Lord of the Rings

I think the only real antagonist in the Hobbit is Smaug and then Bolg. The Thranduil-Bard-Thorin threeway struggle is I think meant to be a case of Gray-and-Gray Morality, where everyone has some semblance of reason and some semblance of being wrong. Bard just wants to feed his people but on the other hand Thorin ls just trying to reclaim his family's treasure and home after a life living as a wanderer in his exile. Of the main parties Thranduil is likely the one with least justification to being there and the least right to the treasure, but since he's helping Bard and the people of Laketown/Dale, he gets a lot of sympathy points.

It's a situation where the problem only exists because of mutual mistrust between essentially good people.

I think the film fucks this up primarily because Thranduil is such a unrelenting asshole in the film continuity that my sympathies instantly go to Thorin.

edited 20th Nov '17 8:54:56 AM by Gaon

Indeed. We're supposed to get that both Thorin and Thranduil are involved in an eons-long cycle of revenge that neither can relent from out of pride, making them both tragic figures.

Bard isn't being completely selfless. He doesn't want to just feed the people of Laketown, he also wants to re-establish Dale - with himself as king, no less.

It can be argued that if Smaug hadn't shown up Bard would have been king of Dale, so it's perfectly within his rights to want to be king, but it isn't an entirely selfless motive.

Yeah, Thranduil is almost straight-up evil in the film. He is much more reasonable in the book. For one thing, he doesn't recognize Thorin when he imprisons him. He's not trying to blackmail Thorin into giving his elves a share of the treasure, he's merely dealing with a bunch of vagabond dwarves who are stirring up the spiders in the forest and won't give him any clear account of what they are up to.

It's also unclear exactly what he would have done if his army had been first to the mountain and claimed the treasure without opposition. Perhaps he would have divided it up very fairly to the dwarves and men, taking only a portion himself. It is clear that he diverted his army to help the lake men because "he was the lord of a good and kindly people."

Bear in mind, Smaug only attacks Laketown because Thorin and company go to the Mountain and stir him up, without any real plan for what they'd do when they got there. While it was the result of incompetence rather than malice, they are responsible for the destruction that Laketown suffered.

I'm pretty sure Tolkien talks about Frodo's "failure" in one of his Letters. The Ring, as a stand-in for Evil or Sin itself, can NEVER be truly overcome. You can resist it but all finite beings will succumb to it in the end. Or so Tolkien's theology holds. Frodo did the best any mortal being could but he was still ultimately just a normal person and thus no match for Sin incarnate. Quite frankly the fact he resisted Sin for so long is what should be remarked upon, not that his will caved in after such prolonged temptation and abuse.

And The Silmarillion will always be the best Tolkien work for me. Fuck Elves. And Morgoth was awesome.

I do remember quite clearly the prose describing Bard's inner thoughts hearing about the whole prospect of being the Lord of Dale. It's described as him paying no heed to this up until he remembers how glorious the city was and his primary concern seems to be that ancient and grand city would be the perfect place for all those people to start life anew. It's only when he realizes his claim to Lordship of Dale can help these poor people restart their lives that Bard makes the switch and decides to act on his claim of Dale.

I do think Thranduil imprisoning a bunch of starving dwarves was dickish of him (since they clearly presented no threat whatsoever and in fact tried to communicate this several times before being imprisoned), but it was more an act of (perhaps justified, given how grim Mirkwood was becoming due Sauron's influence) excessive paranoia than outright malice as it is in the film.

Sure, Smaug attacks Laketown because the Dwarves stir him up, but really their plan wasn't terrible. It consisted of: send the Burglar down to gather some intel, and then kill Smaug with whatever intel Bilbo brings back. To their credit Bilbo indeed notices a weakness (Smaug's soft underbelly) that is ultimately the cause of Smaug's destruction. It's not like the Dwarves had much choice, really. Their ancient home and treasures were taken by a giant fire breathing beast whose very existence threatens Middle Earth. Of course they have to try and slay him, as fruitless as it might be. On the other hand, yeah, the people of Laketown deserve compensation. It's a rough situation.

As the essay last page observed, Tolkien appears to have had beliefs in the Augustinian Theodicy theory (one of the theological responses for "How is there evil in a world with a benevolent omnipotent god?"). The logic goes evil isn't a thing as of itself, but rather the absence of goodness, so evil is inherently infertile and self-destructive, because it's just an absence, a corruption. You can see this reflected in how all the evil races aren't races per see but rather corruptions and mockeries of the actual races in several ways. Morgoth, Sauron and Saruman are all characterized by their utter incapacity to create new life. They're sterile and inherently self-destructive. Exactly because evil isn't a force as of itself, it's the absence of another force, so it cannot generate new life or things, only corrupt previous ones. That's the Augustinian theology working its way through the story.

In this logic, a moral fistfight with evil is pointless, because you're effectively just fighting a vacuum. You win evil by renouncing it (thus, Frodo sparing Gollum) rather than by beating it straight up.

If Frodo had managed to overcome his darker side and hurl the Ring in the fire, that'd make the story lean more to Irenaean Theodicy.

The Dwarves' plan was never to kill Smaug, though; Gandalf lays out in the beginning that they don't have the sort of Hero or Warrior you'd need for dragon slaying. Their plan was to have Bilbo sneak in and steal the treasure out from under Smaug's nose. That the size of the treasure makes this totally unfeasible, and that Smaug would certainly notice his treasure being stolen and retaliate, never crossed their minds (or, if it did, they avoided giving the matter any thought until they were literally standing at the threshhold). Bilbo explicitely calls them out for this.

I think they were hoping that Bilbo could locate the Arkenstone, although Thorin was being very cagey about his desire for the thing. But yeah, it very much felt like a Missing Steps Plan.

In The Quest of Erebor in The Unfinished Tales, Thorin seems deadset on killing Smaug and Gandalf throws Bilbo as a member of the group partially to discourage him from doing anything as openly insane as facing him head-on.

Their plan was to scout out the situation to possibly find a way to get rid of Smaug and in the meantime steal a little gold on the side. The Arkenstone isn't mentioned at all in the book until just before Smaug goes off to Laketown to get killed. There is no mention at all of the movie's idea of using the Arkenstone to call up enough dwarven armies to take on the dragon. That was an idea original to the movie.

If you want to pin blame for Smaug's attack on Laketown, it would probably ultimately rest with Gandalf. He was the one who convinced the dwarves to finally go on this quest in the first place, If Gandalf hadn't met Thorin in Bree there would have been no quest of Erebor, and if Thorin had gone with just dwaves as company they would never have made it to the Lonely Mountain on their own. What's more, it's a good bet that Gandalf knew that something very like the attack on Laketown was a good possibility, and he sent a hobbit and 13 dwarves into harm's way anyway.

To be fair on poor Gandalf it seems like his original plan was going along with them and personally handling the whole dragon business along the Company. It seems like the whole Necromancer business sidestepped him to a enormous extent.

If memory does not fail me when Bilbo meets Gandalf again just before the Battle of Five Armies he notices Gandalf looks absolutely exhausted and beaten down, as if he had just walked out of a battle himself.

Tolkien admitted that Frodo failed, and that Frodo's feelings on the matter are what meant he could not heal in Middle Earth. But Tolkien also maintained that Frodo was justly honored for doing as much as any mortal could have:

"Few others, possibly no others of his time, would have got so far."

And the guy who got so far(Isildur) didnt even drop it and almost doomed everyone else.

To be observed that's a scene only in the movie. In the book Isildur takes the Ring as reparation for the death of his father during the battle against Sauron and immediately darts off Mordor back to Gondor. It's not actually clear in book continuity if Elrond truly realized the momentous fuck-up that was Isildur walking out with that Ring on his person.

Subsequently. Elrond's (incredibly dickish and racist) "Men are weak/Dwarves are greedy and stuck in the earth mining riches" diatribe is unique to the films.

It seems like I misplaced the passage. I think the one he's "unusually weary" is the one after the Battle of Five Armies, then.

edited 20th Nov '17 1:19:01 PM by Gaon

Elrond lacked the power to compel Isildur, and had he taken the Ring by force, he would have damned himself just as surely, and much faster, than had he not done so. He knew this quite well. As Tolkien said, in the end, no "incarnate" — meaning earthly, embodied — being could have resisted the Ring at the height of its power. The quest was doomed from the beginning, save for that one, tiniest chance that ultimately saw it completed.

In a weird way, Sauron was absolutely right. He did not fear the Ring being destroyed at Mount Doom because he knew full well that nobody who tried could ever possibly go through with it. It was literally impossible to make oneself do it.

The scene with Isildur in the prologue to the films makes a great deal of sense if you take it as foreshadowing of Frodo's own inability to cast the Ring into the fire. It's literally a replay with Sam as Elrond and Frodo as Isildur.

edited 20th Nov '17 1:21:05 PM by Fighteer

That was actually something that I thought the Hobbit movies did very well, actually making the Battle of Five Armies be more foreshadowed and whatnot by expanding on the orcs preparing for war, Azog and Bolg being fleshed out more, stuff like that.

I didn't mind an Orc pack having a larger antagonistic role pursuing the protagonists, it served to tie around the almost Random Events Plot of The Hobbit a bit more. My problem's more with resurrecting Azog (who had been killed by Dáin a while before the Hobbit even begins) to be the main villain. I'd just have used Bolg and expanded his role. Make it a bit of a Cycle of Vengeance thing (Azog killed Thrór, Thorin killed Azog to avenge Thrór, Bolg now wants to kill Thorin to avenge Azog). If they had lifted Azog's entire characterization and given to Bolg, naming him Bolg the Defiler and making him "the Pale Orc", it'd have run much smoother. Having both Azog and Bolg feels redundant as it gets. It's noticeable Bolg has practically no role in the trilogy other than fighting Leoglas and Tauriel, who shouldn't even be here.

Also odd of them to cut out the whole thing with the Goblins of the Misty Mountains going to avenge the death of the Great Goblin, giving how the whole Great Goblin business is basically the climax of the first film and the whole motivation of the Orcish army in the book.

According to Elrond in the book, he and Cirdan were the only people who saw Isildur take the Ring, and they did counsel him to destroy it immediately in the mountain, "but Isildur would not listen to our counsel." He doesn't seem to blame men in general for this. Elrond is, after all, half human himself.

Isildur didn't immediately leave for the north - he stayed at Minas Anor for long enough to plant the sapling of the White Tree and confer Gondor on his nephew Melendil. The disaster at Gladden Fields and Isildur's death didn't happen until the 2nd year of the Third Age - two years after Sauron fell.

What I would have done with the film adaptation is cut out the Mirkwood Elves entirely, and just have the spiders occupying an old, abandoned fortress in the forest (maybe with them creating illusions of Elves occupying it at one point to lure the Dwarves in). The Elves who show up for the Battle of Five Armies would instead be from Rivendell, led by Elrond who figured out what the Dwarves were up to after catching a glimpse of their map.

Of course, I'm looking at it from the perspective of trying to make a single, spritely paced movie, not a bloated trilogy.

I'd be alright with two films to properly grasp the story. I am quite fond of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, which I think captures the spirit of the book rather well while doing some good effort to expand upon the personality and history of the Dwarves. But I'd probably wrap it around in a second movie. Retain Beorn's more lovable book self, trim down their stay at Mirkwood severely (as well as the barrel action scene) but keep Thranduil, then basically lightning bolt through Laketown (during which Desolation grinds to a halt) with the Dwarves essentially arriving and almost immediately leaving to the Lonely Mountain, during which we only catch a glimpse of Bard as befitting of his almost Badass Bystander role. Two movies would likely result in the story blazing through the time between Smaug's death and the Battle of Five Armies, but it's what I'd do.

If it had to be a trilogy, they expanded upon the wrong bits. I'd have filled the story with more on the White Council, expanded Saruman's fall into a much larger subplot as well as giving Radagast more to do, likely expanding upon Radagast's efforts to stave off Sauron's darkness from Mirkwood.

Tauriel wouldn't exist and Legolas would only cameo in Thranduil's court but have no larger role. Alfrid's gone and Master of Laketown has a much lesser role. No Azog, only Bolg.

edited 20th Nov '17 1:49:15 PM by Gaon

You speak much wisdom. The main problem I see in the trilogy is the bloated, sometimes silly action sequences which take precedence over things like building proper atmosphere in Mirkwood. Yes, I agree Legolas should have been just a cameo at most. Probably two films would have been plenty, and maybe it could even have been just one, possibly by cutting Beorn (who is fun and interesting in the book, but not as important to the overall story as the trolls and the mirkwood spiders).

The prologue should have been cut. Instead have the dwarves sing all or most of the Misty Mountains song, and use the prologue scenes there to illustrate the song.

To be honest the Elves in the book barely did anything anyway, but having the Gems of Lasgalen in Erebor's hoard at least provides something of an excuse for the elves to be there.

Thranduil's presence is a large element of what ticks off Thorin in the book and film alike. The fact the Elvenking who imprisoned him for no reason suspiciously showed up (with a massive army) just when the dragon died supports his theory that they're all just there to steal his treasure and makes him much more unwilling to meet them halfway through. If Bard was alone with his refugees and his barely-existent army of Dale there's a slight chance Thorin would have been more forthcoming.

If I had to cut anything, I'd likely slash their stay at the Last Homely House. While a wonderful part of the book, it's one of the least relevant to the grand narrative. The spiders of Mirkwood are also rather easy to cut. Beorn and Thranduil can't go because of their roles in the Battle of Five Armies. Beorn smashing through the Orcish ranks is basically the central reason the Orcs lost (with the eagles taking the silver medal for the competition of most damage caused to Bolg's attack). Can't really cut that.

I agree. Speaking of Misty Mountains Cold, I find it a shame only Unexpected Journey had songs to it, while Desolation and Battle didn't really have any music.

If the three movies thing was executive mandate (as I suspect it was), I'd have the Dwarves sing a portion of the (absolutely massive) Misty Mountains Cold Song of the book. Unexpected Journey has the initial verses, Desolation could have, during their stay at Beorn's house while they're attempting to justify their quest, them singing this:

And in Battle, after Thorin is conviced to join the Battle and redeem himself, him, Fili and Kili would sing the first section with the Dwarves joining in the second:

edited 20th Nov '17 3:11:18 PM by Gaon

Cut the spiders of Mirkwood and you cut the first time Bilbo saves the dwarves' lives and the moment he reveals he has the Ring to them. It's a pivotal moment in Bilbo's character arc. Not to mention it's when and how he names Sting.

Beorn plays a strong supporting role in the battle of five armies, but it's not one that couldn't be replaced by, say, Bard or Thranduil with about the same effect. In fact it might be even more significant to have Thranduil be the one who saves Thorin (temporarily, at least) at the gate.

If you cut Elrond and Rivendell you would have to introduce the moon letters in some other fashion.

edited 20th Nov '17 3:30:41 PM by Bense