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.

Books to Movies: A Short Rest and a Great Setting

These posts examine the often necessary changes that occur between mediums: books to movies to radio drama. I am using Tolkien's The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings to make my comparisons. 

"A Short Rest"

Three differences between the book and the movie:

1. The elves in the book and radio drama are mysterious, hidden, and whimsical, not noble irked warriors. Jackson took the elves from The Lord of the Rings as his baseline here, which I think was wise.

 

2. Galadriel, of course, does not show up at Rivendell in The Hobbit. But I appreciate her appearance in the movie. One of my favorite scenes is her interaction with Gandalf. As preparation for The Lord of the Rings, the various arguments made by all the parties--Saruman, Gandalf, Elrond, and Galadriel--is quite illuminating.

 

The appearance of Galadriel is not as unbalanced as it sounds. In fact, the Rivendell sequence is one of the most seamless, possibly because the action is confined to a single location. It brings together at least two of Jackson's arcs without much fuss (discoveries related to Smaug plus the problem of the Necromancer). It also explains why the dwarfs and Gandalf are temporarily separated.

 

2. In the book, the dwarfs don't protest Gandalf's decision to take them to Rivendell. In the movie, Thorin would prefer to avoid it.

 

The tension between Thorin and Elrond exists in the book and is generally well-handled in the movie. I especially get a kick out of the "intellectual" elves and the frat-boy shenanigans of the dwarfs. Aiden Turner, who could easily have been cast into either group, has such a boisterous, rowdy time as a dwarf, the audience is convinced, "Yeah, these are the guys to root for."

 

A note about voice overs. 

 

I generally vote against them. I think a movie is supposed to be a visual achievement. 

 

So...in the Rivendell chapter, Tolkien gets meta for a moment and comments that good times "are soon told about and not much to listen to; while things that are uncomfortable, palpitating, and even gruesome may make a good tale and take a deal of telling anyway."

 

Yet SHOWING those good times is necessary to establish what Bilbo misses and what the dwarfs are fighting for. And I will say--as comes up with Merry, Pippin, and Boromir--that Jackson exercises a skilled and light hand when it comes to "showing" good stuff. That is, he devises scenes that quickly convey that the dwarfs are a rowdy, happy group who stick together (preparing us for Thorin's later out-of-sync behavior) and that Bilbo likes Rivendell. Bilbo will naturally return there for his retirement.

 

The setting is really, honestly, something else. It achieves Miyazaki's "I want to live there" levels of enchantment, one of the best-conceived settings within both franchises. Kudos to the artists and designers!

 

But the action must continue--which involves the Misty Mountains and Bilbo's encounter with Gollum.

Books to Movies: Roast Mutton, Arcs, Cuts, and Pacing

The warg was named Daisy by Manu Bennett.

These posts examine the often necessary changes that occur between mediums: books to movies to radio drama. I am using Tolkien's The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings to make my comparisons. 

"Roast Mutton" 

In the trilogy, the travel sequence from The Shire to Rivendell introduces Azog the Goblin, who is mentioned in the original text but does not make an appearance there. The idea is that the kingly hero--Thorin--needs a foe, so in the final movie, he isn't battling amorphous goblins but a clear antagonist. I don't consider Jackson's decision here wrong. For one, he relies on Tolkien's material, giving the dwarfs a history that stretches beyond this single adventure. (Moria will continue to haunt their story.) However, I never really got into the Azog arc. In terms of moving around events and providing background to the larger problem, I found the Necromancer plot far more engaging (more to follow).

The chapter, of course, focuses on the trolls who turn to stone, and the sequence is lovingly rendered in the movie. It is important for many reasons--for one, it has its own narrative arc. The radio drama also presents the troll arc with little extraneous narration/explanation. That is, the arc has the ability to stand alone. 

 

Jackson, as I've mentioned elsewhere, throws a lot of stuff into The Hobbit. He never forgets the most important Bilbo moments though in the text, Gandalf gets the trolls arguing rather than Bilbo. Still, the change from Gandalf to Bilbo makes for a nice character building moment.

The introduction of Radagast in this part of the movie I find somewhat distracting. However, the expulsion of the Necromancer does occur at this point in Middle Earth's timeline and accounts for Gandalf's behavior on several occasions. The importance of the twin events--expulsion of the Necromancer and confrontation of Smaug--is emphasized in The Lord of the Rings: Elrond and Gandalf and others saw Smaug and the Necromancer as two "fronts" that needed to be dealt with. Confining the Necromancer, Sauron, to Mordor was a stop-gap measure but a necessary one. 

 

It makes the entire trip far more political than the text initially argues--though the political element is there. 

 

But do the additional political elements make for a good movie? 

 

Flemish Giants

If one is going to create a trilogy, there have to be several threads going at once. Jackson has five: Smaug and the mountain, Thorin and Azog, the Necromancer (to which arc, Radagast belongs), Bilbo and the ring, Elvish dysfunctional family life. To his credit, he introduces all of these issues in the first movie although the Elves' dysfunction is mostly implied.

 

Generally, Jackson handles his multiple arcs better than Lucas though there is still some unevenness. I think one reason Jackson manages better than Lucas is that when particular characters are on-screen, he keeps his eyes on where their specific problem/arc will take them next. Lucas, aside from Star Wars IV, seems to get more easily sidetracked. (Film folks, generally speaking, are visually-minded. Lucas may be more abstract-painting-visually-minded while Jackson may be more Pre-Raphaelite-visually-minded: images for their startling effect versus images for the sake of story.)

 

Despite the need for multiple arcs, I'm not sure whether Radagast needed to be introduced so early. The dwarfs, Gandalf, and Bilbo manage to guide the entire first quarter of the movie without problems; their adventures establish that something has gone wrong in Middle Earth ("trolls coming down from the mountains").

The issue here is one of pacing. Tolkien, of course, handled his multiple arcs by telling a straightforward story and putting everything else into footnotes. But even when Tolkien delivers background information in dialog or with a quick paragraph, it is still less distracting than entirely switching scenes. I'm not sure film has a perfect solution here. 

 

Generally, Jackson relies on dialog--Gandalf mentions Radagast to Bilbo--to prepare for the cut. I'm not a huge fan of this approach, but I'm not sure exactly what else a director is supposed to do, other than throw in subtitles: Meanwhile, on the other side of Middle Earth...

Books to Movies: The Unexpected Party

These posts examine the often necessary changes that occur between mediums: book to movie to radio drama. I am using Tolkien's The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings to make my comparisons.

"The Unexpected Party" 

 

All of the dwarfs in the movie are much more good-looking and heroic and rugged than in the book, where they are presented in serio-comedic ways. They are presented serio-comically in the Rankin animation, of which I am also a fan. They are also presented comically (they sound like Muppets)--at least initially--in the radio dramatization, with the exception of Thorin. 

I agree with the decision here to make the dwarfs heroes in their own right rather than clownish figures. Richard Armitage as Thorin glowers as much as book Thorin and has the same sense of his own dignity but more because he is a prince rather than a bombastic politician (princes are easier to like than politicians). As mentioned above, the radio dramatization also makes Thorin a kingly figure in his own right, being voiced by John Justin, a baritone with a commanding voice. 

 

To continue with the movie dwarfs, Kili is hot and Bofur is adorable. And Ken Stott as Balin is thoroughly impressive in his ability to look affable and then stern, rather like Mark Williams as Father Brown.

 

Again, I approve, in part because I like the idea of the dwarfs varying in terms of appearance and background. Just as humans vary considerably in appearance, so do all the other sentient species of Middle Earth. Tolkien wasn't one for pure essentialism (the elves, for instance, are quite distinct in their beliefs, appearance, art/architecture, attitudes, language, and politics). 

 

The dwarfs are also given distinct personalities which, in the book, they gain only incidentally, with Bombur being the most distinct followed by Balin (after Thorin, of course). The movie audience needs to engage with this group of 12+ characters immediately, and it is much easier to engage if they are not "ha-ha" characters--well, not all of them and not all the time. (Even the "ha-ha" characters are given distinct features: an axe in the head, excitable youthfulness, an ear trumpet.)

 

Martin Freeman as Bilbo is, of course, immediately engaging. I had a student who complained about him not being a stout, jolly figure (like Rankin's Bilbo), but other than de-aging Ian Holm, Martin Freeman as Everyman is about as spot-on a casting choice as one can get. (The radio drama engagingly presents Bilbo as a kind of Winnie-the-Pooh character who keeps interrupting the narrator.)

 

The opening scenes of the movie are close to the first chapter, even to the joke about Golf (which, yes, comes from the book). The humor is there as well as the haunting "siren-like" call to adventure. One of my favorite movie scenes is Bilbo leaning against his bedpost while he listens to the dwarfs' song. 

 

He does make the decision to go "on an adventure" himself--rather than being harried into the adventure by Gandalf. Without a voice over--which absence I also agree with--the viewer needs to see Bilbo make the decision, and with a slight turn of his head and curling of his hand, Freeman pulls this off. 

 

The radio drama, of course, relies far more on the voice-over, both by Bilbo and the narrator. However, even there, the voice-over and narrator are not too heavily applied. In fact, the radio drama brings home how "scene-ready" Tolkien's text is. It may not seem that way since it is fairly heavy on exposition. But story with problem starts the book. Story with problem continues it.  

In fact, Jackson COULD have started the trilogy with Freeman and Gandalf as many other versions do. But I appreciate the tribute to Ian Holm as Bilbo.

 

1931-2020

For the Fans: I Like Jackson’s Trilogy, Part I

The banishment of Sauron to Mordor: a scene

referenced in The Hobbit and LOTR, fully 

explored in Jackson's latest trilogy.

Considering how much money Jackson’s Hobbit trilogy has made by now, there are regrettably few people with whom I can share my love of the movies. So to any fans who might read this post, this is for you. (If you want to discourse on how awful it is, there are other websites!)

I like this movie--and Jackson's!

(I prefer "and's" to "or's.")

I recently reread the book (second time in a year; fifth or sixth time in my life so far) and was struck all over again by Tolkien’s plotting and perspective. The book is lighter in tone than the trilogy but not quite as light as criticisms of the trilogy often imply. If you are in search of that particular approach, I recommend the delightful Rankin production—it is a faithful adaptation, tightly plotted, with great songs!

Although aimed at children, the book itself is filled with dark edges. Nothing in the book reaches the sheer exhausting terror and despair of the Mordor chapters in The Lord of the Rings. However, even as a kid, I recognized the unusual anti-hero elements, not to mention the dramatic and shattering chain of events that lead up to the destruction of Laketown and the final battle. The book is remarkably political, a factor that Jackson captures well. Thorin’s fear that the mountain will be overrun by hoarders is justified. At the same time, the people of Laketown have rights to the treasure. The Elf King’s claim, though less meritorious (in the book and in the movie), still carries weight. Tolkien handles the resulting conflict with a deftness that belies its complexity—but the complexity is there.

Likewise, the lightness of Tolkien’s touch is not intended to disguise the greed, anger, fear, and self-interest of many characters. The Elf King is indeed "less wise and more dangerous [than the elves at Rivendell]."  Likewise, the Master possesses a cunning mind (as Baldrick would say). His conman-like assessment of Thorin & Company (it takes one to imagine one) permeates those chapters as they permeate the film, more than validating Jackson’s interpretation of Laketown politics. In fact (speaking of Baldrick), Jackson intelligently gives the Laketown scenes a Monty-Python/Blackadder feel and humor that is somewhat atypical for his films but perfect for the venue (and Stephen Fry). These scenes are very English.

Speaking of Laketown, Jackson is often criticized for adding to/expanding on the book’s material. Since nothing is eliminated, my response here is the same as Frasier’s:

“If less is more, imagine how much more more will be!”

That’s how I feel about the trilogy: Give me The Hobbit plus all the stuff referred to in The Hobbit and LOTR plus Tolkien’s extra material plus the invented stuff Jackson decided to throw in. I’ll take it all!*

Adaptations of a book to film can take several routes: the slideshow or strict rendering (boring), the interpretation (more interesting), the other viewpoint (fascinating), the make-a-place-for-myself (problematic but often insightful), and the “all we used was the title” (pointless). For instance, Howl’s Moving Castle is an interpretation and a make-a-place-for-myself, not a strict rendering. Yet nothing is lost. Hey, it’s Miyazaki!

LOTR, which I greatly enjoy, is an interpretation. With The Hobbit trilogy, Jackson gave himself permission to combine interpretation with another viewpoint (The Hobbit inside Tolkien’s larger universe) plus make-a-place-for-myself.

He had fun! And I am very grateful.

*Even Legolas’s superhuman abilities don’t bother me. In fact, I enjoy the barrel scene as one of Jackson’s few “less is more” action sequences. I’d rather watch a Spiderman leaping on people’s heads for five minutes than people mashing each other with swords for twenty. (Best action scene ever made: John McClane blowing up the building in Die Hard: no muss, no fuss, and it lasts about a minute.)

For the Fans: I Like Jackson's Trilogy, Part II

The final movie captures Bilbo's inner struggles.

Ultimately, the movies are an excellent showcase for Martin Freeman. Throughout the trilogy, Jackson delivers Bilbo's scenes with surprising accuracy (adaptations do involve change!). He is in the movies as much as he is in the book.

Bilbo’s presence in the book ebbs and flows. Tolkien's prose is smooth and unselfconscious: he doesn’t call attention to his own textual strategies. Because so much of the action is delivered through Bilbo’s eyes (Bilbo saw that the dwarfs had . . . ), the reader is left with the impression that Bilbo is doing more than he does in fact do. Many of the chapters use the third person plural almost exclusively: Bilbo and the dwarfs. They . . . Thorin and company . . .

Every place in the book where Bilbo rises to the fore in action, not just voice, appears in the movies. These instances may appear less because, well, more is more. But Jackson never forgets his protagonist. Not only are Bilbo’s scenes rendered, they are often “strictly rendered”: Bilbo and Gollum 's scene is transferred practically verbatim from book to film.*

It would be interesting to see a "book" version of the trilogy, one cut to just Bilbo's scenes (or those that affect him directly). Since all of them are there, the resulting movie might hold together surprisingly well. But then, of course, all the "more" would be gone! I am personally hoping that Jackson puts out a director's cut that expands the trilogy by several hours. My one complaint about Five Armies is that it ends too abruptly--I think Jackson was responding to criticisms that Return of the King had too many endings. Me? I want three or four endings!**

Returning to Bilbo, one major difference between the book and the trilogy is that we don’t hear Bilbo’s inner voice in those scenes where he rises to the fore—which one does with the book. I wonder if Jackson considered (and obviously discarded) a voice-over by Bilbo. If so, I imagine he found no need for it once he watched Martin Freeman on film.

Freeman’s physical acting makes a voice-over unnecessary. In the scene where Bilbo rescues the dwarfs from the Elf King's prison, Freeman conveys Bilbo’s exasperation and sudden confusion (“I forgot to get a barrel for me!”) through physical movement: the tilt of a chin, the hunch of a shoulder, the rise of a foot. But then film is—and should be—about what one sees, not what one hears.

So if you are tired of reading all the negative commentary online (and believe me, there’s plenty of it out there!), rest assured: at least one person loves the book and the trilogy!

--Slight Spoiler--

*In Five Armies, Bilbo’s decision to keep the Arkenstone, then pass it on to Thorin’s enemies plays as large a part as I had hoped it would. Despite the rapid sequence of events—Jackson is tackling multiple storylines at once—the movie conveys the difficulty and pain of Bilbo's decision (in fact, more time is spent on Bilbo making the decision than on carrying it out). The confrontation between Thorin and Bilbo at the gate after Thorin discovers Bilbo's "betrayal" is powerful although I favor the final scene between Bilbo and Thorin as heartbreakingly "true": both Richard Armitage and Martin Freeman deliver their characters' lines from the end of the book with gentle pathos and, in Martin Freeman's case, a boldly different interpretation: masterful performances by both actors.

**Interestingly enough, Five Armies is far more self-consciously thematic than Return of the King. LOTR is message or platitude-oriented: it is always darkest before the dawn; never give up; despair is the worst sin; the smallest person can change the course of history. Five Armies, however, ends with an uneasy peace (as does the book)--a difficult plot to platitudize.

The Mithril coat plus a discussion of values.

In many ways, Five Armies plays the same role in its trilogy as Two Towers except that Five Armies comes at the end of the quest cycle rather than the middle (hence the need for more endings). In a way, Jackson's decision to keep to the book here may have worked against the overall trilogy. I expected a more deliberate bridge of The Hobbit to LOTR; I surmise that Jackson pulled back to satisfy those who accuse him of "marketing" the movies and trying to capitalize off his success with LOTR. (This is a truly weird criticism: of course, Jackson is trying to make money off both trilogies! That's his job. Somebody has to pay WETA--the folks there can't work for free. Most readers don't have several million dollars floating around  with which to mount their own interpretations of Tolkien. Thank goodness somebody does!).

To solve the problem of Five Armies, Jackson threads it with a classic motif: by their fruits you shall know them - or - people show what they care about by what they argue, fight, and die for. Consequently, Thorin's speech to Bilbo at the end is not only a part of the book that had to be included (how I felt going in) but the capstone of a not-too-overly-didactic theme.

The Reimagining of Self: Jackson's Theme for The Hobbit Trilogy

Kili: I saw a fire moon once.*

*Jackson is quite adept at conveying

entire relationships in small scenes. Here,

we realize that Kili and Tauriel have more to

say to each other than to their companions.

The full exchange is below.

Brian Sibley's Official Movie Guide to The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies quotes from concept artist John Howe:

The relationship between Tauriel and Kili is like one of those love stories where people think they are falling in love when, in fact, they are actually falling out of love with everything else around them, and the only sympathetic face is someone who they would never choose in any other circumstances...

Absolutely!

Take Tauriel first. She is an under-appreciated member of an insular society. The only person who seems to comprehend her worth, Legolas, is mute on the subject. She continues to do her job--and do it well--because after all, what else can she do?

And then this dwarf shows up who thinks she is the most impressive person, and woman, he has ever met. (She's just sooo cool!) The actors provide decent sexual tension, and the characters have a nice vibe (not to mention gorgeous music). More importantly, faced with Kili's admiration, Tauriel begins to re-evaluate herself, to question the role into which she has been slated by her king and culture.

She chases after Kili yet in many ways she is chasing after re-definition. When she declares to Bofur, "I'm going to save him," the line is not romantic. Rather, Evangeline Lilly gives it a reverberating pathos that addresses identity without sounding arrogant: I will do this. I can do this. Why did I never realize so before?

As for Kili: He is Thorin's second heir (Fili is the elder of the two). Like Fili, he looks up to his uncle, admiring his strength of purpose and leadership skills. Thorin is a goal-oriented guy! Even at the beginning of the trilogy (and in the book), Thorin comes across as one-idea-ed or tunnel-visioned. This is not necessarily a bad quality, especially when pursuing the seemingly impossible, but it closes him off to outside solutions and makes him susceptible to his grandfather's obsession with treasure.

As in the book, Fili and Kili demonstrate a flexibility of viewpoint lacking in their uncle. For example, they are more accepting and tolerant of Bilbo from the beginning than Thorin. In the movies, as the trilogy unwinds, Kili (representative of the brothers) begins to identify Thorin's inflexibility as a flaw in an otherwise great man. Meeting Tauriel, stepping outside his slated role, lends him the objectivity to voice his worries. He remains loyal to his companions while becoming more likely to question Thorin's course of action. He is in the process--unfortunately never finished--of remaking himself.

Remaking--redefinition--is the theme of the trilogy. Everybody's doing it!

Bilbo  naturally remakes himself, changing into a hobbit who returns home still valuing the comforts of the cozy life yet willing and able to appreciate the dangers he has experienced:

A pivotal moment echoed by the lines below.

Bilbo Baggins: No! I am glad to have shared in your perils, Thorin. Each and every one of them. It is far more than any Baggins deserves.

Bilbo Baggins: One day I'll remember. Remember everything that happened: the good, the bad, those who survived... and those that did not.

This is the Bilbo who will adopt and raise the near saintly Frodo, who sets out to save not just hobbits but  the entire world. Could (would) Bilbo have done it otherwise?

Legolas, Bard, (Saruman, on the downside), all recast themselves as something not entirely new (they retain their fundamental personalities) but altered, redefined in terms of how they perceive themselves within their own communities.

The remarkable aspect of Jackson's approach to this theme is that the results of such redefinition are epic but the redefinitions themselves are human, ordinary, even small.

"He was my friend," Bilbo says of Thorin, a small declaration in which the entire Fellowship (and the future of the ring) is contained.

Kili and Tauriel's Conversation in the Dungeon:

Kili: Sounds like quite a party you're having up there.
Tauriel: It is Mereth Nuin Giliath; The Feast of Starlight. All light is sacred to the Eldar, but the Wood Elves love best the light of the stars.
Kili: I always thought it is a cold light, remote and far away.
Tauriel: It is memory, precious and pure.
[they look at each other for a moment]
Tauriel: Like your promise.
[she holds out his stone and he takes it back; she turns and looks up]
Tauriel: I have walked there sometimes, beyond the forest and up into the night. I have seen the world fall away and the white light forever fill the air.
Kili: I saw a fire moon once. [as he talks, she sits on the stairs to listen] It rose over the pass near Dunland. Huge! Red and gold it was: it filled the sky. We were an escort for some merchants from Ered Luin; they were trading in silverwork for furs. We took the Greenway south, keeping the mountain to our left, and then it appeared. This huge fire moon lighting our path. I wish I could show you...

For an unalloyed Romeo & Juliet moment (with non-teenagers)

watch this while listening to Billy Boyd's "The Last Goodbye".

Another Female Blogger Talks About Kili and Tauriel!

* Spoilers Ahead*

I must confess that I, along with, I'm sure, many other female Hobbit fans, am a huge fan of the Tauriel-Kili relationship.

Sure Tauriel is an elf and lives with the apparent heart-throb Legolas but he is standoffish and his dad is fairly nuts, and then there's that whole class thing.

Along comes this attractive dwarf who teases her and quotes poetry to her and just, well, talks to her (not at her or about her). On top of all that, he is completely captivated by her from the get-go, impressed by her warrior abilities.

Still, it's the talking to her that impresses me. I mention in my Boromir post that in only a few scenes, Jackson is able to establish that Boromir is a good guy and liked by the hobbits. Jackson does the same thing in The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug with Tauriel and Kili when they discuss the stars and Kili begins to tell Tauriel about his travels. Their easy relationship, their interest in the same things, in each other, is instantly established.

My second favorite scene is when Tauriel heals Kili, not the healing itself though that is lovely, and not Kili's wondering speech ("Do you think she could have loved me?") though that is very touching. It is the scene right before when Tauriel runs into Bofur on the stairs.

She takes the kingsfoil. Bofur says, "What are you going to do?"

"I'm going to save him," Tauriel says.

By themselves, the words could be meant arrogantly or passionately, but Tauriel (Evangeline Lilly) says them like she's found a purpose in life or, rather, like she has found a reason to be a elf. *I* can do this. *I* can do something for him that no one else can. I was right to come.

I have my own opinion about what will happen next (taking the book's ending into consideration) and how all of it will affect Legolas. In any case, I think this is one place where a director's invention is completely merited. Tolkien doesn't give us much on Legolas to explain his background or motivations. Jackson and his fellow scriptwriters have gone a long way toward filling in the gaps.

In the meantime, the audience gets a great romance!

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--Thoughts on Villains and Heroes

(This post is an expansion of a previous post and includes material from that post plus new thoughts.)

Tolkien creates ambiguous villains and flawed heroes.

Take for instance Jackson's brilliant casting of Stephen Fry as the Master of Laketown in The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug. The personality that Tolkien ascribes to the master is fully realized in Stephen Fry (who can capture pompous-political-nabob better than anyone on record).

The Master of Laketown's portrait.

In the book, the master is extremely self-serving and coolly political. He funds Thorin's expedition because he believes that the dwarfs are impostors who will die in the wilderness as soon as they run out of food. He doesn't for a moment expect them to succeed! However, despite disbelieving their claims, he sees no reason not to capitalize on their popularity! What a politician!!

Jackson simply builds on this--it is ALL in the book. And Tolkien put it there. Not all his villains may be as subtly drawn as the Master. But his heroes are real heroes, not cookie-cutter heroes-as-already-constituted (just add fairy dust). They battle doubt (Sam), indecision (Aragorn), lack of resources, pride, uncertainty, death (Gandalf), curiosity (Pippin), fear (Gimli), and even corruption (Frodo). Their heroism lies in their doggedness and persistence.

In Tolkien's world, villains--like Saruman--are those who have given in to (political) fear and self-deceit. Saruman believes that HE can handle Sauron. He will do a little evil, so that in the future he can do good. But of course, all his justifications hide a selfish nature that is willing to push people around, especially if those people are "just" hobbits (see the end of Return of the King, book version).

Tolkien's heroes, on the other hand, are those who manage to stave off dread, no matter how much dread they might feel. One of the most touching parts of Gimli's story occurs when he follows Aragorn and Legolas on the Paths of the Dead. Despite being a mountain dweller, this particular journey terrifies him. And yet he doesn't turn back. Likewise, the terror of Mordor doesn't prevent Frodo and Sam from trudging forward, step by step. Courage isn't the point so much as a refusal to despair.

Tolkien's heroes also show awareness beyond themselves. In the trek across Mordor, Sam has a revelatory moment when he sees the stars through Mordor's smog. He thinks, "Ultimately, the world keeps turning. Everything we are doing will be over and done with. Life continues." Sam is experiencing less a warm and fuzzy "This too shall pass!" moment and more a cold realization that historically speaking, he and Frodo don't matter all that much. It is an astonishing piece of objectivity smack dab in the middle of the worst trial of the trilogy.

Most importantly, Tolkien is merciful. Heroes don't have to be heroic all the time. They often fall. Whether they allow themselves to be buried by the fall or not dictates their heroism. Denethor ends a villain, yet Théoden ends a hero. One despairs; the other climbs back on his horse (literally). Likewise, Frodo ends a hero because he remains sane and kind after Gollum takes his finger and the ring ("I'm glad you're with me, Sam Gamgee, here at the end of all things."). Boromir protects Merry and Pippin with his life, willingly confesses his part in the dissolution of the Fellowship, and pronounces his loyalty to Aragorn.

To put all this in the vernacular: Either you get the bear or the bear gets you. Just make sure you end getting the bear.

"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