But to me, he was....
Winter always reminds me of the Hobbit trilogy. Which belongs to the flawed canons which I love fervently despite being aware of just how faulty they are. Too bloated, shouldn't have been three movies, ridiculous Action!Legolas scenes (and too many action senes in general), yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm with you, but listen: These flawed movies made me care about their characters in a way I just hadn't in the book (save for Bilbo). (Maybe I read it too late, and in the wrong order - i.e. I read LotR first, with 12 or 13, and was 21 by the time I got around to The Hobbit.)
The dwarves, whom the movies made into individuals for me (the book did this solely for Thorin and Balin, at least in my dim memory of how I felt during my first reading). The humans - I really love that we got to meet Bard not the screen equivalent of a page before he kills the dragon, but that we got to know him and his family half a movie before that happens, that the plight of the people of Laketown became correspondingly more urgent, emotionally. The elves - I loved all the Galadriel scenes (which also made me ship Galadriel/Gandalf). I know a lot of people feel Thranduil got written too unsympathetically, but to me he came across as something out of an earlier Middle Earth Age, and the conflict between him and Tauriel in the last two movies was interesting because neither was positioned as evil. (Tauriel was right about isolationism, but she, being much younger, also had no idea what losing someone to death really felt like, and Thranduil did. Also, "people arguing because of their convictions" and "being the opposition to someone you don't consider evil" are among my favourite tropes, and those movies delivered both with Thorin and with Thranduil as the Leaders whom people who respected them still needed to stand up to.)
Mind you, caring about most of the characters also meant - and still means, years later - grieving in a way the book didn't make me, and not just relating to events in The Hobbit. Now I'm with Gimli when the Fellowship discovers Balin's tomb (and Ori's skeleton with the book, little Ori!) in Moria, and I want to bawl my eyes out. Also, the idea of Bilbo post-Hobbit and pre-Frodo's arrival in his life: gut wrenching, because while the book reassures us that Bilbo lived happily to the end of his days, the movie leaves him raw with grief and utterly alone in a cleaned out Bag End. As for the three deaths at the end of the Hobbit: yep, still mentally sobbing at the thought of them. Good lord, but caring makes all the difference to thinking "yep, The Hobbit is a nice and charming tale for kids" and going "Tolkien, you bloodthirsty man, how could you?!?"
Also: Thorin is the Boromir phenomenon writ large for me: i.e. character I could take or leave in the book whom by virtue of acting and some writing addendums to the basic material I now love to bits with all his flaws (much like the movies themselves). Because my post last month with the dancing and/or singing scenes from movies and tv episodes which aren't musicals was meant to be cheery, I couldn't include this, but dear readers of this utterings, the Far over the misty mountains sequence is still perfection, and works beautifully on a Doylist and Watsonian level alike as when the comedy tone of the story so far shifts, and Bilbo for the first time feels that longing for mystery and adventure which ultimately lets him run off with the dwarves.
Yeah, that's Tolkien, you'll say, but none of the non-Tolkien based has that emotional power. But but but the acorn scene in "Battle of the Five Armies", say I, which is pure Philippa Boyens and Fran Walsh, with zero Tolkien basis. Whether or not you consider the decision to let Thorin not just be a stubborn bastard in that part of the story but to go not so slightly mad before he snaps out of it again a mistake, this scene, mid-"gold sickness" phase when Thorin is at his greedy and paranoid utmost yet capable of accessing his better self for Bilbo again is just immensely moving and wonderfully played by both actors:
It also foreshadows Thorin's death scene, which gives Thorin mostly Tolkien's lines but also makes me incapable of ever hearing "The eagles are coming" the same way I did post LotR again.
And because just thinking about it makes me sad, I checked whether there was new-to-me fanfiction relevant to my interests, and came up with these:
Exile: what Tauriel did next
From such great heights: There's a first time for everything: Gandalf/Galadriel.
Perennial: Bilbo's life with Frodo between trilogies and beyond. (Bookverse, but works for movieverse as well.)
Unguarded: Thorin contemplating his burglar.
This entry was originally posted at https://selenak.dreamwidth.org/1323485.html. Comment there or here, as you wish.
The dwarves, whom the movies made into individuals for me (the book did this solely for Thorin and Balin, at least in my dim memory of how I felt during my first reading). The humans - I really love that we got to meet Bard not the screen equivalent of a page before he kills the dragon, but that we got to know him and his family half a movie before that happens, that the plight of the people of Laketown became correspondingly more urgent, emotionally. The elves - I loved all the Galadriel scenes (which also made me ship Galadriel/Gandalf). I know a lot of people feel Thranduil got written too unsympathetically, but to me he came across as something out of an earlier Middle Earth Age, and the conflict between him and Tauriel in the last two movies was interesting because neither was positioned as evil. (Tauriel was right about isolationism, but she, being much younger, also had no idea what losing someone to death really felt like, and Thranduil did. Also, "people arguing because of their convictions" and "being the opposition to someone you don't consider evil" are among my favourite tropes, and those movies delivered both with Thorin and with Thranduil as the Leaders whom people who respected them still needed to stand up to.)
Mind you, caring about most of the characters also meant - and still means, years later - grieving in a way the book didn't make me, and not just relating to events in The Hobbit. Now I'm with Gimli when the Fellowship discovers Balin's tomb (and Ori's skeleton with the book, little Ori!) in Moria, and I want to bawl my eyes out. Also, the idea of Bilbo post-Hobbit and pre-Frodo's arrival in his life: gut wrenching, because while the book reassures us that Bilbo lived happily to the end of his days, the movie leaves him raw with grief and utterly alone in a cleaned out Bag End. As for the three deaths at the end of the Hobbit: yep, still mentally sobbing at the thought of them. Good lord, but caring makes all the difference to thinking "yep, The Hobbit is a nice and charming tale for kids" and going "Tolkien, you bloodthirsty man, how could you?!?"
Also: Thorin is the Boromir phenomenon writ large for me: i.e. character I could take or leave in the book whom by virtue of acting and some writing addendums to the basic material I now love to bits with all his flaws (much like the movies themselves). Because my post last month with the dancing and/or singing scenes from movies and tv episodes which aren't musicals was meant to be cheery, I couldn't include this, but dear readers of this utterings, the Far over the misty mountains sequence is still perfection, and works beautifully on a Doylist and Watsonian level alike as when the comedy tone of the story so far shifts, and Bilbo for the first time feels that longing for mystery and adventure which ultimately lets him run off with the dwarves.
Click to viewYeah, that's Tolkien, you'll say, but none of the non-Tolkien based has that emotional power. But but but the acorn scene in "Battle of the Five Armies", say I, which is pure Philippa Boyens and Fran Walsh, with zero Tolkien basis. Whether or not you consider the decision to let Thorin not just be a stubborn bastard in that part of the story but to go not so slightly mad before he snaps out of it again a mistake, this scene, mid-"gold sickness" phase when Thorin is at his greedy and paranoid utmost yet capable of accessing his better self for Bilbo again is just immensely moving and wonderfully played by both actors:
It also foreshadows Thorin's death scene, which gives Thorin mostly Tolkien's lines but also makes me incapable of ever hearing "The eagles are coming" the same way I did post LotR again.
And because just thinking about it makes me sad, I checked whether there was new-to-me fanfiction relevant to my interests, and came up with these:
Exile: what Tauriel did next
From such great heights: There's a first time for everything: Gandalf/Galadriel.
Perennial: Bilbo's life with Frodo between trilogies and beyond. (Bookverse, but works for movieverse as well.)
Unguarded: Thorin contemplating his burglar.
This entry was originally posted at https://selenak.dreamwidth.org/1323485.html. Comment there or here, as you wish.