on Aragorn by cavalry Orcs riding wolflike Wargs, leaving him wounded and unconscious. The entire episode is a digression from the main story; Shippey suggested it was inserted to provide more of a role for the beautiful but distant Elf-woman Arwen, who helps to bring Aragorn back to life. Transformations of structure Film-makers can transform the structure of a book to clarify the film's action; such transformations may necessitate further changes when story elements are tightly woven together by the plot. Jackson decided to make use of some of the "history" (events long before the main action of The Lord of the Rings, described in the appendices and recalled in dialogue in the Council of Elrond, midway through the first volume) in a dramatic film prologue. It begins with Sauron's forging of the Ring in the Second Age, his overthrow by an alliance of Elves and Men, and the taking of the Ring by Isildur, a distant ancestor of Aragorn. This resolves a major problem for the film-maker in the narrative, namely that Tolkien tells much of the history through "talking heads", reflecting long after the events on what they meant, and violating the basic "show, don't tell" principle of film. A major structural change was Jackson's decision to abandon Tolkien's interlacing structure (entrelacement) and replace it with a story told in chronological order, with intercutting between characters in different places at the same time. This may make the narrative easier to follow, but it allows the audience to know more than the characters do, undercutting the feeling that choices must be made based on personal courage in the face of incomplete knowledge. One of the scriptwriters, Philippa Boyens, stated that the trilogy was simply their interpretation of the written work. Jackson asserted that it would not be possible to film a straight retelling of the story on screen, and said of his version "Sure, it's not really The Lord of the Rings … but it could still be a pretty damn cool movie." Other scenes have necessarily been adjusted to handle the effects of cuts and other changes. The death of the Wizard Saruman is moved to his fortress of Isengard and to an earlier time, as the end-of-book action on returning to the Hobbits' home the Shire is omitted. Since, too, the Hobbits failed to visit the Barrow-downs and so didn't pick up ancient blades from the Barrow-wight's