How Peter Jackson Got The Ents Wrong

In this video we explore what the Lord of the Ringd Movies got wrong about the Ents, as well as examine their impact on the popular imagination as well as what the Ents were actually like based on Tolkien's writings!

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Lament of the Ancients by Asher Fulero

[InkandFantasy]

By the way guys, by trees being alive or not I mean them being sentient and conscious!!!

[frggdeckkkydexhhgg]

Treebeard said, that trolls were created in mockery of ents. Like even Morgoth couldn’t create a goober named Bert out of a tree stump. It makes sense, that ents were a distinct species.

[Sgrunterundt]

The ents don't have beds to sleep in. Treebeard stands up to sleep, he is surprised at first that Merry and Pippin want to lay down to sleep. He lays down on the bed to stay awake while they talk.

[circedelune]

He also got elves wrong, and consequently everyone else gets them wrong. To this day, you’ll hear how elves are supposed to be stoic, nearly emotionless. That is the exact opposite of what Tolkien said. Legolas, for example, is more emotionless than the rest of the fellowship combined. Upon meeting his first elf, Sam said of them that they were not what he expected. They were both so sad and so joyful, so old and so young.

[hakonsoreide]

The image of ents as living trees that move and talk is not the invention of the Peter Jackson films, but had already been solidified in popular culture far longer, being how they are portrayed in Dungeons & Dragons or Blood Bowl, for instance. The popular image of ents is also from Tolkien since it matches his description of the huorns, but at some point ents and huorns simply got conflated.

[pedro-e-o-lobo]

I feel similarly about the balrog. It is represented as this irrational beast, when in fact they are Ainur, full of knowledge and very cunning

[Davy.J.Y]

Just got the Ents wrong? He got a lot wrong, you could create a series of video's about what he got wrong . He also missed out quite a lot from the book . But on the positive side, he created 3 amazing movies that captured the feel of the books.
As movies, they are outstanding .

[PlanetZoidstar]

I can't blame the LOTR movies too much since many pieces of fantasy media already ran with the concept of "Treants" (obviously inspired by the Ents from the books) and "Treants" were commonly depicted as sentient tree monsters.

Just look at the Magic: The Gathering TCG, which started years before the LOTR movies were filmed. Hell I have a 'Top Trumps' collectable card game from the 80's that has a 'Tree Monster' card which is essentially a living tree creature.

So while the LOTR movies may have popularised the idea of "Treant-like Ents" they were hardly the first to depict such creatures in popular culture.

[DavidImiri]

ALL trees are alive. What the Ents are is anthropomorphized. All plants are alive - they just can't walk and talk and think like people. Otherwise an interesting observation.

[swanofnutella]

I got a view of a very Tree-like creature from the books, before the movies came out. There is a lot in the books that allows the reader to infer a thin line between tree and Ent. It's very easy to infer that the Ent-wives and Ents themselves have been morphing into regular trees as magic in middle earth begins to retire.

[burrahobbithalf]

But Tolkien also said that the hobbits didn't even notice Treebeard at first, taking him to be an odd looking stump with two arm like branches. I think the illustration first provided is too man like.

[gvecsfn]

Tolkien developed the name "ent" from the Old English "eoten", meaning giant.
The intended mamal-like ents fit the more general idea of giants that way.
You could even think of the stone giants we briefly see in the Hobbit in a similar way. Maybe it is pushing speculation a bit far, but in a similar way to the ents adopting tree-ish features, perhaps the stone giants were originally similar spirits who adopted the stone-ish features of the mountains.
Not sure how that could fit into the larger Legendarium, but I've always enjoyed the mysterious presence of the stone giants that way.

[DarthX]

Beyond the movies, from dnd to homm, many fictions had humanoid trees (trents beings the usual name) that were clearly based on the ents and predate the movies. The many descriptions of tree like traits as opposed to the single description of treebeard's smooth skin would point someone to have an image of a tree looking creature in mind. From looking like a tree to being portrayed like a tree there is but one step that everyone seams to have done.
Leshy of slavic mythos do have the same treatment.

[LC-wvtz]

I don't know I think you are reaching a bit. The truth of the matter is that Tolkien does not give specific and detailed physical descriptions of a lot of creatures or really anything in the book. You pointed out the passage describing Treebeard. All we get told is that the skin looks like grey gnarled bark. So much so that the hobbits cannot tell whether or not it's his body or if he is wearing some kind of bark/wooden clothing. And then, as the arms travel further out from the body that tough gnarled bark gives way to smoother skin. Then we basically get told that he has mossy/twiggy beard and very striking eyes and that's about it.

The hobbits didn't say he looked like a man that was wearing bark and wood and leaves. The hobbits didn't say it looked like a tree whose branches formed into limbs and move either. The book does constantly compare how similar ents and trees are, though. Ents can "fall asleep" and become like trees. Trees can "wake up" and be like ents. This gives the impression that if a tree "woke up" and started moving and talking it would be very much like an ent... and it makes it seem like if an ent just stopped moving it would be very much like a tree.

The truth us the description isn't specific enough for us to really know. It's up to the reader to imagine. I think the Jackson interpretation is a perfectly understandable way to envision the the Ents given the sparse description we have in the books. Save for the specific detail that at least Treebeard's hands and lower arms would have smoother more skin like covering than bark. The other ents are not really described at all, but it's just said they resemble specific species of trees. It's left up to the reader toimagine what that really means.

[noelcastillo]

There is no film evidence that Peter Jackson made Ents into talking trees, if people think that, they are clearly not fantasy fans yet. I think you missed the mark here, In the world of art direction, treebeard had already been drawn and painted by many artist for decades before these movies were made. Peter Jackson makes it clear that his art direction recognizes artists like Alan Lee and Ralph Bakshi. The imagery of Ents had already evolved through games likes dungeons and dragons back in the 70s and 80s. Film is a visual medium, and if its aware of the media around it, its message delivers better. The book does what the book does best, add nuanced information, and the trilogy does what movies do best, immerse you in the core plot.

[TranscendentLion]

Great observations - I hadn't really thought of this before, but I can definitely see the sense behind it. A point that occurred to me while watching this is the slight change in description of the Ents from guardians (when they first appeared in Middle-earth) to shepherds (as they were in the Third Age), which could indicate a change in behaviour of the trees themselves, and perhaps an increase in populations of Huorns.

[fundorgon]

I don't really see what the fuss is. To be honest, Peter Jackson needed to communicate a lot of things very quickly in order to tell something approaching the story of lord of the rings within the run time of a film, a runtime, which is notably longer than most blockbuster Films. Personally, I have spent a lot of time subjecting Jackson's work to scrutiny and nearly every time I find that it comes out splendidly well when viewed through the lens of a screenplay.

What I'm trying to say is every character needed to have a distinct visual language and a musical language to accompany that, perhaps the greatest thing about the trilogy is the harmony between Howard shore and Jackson's edit. I think that the standard edit (Non-Extended version) is realistically about as good as you could ever achieve in a film, still to this day. Totally outstanding and unbelievable.

I'm aware that bias can always creep in and I really have subjected these films to a lot of scrutiny and for that I thank you but I think the choice to make the ents how they were in the film is of course a creative decision and within the context of the films themselves, I view it as a very respectful, creative decision, as many of Jackson's decisions were.

[NoPantsBaby]

But the books also repeatedly talks about how Ents, when growing to old and weary, take root and become as no different from the other trees. So this is weird if a sleepy Ent can so thoroughly resemble a tree they are indistinguishable when they then also have to be magical fairy people.

‘Some of my kin look just like trees now, and need something great to rouse them; and they speak only in whispers. But some of my trees are limb-lithe, and many can talk to me."

Trees have sexes and you can try all you want but without a female and male tree you won't get any fruit from some species. No Entings if you wish. The tree and the Ent being the same but different is like how the Chimpanzee and the Human are both hominids.



Peter Jackson didn't get them wrong. He took an artistic choice to visually portray them as tree people. As the opposite spectrum of Smooth skinned tree sheperd vs treefied ent.

[TheFriendlyAnarchist]

They don’t need to be mammals to require entwives. Trees often require males and females to reproduce.

They also sometimes require another tree of a similar but still distinct variety to bear fruit.

[RainerLP]

Aren't they described to look like a tree stump rather than a tree?
if you look at the pictures in the video where they are shown "how Tolkin intended", you could see why they would be mistaken for a tree stump but not for a tree.