Top three challenges for filming The Hobbit
Are you a book person or a movie person? In the Tolkien fandom, that's a question that often leads to virulent arguments -- something I always try to avoid, because life is short, and in my old age my tolerance for wank has gone down from zero to less than zero. The book/movie argument is one I'm particularly eager to sit out, because I find myself, as I often do, cowering in an uncomfortable no-man's land somewhere between two sides. If there were a Kinsey scale for Tolkien media preferences as there is for sexual preferences, I'd probably come out solidly in the middle of it.
So call me a bimedia Tolkien fan. I swing both ways. Some of the changes in the movies I liked quite a lot (the changes to the Eowyn plot line so that Theoden recognizes her when he dies in her arms). Other changes weren't my cuppa (Denethor), but were not, at the end of the day, a deal-killer in films that showed me magnificent visual interpretations of scenes I'd dreamed about for years.
For that reason I squeed as loudly as a car alarm in a thunderstorm last night at the news that finally, FINALLY, Peter Jackson has settled his differences with New Line, and there's a Hobbit film -- two films! -- in the offing. For me this has the potential to be unambiguously good fannish news -- but that's not to say that I don't sympathize with the people who are a little nervous. On the whole, I have faith that PJ has the capacity to make a good movie out of this book - but I also think the Hobbit is in some ways even MORE challenging to adapt than The Lord of the Rings. Here's why. (Massive spoilers ahead for anyone who hasn't read The Hobbit.)
Challenge number one: All those dwarves: Bilbo leaves Bag End with thirteen -- count 'em, thirteen -- Dwarvish companions. To what extent will or should the films try to differentiate among them as individual characters?
In the books, I don't think that Tolkien tries to do this much. Let me hasten to exempt Thorin from this generalization. Thorin is a fascinating character, one who works, I think, as a dwarvish variation on Aragorn's plot arc in LotR. He's a true dwarvish hero who starts in poverty and aims to revive the fortunes of his people against overwhelming odds. He's interestingly flawed in particularly dwarvish ways: mistrustful of outsiders, a little too entranced by the works of dwarvish hands (for that's what treasure is in the dwarvish mind as opposed to Smaug's mind: a thing wrested from the earth and made beautiful).
The entire action of the narrative (as planned by Gandalf) challenges Thorin's preconceptions; he's forced to rely on an outsider, and to sacrifice the treasure that he'd always thought of as his heart's desire. As an adult reader I've thought the final scene between Bilbo and Thorin is one of the most touching things in all of Tolkien's work.
So hurray for a complicated Thorin! But what about the rest of the Dwarves? If you read between the lines, Balin comes across as a clear second-in-command. (It will be interesting to see if the movie tries to set him up as the Dwarf who will eventually be inspired to go to Moria -- what happened in Balin's head as they crossed the Misty Mountains?) Fili and Kili are the youngest and most active, and they fall defending Thorin at the end; a two-movie sequence could flesh them out a bit and construct a moving character arc out of that.
As for the other dwarves, Bombur is often used as comic relief in the book, an aspect of canon that Peter Jackson will probably find hard to resist exploiting. And that's it, as far as differentiated dwarves are concerned in canon. Oin and Gloin? Bifur and Bofur? What are they like? Should the movie even try to tell us? Should we just get an undifferentiated crowd of dwarves, or would it actually be a good idea (gasps) to cut a few?
Challenge number two: Explaining Gandalf's disappearance,and how this will affect the structure of the story In the book, Gandalf disappears at the gates of Mirkwood with little explanation. We get a handwaving explanation after the fact, but it isn't really persuasive until LotR, when we discover how crucial Gandalf's departure really was. For Gandalf the entire Dwarvish expedition was part -- a somewhat dodgy part -- of a much larger strategy; by stirring up trouble at the Lonely Mountain he created a crucial distraction for goblins who might otherwise have come to the support of Sauron. He also kept Smaug busy at exactly the moment when you'd want a dragon's mind to be focused firmly somewhere where you were not.
If the Hobbit movies try to tell this much larger story, they'll depart from the structure of the book as we have it very radically. Given the reports of we've had of the film-makers plans (two movies!) it seems likely that they're going for this larger story. Different from the book? Very. Necessary? Probably -- because Gandalf's disappearance would otherwise be incredibly difficult to explain -- particularly for an audience that (unlike Tolkien when he actually wrote The Hobbit) is completely familiar with Gandalf as he was characterized in The Lord of the Rings.
And that's a different Gandalf -- one who is less fickle, less curmudgeonly, more obviously burdened by the fears and hopes that drive him to self-sacrifice. There are lots of ways to explain the differences between book!Gandalf in The Hobbit and the Gandalf who later developed in LotR. We can follow Sherlock Holmes fans and adopt "Doylist" or author-centered explanation: Tolkien changed Gandalf a bit between the early children's book and the later adult series. Or we can adopt a "Watsonian" or character-centered explanation: Gandalf is seen in the Hobbit very much through Bilbo's as-yet-limited point of view. But at the end of the day the movie, unlike the book, has to answer to audiences that saw LotR first, and under those circumstances, here's my question: should the movie emphasize line-by-line fidelity to the source, or character consistency in the epic as a whole?
Challenge number three: should the Ring be the innocent magic Ring of the Hobbit, or the dark, immensely powerful engine of destruction we know from LotR? I suppose this question is about tone just as much as anything else. In The Hobbit, it would take a very, very canny reader to predict how much damage the Ring would cause in the later epic. I don't think a reader of the first edition of The Hobbit -- the edition with Tolkien's original, less morally ambiguous confrontation between Bilbo and Gollum -- could have predicted how dangerous the Ring really was at all. (By the way, if you haven't read this version, you can get it in either The Annotated Hobbit or The History of the Hobbit; if you don't have these sources available to you, I'd be happy to email you a copy of the original version of this chapter).
As with Gandalf's character, we can adopt Watsonian or Doylist explanations for the discrepancies between Hobbit!Ring and LotR!Ring. I don't think a Doylist, author-centered explanation is entirely avoidable -- after all, Tolkien decided he had to rewrite a pivotal chapter of the Hobbit to make the series consistent. Obviously he didn't quite foresee everything about the Ring's nature when he wrote the first story. But Watsonian explanations are possible here, too: the Ring seduces in part by NOT revealing its nature all at once. It might very well seem innocent at first, particularly if we're looking at the action from Bilbo's point of view.
Still, I find myself wondering whether the filmmakers will -- or should -- put in a few dark hints here and there. For viewed from the perspective of the entire series, The Hobbit isn't just a there-and-back again adventure. It's the story of the beginning of Bilbo's ownership of the Ring. This is the only extended ownership in the Ring's long history -- apart from Sam's, but including Frodo's -- that ended with the Bearer surrendering it voluntarily to someone else.
Something happens to Bilbo in The Hobbit besides finding treasure; he finds the courage and the strength to bear the Ring for decades without being entirely corrupted by it. Seen in this way, Bilbo's willingness to sacrifice the Arkenstone carries a huge if ambiguous moral weight; it's a treasure he found, one that isn't really his, and one he sees not as precious and desirable but as a problem -- a problem to be solved by giving it away. Bilbo begins as he will end -- and it would be lovely if the movies found a way to show us just a little of this larger story.
So call me a bimedia Tolkien fan. I swing both ways. Some of the changes in the movies I liked quite a lot (the changes to the Eowyn plot line so that Theoden recognizes her when he dies in her arms). Other changes weren't my cuppa (Denethor), but were not, at the end of the day, a deal-killer in films that showed me magnificent visual interpretations of scenes I'd dreamed about for years.
For that reason I squeed as loudly as a car alarm in a thunderstorm last night at the news that finally, FINALLY, Peter Jackson has settled his differences with New Line, and there's a Hobbit film -- two films! -- in the offing. For me this has the potential to be unambiguously good fannish news -- but that's not to say that I don't sympathize with the people who are a little nervous. On the whole, I have faith that PJ has the capacity to make a good movie out of this book - but I also think the Hobbit is in some ways even MORE challenging to adapt than The Lord of the Rings. Here's why. (Massive spoilers ahead for anyone who hasn't read The Hobbit.)
Challenge number one: All those dwarves: Bilbo leaves Bag End with thirteen -- count 'em, thirteen -- Dwarvish companions. To what extent will or should the films try to differentiate among them as individual characters?
In the books, I don't think that Tolkien tries to do this much. Let me hasten to exempt Thorin from this generalization. Thorin is a fascinating character, one who works, I think, as a dwarvish variation on Aragorn's plot arc in LotR. He's a true dwarvish hero who starts in poverty and aims to revive the fortunes of his people against overwhelming odds. He's interestingly flawed in particularly dwarvish ways: mistrustful of outsiders, a little too entranced by the works of dwarvish hands (for that's what treasure is in the dwarvish mind as opposed to Smaug's mind: a thing wrested from the earth and made beautiful).
The entire action of the narrative (as planned by Gandalf) challenges Thorin's preconceptions; he's forced to rely on an outsider, and to sacrifice the treasure that he'd always thought of as his heart's desire. As an adult reader I've thought the final scene between Bilbo and Thorin is one of the most touching things in all of Tolkien's work.
So hurray for a complicated Thorin! But what about the rest of the Dwarves? If you read between the lines, Balin comes across as a clear second-in-command. (It will be interesting to see if the movie tries to set him up as the Dwarf who will eventually be inspired to go to Moria -- what happened in Balin's head as they crossed the Misty Mountains?) Fili and Kili are the youngest and most active, and they fall defending Thorin at the end; a two-movie sequence could flesh them out a bit and construct a moving character arc out of that.
As for the other dwarves, Bombur is often used as comic relief in the book, an aspect of canon that Peter Jackson will probably find hard to resist exploiting. And that's it, as far as differentiated dwarves are concerned in canon. Oin and Gloin? Bifur and Bofur? What are they like? Should the movie even try to tell us? Should we just get an undifferentiated crowd of dwarves, or would it actually be a good idea (gasps) to cut a few?
Challenge number two: Explaining Gandalf's disappearance,and how this will affect the structure of the story In the book, Gandalf disappears at the gates of Mirkwood with little explanation. We get a handwaving explanation after the fact, but it isn't really persuasive until LotR, when we discover how crucial Gandalf's departure really was. For Gandalf the entire Dwarvish expedition was part -- a somewhat dodgy part -- of a much larger strategy; by stirring up trouble at the Lonely Mountain he created a crucial distraction for goblins who might otherwise have come to the support of Sauron. He also kept Smaug busy at exactly the moment when you'd want a dragon's mind to be focused firmly somewhere where you were not.
If the Hobbit movies try to tell this much larger story, they'll depart from the structure of the book as we have it very radically. Given the reports of we've had of the film-makers plans (two movies!) it seems likely that they're going for this larger story. Different from the book? Very. Necessary? Probably -- because Gandalf's disappearance would otherwise be incredibly difficult to explain -- particularly for an audience that (unlike Tolkien when he actually wrote The Hobbit) is completely familiar with Gandalf as he was characterized in The Lord of the Rings.
And that's a different Gandalf -- one who is less fickle, less curmudgeonly, more obviously burdened by the fears and hopes that drive him to self-sacrifice. There are lots of ways to explain the differences between book!Gandalf in The Hobbit and the Gandalf who later developed in LotR. We can follow Sherlock Holmes fans and adopt "Doylist" or author-centered explanation: Tolkien changed Gandalf a bit between the early children's book and the later adult series. Or we can adopt a "Watsonian" or character-centered explanation: Gandalf is seen in the Hobbit very much through Bilbo's as-yet-limited point of view. But at the end of the day the movie, unlike the book, has to answer to audiences that saw LotR first, and under those circumstances, here's my question: should the movie emphasize line-by-line fidelity to the source, or character consistency in the epic as a whole?
Challenge number three: should the Ring be the innocent magic Ring of the Hobbit, or the dark, immensely powerful engine of destruction we know from LotR? I suppose this question is about tone just as much as anything else. In The Hobbit, it would take a very, very canny reader to predict how much damage the Ring would cause in the later epic. I don't think a reader of the first edition of The Hobbit -- the edition with Tolkien's original, less morally ambiguous confrontation between Bilbo and Gollum -- could have predicted how dangerous the Ring really was at all. (By the way, if you haven't read this version, you can get it in either The Annotated Hobbit or The History of the Hobbit; if you don't have these sources available to you, I'd be happy to email you a copy of the original version of this chapter).
As with Gandalf's character, we can adopt Watsonian or Doylist explanations for the discrepancies between Hobbit!Ring and LotR!Ring. I don't think a Doylist, author-centered explanation is entirely avoidable -- after all, Tolkien decided he had to rewrite a pivotal chapter of the Hobbit to make the series consistent. Obviously he didn't quite foresee everything about the Ring's nature when he wrote the first story. But Watsonian explanations are possible here, too: the Ring seduces in part by NOT revealing its nature all at once. It might very well seem innocent at first, particularly if we're looking at the action from Bilbo's point of view.
Still, I find myself wondering whether the filmmakers will -- or should -- put in a few dark hints here and there. For viewed from the perspective of the entire series, The Hobbit isn't just a there-and-back again adventure. It's the story of the beginning of Bilbo's ownership of the Ring. This is the only extended ownership in the Ring's long history -- apart from Sam's, but including Frodo's -- that ended with the Bearer surrendering it voluntarily to someone else.
Something happens to Bilbo in The Hobbit besides finding treasure; he finds the courage and the strength to bear the Ring for decades without being entirely corrupted by it. Seen in this way, Bilbo's willingness to sacrifice the Arkenstone carries a huge if ambiguous moral weight; it's a treasure he found, one that isn't really his, and one he sees not as precious and desirable but as a problem -- a problem to be solved by giving it away. Bilbo begins as he will end -- and it would be lovely if the movies found a way to show us just a little of this larger story.