Books to Movies: The Desolation of Smaug, Mirkwood, More on Pacing, What to Keep, What to Ignore

The Mirkwood scenes keep the fairy-tale dreamlike tone from the book while moving much more quickly. They also link the spiders more directly to Dol Gulder, underscoring Thandruil's failure to act. 

And they introduce the Tauriel/Kili romance. I have mentioned elsewhere why I'm a fan--though I wish the movie had paid the romance off better (not necessarily happier, just better). I will discuss the trilogy's ending more later. 

The Wood Elves are great characters in general: "less wise and more dangerous," as both Beorn (in the movie) and the narrator (in the text) state. The Elf King, Thranduil, played by Lee Pace, is a fantastic damaged leader. 

The conflict between him and Thorin is more direct in the movie than in the book but the dispute over gems is there plus the sense of long-held grievances and lifelong distrust: "Take him away...even if he waits a hundred years...I'm patient. I can wait."

In the book, Thorin and the other dwarfs are separated during their imprisonment. The others don't know what happened to Thorin, and Bilbo carries messages between him and the others. He also reconnoiters over several weeks and waits until the feast to free the dwarfs. 

The movie speeds everything up.

Frankly, the Mirkwood sequence is one of the best in all the films with excellent pacing. It also has one of my favorite "nope, Martin Freeman doesn't need a voice over" scenes when Bilbo realizes he failed to get a barrel for himself. 

Even the chase-chase-chase scene doesn't bother me. The dwarfs escape; the elves chase them; Azog and his people join in to get the dwarfs but end up inviting the elves' ire. The sequence is engaging, has a point, has mini-emotional arcs, and is actually fun to watch. It also brings several plots together, and there's no breakaway until the dwarfs get free. Then, the movie cuts to Gandalf.

Generally speaking, the action from Beorn through to the barrels is some of the best in the trilogy! The choices of what to keep and what to discard and what to speed up are very smart.

In sum, I think there are several reasons for the apparent seamlessness: 

1. What happens next is naturally what would happen next, including Tauriel and Kili's conversations. 

2. The characters' personalities--specifically Thranduil, Thorin, and Bilbo--are well-established enough to explain certain actions and reactions. Everyone behaves believably. 

3. The main characters remain the center without feeling "showcased," so Bilbo's reaction to the ring in Mirkwood--a scene where he is separated again from the others--feels in pace with the rest rather than a breakaway. 

4. The barrel-chase scene, again, highlights personality rather than being just a bunch of people getting felled by axes and falling into water. It even has some humor, as with Bombur's barrel act! 

Consequently, The Desolation of Smaug, extended version, is the one DVD set of Jackson's movies I purchased for myself. I consider the piece fairly high quality as an actual movie.

Books to Movies: Out of the Frying Pan, Into the Fire, or, The Non-Mary Sue Makes Choices

I consider the entire goblin-warg-trees sequence in The Hobbit somewhat random, both in the book and in the movie. However, if one is Jackson, one certainly wouldn't remove it! 

And I think Jackson uses it well to create character growth (as opposed to a bunch of action moments strung together). Specifically...

Thorin faces down Azog and fails. Kudos! Thorin is not a Mary Sue, and Azog needs to be worthy of all the hand-wringing. 

Literature Devil correctly presents the Mary Sue as a character that has no flaws and doesn't learn or grow or change. Everything is simply handed the Mary Sue. The universe bends to the Mary Sue's convenience.

My personal definition of a Mary Sue is that a Mary Sue resists taking risks that could result in unforeseen outcomes. That is, part of the allure of the Mary Sue--I'm guessing--is the non-risk, the desire for a character to have everything and to not have to live with decisions that will, in reality, cut off other avenues (if I live in Portland on the non-Old Port side, I'm not living on the waterfront or in the center of Boston--not with the kind of money I make in the profession I choose to pursue). 

From a narrative point of view, the Mary Sue is a waste of a viewer/reader's time. A character that doesn't choose, who simply goes along with the "correct way of thinking," who never has to back a position and maintain it without accolades...that character is boring and not truly a character. 

Jackson, a decent storyteller, gives Bilbo several defining moments, times when he chooses to act. The moments increase in difficulty, problem-solving, and consequences. Not killing Gollum and helping Thorin are good ones. They are also mostly emotional and instinctual. Later, Bilbo will make more thoughtful choices, leading eventually to the troubling ethical choice to take the Arkenstone. 

A well-crafted character makes choices and lives with them. 

Bilbo owns his decisions, so in LOTR, he apologizes to Frodo for choices he made over 50 years earlier. From an objective point of view, not only was Bilbo justified in his decisions regarding Gollum, Gandalf implies that Bilbo was "meant to find the ring." 

But the justifications and theological implications don't matter. (Nothing is gained by blaming God.) And that perspective comes from Tolkien (as well as Jackson). Tolkien continually underscores the lack of sure knowledge in his texts. Even people like Gandalf and Galadriel cannot see into the future. Belief does NOT equal instant answers and "I've got it all pegged" ideologies. Nothing is certain. Nothing is set. Nobody can guess the end. 

The most anyone can do is the best they can manage in the moment. The subsequent decisions might be right. They might be wrong. They might be best. They might be mistakes. The point is not that the decisions are PERFECT because the character is PERFECT. The point is, a well-crafted character takes responsibility (or learns to take responsibility) for those decisions. "These are mine."

Bilbo's decision in the goblin-warg-trees movie scene, right or wrong, resolves the Bilbo-Thorin conflict that underscores the first movie of The Hobbit trilogy. A resolution of some type must occur--not simply the end of the first leg of the journey--since the audience needs to be sent away feeling that the movie accomplished something. Bilbo and the dwarfs are now a united group, and the dwarfs have proven they are a fighting force (they seemed a bit rusty before). In addition, Thorin will now trust Bilbo's assessments--until the final movie.

LOTR--The Book This Time--The Eagles

The eagles show up in The Hobbit and in The Lord of the Rings as eucatastrophic figures. The term is Tolkien's, so couldn't he have used the eagles to fly Frodo into Mordor (not just out)?

No.

Breathable airspace is breathable airspace even in Middle-Earth, and Tolkien kept his fantasy world as close to realism as possible. Magic supplements--never replaces--the plausible action of Middle-Earth.

In other words, eagles could never fly higher than Winged Nazgul. Or faster.

Eagles are also not indestructible as the Battle of the Five Armies (both book and movie versions) indicate. They can be killed by ground weaponry (i.e. arrows) and certainly other winged creatures. Plus Sauron's giant great eye has power of its own: call it an anti-missile defense system. In sum, Mordor is fairly immune to flying stuff. The eagles would be spotted immediately.

Gandalf and Elrond's entire plan rests on secrecy. Sauron must never suspect, even for an instant, that the Fellowship's goal is to destroy the ring. The moment he did, Sauron would naturally block access to the volcano, both from the ground and from the air. He would not "systematically empty Mordor," a process that allows Frodo and Sam some degree of freedom as they creep across Mordor's landscape.

Of course, this begs another question: Is it believable that Sauron would never suspect that his enemies intend to destroy the ring?

Yes, it is.

When reading about WWII, one becomes aware of how much the Nazis believed in their own untouchability. Note, I wrote, "Nazis," not the German army or, for that matter, the German submarine commanders. The German army and navy were composed of a mix of good and bad and indifferent leaders like in any nation's military. (And many of them despised Hitler.)

It was Hitler--and Hitler's paranoia--that insisted on maintaining constant wireless communication with the German military, a state of affairs that led to the British eventually breaking Enigma. It was Nazi wishful thinking that led to the bizarre and successful career of double-agent Garbo.

The Crossing by Peter Fiore, a more realistic portrayal

than Leutze's famous painting.

To back up to a group of far less fanatical--and far less degenerate--commanders, British complaisance allowed George Washington to escape New York and led to the completely unanticipated rebel attack (and victory) on Trenton on Christmas Day. A severely diminished army, the American rebels nevertheless routed the surprised Hessians, incurring for the Americans only 2 deaths (both from frostbite).

It is easy in hindsight to see the obvious (and I'm sure if Sauron had lived, heads would have literally rolled), but Sauron's weakness is his inability to believe that anyone would actually destroy the ring. Although he captures and tortures Gollum, he misses what Gandalf and Elrond have not: Gollum may be obsessed with the ring, but he lived for generations under the mountains without feeling compelled to do much more with it than catch orcs to eat. Gollum, however corrupted, has the same stamina and indifference to power that make Bilbo and Frodo good bearers.

Sauron isn't totally imperceptive: should Aragorn, Galadriel, Boromir, even Gandalf--any of his "real" rivals--don the ring, they would sooner or later be drawn into the dark. They might momentarily eclipse Sauron (hence his worries about Aragorn); in the long run, however, they would be drawn to his ways: dominion over the lives of others. A military rival is something Sauron dreads yet something he can handle.

Consequently, Sauron reads in Gollum the very thing he sees in others and himself: desire for the ring. He fails to notice the intrinsic toughness that will eventually undo him. Gollum, however ruined by the ring, is hobbit-like enough to eventually care only about wearing it, not wielding it over others. And that indifference to power is something Sauron cannot comprehend.

"The Lord of the Rings--The Book This Time" posts address the following topics:

Galadriel 

Boromir 

Orcs 

Fatty Bolger et al. 

Poetry 

War 

The Ring! 

Frodo

Mordor

and Frodo as True Hero

LOTR--The Books This Time--Sauron's War

SAURON'S WAR

Sauron's war on Middle Earth is somewhat more complicated than indicated in the movies. Sauron does not just attack Minis Tirith. His war takes place on three fronts, a familiar concept to a writer who had seen both World War I and II.

Excluding the war on Rohan (which is effectively won by the "Allies" by the end of The Two Towers), Sauron attacks Minis Tirith, Lothlorien & Mirkwood, and the country of Erebor (which includes Dale). The latter "front" is why a prescient Gandalf is so eager to oust Smaug in The Hobbit.

Tolkien discusses the three fronts of the war in his "appendices". And the novels hint at some of the events.  However, Tolkien utilizes his third-person narration with great caution, only occasionally breaking the current viewpoint to inform us of events in other locations. Otherwise, what a group of characters knows is only what can be known by that group of characters in that area in that moment.

Because Middle Earth is BIG, something that Tolkien never, never, never forgets.

Reading The Lord of the Rings is rather like reading about space--one is struck over and over by distance. When Gondor calls for Rohan's aid, it takes several days for the Rohan riders to get to Gondor. It takes Sam and Frodo nearly a week to cross Mordor. Consequently, there is little chance for people in one location to know what is occurring in another location--no satellite imagery, folks!

This is true even for the bad guys, which is a refreshing change from the omniscient bad guy that pervades so much current media. Sure, Sauron is evil. But he is as bound to the confines of his area as much as anyone else.

This is important and one place where Jackson makes a "mistake"*. At the end of The Two Towers movie, Frodo comes face to face with a Nazgul. He doesn't put on the ring, but Nazgul can (semi)sense the ring even when it isn't being worn (the Nazgul have left Mordor to attack Gondor by the time Frodo and Sam enter it). So the Nazgul (and Sauron) would know that the ring had arrived in Gondor. Yet in The Return of the King movie (as in the books), Sauron operates on the assumption that the ring is in Rohan.

Of course, in the movies, the viewer is led to believe that Rohan and Gondor and Mordor are practically next door to each other. In the books, Rohan is far enough away from Mordor that the ring's location pushes up Sauron's time table. He starts his war early because he thinks the ring has not yet arrived in Gondor, and he wants to retrieve it before it arrives there.

So, it's a "mistake." However, at this point, it is important to remember . . .

*MOVIES ARE NOT BOOKS*

One difference between books and films (there are many) is that visuals matter. I know that sounds obvious, but it leads to changes that upset readers. In a book, extra characters can appear and disappear, and nobody cares. In a book, a throw-away line can reference actions in other areas, and again, nobody cares. A book can also cover great distances in a single paragraph.

But do those things in a movie, and the audience will expect the character, reference, or distance to be paid-off. That is, the character, reference, or distance will begin to matter more than it should. Consequently, it must be excised in order to make the movie work.

It is not that movies are "simpler" than books. It is that movies are complex in a different way. Rather than expansion of events and characters (more, more, more), the audience is given depth of moments. In the books, for instance, we know Gimli and Legolas become friends through a series of events; for example, in Lothlorien, Legolas begins to take Gimli with him during his explorations.

The first movie can't shows us all that--Gimli and Legolas's adventures would be their own movie! Instead, it relies on moments: my favorite is when Gimli and Legolas are on the river; when Gimli praises the Lady Galadriel, Legolas smiles to himself. It is infinitely touching and says all we need to know about that relationship.

So I don't fault Jackson for ignoring the distances which Tolkien sticks to so assiduously--it's not like an audience wants to watch Rohan decide to respond to the fires getting lit and then . . .

Ho hum. "Are we there yet?"