The Movie and the Book

The Old Forest

This entire chapter was left out of the film. A brief description of what it contains is provided below.

Instead of travelling by road, the hobbits decided to travel through the Old Forest to avoid pursuit. They all took ponies with them. The old forest was known to be a dangerous place at night but they thought it would be safe during the day. It was full of living trees that had been known to attack the shire in the past. A long hedge ran along the eastern edge of Buckland as a defence, though Merry knew of a little known way under the hedge.

After a largely unpleasant walk through the forrest, they came under the spell of an old willow tree (referred to as Old Man Willow). The tree put them to sleep and captured Merry and Pippin. After Frodo and Sam failed to free them they were rescued by Tom Bombadil who was able to overcome the power of the tree's spell. They then followed Tom to his home on the edge of the Forest.

Part of this section was moved to the Two Towers movie. In the extended version of the film, there is an additional scene where Merry & Pippin were caught by a tree in Fangorn Forrest and were rescued by Treebeard (rather than Tom Bombadil).