Adapting your Book: The Fellowship of the Ring

In my copy of The Fellowship of the Ring there are almost 400 pages to describe the first step to Frodo’s epic journey. For the most part there is no way that a 2+ hour movie can fully describe a 400 page book. Filmmakers would have a difficult time adapting this into a movie due to the mountains of detail, inner thoughts, and subplots they would have to sift through to decide what they want to incorporate or throw out.

I have almost made it to chapter five and already I have begun to notice something’s that would have to be cut down or cut out completely in order to keep the movie exciting and fast paced. First and for most, the years Frodo spends in the Shire after Bilbo leaves will have to be either removed or cut out. It would take up too much time and bore the audience. I personally wouldn’t mind that change, that entire part of the novel was hard to read and extremely boring with little or no importance to the rest of the novel.

Next, the time Frodo spends traveling from the Shire to his new home in Bucklebury would have to be cut down to more than half of the actual time. This would exclude the breaks they took and some of the side characters they meet on the way. This is slightly upsetting to me because for the first time in the book things are finally starting to pick up. Things are getting interesting and exciting! But when you are watching the movie you wouldn’t feel this because you didn’t have to work your way through 30+ pages to get there.

Some scenes that are essential to keep based on what I have read so far would be all three scenes with the Black Riders. It is the first time as readers that we experience how dangerous Frodo’s journey actually is, it instills fear in him and his companions and gives them a reason to look over their shoulders. These encounters speed up the novel and make you want to keep turning the page. In the movie this should be one the first times you’re actually weary of something and it should have you biting your nails as you watch Frodo and the others hide in the bushes. It is necessary that you have all the times the Black Riders catch up to them because it not only shows how close to danger they are but how incredibly LUCKY the hobbits are to keep evading them. A theme that is present in both the prequel and the rest of this trilogy.

Mrs. Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children

Mrs. Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children

The ultimate fan experience is finally here! Follow Jacob’s footsteps and explore around Mrs. Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children. This house turned museum is an exact-replica of the Peculiar’s house, complete with pictures, furniture and the strange items they left behind. A walk through museum of Mrs. Peregrine’s home would be a perfect way to relive Jacobs unique and peculiar journey. It also helps bring the reader closer to the characters and help really bring the book to life. The house was one of the most important settings in this book and many people (including Jacob and myself) wouldn’t mind having to live there. As Jacob describes it, there is a happiness in the air that relaxes you and makes you feel like you can spend years there and never be bored.

In Mrs. Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children the main character, Jacob, sets out to discover the secrets in his grandfather’s past after he is brutally killed by a terrifying creature only he can see. The only person who might be able to help him is the mysterious Mrs. Peregrine, who might not even be alive. After following the clues he sets out to a small Welsh Island, where he starts looking for the woman. After asking around he is told that the orphanage was bombed many years ago and there were no survivors. Ever determined, Jacob sets out anyway through the dangerous swamp area. When he comes upon the orphanage he is devastated to find it in even worse condition than he had imagined, “[A] doorless doorway, bearded with vines, gaping and black; an open mouth just waiting to swallow me. Just looking at it made my skin crawl” (Riggs 54). But nothing is ever as it seems.

The stories his grandfather had told him as a child, about the strange children come back to him as he finds a trunk full of similar photographs. Jacob is slowly becoming less and less sure that they had been photocopied when the silence of the empty house is broken.

The Peculiar children, the ones that had been a part of his childhood bedtime stories for years, never actually left the house. They find him rummaging around in the wreckage of the old house mistaking him for his late grandfather, Abe. “I recognized them somehow, though I didn’t know where from [...] Then It clicked. The pictures strewn before me, staring up at me just as the children stared down. Suddenly I understood. I’d seen them in the photographs” (Riggs 78).

The children were alive and they take Jacob into a whole new world, “I gazed at wonder- not because it was awful, but because it was beautiful. There wasn’t a shingle out of place or a broken window. Turrets and chimneys that had slumped lazily on the house I remembered now pointed confidently toward the sky. The forest that had seemed to devour its walls stood at a respectful distance” (Riggs 93). Jacob is suddenly thrust into an adventure he isn’t sure he is ready for, but with the help of his new friends he can dare to hope to make it out of this strange and frightening experience alive.

 

I would recommend this book for ages 14 and up because of language and frightening situations. This book is filled with suspense and Riggs uniquely uses pictures to help make his point. This book is promised to keep you on the edge of your seat and biting your rails, waiting for the hammer to fall.