, the situation could have been much worse.
Thankfully, the slightly younger Jackson still respected Tolkien’s original writing enough to understand that killing off characters for the sake of it is not always the solution, especially when working with a lengthy novel where the protagonist (Gandalf) already experiences one of the most well-known death-and-resurrection sequences in English literature. Would it truly have made a difference if Merry had perished on the Pelennor Fields (as there is no other natural place in the story for the mischievous Brandybuck to meet his end), or if Samwise Gamgee had not managed to return home after heroically guiding Frodo to Mount Doom?
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The truth is that fans would still be complaining about it now, more than two decades later. Just as there are those of us who wish – in retrospect – that Han Solo was still around to take one look at the latest generation of Star Wars film-makers, with their rubbish attempts at sacrilegious retrofitting, and feed them direct to the Rancor.
Source: theguardian.com
