Literary Corner: Why The Hobbit Is Better than the Films

Hey Reader!

So, as you might recall from our discussion about The Lord of the Rings movies and books, this year we're doing some literary study and comparing the books and movies tied to Tolkien's legendarium, and this week I'm kicking us off with a look at The Hobbit. In our last discussion on the Lord of the Rings trilogy I largely agreed with Tiberius's thoughts: the movies are pretty good adaptations and do a lot of things really well.

Today's post is not going to be as understanding to the Hobbit movies, though admittedly I have toned back a lot of my rhetoric because 1) people do like the movies, and I don't want to rain too hard on their parade, and 2) because I really am trying to cut back on being salty about most things in life, so I have to practice somewhere, :P

Like last time, this is not intended to be exhaustive: I've kept myself to five overarching reasons, but you can definitely add more in the comments if you wish. But as someone who had the equivalent of a Literature minor in college, has spent a lot of time specifically studying faerie literature and Tolkien's works, and even wrote a high school course on The Hobbit and its themes, it will surprise no one when I tell you that I have thoughts on this.

I think the Lord of the Rings movies are decent adaptations of the books: it's not a 1:1 recreation, but it does try to remain faithful to the themes and (generally) character arcs in the original text. I do not think the Hobbit movies are faithful adaptations of the source material, as a lot of what they do in them takes away from the central themes of the story, and overly complicate what should be a deeply resonant story for all of us who have ever felt like we weren't quite "home" yet, and are still searching for that place in our hearts (if not our physical bodies). And as a literary person, I really don't like it when themes aren't properly adapted from the source material.

So let's get started.

I.  Songs are GOOD

The first movie, admittedly, does this very well - I still remember where I was the first time I watched the trailer for the first movie, because Far Over the Misty Mountains Cold is done SO WELL. It sent chills down my back, and I got so pumped for the movie. And on the whole, by the way, I don't mind the first movie: I think it's a decent adaptation, and I appreciated what they did to bring out the minor characters in Thorin's Company (which the book doesn't really do).

But they cut so many songs over the course of the story, and that's a loss, because Tolkien isn't just adding songs because "he's writing it for kids" (as if kids are the only people to appreciate songs). Tolkien includes songs - just like he includes food - for each group of people we run into so that we know immediately what they are like, and whether or not they are protagonists or antagonists.

The song of the elves in Rivendell tells us a lot about who they are, how care-free they are, and how this is a place that is safe for the Company to stay the night (important considering their last run-in with the trolls). The song of the goblins, both as they descend into Goblin Town, but also as they are cornered on the fir trees by the warg-goblin alliance, is dissonant and has discordant rhythm and rhyme, which also tells you what they are like.

And the songs form an effective way to exposit a culture and people without having to do it through a narrative format, which is ideal for a movie setting: we don't want narrator voices over things if we can avoid it. And the songs fill that gap very well.

So great work first movie in execution; on the whole it's great (though again, where's the Rivendell song?), but as you go through the rest of the series we lose this. Tolkien also uses food for each culture to tell us what they are like and whether they are protagonists or antagonists or not, but that's a story for a different time.

II.  Tight Beats Are GOOD

The Hobbit is actually a pretty tight story: you basically need all of it for it to work, with every scene being necessary, and every character having a purpose. Scenes are actually quite short by comparison to other books (not surprising considering its reading level), and the plot is tight.

And I don't mind expanding on elements of the plot to give you greater context: I got very excited when I realized that they were going to show the Necromancer side of the plot that's going on behind the scenes during Thorin's quest, and I wouldn't remove that.

But I think it's a fair critique to say that there's also a lot of bloat. Elven-dwarven love triangles with no grounding in the source material aside for a moment, the latter two movies in particular (which tend to be much further from the source material) add a lot of scenes - mostly just talking - that embellish or stray from the critical elements of the plot, and don't really add much to the story. The love affair between Kili and Tauriel is very rushed, and thus doesn't have the impact that it should have when Kili dies (as he does in the book). Azog killing a lieutenant who "failed him" is fine, except that 1) we already know he's a bad dude because he cuts off the head of one of Thorin's ancestors and throws it out to them, so we don't need this, and 2) it doesn't add anything to the story (putting aside for a moment the fact that the Hobbit should focus on Bolg, not Azog, but more on that below when we talk about bloodlines and the importance of them for the story). All it does is 1) require another character, 2) rehash with an overused trope that this guy is, in fact, an antagonist, and 3) fill time. Not that the Hobbit movies had to be a trilogy (two films probably would have worked), so filling time isn't all that necessary, but here we are.

And to be clear, I don't mind embellishments; I like that Dwalin and Bofur gets more screen time in the movies than they do in the books, and I like how we get to see where Legolas fits into the scene, as he's not present in the book. But if you're going to add something, at least make sure it hits on the central themes of the story, doesn't take away from them, and lends more impact to the ending. And most of the add-ons don't do that.

III.   Epic Conclusions Are GOOD

The Hobbit doesn't get enough credit for how epic the conclusion is. The last really great dragon in the region (which is also far smaller than the great dragons of bygone ages, but for its time the largest in the region as far as we know) is slain, not by elves fighting with the graces of the Valar, but by a human man with a bow and (an admittedly very loyal and fateful) arrow, who though being in the lineage of the old kings of Dale works as a lowly riverman. This is like straight-ripped from the old stories that Samwise would talk about.

A massive horde of orcs, the leader of which descends from one of the great enemies of the dwarves, is utterly defeated. In the process, an old alliance between the Halls of Thranduil and Dale is restored, as is the old alliance between Dale and Erebor (with a friendly alliance between Thranduil and Dain thrown in to boot), an alliance that would remain even to the end of the Third Age as Dain and his son Thorin III stand side by side with King Brand and his son, Bard II.

A lowly hobbit gentleman brokers peace and security for an entire region of the world that is far removed from his home through burglary, and goes home with so much wealth he could buy his own country. But he doesn't spend basically any of it, because, you know - he's Bilbo Baggins, and a quiet home and a simple life is all he needs.

An evil fortress housing the great threat of the Third Age is overthrown by an army of elves led by one of the great elven lords and the Lady of Light herself (effectively the Sacred Mother of Tolkien's legendarium), forcing him to flee to Mordor, which sets us up for the next trilogy.

This book is full of epic conclusions. And we get them in the movies, but with a lot of bloat. The combat would be far better if it wasn't CGIed to death with less-than-optimal CGI (keep in mind that Avatar was made over 5 years earlier) and a lot of unnecessary beats added. An epic battle can lose some of its epic feel if it is stretched out with unnecessary beats that cause the energy of the scene to falter (I'm not saying we shouldn't have Legolas jumping on falling rocks, but I'm saying that Legolas jumping on falling rocks without sufficient payoff in the end is overextending the fight in ways that aren't helpful to the story).

And some of them don't appear at all - where is the army of Lorien?!?!? It's not like Weta Workshop didn't make Lorien battle armor 10 years earlier, and since there are orcs there, it's not like you couldn't have the elves fighting orcs while the big heroes of the White Council are trashing wraiths and banishing the big maiar himself. But as cool as the Dol Goldur fight is, it's not nearly as epic as the hint we get about it in the books, as the fortress is left intact and the army isn't there.

And we get basically none of the interaction between Dain and his new allies following the battle, we don't learn about the epic conclusion of Beorn that leads to more shapeshifting men - so many interesting conclusions that are not included because...we needed Thranduil to comfort an elf warrior who lost a dude she barely knew? Like, if you like the love triangle that's fine, but seriously: there's other stuff far more central to the plot that could have filled the time better. But more on that in our last point when we talk about Beorn.

IV.  Bloodlines Are GOOD

Do you know what modern audiences don't pay nearly as much attention to, even though they should? Bloodlines. Tolkien cared a lot about bloodlines because legitimacy of rule and authority stems primarily from bloodlines in Middle-Earth, and that means that a specific person dying or living could be HUGE for the world around them.

As an example, of Thorin's Company of 13 dwarves, three of them are directly related to Thror, King Under the Mountain: Thorin (who dies), Kili (who dies), and Fili (who dies). Which is HUGE because they represent three of the closest heirs to the throne of Thror, which is kinda what the whole mission is about restoring. And this is why Dain Ironfoot becomes the next ruler of Erebor: he is also related to Thror, admittedly with a bit more distance, but he's closer than the rest. So even though he's not one of the Company, he ends up on the throne. So suddenly, only three of the members dying has impact: of the 13 members of the Company, the three that you don't want dying are these three.

And this isn't the only place where bloodlines come up: Thorin is imprisoned by Thranduil mostly because of his lineage. Bolg is a descendant of Azog, and desires to finish the extermination of the dwarves as a continuation of his bloodline's work. Elrond welcomes Thorin and his Company because of his past friendship with the dwarves of Khazad-Dum and his lament for their demise.

Even Bilbo has a lineage! He is reminded by Gandalf that he has Tookish blood: the hobbits most prone to both acts of valor and adventure. And Bilbo's tenacity and resilience in the face of danger and evil is what establishes his nephew, Frodo, as part of his "lineage" even though they are not father-son.

Even the lack of lineage is important! Smaug is built up as an antagonist because he has no lineage: he has no long feud with the men of Dale or the dwarves of Erebor, yet he eats their women and sneaks into their halls to slay them. Why? Because he is an evil, malevolent being (and the similarities between this and Grendel sneaking into the halls of Hrothgar should not be lost on you), and thus strikes us from the outset as "antagonist monster who we are 100% justified in slaying," which you need for a good epic adventure.

So to say that the movies don't really focus on lineage all that much is a generous claim: they note Thorin's lineage (and relation to Kili and Fili), and we note the lineage of Legolas in the second and third movie, and of course we get the mention of Azog and Bolg's relation (though we complicate that with Bolg becoming second fiddle, so...maybe half credit here?), but the real impact of so many of the deaths and decisions being made by people isn't impacted nearly enough in the movies. This was very, very important for Tolkien (and arguably one of the three central themes of the book for him), and it's largely missing in the movies.

And this is bad, because when driving themes of the story are largely ignored the movie tends to lose its focus. It becomes just a collage of action sequences, panoramic shots, and attempted banter. And I want more than that, because the book gives me more than that. And they made a short book into over 10 hours of screen time when you add in the extended cuts. So I think it's fair to say that they had enough time to develop these themes if they wanted to do that.

V.  Beorn Is GOOD

Beorn is probably the biggest missed opportunity in the Hobbit films. Maybe a hot take - guess we'll see in the comments below. To understand what they are missing, we need to back up slightly and remember that 1) Tolkien is writing the history of Arda as a mythos for Britain: this is their equivalent of the Greek Myths, the Poetic Edda, Beowulf, and other mythic stories, and 2) that because of this, everything in the story is referencing something about Old Britain.

Which has to make you wonder, what the heck is Tolkien doing with Beorn? He's a skinshifter who roams about, ripping the heads off of orcs and spitting them on spikes around his house. He's being fed by dogs, deer, bears - all kinds of animals - that bring him food from the land around him (there's no meat or slaughter going on here, save for orcs). His home is rustic to say the least, made with old timbers from older times.

So what is he doing? It's simple actually: Beorn is a druid. The pre-Roman philosophers, diviners, and sometimes warriors of a people from long ago, known only through legend, and shrouded heavily in mystery because of that. All of his abilities are abilities ascribed to the druids (so is most of Gandalf's magic, by the way, which has led some scholars to think that Melian is supposed to be a druid too, but that's a side discussion for another day), and the wild, untamed, "unrefined" portrayal of him is exactly how a post-Roman Anglo-Saxon culture would view the druids of Old Britain.

And in the books this comes out in spades: from when Beorn is first mentioned to the last time we hear about him, there's something mysterious, veiled, and guarded that we sense about him. And it adds palpable tension to the scene when Gandalf is talking with him and trying to introduce the Company to him, hoping that he won't go into a rage.

But this "otherness" and mystery also means that Beorn can be a protagonist who gets to do things that the rest of us can't do, because he's not from our refined times with our sensibilities and proclivities. "The rules of war" don't apply, hospitality is not assumed, and the Golden Rule is not in force. But this doesn't mean that Beorn is evil, or even "bad" as presented: he's just not culturally part of us, so we shouldn't assume he'll play by the rules of our culture.

And the Beorn of the movies is flat to say the least: he's mostly just reduced to a gruff woodsman who can turn into a massive bear to make the "monster fight" crowd happy, and I think that's a huge missed opportunity. Beorn instructs the Company on how to survive their next katabasis, using his knowledge of "The Old Ways," and they don't heed it. He follows them and is aware that they are talking amongst themselves about keeping the ponies he gives them instead of sending them back when they reach the woods, and is ready to strike them down if they don't abide by the promise Gandalf made on their behalf. He keeps his own company and counsel, acts in his own capacity, and even saves the day, ripping through the ranks of even the stoutest bodyguards of Bolg. And in the process, he is integrated into the culture, becomes part of a community, and even has descendants (see, bloodlines!).

Beorn is a massive wasted opportunity: there's so much going on with this character, and we basically just glance the surface. And while in general the "minor characters get better treatment in books than in movies" is not true in this trilogy (again, we see far more of the dwarves in the trilogy than we do in the books, where basically only Thorin, Balin, Kili, Fili, and Bombur get anything close to a serious amount of time), it is very true for Beorn. For the few chapters he is in, he gets a lot of depth, but in the movies he's largely glossed over. Even his happy ending - which we do not expect when we meet him - is skipped over in the final movie.

Conclusion

Do you like the movies? Great! I enjoyed the first one quite a bit, and the others a good bit, mostly because I really like Bard in the books, and I thought they did a pretty good job with Bard in the movies (shenanigans with the windlance bolt notwithstanding). But the movies don't hold a candle to the book, which has great pacing, great action, great depth, and great dialogue.

But that's just, like, my OPINION, MAN! :P Let me know what you think below! Until then, you know where to find me,

Watching the stars,

Centaur

"Centaurs are concerned with what has been foretold!  It is not our business to run around like donkeys after stray humans in our forest!" ~ Bane, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone