The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring is the epic first edition in a saga of books with lots of renown to its name. Both the book and the movie are masterpieces for fantasy-oriented people. The original work by J.R.R Tolkien was written in the early 50’s and provided an easy distraction to many people during the period of time after World War II. Tolkien’s story also inspired many fantasy books and even games, like Dungeons and Dragons, to come into existence. The Fellowship of the Ring movie was created in the early 2000’s, but not many people from younger generations have actually read the book in order to make an accurate comparison to the movie. After reading the book, it’s easy to come to the conclusion that the movies were as accurate as possible with the amount of media provided.

There are some things that absolutely needed to be cut from the production of the first movie, The Fellowship of the Rings. For example, there’s a time during the book where an entirely new character gets introduced and helps the party of Hobbits through a haunted forest. Introducing this character made sense in the book, but would have been extremely tedious and all together unimportant if added in the movie. In the book this isn’t at all important to the bigger picture of the plot, but stays true to the map progression of the characters. For example, in the movie we aren’t well acquainted with the map of the world that these characters are traversing through, but in the book it’s something that you frequently flip back to in order to watch the characters’ progression. The removal of a character that helps them through a bit of their journey isn’t all that big of a loss.

The smart removal of plot points does make up for some of the differences between the book and film, but some other changes make the storyline confusing. For example, there’s a point in the book where a large time skip happens. During this time, the main character grows older and even sells his house. This time skip doesn’t really get explained in the movies, which makes the timeline confusing and hard to follow. As a result, the danger in the movies also seems less perilous. However, it’s understandable that some things couldn’t be added or explained more, because the movies already have a long runtime.

The book and movies are masterpieces in their own right and are good together and alone. Tolkien’s original writing is a long journey and something that has to devote a long time to reading. However it’s sorely worth it. On the other hand, if you’re adverse to much reading, the movies are a pretty well done and loyal adaptation to the original books. However, at the end of the day, the book will always be the clear winner when it comes to originality and classicism, but the movies are a good second.