Kili and Tauriel in Retrospect

As we arrive at both the 1-year anniversary of The Battle of the Five Armies and the 1-month anniversary of its Extended Edition, I think enough time has passed that we can look back on the Peter Jackson Hobbit films with a more objective eye. Whether we love them or hate them, the films have always sparked controversy among Tolkien purists, and one of their most infamous controversies is the romantic subplot involving Kili the dwarf and Tauriel the elf.

It's easy to understand the backlash that this subplot has received from fans, seeing how I was among those who initially cringed at it. Not only was it never in the book, but it also featured a character who was never in the book and it took up a lot of screentime that could have been spent on elements that were from Tolkien's original tale. It's said that the studio pressured the filmmakers to shoehorn Tauriel and the love story into the movies, and although I still think that her romance with Kili is unnecessary, I have come to wonder if it's really as trite and implausible as I once found it.

First of all, I'm not against adding an original, major female character to The Hobbit. The book has pretty much no women in it, which would be conspicuous in a modern-day film, and since many characters from the book were totally re-envisioned in the movies anyway, creating a whole new character alongside them doesn't feel like that much of a crime. When you get down to it, the biggest difference between Tauriel and the film versions of the dwarves, Radagast, and Azog is that Tauriel was given her name by the screenwriters instead of by Tolkien. I never took issue with her, just with her and Kili's romance.

Looking back on that subplot now, I'm willing to consider that it's more complex than I first gave it credit for.

While their relationship is technically a romance, it's a romance that never really gets off the ground. The whole thing is just about Kili trying to convince Tauriel to give him a chance while she keeps trying to deny that she feels anything for him. It's largely one-sided, they don't exchange sappy love dialogue, and they don't even kiss until after it's too late for them to be together. I think the reason I cringed at their relationship the first time I saw The Desolation of Smaug was because I was so bugged at the film for including it at all that I blew it out of proportion.

Consider this: shortly after Desolation came out, I tried an experiment where I went through the Kili and Tauriel scenes over and over in my head but kept replacing Kili with other dwarves from the Company. The only changes I made to the scenes were some adjustments to the dialogue so it would better suit the replacement characters. Some of the other dwarves filled Kili's shoes better than others, but one that I actually found those scenes working really well with was Ori.

Now, that wasn't because Ori is an irresistible dreamboat full of charisma  — which, let's face it, he's not. The reason those scenes worked so well with him was because he was so childlike that it made Tauriel's kind and protective behavior towards him come off as motherly instead of romantic. It made it seem like she befriended him in prison because she felt bad for him and then came to admire how innocent he was, not because she was attracted to him, and it made it seem like she followed him to Lake-town to help him because she wanted to preserve his innocence in the midst of all the evil that was growing in the world, not because she had fallen in love with him.

While I was recently thinking back on how much more interesting a relationship like that would have been, it occurred to me that maybe Tauriel's relationship with Kili in Desolation actually was supposed to be like that. She says that Kili's promise to return to his mother is "pure," and when she explains her decision to follow the Company and the orcs to Lake-town, she describes it more in terms of taking a stand against evil than in terms of saving one dwarf. Maybe she first takes a liking to Kili not because of who he is, but because of what he represents to her in the grand scheme of things.

It's probably not until Kili asks if Tauriel could have loved him that she starts to wonder the same thing. Since love is unheard of between elves and dwarves and she knows how irrational Kili can be, she tries to let him down easy. That rejection obviously hurts him, but being young and hopeful, he refuses to let go of the idea. I think the reason why Tauriel's so sad at the end of their goodbye scene in The Battle of the Five Armies is because she feels that Kili's only setting himself up for more heartache over her, and she doesn't want to be the thing that ruins his optimistic outlook on the world. I really don't interpret it as her being sad that she can't be with her romantic interest that she's known for one day.

Furthermore, I think that Thranduil's speech to her about how she doesn't really love Kili is supposed to be what makes her realize that she does, hence the reason why she's in such a state of shock after he says it. Not all love is romantic love; Tauriel's feelings for Kili could be anything that's strong enough to make her want to save him from Azog's ambush, and they could be anything that's strong enough to devastate her when she fails to save him. It's possible that kissing Kili after he dies is her way of admitting that her love for him could have become romantic somewhere down the line, if it wasn't already.

Bottom line, I think that Kili and Tauriel's subplot is mainly about, again, what they represent in the grand scheme of things. It's not about their relationship; it's about whether or not any relationship between any elf and dwarf is possible, and ending it with the realization that such a thing is possible is actually a halfway decent setup for Legolas and Gimli becoming friends in The Lord of the Rings. Kili and Tauriel's romance presents the idea without them getting much chance to act upon it, and then Legolas and Gimli's friendship takes that idea to the next level by having them maintain a bond after forming it. I think that Kili and Tauriel were meant to pave the way for Legolas and Gimli in the movies rather than steal their thunder.

Maybe I'm reading too much into this subplot, or maybe the screenwriters really were trying to make lemonade out of lemons with it and their efforts just took a year or two to stand out. In either case, it's nice that Kili and Tauriel's story is presented in a way that leaves it open to more than one interpretation.

Was Bilbo a Failure?

I was recently thinking about the third Hobbit movie, The Battle of the Five Armies, when I realized what my biggest issue with it is. It's not that it strays from the book or that the elves get more screentime than the dwarves, or even that Alfrid gets any screentime.

It's that the main protagonist, Bilbo Baggins, doesn't clearly accomplish anything by the end of it.

That's not to say that Bilbo doesn't do anything in the movie. He actually does quite a lot. It's just that for as much as he does, none of it really seems to pay off.

His main goal for about the first half of the plot is to save his thirteen dwarf friends by preventing the battle over the treasure that Thorin refuses to share with the Laketown survivors. Bilbo tries to accomplish this by giving the survivors Thorin's prized Arkenstone, which they can use as leverage to get their promised share of treasure from the corrupt dwarf king. It's an ingenious plan (despite Thorin trying to kill him over it), but then a bunch of other armies show up and make it all for nothing. Bilbo's new objective after that becomes to save Thorin and company from an ambush by Azog on Ravenhill during the battle. He does a good job of defying Gandalf's authority and reaching Thorin in time to warn him, but by then it's too late for them to escape from that ambush, so Thorin, Fili, and Kili end up dying anyway.

And then there's Bilbo's overall goal throughout the whole film: to save Thorin from his corruption. He does succeed at that, but Thorin's death soon afterwards makes it kind of a short life lesson, and since the other dwarves already disapproved of his greedy behavior, they don't really learn anything from the hobbit by the end either. What's more, instead of feeling uplifted by Thorin's noble redemption, Bilbo spends the rest of the movie and possibly the rest of his life so traumatized that he can barely even admit Thorin was his friend.

Man, and we say The Lord of the Rings is the darker story.

It's possible, like many issues with The Battle of the Five Armies, that this will be ironed out in the Extended Edition later this year. You can also make the argument that Bilbo's real goal throughout the entire trilogy was to help the dwarves of Erebor reclaim their homeland, which he did, and therefore he wasn't a failure. I heartily agree with that argument, but the third installment doesn't take the time to properly reflect on that and remind us of Bilbo's successes when all is said and done.

...And that's why I think The Battle of the Five Armies needed to establish Ori's journal.

If you read my essay "There's Something About Ori" back in November, you knew I was going to revisit that topic sooner or later after the third movie came out. Not only doesn't the mitten-wearing scribe get the payoff I was hoping to see for him in Battle, but he doesn't even photobomb Bilbo all that much. He does get to stand with Bofur at the front and center of the group when Bilbo says good-bye to the dwarves though, and I'm fairly certain there was a shot of him killing orcs during the company's charge onto the battlefield. It's also been brought to my attention that Ori did in fact draw the sketch of young Bilbo seen in An Unexpected Journey, so at least one speculation in my essay was right.

But I digress. In regards to Bilbo's successes, I think establishing Ori's journal would have done a world of good because it would have reintroduced a very important element of the story: legacy. That's the idea behind Bilbo's book, as well as all of the tales and songs presented in Middle-Earth. They're the means by which their writers pass along lessons and experiences so that future generations can learn from them as well. By informing Bilbo and the audience that one of the dwarves was documenting the quest the whole time, the third movie would have assured that the hobbit's part in that quest would become a major part of Erebor's history. Also, since Ori wrote that tale, we could assume that it would present Bilbo in a positive light and as a good role model.

Just think back to the company's prison-break from Mirkwood in The Desolation of Smaug. Right before Bilbo shows up with the keys, we see Ori very gloomily ask his brother, "We're never gonna reach the mountain, are we?" After Bilbo arrives and starts freeing the dwarves from their cells, we see Ori again, looking completely awestruck by him.

Wouldn't it be a great payoff to have Ori approach Bilbo, perhaps after Thorin's funeral in the Extended Edition, and tell him that every dwarf in Erebor who reads about its reclamation will know it was all thanks to a humble but decent hobbit? It might also be a nice touch if he mentions his notes including how that humble, decent hobbit made the fallen King Under the Mountain noble again. And just for continuity's sake, I would have Ori first break the ice by awkwardly giving Bilbo that portrait sketch.

Alas, like most of my recent Hobbit ramblings, whether or not something like this will happen remains to be seen. I don't know how much hype there's been for the last two Extended Editions, but I suspect the third one is going to stir up a heck of a lot more buzz. It might even stir up enough to rival the third film's theatrical release, at least among fans. And who can blame us? To me, the issue of Bilbo's undermined accomplishments at the end of The Battle of the Five Armies is the ultimate proof that we didn't get a whole movie last December.

And if by change the Extended Edition features a scene of Bilbo kicking Alfrid in the shin, I'll count that as another success.