If you discovered The Lord of the Rings when it hit theaters in the early 2000s and never watched Peter Jackson’s trilogy since then, the last time you saw Saruman was at the end of Turn Two. After defeating the Treebeard and his army of Ents, the Wizard, holed up atop Ortank, watched helplessly and panicked as his empire was destroyed.
Indeed, contrary to what we might read in J.R.R. In Tolkien’s work, and what we later saw in the longer version of the saga, Saruman’s real conclusion was simply not in the montage, and the mage did not appear. All in Return of the King.
A decision that Peter Jackson reluctantly made in order not to disrupt the narrative rhythm of his films, and which Christopher Lee, Saruman’s legendary interpreter, found it difficult to swallow.
The latter, an absolute fan of Tolkien’s work, who himself had the privilege of meeting the author in his youth, took his absence from the third part as an insult and therefore boycotted the first part. – The premiere of the movie, it says. Yahoo! Movies.
“They showed us the movies in private and when the third one came, I couldn’t believe my eyes because I wasn’t in it”said Christopher Lee at a meeting at University College Dublin in 2011.
“This scene is one of the most important in the entire trilogy because we see Saruman, the great mortal enemy, the most evil against society. (…) And he wasn’t in the movie. No one would understand.”
Back in 2003, the New Zealand director explained the reasons for his choice on the site Not cool news :
“The problem is that this scene was originally shot for The Two Towers, as it is in the book. But since The Two Towers couldn’t prove the conclusion after 7 minutes from Helm’s Deep, we thought it would be a good idea to save it. This to start Return of the King.”
However, when making the third installment, the director realized that the confrontation with Saruman tended to bring the audience back, re-introducing a situation already resolved in the previous film, instead of moving forward and focusing on the finale. The arc and the showdown against Sauron.
“We reluctantly decided to save the footage for the DVDPeter Jackson said. “Our choice was based on the fact that for most people, Saruman was defeated during the events of Helm’s Deep and the attack of the Ents. We can now move forward and create narrative tension with the return of the king, where the bad guy is Sauron.
As all readers of The Lord of the Rings know, Saruman’s conclusion in Tolkien’s original work was very different from the conclusion we find in Peter Jackson’s longer version. Between the pages of the book, the wizard was killed not on top of his tower, but in the Shire, which he and Grima had tried to enslave earlier.
Long after the fall of Sauron, the Hobbits returned to their home region to find it in the hands of Saruman. After the final battle, it was Grima who ended up stabbing his master in the back (as in the movie) before shooting the hobbit down with an arrow.
(Re)discover all the hidden details in ‘Return of the King’…
Source: Allocine
Rose James is a Gossipify movie and series reviewer known for her in-depth analysis and unique perspective on the latest releases. With a background in film studies, she provides engaging and informative reviews, and keeps readers up to date with industry trends and emerging talents.
