Unbalanced Duos

I recently got reacquainted with the first three Pirates of The Caribbean films, or as I tend to call them, the two good ones and that one that you have to watch to give the second film an ending. The third film, At World's End, certainly has a lot of cringe-worthy elements for a lot of fans, but one of the elements that bothers me most is the arc of one of my favorite characters, Ragetti.

Don't get me wrong. His overall arc from a mumbling, dog-like sidekick to a cheeky, erudite badass is fascinating. What bothers me about his character arc in the third film though is how much more of one he gets than his partner-in-crime Pintel. Practically every scene in At World's End that features these two has Ragetti upstaging Pintel, getting the spotlight without him, and generally being treated like he's a way more important character.

The problem with this is that before At World's End, these characters were introduced and always presented as a duo. We see duos all the time in movies like this, often as comic relief, and their purpose for being a duo is that they offset each other. They can have a leader and follower dynamic, but the two characters are supposed to work together and be of equal value in the story. Giving more attention and development to just one of them over the course of the narrative can reduce the other duo member to a pointless character, which is what happens to Pintel in At World's End.

Pintel and Ragetti aren't the only character duo in film to have balancing issues. Fans of the Hobbit films often point out how much more focus the dwarf Kili gets over his brother Fili despite them being a pair. The roles of Merry and Pippin in The Lord of the Rings are pretty equal in the books and don't change much in the films, but it's clear from the staging and editing that the filmmakers liked Pippin more. I even think that Jake in the first Blues Brothers movie gets the spotlight a few too many more times than Elwood. Why does this happen?

In some cases, it may be in response to fan preference. Jake Blues was played by John Belushi in the original Blues Brothers sketches on Saturday Night Live, and Belushi was a more energetic performer than his costar Dan Aykroyd. Because of this, Jake was probably more memorable and more liked by viewers than Elwood, so the writers decided to give Jake more material when it came time to write the film. Similarly, Ragetti's wooden eyeball and more sympathetic portrayal in the first Pirates of the Caribbean probably made him stand out more than Pintel, so the writers expanded his role in the sequels to appease fans.

Another reason why duos lose their balance could be that one member just shows more potential for personal growth. Kili, Pippin, and even Ragetti are the younger and more naive halves of their duos, so they naturally have more to learn and more growing up to do. That often speaks more to writers, which is fine, but as the writer, you have to do something with the other duo member to offset the more compelling one's growth. Duo characters are usually together because they have a unique and firm understanding of one another, so any notable change that one of them undergoes is going to affect the other.

I think one of the best examples of a film duo done right is the droids R2-D2 and C-3PO from Star Wars. Their personalities are strong and distinct enough not only to complement each other when they're together, but also to make both of them interesting when they're apart. They each get a fair amount of alone time in the spotlight, but neither one ever outgrows the other because they're kind of designed to need each other.

R2-D2 is pretty much the only character that C-3PO can rant and complain around without getting dismissed, and C-3PO is the only major character who can always translate what R2-D2 is saying. Each one can only achieve his full character potential when the other is present because they're the only characters who fully allow one another to have a voice. They're equal opposites who complete each other -- a whirring, beeping, blue and gold yin yang.

The simplest advice I can think of for writing a good, balanced duo is to almost think of it like adopting twins. If you're going to bring a pair into the picture instead of just one character, then you need to be willing to raise both of them. Explore and celebrate the bond that they have, encourage them to be individuals but not to forget each other, and above all else, treat them fairly.

Grima, Son of Alfrid

When it comes to fan speculation about a work of fiction, there are generally two types of ideas that people discuss: fan theories and headcanons. A fan theory of course is an idea about something in the work of fiction that's supported by possible evidence within the story. A headcanon, on the other hand, is an idea with no evidence to support it. It's just something that certain fans choose to believe because they like the idea. I've talked about plenty of fan theories from the Peter Jackson Hobbit films on this blog, but today I want to talk about a headcanon from the series and try to at least clear its path of anything that could contradict it. That headcanon is the idea that the character Alfrid Lickspittle is the father of Grima Wormtongue in the six Middle-earth movies.

To start off, Grima Wormtongue is a character from J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings book trilogy who also appears in the film adaptations. Alfrid Lickspittle is an original character created for the film adaptations of The Hobbit, a prelude to The Lord of the Rings. The two characters have a lot in common, being arrogant, sniveling, and manipulative and even having similar physical appearances. They're so similar that some fans used to speculate that they were the same character, with Alfrid changing his identity in between film trilogies to become Grima. This notion has always seemed unlikely since the two stories take place sixty years apart from each other, so the father and son headcanon seemed like a stronger alternative.

The only problem with the father and son idea (and also with the changing identity idea) is that the third Hobbit film's Extended Edition shows a bonus scene where Alfrid dies instead of making his getaway like in the theatrical cut. This doesn't destroy the father and son headcanon, like I used to think it did, but it certainly limits the possibilities.

The key to everything is Grima's age at the time of The Lord of the Rings. The only source I can find that mentions his year of birth is the website "One Wiki to Rule Them All," which claims that he was born in the year TA 2974. Since The Lord of the Rings takes place in the year TA 3019, this would make him forty-five years old and thus too young to be the son of someone who died sixty years prior. However, these dates are meant to reflect the timeline in Tolkien's books, where Alfrid's character doesn't exist. Whether or not "One Wiki to Rule Them All" is a reliable source, this timeline can be ignored because it doesn't truly relate to the movie-verse.

A source that does relate to the movie-verse, as odd as it sounds, is the Lord of the Rings Top Trumps Card Game. Available in three decks, the game features cards for each character as they're depicted in the Peter Jackson films, and those cards also offer a list of basic information on each character. According to Grima's card, he's fifty-nine years old in the movies.

This may seem like a year too short, but it's still possible that he was conceived before Alfrid's death. It would have to have happened shortly before though, and whether or not Grima's mother knew that she was pregnant, she probably would have wanted to distance herself from Alfrid and the town where he lived soon after the conception. Lowering her standards enough to spend the night with Alfrid could easily drive a woman to skip town like that. It's possible then that she traveled south in the following nine months and gave birth to Grima in the kingdom of Rohan, where we see him living as an adult. It could be that Grima hadn't quite reached his sixtieth birthday by the time of The Lord of the Rings, which could very well make him Alfrid's son in the timeline of the movies.

Like "One Wiki to Rule Them All" though, it's debatable how reliable of a source the Top Trumps card game is. And of course, it doesn't prove that Alfrid and Grima are related. It only leaves the possibility of that idea open. This is all that headcanons need though, and since that headcanon does the service of further tying together two trilogies and making the similarities between two characters feel less contrived, I still think it's worth considering.

The Appeal of Tom Bombadil

How you feel about certain elements in a popular series often depends on how you were introduced to the series as a whole. When it comes to a series like the Lord of the Rings trilogy that's been adapted across more than one medium, the fans who were introduced to it through the books tend to be more devoted to Tolkien's universe than the fans who were introduced to it through the movies. I'll admit upfront that I belong to the second group, and I think it's because of this that I've never quite seen the appeal of one of the books' more beloved elements: the character Tom Bombadil.

Appearing in only three chapters of the first Rings book, Tom Bombadil is a mystical, carefree fellow of unknown origins who wears yellow boots and a blue coat and spends his days wandering the Old Forrest while singing. He saves the hobbits a few times on the first leg of their journey, shows no interest at all in the One Ring, and then bows out of the story entirely with only a brief mention afterwards at the Council of Elrond. Like a lot of minor characters from the books, Bombadil gets left out of most adaptations, but he always seems to be the one whose absence people object to.

Why is that? He doesn't contribute all that much to the plot, and even by the books' own admission, he's so disconnected from everything having to do with the Ring that it's pointless to include him in the quest. What's more, having someone that lighthearted and silly pop up so early in the story almost harms the dark tone that it's trying to set. Again though, I'm someone who already saw the story play out fine without him on film before I read the book, so maybe I need to look at merry old Tom from a different angle to see his charm.

For starters, fans of Tom Bombadil probably like him more from a worldbuilding standpoint than from a storytelling one. Having the hobbits cross paths with someone who seems to come from a separate story makes Middle-earth feel like a much bigger place, and keeping Bombadil's origins a mystery opens up all kinds of fan theories about who or what he might actually be. As I've said in past essays, fan theories provide a more interactive way of enjoying a work of fiction, and since Tolkien mapped out so much of Middle-earth's history and mythos in his other writings, it makes sense that a rare enigma like Bombadil would intrigue so many readers.

Another explanation could be that his jolly, quirky demeanor makes him more unique and memorable. In a story full of brooding, angry, and depressed people, it does turn a few heads to see someone who's more upbeat among the cast. There's also something about an ageless, magical figure who's eccentric rather than stoic that people often find interesting. We've seen that type of character everywhere from Merlin the wizard in the King Arthur legend to the Cheshire Cat from Alice in Wonderland — even Mew from Pokemon, to be topical — and a lot of character complexity can be found in that contrast of age and youthfulness.

I think that the best explanation for Bombadil's appeal may lie in the story behind his creation. The character was said to be inspired by a doll with boots and a hat that belonged to one of Tolkien's children. After an incident where the doll survived getting stuffed down a lavatory (the Forbidden Pool, if you will), Tolkien was so impressed that he would often make up bedtime stories for his children about the doll's other adventures. The Hobbit also started out as a bedtime story, so when Tolkien came up with an idea for a sequel to the book, he decided to incorporate the doll-inspired Tom Bombadil into that followup.

Given their similar origins, it's only natural that Tom's scenes in The Lord of the Rings would have the same lighthearted tone as The Hobbit instead of the dark and serious tone of the sequel. It's also possible that the character is meant to ease that transition in tone, acting as one last callback to the more innocent times of Bilbo's adventure before the Nazgul come along and ruin everything. If this is the case, then his final mention at the Council of Elrond where the heroes decide not to involve him in the One Ring's destruction can be seen as an official goodbye to that innocence. That does kind of make it sad to see him go.

At the end of the day, I still think that the Lord of the Rings movies were smart to leave out Tom Bombadil. Film is a different medium that requires a tighter narrative than literature, so minor storylines such as his have to go. The fact that some of his lines are said by Treebeard in the Extended Edition of The Two Towers at least shows that Peter Jackson's team appreciated his character and wanted to have some nod to him in their version. I may not have the same attatchment to Bombadil as fans who discovered Middle-earth through the source material, but after looking at him through a wider scope and getting to know him better, I can appreciate him too.

The Point of the Spiders

Perhaps the most important rule in storytelling is that every person, place, thing, or event in the story needs to serve a purpose. If an element doesn't have some unique effect on the characters or the plot, then it should probably be removed. This rule is a lot more strict in film than in literature, but even books can only get away with spinning their narrative wheels for so long. Considering this, let's examine one of the more famous scenes from The Hobbit where Bilbo saves his dwarf companions from the spiders in the forest of Mirkwood.

Here's how the journey through Mirkwood unfolds in both the book and its film adaptations:

1.  Bilbo and the dwarves get lost.

2.  Bilbo gets separated from the dwarves.

3.  The dwarves get captured by spiders.

4.  Bilbo saves the dwarves from the spiders.

5.  The dwarves get captured by elves.

6.  Bilbo saves the dwarves from the elves.


Looking at this list, the chain of events seems a little redundant. Why not just have the elves capture the dwarves right after Bilbo gets separated from them and leave out the spiders altogether? The elves are more important in the long run, and since rescuing the dwarves from them is the bigger challenge of the two anyway, it seems like more efficient storytelling to only have one rescue in Mirkwood. So what's the point of including the spiders in the plot?

Well, the first argument is an easy one: J.R.R. Tolkien wrote The Hobbit as an adventure tale for children, so it's okay for it to have a lot of action scenes with a loose narrative structure. That may be true, but there's a bit more to the spiders than just being one more obstacle. There's a lot of fear surrounding Mirkwood in the story, enough to earn several warnings, and having the characters actually get captured by monsters inside that forest justifies that fear. Without the spiders, Mirkwood would just seem like a really dark place with deer, butterflies, grouchy elves, and rivers that you need to stay out of -- hazardous, but not menacing. Including the spiders also helps to drive home the story's lesson of listening to your elders; having the dwarves almost get eaten by monsters because they ignored Gandalf and wandered off the path leaves a much stronger impression than just having them get arrested by elves.

It can also be argued that the spiders serve to offset the elves. The Mirkwood elves are the beings that Bilbo's company gets the biggest warning about. They're the main obstacle in the forest, not the spiders. Prior to this though, the story presents elves more or less as allies, so they don't feel like much of a threat to the readers, the viewers, or the heroes. All of the trouble before Mirkwood comes from monsters, and having Bilbo fight off one more round of monsters in the forest only to have the elves capture his friends shows a transition in the story. Instead of vicious, evil creatures, Bilbo now has good but uncooperative people standing in his way. That means that instead of cutting and stabbing his way out of trouble, he has to harness his wits that he discovered during the Riddle Game with Gollum and be strategic from this point on.

Another thing to consider is that the fight with the spiders is the peak of Bilbo learning to embrace his adventurous side. He comes to the dwarves' rescue single-handedly for the first time, he names his sword and uses it for combat, and in the book, he makes up songs to taunt the spiders with as he fends them off. He's finally mastering the abilities that the quest has forced him to learn so far, and he's having fun doing it. The fact that he's going up against a nest of evil monsters with very little moral dilemmas about hurting them makes the scene fun for the readers and viewers as well. This creates an especially nice contrast with his refusal to fight in the Battle of the Five Armies after he grows wiser from his experiences.


And that's the most important purpose of the spiders in The Hobbit. They show that the main character is capable of growing and changing. Bilbo's greatest internal conflict is that he wants to lead the quiet, predictable lifestyle of a hobbit despite being from a family that prefers the unexpected. He resists change in the first part of the story, and while it's helpful that he's good at fighting giant spiders in Mirkwood, it's more important that he decides to fight them at all. Thematically, the spiders are a test of whether or not Bilbo is adaptable and confident enough for the second half of his journey, and as soon as he passes that test, the Mirkwood elves step in to take things to the next level things for him.

What Comes First? The Hobbit or the Rings?

Prequels pose a rather unique challenge to writers and filmmakers. Not only do they have to tell their own coherent stories, but they also have to adequately set up the events of the installments that came before them. Since they take place earlier in the series, they often can't include a lot of familiar elements from their predecessors, yet they still have to be similar enough to those predecessors to keep from alienating fans. What's more, most books, films, and so on are created without any prequels in mind, and this lack of accommodation can really plague a prequel's storyline and form plotholes and inconsistencies in the overall series.

Peter Jackson's Hobbit films add a layer of confusion to this. Not only are they prequels to a film trilogy that had been made without any prequels in mind, but they're based on a book that was written without any sequels in mind -- sequels which were eventually written and adapted into the Hobbit films' predecessors. It's the book-to-movie equivalent of the "chicken or the egg" question, and this leads many to wonder if the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings film trilogies can really function as one six-film series. Can future audiences view the films in chronological order without confusion, or are they better off viewing the films in the order that they were made?

There are a few inconsistencies between the two trilogies, but not many, so let's get those out of the way first.

Only two notable characters had to be recast throughout all six films: Gloin the dwarf and Bilbo Baggins the hobbit. Gloin's recasting in The Hobbit creates no conflict whatsoever, seeing how he's never identified or given any lines throughout his one scene in the Lord of the Rings films, but Bilbo's recasting is a different matter.

Even though Ian Holm was available to reprise his role for The Hobbit, playing a younger and more able-bodied Bilbo would have been too difficult for him, so Martin Freeman was brought in. Holm still plays the older Bilbo at the beginning and end of the Hobbit trilogy, and while this fits with the way he looks in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, it does create a bit of a plothole.

See, one of the powers that the One Ring possesses is immortality, which prevents its bearer from aging for as long as they carry it. This is said to be the case with Bilbo in The Fellowship of the Ring, but in the Hobbit films, he clearly doesn't look the same age sixty years after finding the Ring. In fact, if you listen closely to the dialogue from Fellowship that's replayed at the end of The Battle of the Five Armies, Gandalf's line about how Bilbo hasn't "aged a day" is omitted from it.

The argument could be made that the Ring in the movies doesn't stop the aging process so much as it slows it down; after all, Gollum's appearance doesn't stay the same throughout his time with the Ring. However, it's still apparent that having Bilbo played by two different actors was not in the equation at the time that The Lord of the Rings was filmed. This is evidenced by the fact that Ian Holm does play the younger Bilbo in a flashback at the beginning of Fellowship, where we see him finding the Ring.

This leads to some other minor issues. Not only does that version of the younger Bilbo look and dress differently from the one in the Hobbit films, but the entire riddle game with Gollum is removed in that flashback. The scene jumps right from Bilbo picking up the Ring to Gollum screaming that his "Precious" is lost, something that Gollum doesn't realize until after the riddle game concludes in An Unexpected Journey. Future audiences will probably be able to tell that both scenes are depicting the same plot point, but the inconsistencies between them are bound to be a little jarring.

Gollum is another character who differs between the trilogies. Since Peter Jackson's team was still perfecting CGI motion capture in the early 2000's, Gollum was mostly kept out of sight in Fellowship. By 2011 though, his scenes were pretty easy to shoot and render. As a result, people who watch the six films in chronological order will get a Hobbit film where Gollum is shown as clear as day, a Lord of the Rings film where he's suddenly shrouded in mystery, and then two more Lord of the Rings films where he's plainly visible again.

This doesn't really detract from watching the films in that order, though. It just slightly lessens the impact of Gollum's reveal in The Two Towers and makes it easier for viewers to tell which order the two trilogies were made in. Gollum's buildup in The Lord of the Rings might even still work, since viewers are given two whole films to forget what he looks like in between his appearances in An Unexpected Journey and The Fellowship of the Ring.

There are other things that can play out strangely to viewers, especially when watching the Extended Editions. It's odd to hear Bilbo calling for Frodo in Bag End at the beginning of Fellowship's Extended Edition when he clearly saw Frodo leave Bag End at the beginning of Journey, and it's ironic that viewers don't get a clear explanation of what a hobbit is until after the Hobbit trilogy is over. A lot of major characters like Radagast, Thranduil, and Tauriel disappear with no explanation halfway through the series, and no mention of Balin's conquest of Moria is given prior to the Fellowship's decision to go there in The Lord of the Rings. People who forget what Moria is from all the way back in Journey might get confused about this plot thread. Once again though, these are minor issues.

With that said, let's discuss how the two trilogies do flow into each other.

As I've said before, the Hobbit films do a very good job of making the book's story and setting more consistent with The Lord of the Rings. Showing things like the One Ring's effect on Bilbo and Gandalf's relationship with other authorities in Middle-earth go a long way in connecting the trilogies, as does the more fleshed-out Necromancer subplot that foreshadows Sauron's return. It's important to illustrate that such dark powers exist in a prequel that is meant to set up a story about those powers. The lack of resolution with Bilbo's "magic ring" by the end of The Battle of the Five Armies also makes a strong case for watching Fellowship soon after.

The Hobbit's mentions of characters from The Lord of the Rings further help to bridge the gap between the film trilogies. Some feel that those mentions can be forced at times, but they do help to establish those characters' relevance in the long run. In case we forget who the minor character Gloin is by the time Gimli is introduced as "Gimli, son of Gloin" in Fellowship, we might remember Gimli's name from its prominent mention in The Desolation of Smaug; in case it seems odd for Legolas to be such good friends with a non-elf like Strider in Fellowship after watching the Hobbit trilogy, we'll remember his father telling him to seek out Strider at the end of The Battle of the Five Armies. Screenplays have to be a lot more tight-knit than books, so it's usually good practice for films to elude to story elements that way.

Lastly, it helps that the Hobbit films get darker and more serious to match the tone of The Lord of the Rings as they go on. This was partly by design and partly by necessity, since the Battle of the Five Armies and all of the major character deaths that result from it really couldn't have happened offscreen in the films like it did in the book. Because of this, the Hobbit films give us a comfortable transition from their light-hearted source material to the more grisly Lord of the Rings films.

And that brings us to our final verdict. At the end of the day, it's pretty obvious that the Hobbit film trilogy, while having its own identity, was meant to be viewed in order with the Lord of the Rings and not as a stand-alone series. The inconsistencies between the trilogies are all fairly minor, and they cease to be a problem roughly halfway through The Fellowship of the Ring. 

It's doubtful that Peter Jackson will ever go back and make changes to Fellowship to better match it with The Hobbit, and most fans of the series likely wouldn't want him to anyway. And really, he shouldn't. As far as prequels go, the Hobbit trilogy is a strong followup that ties in very well with its predecessors, and its shortcomings in that regard should be left intact just to highlight how few of them there really are. If the perfect prequel is unachievable, then the Hobbit films are three of the closer attempts at reaching that.

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.

Top 5 Things the Hobbit Films Improved From the Book

November 17th, 2015 marks a milestone in the history of the Peter Jackson Middle-earth film series, in that it's the release date for the Extended Edition of the final Hobbit film, The Battle of the Five Armies. This is the last time that the fanbase gets to celebrate the release of any official version of any of the films, and in honor of that, I wanted to do something special this month.

It goes without saying that J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit is a literary masterpiece, but because film is such a different medium from literature, a lot of changes did have to be made in the process of adapting the book for the big screen. While some of those changes have been controversial, some of them have actually made a lot of sense and strengthened the story in many regards. It can even be argued that the films handled some story elements better than the source material did, and I say that as someone who loves the book enough to collect copies of it.

Since both versions of all three Hobbit films can now be seen in all of their glory, I think it's only fitting to discuss what are, in my opinion, the top five things that they improved from the book.

#5

Consistencies with The Lord of the Rings

I put this one low on the list since 1) Tolkien had the excuse of writing The Hobbit as a stand-alone book with no plans of further developing its universe at the time, and 2) the differences between the two works are because of The Lord of the Rings being different from The Hobbit, not the other way around. Tolkien did make some revisions to The Hobbit after The Lord of the Rings was published, most notably to Bilbo's encounter with Gollum, but the two works remain very different in tone and in their presentations of Middle-earth--which is actually never given as the name of the setting in The Hobbit.

The Hobbit films make a point to show us that transition in tone, starting out lighthearted like the book and then slowly taking on the darker and grittier feel of The Lord of the Rings as they progress. They also remove some of the book's more whimsical elements, such as the talking purse that Bilbo tries to steal from the three trolls, to better match with the more realistic Rings.

In addition to that, the Hobbit films emphasize a lot of prominent elements from Rings that were largely glossed over or absent from the book, such as Sauron and the Rings of Power, the deep-rooted tensions between the elves and dwarves, and the One Ring's influence on Bilbo. It can be debated whether or not The Hobbit needs those elements in it as a stand-alone story, but now that it shares a universe with Tolkien's darker and more fleshed out works, I think it's good to tie the whole series closer together.

#4

Thorin's Plan

 

One of the strongest overall changes in the Hobbit films is Thorin's motivation for wanting to reclaim Erebor from Smaug. In the book, his main reason from the start is to steal back the treasure in the mountain, but in the movies, he starts out wanting to win back his people's homeland and only becomes greedy for the treasure after he reclaims the mountain. Since his goal in planning the quest is different in the adaptation, his strategy is different as well.

Thorin's plan in the book is to hire a burglar, send that burglar into the mountain over and over again to steal back the whole treasure one piece at a time, and then transport all of that treasure to a place that's far away from Smaug. Thorin's plan in the movies is to hire a burglar, send that burglar into the mountain to steal back the Arkenstone, use the Arkenstone to command the loyalty of every army in Middle-earth, and then lead those armies into the mountain to kill Smaug. Comparing these two plans, the one from the movies seems a lot more logical and has a much better chance of working.

To the book's credit, Bilbo does point out how flawed Thorin's idea to steal and relocate all of the treasure is. However, it's difficult for an audience to invest in characters who are that poor at planning ahead, especially when the thing that they're trying to get isn't terribly noble. In terms of the narrative structure, it's also more concise to have Thorin's plan center around the Arkenstone since the King's Jewel becomes so important later in the story.

Granted, his plan doesn't work out in either the book or the films, and since both versions of it do serve the purpose of showing Bilbo's cleverness and capability, it can be argued again that Thorin's plan doesn't matter. Still, I find the story a lot more engaging if Bilbo's company has a feasible strategy going into things.

#3

Bard the Bowman

A key principle of storytelling is that the better you establish a plot element before using it, the more justified its use will be. Considering this, I think it was very smart of the Hobbit films to introduce Bard the Bowman and his Black Arrow sooner than the book did.

Smaug's attack on Lake-town in the book is far from boring, but since it's also Bard's introduction scene, the readers only have the most general reasons for wanting him to kill the dragon. In contrast, letting the readers get to know him over the course of several scenes leading up to that point threatens them with a sense of loss if he fails, and that always raises the stakes. It's all the more beneficial to establish Bard as an important character prior to the attack on Lake-town because Smaug's death is such a crucial plot point in The Hobbit. Having an unknown person resolve one of the main conflicts in a story runs the risk of cheapening that resolution, even if the unknown person receives help from an important character.

I also think that giving Bard extra time for development makes his personality in the films more compelling than his personality in the book. Since we see what he's like and how he interacts with Thorin before Lake-town's destruction, we have a better understanding of where he's coming from when he demands a share of Erebor's treasure. What's more, it's easier to get behind him when we're introduced to him as someone who's witty and charming rather than someone who's just a voice of reason. All in all, I feel that the movies did a lot more with this character and made his purpose in The Hobbit much stronger for it.

#2

Bilbo and Thorin's Relationship

Bilbo's most important relationship in The Hobbit will always be the one he has with Gandalf, but in terms of him actually finding it in himself to grow as a character, his relationship with Thorin plays the biggest role. Thorin underestimates Bilbo while overestimating himself, which challenges and even forces Mr. Baggins to grow more courageous over the course of the story. While this dynamic between the humble hobbit and the proud dwarf king is of course explored in the book, it's shown mostly as a professional relationship that doesn't really become personal until their last few scenes together. In the films though, Bilbo and Thorin's relationship is a personal roller coaster that serves as the story's emotional backbone from beginning to end.

I can't stress enough how much more the movies focus on these two and complicate their relationship, and it all works perfectly. They hit every high and low imaginable, becoming friends a third of the way into the story and then constantly having their friendship tested, damaged, and repaired up until Thorin's death. It should be noted that a lot of the scenes dealing with their relationship were added to the story for the films, but even the scenes that come from the book are given more weight on screen and become more engaging, as well as more heartbreaking in a few cases.

The two biggest reasons for this seem to be that Bilbo in the films is much more affected by Thorin's criticism of him than in the book, making him more sympathetic and strengthening their conflict, and that the films give a lot more attention to Thorin's character arc than the book does. The book mentions Thorin's hardships of the past but doesn't really delve into how much they've affected him, whereas the films do that and more. We can sympathize with him as much as with Bilbo, and the fact that we can still see his nobility and optimism through his arrogance and bitterness makes us want to see him befriend the hobbit all the more. There's just a lot more meat added to the bones of what was in the source material, and at the end of the day, that makes for a heartier meal.

#1

The Dwarves

Maybe it's an obvious choice for #1, but it was apparent from the start that the films had made these characters way more interesting than the book had. Instead of thirteen largely interchangeable dwarves with varying beard and hood colors, the movies gave us thirteen very distinct individuals with unique personalities and appearances--most of which were conceived from scratch by the filmmakers themselves.

What's especially impressive about this feat is that the filmmakers did more with the dwarves than they really needed to. I've said before that Jackson's team could've easily just made each dwarf a one-note stock character and still given the audience more than the book did, but they took the time to develop these characters as much as possible and show more sides to each of them as the story went on. They didn't just want to make these dwarves entertaining, they wanted to make them realistic and relatable, and they were right to do that. These are the characters that drive the narrative, the people that Bilbo spends the most time with on his adventure and decides are worth risking his life for over and over again. He should form bonds with them over the course of the story, and in order for us to believe those bonds, it's important that we believe those characters.

Another reason why I made the film dwarves the #1 improvement from the book is because unlike the other things on this list, this one actually goes full circle to benefit the book. There are entire fanbases now dedicated to characters of Tolkien's who had virtually no fans prior to 2012, and anyone who reads The Hobbit after seeing the films will have an identity for each dwarf. They'll think of a prankster in a floppy hat when they read about Bofur tripping over Bilbo in Beorn's house; they'll think of an easygoing young warrior with knives hidden all over him when they read about Fili trying to spot the boat in the Enchanted River; they'll think of a pointy-haired thief and a fussy mother hen when they read about Nori and Dori bickering over leaving Bilbo at the bottom of their tree during the warg attack.

That's probably the greatest accomplishment of the Peter Jackson Hobbit films: they gave us something memorable that offers us a new experience when reading the book. They gave us a more colorful cast of characters to go on a quest with, which made the story as much about meeting new friends as it is about seeing new places and trying new things. In short, they added an extra dose to an already very exciting adventure.