I get why it’s easier due to time constraints and the comfort of a modern audience, but the lotr movies recontextualizing Sam and Frodo as good friends at the beginning of fellowship rather than master and servant does SUCH a disservice to their relationship and completely steam rollers over the inherent class divide that is an implicit point of tension throughout the books.
Sam is the only lower class hobbit of the main four and as such he holds himself at a distance from the others, and puts them—especially Frodo—up on a pedestal. From birth, Sam has grown up in a world where he’s less than the gentlehobbits. His father tells him he’s reaching above his station for learning to read, no his purpose is to serve his betters. And the other hobbits aren’t immune to this mentality. Iirc there’s scene in fellowship where where pippin treats Sam more like a pack mule than a friend.
Even in Mordor, Sam constantly refers to Frodo as his master. They are at the end of the world and they are STILL not equals. Sam clings to that normalcy of the Shire but that normalcy entails holding onto a world where he’ll always be less than Frodo. Again and again he sacrifices his own safety and comfort for Frodo—giving the last of the water to Frodo, refusing to eat, literally planning to kill himself when Frodo is “killed” by Shelob.
We can talk all day about Sam Gamgee and devotion—a devotion that IS genuine—but you miss a lot when you don’t factor in the hobbits’ unequal social status. This is something that they do overcome—I’d argue they return to the Shire as equals. Hell, Sam subsumes Frodo’s social status when Frodo leaves the shire. One of the draws of their story to me is watching this superficial master-servant relationship grow into a very genuine love and friendship between equals.
The class divide is uncomfortable. It was always uncomfortable, and at the end of the day I feel the movies lose so much by shying away from that discomfort.


















