To Kill an Alfrid

Well, it's finally happened. After months of theorizing and speculating, fans of The Hobbit have finally received a list of bonus scenes to expect in the Extended Edition of The Battle of the Five Armies. I don't recall a list like this coming out for any of the previous five Extended Editions, at least not this early. If I'm correct to think that it hasn't been done before, this could serve as further evidence that Peter Jackson was forced to trim down this film far beyond his liking for the theaters.

In any case, here's the list:

• More scenes of Bard attempting to kill Smaug
• More scenes of Smaug destroying Lake-town
• An extended scene of Azog's invasion forces
• Elf archers firing at Orcs, Wargs, and Trolls
• Dwarves with Ballistas firing at Orcs and Trolls
• Dwarven Goat Riders and Rams join the battle to attack Orcs and Wargs
• Funeral of Thorin, Fili, and Kili
• Coronation of Dain II Ironfoot, Now King Dain II Ironfoot
• Bard becoming the new king of New Dale
• Gifts of treasures given to Bilbo, Bard, Thranduil, and the People of Lake-town
• Bilbo and Gandalf revisit the Trollshaws
• An Exchange between Thranduil and Gloin during the battle
• Beorn tortured in Dol Guldor
• Sauron interrogates Gandalf in Dol Guldor
• The death of Alfrid Lickspittle
• More fighting in the city of Dale
• More battle scenes
• The war beasts Azog sends just after the battle begins
• Axe blade removed from Bifur's forehead
• Conversation between Bilbo and Bofur before Bilbo hands over the Arkenstone
• Smaug destroys the Dwarven Wind lance
• Galadriel unveils true the power of her Elven ring, Nenya
• Thorin and Company start counting and assessing their treasure hoard
• Bilbo buries his acorn in Dale
• Beorn brings a dead Thorin II Oakenshield back to the Lonely Mountain
• More graphic and brutal Orc kills 

Most of these scenes seem like promising additions, particularly the ones involving the dwarves from Thorin's Company. The only extra footage of Smaug's attack on Lake-town that I think we need is him destroying the Wind lance to explain why Bard doesn't use it, but if more destruction and attempts to kill him better illustrate the horror of that attack, then I'll take it. Scenes like Beorn being tortured and Bilbo planting his acorn should also be interesting, and it looks like a lot more very welcome closure is in store for the end of this version.

The only scene on this list that I have reservations about, strangely enough, is Alfrid's death.

I've been all over the spectrum with this character since the release of The Battle of the Five Armies. In the span of a few months, I've gone from saying that he shouldn't be disposed of so quickly and that he should get more screentime to saying that his only screentime at all should consist of Bilbo kicking him in the shin. The whole "Alfrid Problem" is just so befuddling because he had so much potential in the second Hobbit film that went utterly wasted in the third, and it leaves many of us scratching our heads about why he was even written into this trilogy.

The question then is why I would take issue with seeing him die if that's pretty much the only gratifying thing he can do at this point. Well, there may be a few answers for that.

First of all, there is a legitimate reason for adding Alfrid's character to the films. Giving the Master of Lake-town an accomplice makes sense from a screenwriting standpoint because it's easier to convey his plans to the audience when he has someone to discuss them with out loud. The puzzlement is why the Master becomes the one to die in the third film's opening while his accomplice gets to stick around afterwards for the majority of the plot. It would be a lot truer to the book if the opposite happened, with Alfrid the watchful manipulator dying in Lake-town and the Master being reduced to a powerless weasel without his aide around to manage things.

The screenwriters wouldn't even have to change all that much; Alfrid could get killed by Smaug right after the Master pushes him off their boat, then Bard's lasso could pull the Master overboard and Smaug could fall on the boat before the Master can return to it to save his gold. The Master could spend the rest of the movie doing the exact same things that Alfrid does, discovering how ineffectual he really is on his own, then decide to skirt off—so to speak—after finding the gold hoard in Dale because wealth was all he ever cared about.

It doesn't make as much sense for Alfrid to have that story arc in the third film because he was never established as being so materialistic before Smaug's attack. He actually suggests dumping some of the Master's gold overboard to lighten the boat during their escape attempt, so it seems somewhat out of character for him to become obsessed with getting his hands on Erebor's gold later. I guess the argument can be made that he starts falling into the same greedy vices as the Master once he comes into his own, much like Thorin does after succeeding Thror, but the movie never indicates that this sort of character development is going on. It almost feels like the roles were the other way around originally and then Alfrid was dumped into the Master's place at the last minute without any other changes being made to those scenes.

That brings me to my first issue with Alfrid's death. In my opinion, if this adaptation is going to give him the Master's story arc, then the least it can do is be true to the Master's arc in the book. Killing Alfrid robs that arc of one of the few things it had in common with the source material. Granted, we don't know what "The Death of Alfrid Lickspittle" entails, if we'll see him get killed during the battle or starve to death in the wilderness like the Master eventually does in Tolkien's writings, but knowing these movies, it's likely that he'll meet a more theatrical demise.

My second issue with Alfrid’s death, which I admit is my own problem, is that I had been very on board with the headcanon that he was actually Grima Wormtongue’s father in the movies. One of the biggest grievances that people have always had with Alfrid is that he’s a knockoff of Wormtongue, so what better solution is there for that resemblance than to make them relatives? It would have explained a few things about Wormtongue too, such as why he has a drastically different appearance from the other Rohan natives, and it would have given fans something neat to further tie the two trilogies together.

Any chance of that being canon dies with Alfrid in the Extended Edition of the third Hobbit movie though, which means we have to go right back to accepting that he looks, sounds, and acts exactly like another Middle-earth character by complete coincidence. In that sense, his storyline is one that the filmmakers might have been better off leaving open-ended.

My third issue comes from looking at the Hobbit films in a wider scope with the Lord of the Rings films. For as much as The Lord of the Rings gets dubbed the darker of the two stories, it leaves surprisingly few casualties on the good guys' side. The only significant, permanent, onscreen deaths that I can think of are Boromir's, King Theoden's, and Haldir's. On the bad guys' side, however, virtually everyone dies. Sure, Shelob lives and some of the orcs escape from that earthquake outside Mordor at the end of The Return of the King, but none of them were really characters that we grew to personally know or hate.

That makes Alfrid's apparent survival in the theatrical cut of The Battle of the Five Armies rather unique. Instead of dying like every other notable antagonist, his comeuppance is running away alone and disgraced with nothing wholesome or meaningful in his future. That's arguably an even worse fate. It's also a much more mature and thought-provoking one when compared to the deaths of the heroes Thorin, Fili, and Kili.

It all hearkens back to Gandalf's line in The Fellowship of the Ring about how "many that live deserve death" while "some that die deserve life." I think that this line resonates a lot more if we've seen examples of both play out in a previous film. Keeping Alfrid alive adds an extra dose of reality to the whole six-film series, however unfair that reality is, and it creates something of another legacy from The Hobbit that didn't exist so clearly in the first Lord of the Rings movie prior to last December. Having him turn out to die after all, in my mind, undoes the one substantial thing that he contributed to The Battle of the Five Armies.

I'm not sure how any of the decisions on Alfrid's role in the trilogy were made. My theory is that the filmmakers really liked actor Ryan Gage and decided to do a lot of tinkering with the script after realizing that they had to scrap the character he was originally cast for, but that's mostly just a hunch. In the end, Alfrid is what he is, and no amount of complaining is going to change that. It's possible that the upcoming Extended Edition could give some depth to his character like the last one did, but if not, I can look on the bright side. If his death is the only bonus scene that I have reservations about on a list of twenty-six, then I’ve got it pretty good.

The Road to Bilbo's Oak Tree

One of the more talked about scenes in The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies is the scene where Bilbo shows Thorin the acorn from Beorn's garden. It's not a long scene, and like many in that film, it wasn't in the book, but there's always been a bit of buzz surrounding it. Some people like it for being one of the happier and more tender moments in Battle, and others like it for the metaphor comparing Bilbo's character to an acorn, which had been very subtly hinted at up until that point. This is especially clever when contrasted with Thorin, who is often associated with an oak tree because of his oakenshield.

I think one of the biggest reasons why people talk about the scene is because we don't really get a payoff for it. Thorin tells Bilbo to go home and plant his tree, but we never see the hobbit do that. We want to know what became of the acorn since it tugged at our heartstrings so much.

Popular belief for a little while was that the oak tree on top of Bag End was the tree that Bilbo planted from it. However, the few exterior shots that we see of his house in the beginning of An Unexpected Journey and the end of The Battle of the Five Armies seem to show that the tree was already there prior to his adventure.

I tried comparing those shots with shots of Bag End from The Fellowship of the Ring to see if any other trees had appeared there since the Hobbit movies. There's one lighter colored tree on the side of the hill in Fellowship that looks small enough to have been planted fairly recently, but it's hard to tell from the angle in Battle if it's already there or not. In any case, it doesn't look like an oak tree.

This left me in a bit of a quandary. Was I overlooking something? Was the acorn scene such a last-minute idea for the Hobbit movies that the filmmakers didn't have time to go back and remove one of the trees from Bag End's exterior shots? Was there a deleted scene showing where Bilbo planted the acorn? These questions were nagging me so much one day that I decided to research the matter using one of the greatest sources of information known to modern man.

Tumblr.

And sure enough, I found an answer. Apparently, there is going to be a bonus scene in the Battle of the Five Armies Extended Edition that shows Bilbo planting his acorn—in Dale.

This of course raises all sorts of new questions. Why would Bilbo do that when Thorin told him to plant the tree at his home? Did Bilbo not want to remember his journey after all? Did he do it to leave a reminder of himself in the closest place to Erebor where a tree could grow?

My personal theory is that Bilbo knew by then that Bag End was never really going to be his home anymore, so he didn't want to plant his tree there. Maybe a part of him always knew that he was going to leave the Shire again one day and try to return to Erebor, so he saw the East as his home instead. It would certainly lend a more poignant subtext to his decision to leave in Lord of the Rings; one of his motivations could have been that he wanted to see his oak tree once before he died.

As most of my essays these days end though, no conclusions can really be drawn until the Extended Edition comes out. If there is a scene of Bilbo planting his acorn in Dale, it could contain dialogue or something else that conveys his reasoning. It's also entirely possible that it won't, and that the reasoning will be left up to the viewer's imagination. Either way, I suspect that Bilbo's acorn and the tree that grew from it will remain a popular topic of discussion among Hobbit fans after this November.

The Genius of Bofur

Whether they’re casual filmgoers, fantasy film lovers, or devout Tolkienites, most people seem to agree that Peter Jackson’s Hobbit movie trilogy is of a lesser quality than his Lord of the Rings trilogy. Reasons for this vary, though one of the most prevalent complaints is that the Hobbit films focus heavily on characters who had minor roles in the novel, weren’t in the novel at all, or weren’t in any work of Tolkien’s whatsoever. While this complaint is understandable, I do want to discuss one such character that has been well received by viewers: Bofur the dwarf.

Bofur obviously falls into the first of the above three categories. A dwarf with his name and same colored clothing is present in the book, but his characterization—that of a witty, fun-loving prankster who’s protective of Bilbo despite constantly teasing him—is not. Although hints of that persona can be read into the original text, particularly in a scene where he trips over a sleeping Bilbo and finds a reason to scold the hobbit for it, the Bofur that we see onscreen is largely a creation of the filmmakers.

 

You would think that being so embellished from his book counterpart would turn fans off to him, but he’s had the opposite effect. The Internet has been swarming with fanart, fanfiction, fanvideos, memes, and cosplay photos proclaiming our love for the dwarf in the silly hat ever since December 2012. We love Bofur so much that we were even disappointed when he didn’t get his seemingly promised character arc in the third film. Really think about that. Fans of The Hobbit, including fans of the novel, were disappointed that a character made almost from scratch for the movies didn’t get more screentime.

So why do we love him so much?

Well, he gets points for technically being a major character who’s supposed to be in the story. Bofur is one of Bilbo’s thirteen main traveling companions from the book, so it makes sense that the movies would want to give him a better-defined personality and more development. He also gets points for being a nice guy, as well as for being funny and optimistic to a degree that isn’t annoying or forced. And yes, being played by a charismatic actor like James Nesbitt also helps. These qualities certainly make Bofur likeable, but I think what really made his character stand out was the way the movies unveiled him.

We probably weren’t expecting the supporting dwarves to be very complex when we first saw An Unexpected Journey. They were barely more than names on a list in the book, and since we had a much bigger main cast and a shorter running time than the Lord of the Rings films, we may have figured that those dwarves would each fall into a standard “token” role. The tough-looking dwarf with the tattoos would be the token muscle, the little dwarf with the slingshot would be the token kid, and that dwarf with the floppy hat and the jaunty accent would be the token comic relief.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with keeping film characters simple when you’ve got so many of them, especially in an adaptation. Leaving any of the dwarves out of the Hobbit films would have likely angered the fanbase, and since Peter Jackson’s team didn’t have much to go off of from the book in terms of their personalities, depicting the less important dwarves as one-note tropes would have been forgivable. The fact stood though that being an oblivious walking punchline didn’t make Bofur terribly engaging in the first two thirds of the film.

And then the cave scene happened.

To this day, I think that the conversation where Bilbo accidentally says the dwarves don’t belong anywhere and Bofur wishes him “all the luck in the world” is one of the most moving and ingenious moments in the whole Hobbit film trilogy, and it wasn’t even written by Tolkien. Not only did it reveal that Bofur actually had feelings to hurt underneath his wisecracks, but it also changed our perspective on a lot of his previous actions towards Bilbo. He wasn’t an insensitive idiot; he was a well-intentioned friend who just liked to poke fun at the hobbit for being so uptight.

That’s why I think we came to love Bofur so much. He caught us by surprise in a really good way, and we were excited to see what he would do next. The Desolation of Smaug and The Battle of the Five Armies may not have given us anything quite as impressive, at least not yet in the latter’s case, but after Bofur got our attention, he stayed interesting enough to keep it.

As superior as the Lord of the Rings movies are considered to be, I do think that the filmmakers learned a lesson from their slapstick portrayal of Gimli. They may have learned that lesson so well, in fact, that they decided to play to our expectations by introducing Bofur as another clown before revealing more of his layers. Granted, there are still a few comedic misfires among the cast of The Hobbit, and the cave scene with Bilbo was actually a later idea shot in pickups, but it’s clear that movie Bofur was always meant to be something new to Peter Jackson’s Middle-Earth. He was meant to be (and is) self-aware comic relief.

How often in movies like this are the funny characters in on their own jokes? Most of the time, it seems like the audience is meant to laugh at them rather than with them. Even with previous three-dimensional comic relief characters like Merry and Pippin, the humor usually came from how foolish or awkward they were, not from how witty they were.

Bofur is a different breed. While he does have a few comical misfortunes, such as hitting his head on the bottom of a table and saying that things “could have been worse” right before the Great Goblin falls on him, the majority of his humor comes from him mocking or making light of serious situations. The character himself has a sense of humor, and he deliberately uses it throughout the films to try and boost his company's moral.

Case in point, the scene in The Desolation of Smaug where he leaves to find Athelas for Kili's poisonous arrow wound. Just before Bofur runs out the door to begin his search, he stops in front of the younger dwarf and orders him not to move, earning a few stares from his other companions. This line might seem obtuse at first, but a moment's thought makes us realize the true spirit behind it. 

Bofur knows full well how dire the situation is. He was the one who told Bard in the first place that Kili was "very sick," after all. He's aware that a dying, violently convulsing person isn't going to wander off while he's gone, but he's making a joke anyway to try and cheer up Kili.

Another case is the scene in An Unexpected Journey where he describes to Bilbo what it’s like to be incinerated by dragon fire. Bofur obviously has no idea what that’s really like, but since Bilbo is taking the threat of it so seriously, the dwarf is trying to play it down and make it sound ridiculous. Some might see this as him trying to scare Bilbo more, since it ends with the hobbit passing out, but remember that it comes after Bofur’s thoughtful reaction to Gandalf saying that there’s more to the hobbit “than appearances suggest.” He’s putting on a goofy act to try and make Bilbo laugh off the danger. 

That’s what makes Bofur’s movie persona so ingenious, in my opinion. He’s a person first and an archetype second, and he knows it in a way. Because of that, he’s versatile enough to carry a completely serious moment just as naturally as a completely funny one, just like a real person who has a sense of humor.

The fact that he carries out those funny moments on purpose makes him all the more endearing, because he’s putting forth a conscious effort to make the events we see onscreen more enjoyable. We almost feel like Bofur, not just the actor and film crew behind his character, is trying to entertain us and get us through things as much as he’s trying to do that for Bilbo and the other dwarves. That makes us feel more like we’re part of the company, rather than a bunch of spectators watching them from a theater. The experience of viewing the Hobbit movies is more immersive because his character is so genuine.

No official word has been given so far on Bofur’s role in the Extended Edition of The Battle of the Five Armies. The only guesses we can make are from hints by screenwriter Philippa Boyens and a couple castmembers about what was meant for him prior to the film’s theatrical release. Whether or not we’ll see him come more into his own or have another conversation with Bilbo this November is unclear, but given his history with the Extended Editions and that thirty minutes will be added to this coming one—and that the filmmakers seem to like him as much as we do—it’s a safe bet that he’ll get his chance to shine one last time.

The Line of Thorin Would Not Be So Easily Cut

Ever since Peter Jackson announced last month that the Extended Edition of The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies was set to be thirty minutes longer, the Internet has been buzzing with predictions. We've all heard tidbits from the writers and cast about things we might expect to see, such as Radagast giving his staff to Gandalf and Bilbo having a talk with Bofur before sneaking out of Erebor, but a lot of hints at other bonus scenes can be found right in the film's promos. Even the two main trailers feature a considerable chunk of material that didn't make it into the final cut.

Looking at some of that material, fans can gather evidence and piece together a few potential scenes.

The scene I want to piece together today centers around Thorin Oakenshield. For as much as the King Under the Mountain gets rebuked in the official trailer, he does get one thing to say for himself: "Everything I did, I did for them." Since he's most likely referring to his nephews Fili and Kili, I think I know exactly what the context of that line is.

First of all, Thorin isn't wearing any of his kingly attire in the shot where he says it. This means that the scene either takes place before Fili, Kili, Bofur, and Oin arrive at Erebor or after Thorin overcomes his "Dragon Sickness" and decides to join the battle for the climax. He doesn't seem to be wearing any armor, so the first theory is probably the case.

Second of all, the trailer shows a shot right before that where Thorin appears to be standing among Erebor's treasure hoard without his crown on. If memory serves me correctly, I don't think that's a scenario we ever saw in the theatrical cut. Since he doubtfully would have gone back to the treasure after casting away his crown, that shot most likely takes place before the four dwarves in Laketown arrive at the mountain. Therefore, the shot where Thorin says his line probably occurs around that same time.

I found it a bit jarring in the theatrical cut when Fili, Kili, Bofur, and Oin arrive at Erebor and Bilbo just runs up to them saying, "FYI, Thorin's a totally different person now." It's understandable that this is how those characters would be informed of Thorin's transformation, but it's also how the audience is informed of it. No more gradually watching his character spiral downward -- he's just completely corrupt now. Since Bilbo mentions that Thorin has been counting the treasure in the mountain for days, we can assume that a scene of that downfall was originally included in the film and might return in the Extended Edition.

So how will it occur?

Well, let's look at Thorin's introduction in The Battle of the Five Armies. As Bilbo and the dwarves watch Smaug attack Laketown in the prologue, we see Nori trying to console his brother Ori. After that, we see Gloin looking dreadful and Bombur looking horrified. I always interpreted that as Gloin and Bombur realizing that their brothers, Oin and Bofur, are still in Laketown and caught in the middle of the carnage. Given that, I see Thorin's reaction, standing away from the group with his back to Laketown, as him realizing that Fili and Kili are also caught in the attack and not being able to watch.

It's likely that the Company's next scene in the Extended Edition will be a new one where they discuss their concern for the dwarves left in Laketown. Since Thorin isn't the most optimistic dwarf, he'll probably be convinced that Fili and Kili didn't survive Smaug's attack. That will prompt him to dismally say his line, "Everything I did, I did for them."

You can imagine what a horrible state of mind that would leave him in. He thinks his nephews are dead. The whole reason he set out to reclaim Erebor was to build a better future for them, and now the whole quest has been for nothing and he no longer has a purpose. And it's pretty much all his fault that Fili and Kili were left behind in Laketown to begin with. Adding the fact that all of his loyal followers are now mourning over two other dwarves that he left behind, it's a wonder Thorin didn't jump right off that cliff he was standing on at the start of the film.

It's pretty easy to guess where things might go from there. Thorin will probably wander away from the others in his depression, come across the treasure hoard, and literally lose himself in it. As we see in the theatrical cut, he gets so lost in it that when Fili, Kili, Bofur, and Oin turn up alive in Erebor, he barely even cares. The only thing he wants to do is show off all of his new treasure to them.

Let me just state for the record how much I hate the concept of "Dragon Sickness." It seems to be presented, at least in the movies, as a mental disorder caused by something in Erebor's gold that descendants of the dwarf king Durin are especially susceptible to. Being corrupted by greed has nothing to do with who those descendants are as people; they have a certain genotype, so they're going to catch that disorder from the contaminated gold. It's the same problem people have with the Midi-chlorians from Star Wars -- it reduces what should be a character trait to a condition.

Having Thorin succumb to "Dragon Sickness" because of his grief over his nephews, however, would fix that. He wouldn't have fallen to temptation because of his bloodline. He would have fallen to it because he lost hope and momentarily lost the will to resist it. That would have everything to do with who he is as a person. It would even make us wonder if he might have endured had Fili and Kili been with him the whole time.

That's about the only extra screentime I see Thorin needing in the Extended Edition (aside from his funeral). I'm very much in the camp that the bulk of that bonus footage should go to the supporting dwarves and characters like Beorn who got seriously shortchanged in this adaptation. We'll probably get more news about the Extended Edition closer to its release, but in the meantime, we'll just have to keep wandering the glorious halls of Tumblr and Twitter while counting the piles of rumors sparkling around us...

There's Something About Ori

It's no news to Hobbit fans that the Extended Edition of The Desolation of Smaug came out a few weeks ago with 25 minutes of bonus scenes added to the film. I enjoyed those scenes as much as the next fan, but watching that version brought a rather amusing and puzzling trend to my attention. What makes that trend puzzling is that it centers around the character Ori.

For anyone not familiar with The Hobbit, Ori is one of thirteen dwarves that the hero Bilbo Baggins joins on a quest to reclaim their kingdom from a dragon. Even though Ori appears all throughout the book, he has no real personality to speak of and never gets a single line of dialogue. He's basically just there to be the thirteenth dwarf. His character is much more fleshed out and talkative in the movies, yet he still remains something of a featured extra.

But have you ever noticed how often he's right next to Bilbo?

I'm not talking about scenes where the two of them actually interact, either. I'm talking about scenes where Bilbo and the dwarves are just standing around, running around, wandering around, or doing anything else around; scenes where the placement of the characters is meant to be random. There are so many times where Ori is either directly beside, behind, or in front of Bilbo. Even in a lot of shots where Bilbo is the main focus, Ori will be the most prominently visible other character.

 

Okay, that last one doesn't count. I just think it's a funny picture.

But why does this keep happening? Why does this seemingly unimportant character keep popping up so close to the main protagonist? Is it just a coincidence? Are the filmmakers doing it on purpose, or aren't they even aware of it?

If they aren't aware of it, I have two theories:

         1. It really is just a coincidence.

         2. They're doing it subconsciously.

A bit of background for Theory #2 -- The actor who plays Ori is named Adam Brown, and when he first auditioned for The Hobbit, he actually tried out for the role of Bilbo. He wasn't quite what they were looking for, but the screenwriters loved his audition so much that they wrote Ori's characteristics based on Brown's personality for him specifically to play. Since Brown had a lot of Bilbo-like qualities to begin with, it's no surprise that the film version of Ori wound up with a lot of those qualities too.

Is it possible that in the backs of their minds, the filmmakers still saw Adam Brown and Martin Freeman as the same character, and thus kept seeing Ori as the most natural choice for someone to frame with Bilbo?

If the filmmakers are aware of the trend, I have a few other theories:


         3. They're doing it as an in-joke to the fact that Adam Brown auditioned for Bilbo.

         4. They're doing it because Ori is the smallest and least distracting-looking dwarf.

         5. They're doing it to hint at how protective the other dwarves are.

See, most of the dwarves are well aware of how dangerous their quest is -- except for Ori. He's the kid who signed up with no clue of what he was getting into, much like Bilbo did. Since the two of them are the weakest and least experienced members of the group, it would make sense for the others to lump them together. That would make keeping tabs on both of them easier.

It's also possible that as the journey goes on and becomes more dangerous, this would start happening more often. That could be why Ori and Bilbo are seen together far more in The Desolation of Smaug than in An Unexpected Journey.

And then there's the crazy theory:

         6. The filmmakers are trying to subliminally convey that Bilbo and Ori have a lot in common.

Think about it. The movies could be gradually conditioning us to associate Ori with Bilbo and we don't even know it! If in some bizarre universe this really is the case, then why do it? Did the filmmakers feel bad that they couldn't give Adam Brown a bigger subplot so they decided to showcase his character more covertly? Or better yet, maybe it could be some very subtle foreshadowing of things to come in the next movie, The Battle of the Five Armies.

Probably the most notable aspect of Ori in the films is that he's a scribe. His job on the quest is to document everything in a journal so that future generations can someday read about his group's accomplishments. The only problem is that the films still have yet to clearly introduce his journal. The most we've seen of it so far are a few shots of him handling it in Bilbo's house, and one of those shots features him (of course) in the background behind Bilbo.

That instance really lends to the idea that the filmmakers are trying to subtly draw a connection between the two characters. It happens when the wizard Gandalf tells Bilbo, "All good stories deserve embellishment. You'll have a tale or two to tell of your own when you come back." Look quickly, and you can spy Ori behind the hobbit, writing in his journal; he's in the process of telling his own "tale or two."

It's also worth noting that Ori tends to play second fiddle to another dwarf, Bofur, in scenes where the latter interacts with Bilbo. In An Unexpected Journey, Bilbo's rant to Gandalf about what the dwarves have done to his house is book-ended by an exchange with Bofur and an exchange with Ori. Later, when Bilbo nearly falls off of a cliff, Ori assists Bofur in a rescue attempt.

In The Desolation of Smaug, Bofur, Bilbo, and Ori are the first three to approach the enchanted river in Mirkwood. When it becomes apparent that Bilbo will have to cross the river first, he looks to Bofur and Ori for confirmation.

In the scene where Bilbo frees the dwarves from an elf prison, Bofur and Ori are the only two characters who speak before the hobbit arrives. Lastly, when the group reaches their destination without Bofur and sends Bilbo in to face the dragon alone, Ori is the first to voice concern for the hobbit -- a job that Bofur usually has covered.

So what's my point in bringing this up? Well, Bofur has one of the closer relationships with Bilbo among the dwarves, and having Ori as the third wheel in that relationship seems to suggest that the little scribe has a similar fondness for Mr. Baggins. Since Bofur is currently not among the group and it's allegedly been hinted that Ori and Bilbo have a lot in common, perhaps the two will have a moment to bond with each other in the next movie. And perhaps it will be over Ori's journal.

We see in the very beginning of An Unexpected Journey that Bilbo eventually decides to write his own book about the quest. We also see him dig up an old sketch of his younger self while preparing to write his book. I can easily imagine a scene in the third film where Ori shows Bilbo his journal and unknowingly plants the seed of inspiration for our hero to become a writer too. Given how dark and dire The Battle of the Five Armies seems to be from the trailers, a warmer and more innocent scene like that might be greatly welcome.

As for the old sketch of Bilbo, I'm not the first person to speculate that Ori drew it for him.


But at the end of the day, that's all any of this is: speculation. Come December 17th, I might look back on this essay and think, "Wow. I was an insane person three weeks ago." That's the fun of watching a story play out over multiple installments, though. It gets the creative wheels in your head turning.

In all likelihood, regardless of why he's there, Ori will probably remain off to the side and in the background throughout The Battle of the Five Armies. I see potential for his character and an opportunity to show it, but that doesn't change the fact that his character is a peripheral one that the film might not have time for. Who knows? Maybe he stands a better chance of getting the spotlight in the next Extended Edition. I have hope, even if it is, as they say, just a fool's hope.