Getting my feelings about hobbit spec out before the world premier happens!
HI blogfriends. HI.
So there's this MASSIVE speculative article-thing on theonering.net and I have a lot of REACTIONS to it. But I don't think I can tweet about them in good conscience because what if the spec is right and they are actually SPOILERS.
SO I WILL TALK ABOUT THEM HERE.
HERE IS THE ARTICLE. IT IS VERY THOUGHT PROVOKING.
Compressed timeline and up the threat of sauron: COOL. GO FOR IT PJ AND CO. YOU DID THIS WITH THE LAST TRILOGY. IT WENT WELL.
And if future viewers of all six films in internal chronological order first see Saruman as a good guy, they’ll be as blindsided as Gandalf when he turns traitor in FOTR. The only narrative function of a fallen Saruman in The Hobbit would be to spoil that surprise.
OOH. GOOD POINT. ALSO: OMG SIX FILM TOLKIEN MARATHONS. A THING THAT PEOPLE OF THE FUTURE WILL BE ABLE TO DOOOOO.
We’ll even see Gandalf and Saruman collaborate on creating devices to help win the Battle of Dol Guldur
BATTLE. OF DOL GULDUR. BATTLE!
Oops, I said the magic words: Morgul-blade. We’ve learned quite a bit about how the Sauron storyline has been revised for the movie, but what we’ve learned raises many further questions, some of which are so subtle that I haven’t seen them asked yet. Let’s look at what we know and what we don’t know, and see if we can figure out the missing details of this major (but quite justifiable and dramatically effective) revision of Middle-Earth history.
SRSLY, DID I JUST *FORGET* ALL SPOILERS RELATED TO THIS MORGUL BLADE THING? THIS IS THE FIRST TIME I'VE HEARD ABOUT IT, I FEEL.
From the footage shown at CinemaCon, we know that Gandalf presents a Morgul-blade to Elrond, Galadriel, and Saruman (but not Radagast) at a White Council meeting in Rivendell, and they debate its significance.
TOTALLY MISSED ALL FAN REPORTS OF THIS. ALL OF THEM. *SOMEHOW*
In the same scene, we learn that at some point in the past, the Witch-king and the rest of the Nazgûl had been entombed / imprisoned by the Dúnedain, in crypts protected by powerful spells.
WHAAAAAAT. WHAAAAAAT. OH MY GOD THERE ARE NAZGUL IN THESE FILMS. NAZGULLLLL. AND THE WITCH KING! WITCH KING WITCH KING WITCH KING OMG. I WANTED TO TAKE OUT A WHOLE TWEET OF NAZGULLLLLLLLLLL AT THIS POINT BUT NOTICE THAT *I DID NOT* \o/ I WAS STRONG. (ALSO WOULD NOT OBJECT TO VIGGO CAMEO W/THE DUNEDAIN. CAMEOS FOR EVERYONE \o/)
From the figurine character biographies, we know that the company encounters an apparently resurrected Azog (the orc captain killed long ago at the battle of Azanulbizar), and that Gandalf regards this as a clue as to the nature of the evil that dwells in Dol Guldur. This tells us that the film emphasizes Sauron’s powers of necromancy.
FUCK YES NECROMANCY. FUCK. YES. AND OH MY GOD. I HOPE SO HARD. SOOOOOO HARD THAT PETER CANNOT RESIST AND WE GET A SWORD-FIGHT AGAINST SKELETAL *SOMETHINGS* AT SOME POINT. BECAUSE HE LOVES HARRYHAUSEN. AND HOW COULD HE NOOOOOT. THEY COULD BE CAVE TROLL SKELETONS OR GOBLINS OR WARGS OR ANYTHING AT ALL AND I WOULD BE SO VERY HAPPY. GRATUITOUS SKELETON FIGHTS!!
Unless the orcs have sperm bank technology (credible only in a Rankin-Bass adaptation)...
THIS IS JUST ONE OF MY FAVORITE LINES OF THE ARTICLE. LOL.
Nope, you can’t just find a Morgul-blade. You have to know it was recently used by an enemy. And who could that be? Who might be wielding a Morgul-blade, other than a Nazgûl? A barrow-wight, that’s who. A barrow-wight, as in a spirit re-animated by necromancy.
LOOSING MY SHIT. OH MY GODDDDDDD. BARROW-WIGHTS. MOTHERFUCKING BARROW-WIGHTS. I WROTE AN *ESSAY* ON THEM. I AM VERY INVESTED IN THEMMMMMM. BARROW-WIGHTS. THAT WOULD BE SO COOL. I HOPE THIS HAPPENS. I HOPE THIS HAPPENS A LOT AND IF IT IS ONLY IN THE EXTENDED EDITION AND NOT THE THEATRICAL RELEASE I WILL WEEP BITTER TEARS UNTIL IT IS CONFIRMED. ::WAAAAAAAAAAAAANT::
HERE IS THE JOHN HOWE ARTWORK THAT I HAVE HOTLINKED FROM THE ARTICLE. IT LOOKS VERY PROMISING. NO. NO. DO NOT TALK TO ME ABOUT HOW IT COULD BE WHERE THE TROLLS HID THEIR STASH OF STUFF. HUSH.
Second, if Gandalf stays behind to further investigate signs of barrow-wight activity, it provides a much more satisfying reason than the book’s for his absence when they encounter the trolls, and hence a much more dramatic reappearance (and of course explains why he is missing from all of the walking and running footage in the second trailer).
...POINT.
In other words, if we stay faithful to the book’s geography, we’d see Haldir instead of Legolas at the battle-and we know we’re seeing Legolas.
SO ~SNARKY~ YOU ARE, OH WRITER OF THIS SPEC. \LEGOLAS/ \PROBABLY IN FILM TWO/
And like you, I am dying to find out just what Sauron can do to a hedgehog that would be as scary to Radagast as the re-animation of the dead is to Gandalf. But this invention of Jackson’s seems nicely in accord with the concern that Tolkien always shows for the natural world. A hedgehog by any other name would be a tree.
TOLKIEN+NATURE/TREES 4EVAAAAA
Let’s jump ahead now to the end of this sequence, where things become clear again. The Council (perhaps just Elrond) has received Radagast’s terrifying message that a Dark Power had attacked and destroyed the home of a Wizard. They have responded urgently: the Nazgûl tombs must be examined at once.
CREEPY TOMBS YESSS. GO INVESTIGATE SOME. GO!
That Gandalf is not formally a part of Thorin’s group is of course a central plot element: it’s because he can’t be counted as one of the party that the Dwarves need Bilbo to be the lucky fourteenth member. In Tolkien, there are two types of reason for this. The authorial reason is that Gandalf is too powerful a character, and his permanent presence among the company would restrict the range of perilous situations that Tolkien could have the company face. The reason internal to the story that Tolkien then invented was that Gandalf had other wizardly business he expected to have to attend to, and therefore could not commit to accompanying the Dwarves the entire time; specifically, Gandalf expected to be working with the White Council against the Necromancer. (The glib jest here is that it’s a good thing for Jackson that he did, because without the Necromancer storyline there might not be material for more than one movie. The truth is that without this seemingly offhand connection, there might be no Hobbit or Lord of the Rings at all...)
THE IDEA OF GANDALF HAVING ALL THESE ADVENTURES AND EXPLORATIONS THAT WE MIGHT GET TO SEE THRILLS ME *TO NO END* AND IT WORKS SO *WELL* WITH ALL THOSE DISAPPEARANCES IN THE BOOK. LOOK AT PJ/THIS PERSON'S GUESSES ACCOUNT FOR ALL OF THEM! LOOK HOW CLEVERRRRRRRR.
So here’s our new backstory. The Dúnedain defeat the Witch-king in Eriador and, after failing to destroy him, immobilize him with spells; they then bring him East to Dol Guldur, and work the same magic on the rest of the Nazgûl.
THIS IS SO CLEVERRRRR OH MY GOD I WANT THIS TO BE WHAT HAPPENED. I WANT IT SO MUUUUUUCH.
And here’s a bold guess for exactly where the tombs are: the Carrock. To begin with, it already has a cave. It’s surrounded on three sides by a river, and hence the burial of the Nazgûl here would echo the suggestion in Tolkien that the Nazgûl don’t much like water, and thus have an evocative resonance with their defeat at the ford of the Bruinen in FOTR. The tomb of the Nazgûl may be inside The Carrock. You’d get two uses from one location design, and you’d make the location important and memorable without having had to invent it. And if we hear quite a bit about the tombs, visit the Carrock without giving their location away, and then come back there to reveal it, it would be a very cool surprise.
THE CARROCK??? WHAT. WHATTTT. WHAAAAAAAAATTTTTT OH MY GOD. (GENIUS)
By delaying the Sauron storyline, Jackson can show us the crucial moments when Gandalf first takes on the great task that has long been appointed for him: being the enemy of Sauron. Tentative first steps and missteps, and the lessons they teach, make for terrific drama; the better Gandalf gets at his job, the less interesting a character he becomes (although he becomes more inspiring to an almost precisely opposite degree). Gandalf is the one character who has a story arc across all six movies; an unsure Gandalf is precisely what Jackson wants to show us here at the start.
ILU GANDALF/IAN MCKELLEN. ILUUUUUUUUUU
(DAMN IF ONLY HALF OF THIS TO DO IAN WILL HAVE TO HAVE BEEN *QUITE* THE ACTION STAR. LOOK AT YOU *GO* IAN MCKELLEN!)
While it would seem obvious to Tolkien that even a creature as intelligent and self-willed as a dragon could be used in such a fashion by a Dark Power, it wouldn’t seem anywhere as evident to film audiences who know nothing of the Glaurung story. So that’s why Jackson has the stone-giants attack Gandalf and his party, and giant spiders destroy Rhosgobel. It’s not just that it gives Gandalf the chilling insight that if Sauron has indeed returned, he is very likely planning to use Smaug in a similar fashion as a weapon against Rivendell. It’s that it makes this credible to the other members of the Council-and to us.
YEP. I TOTALLY DIDN'T REMEMBER/KNOW ABOUT GLAURUNG. I AVOIDED CHILDREN OF HURIN. THEIR STORY IN JUST THE APPENDICES WAS JUST SO FULL OF AWFUL THINGS HAPPENING TO PEOPLE SO I SKIPPED THE BOOK! NO REGRETS! ...OK FEW. A FEW REGRETS THAT I MISSED THE IMPLICATION HERE. BUT THAT IS WHAT OTHER PEOPLE WHO HAVE READ IT ARE FOR \o/
The now-homeless Radagast will clearly be an important figure throughout it; I suspect we’ll even see him at The Battle of Five Armies.
I HAVE NO OBJECTIONS TO ACRES AND ACRES OF SYLVESTER MCCOY. HE IS GREAT. (I HOPE PEOPLE LIIIIIKE HIM) AND IT *WOULD* EXPLAIN WHY HE HAS SUCH A PROMINENT PLACE IN THE TRAILERS.
I can imagine cutting from the Lord of the Eagles telling Gandalf that he sees orcs and Wargs, to the scene of them surrounding or trapping Radagast, and then back to the Carrock landing, where Gandalf (after hesitating mysteriously and appearing unsure of himself) says cryptic things about where he’s taking them next. And then the credits.
AHHHHHHHH!
In the book, it’s noted that Gandalf had once healed the Lord of the Eagles of an arrow-wound, thus beginning the great friendship between Gandalf and the Eagles that reaches its apotheosis near the end of LOTR. The help of the Eagles at the Battle of the Five Armies is what Tolkien called a “eucatastrophe”. Jackson loves to take elements from the backstory and place them in the present action-for instance, we witness the first time that Treebeard sees the destruction of trees he knew, when in the book that had been going on for some time. So Gandalf wouldn’t just convince the Eagles that he and his companions were innocent; he would fix whatever it was that had made the Eagles so angry (or promise to do so and then later make good on it), and this would replace the healing of the wound as the origin story for his friendship with them.
THAT WOULD BE COOL. YES. HAVE FILMED THIS PJ. PLEASE AND THANK YOU.
(It occasionally crops up in realistic narratives, too, including one of the most critically acclaimed films of the last few years. Note that simply knowing that there is a eucatastrophe, even without knowing what it is, spoils the ending, so click at your peril if you want to know which one.)
THE FACT THAT THIS LINK LEADS NOWHERE FOR ME IS DRIVING ME BONKERS. WHAT EUCATASTROPHE, OH AUTHOR? TELL MEEEEEEE.
On the other hand, it’s quite possible that the Beorn stopover has been made more exciting, enough so that it would work perfectly well as a near-final sequence. That’s why I can’t completely dismiss the possibility that Jackson was hedging his bet here.
I *LONG* TO SEEN THE BEORN STOPOVER. HE IS MY FAVORITE. SO GROUCHY.
WHEW OK. CAPSLOCK OVER.
So yes. Many things. I scowl at the commenter over on theonering who says the barrow-downs thing is harebrained though. Now that it has been suggested anything else will be so disappointing!
...this is why every Harry Potter book since I started reading HP fanfic was disappointing too. /o\ I keep reading theories that are cooler that what the canon turns out to be. When will you learn, self?
Also at http://isweedan.dreamwidth.org/107280.html -
comment(s) there.