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: 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...