Lord of the Rings

Well Bilbo saves them (in a even more dramatic fashion) right afterwards with the barrel riding escape (not to mention Bilbo playing a crucial role in delaying the Trolls trying to eat the Company beforehand). Cutting the spiders puts more dramatic torque into the barrel escape. You could relocate the Sting naming bit to another moment of the plot. E.g: Right before the riddles in the dark, Gollum could attack Bilbo, but then Bilbo gives him a grazing wound with Sting to keep him off, making Gollum whine "It stings, precious!" and Bilbo picking up on that and dubbing the sword Sting.

Cutting the Last Homely House would probably mean allocating its relevant bits to Gandalf. In this hypothetical version Gandalf would recognize Glamdring and Orcist on sight (and dub them such), and he'd already know how to read the runes in the map and would just be waiting for the right moon and location to do so.

You're right that Beorn's role could be transferred to Thranduil, Bard or just sticking with the Eagles doing much of the legwork, but I just find the imagery of a giant bear rampaging through the Orc army too compelling to cut it from a movie adaptation.

"All you Fascists bound to lose."

Well Clamavi has already been linked here, so I'll just say that they do the entirety of the Misty Mountains Cold song.

But maybe at the end of Five Armies, they could have done the King Beneath the Mountain poem.

Cut the romance, downsize Bard's role, beef Beorn's role, do it in two movies and and end the first movie with Bilbo meeting Smaug.

"You can't change the world without getting your hands dirty."

The broader problem seems to be expanding upon the Elves and Lake-Town. Desolation and Battle both spend way too much time on Thranduil, Legolas and Bard. Downsizing them both to roughly their book size would leave a lot of breathing room for everything else. Desolation is practically 70% filler in Laketown.

To be fair, the full Misty Mountains Cold, as demonstrated by Clamavi de Profundis, would be something like 30 minutes long. It's understandable they wouldn't sing the whole thing.

I'd probably have "The King Beneath the Mountains" play more or less the same time it occurs in the book: When the Dwarves are convincing the people of Laketown of the nobility of their quest (keeping in mind in my hypothetical version they arrive on Laketown and immediately are confronted by the villagers). As they're explaining, some completely random village elder would likely start singing, in a reminiscing and bittersweet tone:

As he picks up, the other villagers would join him, as if remembering the old song. The Master would stare at them, confused, but when the song picks up steam, the Master of Laketown would join in the singing, realizing the people now support Thorin's quest. By the end Bard would be the only one not singing, grimly staring at the Dwarves and shaking his head.

I figure it'd be a good way to visually show the people of Laketown supporting Thorin's journey.

In this hypothetical version Thranduil's elves would likely arrive immediately after Laketown is destroyed, probably mere moments after Smaug's death.

You know the detail I miss the most? The thrush who helps the Dwarves in anonymity, helping them find the Moon Door, then discovering Smaug's weakness, alerting Bard to it and informing the Dwarves of Smaug's death. It's a detail I liked because it represented that even the mountain itself rejected Smaug's usurper rule.

"All you Fascists bound to lose."

Bilbo does not play a crucial role in delaying the trolls eating the dwarves in the book. In fact, in the book, it's Bilbo's inexperience at this whole burglary thing that nearly dooms them all with the trolls.

One can see how what happens in the book - Gandalf imitating the Trolls' voices in order to keep them arguing until sun up - could be difficult to film.

edited 21st Nov '17 6:57:50 AM by Bense

I seem to be misplacing scenes left and right now. I forgot the whole sequence of Bilbo making shit up to delay the Trolls is unique to the film.

Regardless, I think the Bilbo saving the Dwarves at Thranduil's court is enough.

"All you Fascists bound to lose."

Yeah.

If anything the Misty Mountains Cold bit could be done in its entirety over a travel montage or something.

The vital parts I see are:

• The unexpected party. Introduces Gandalf and the dwarves, provides the background for the whole quest.
• The Trolls. Bilbo's first real adventure which almost ends in disaster, introduction of Sting and Orcrist and Glamdring.
• Rivendell. Introduction of the moon letters and how the secret door can be opened. Also important setup for LotR - the council and Bilbo's retirement there.
• Encounter with the goblins in the Misty Mountains. Leads directly to Bilbo being separated from the dwarves, setup for the goblins showing up at the Battle of Five Armies. We don't have to have a long battle sequence between the dwarves and goblins - just have them drop Bilbo and then show up outside the back door with a story of how they fought.
• Bilbo finding the Ring, Gollum, and the Riddle Contest. Obviously this has to be there.
• Eagles save them from pursuing goblins. Sets up the eagles to show up again during the Battle of Five Armies, and later in LotR.
• Gandalf leaves the dwarves at the edge of Mirkwood, entrusting Bilbo with keeping track of them. Necessary to remove Gandalf from the picture as a source of help for the next adventure.
• Mirkwood spiders. Bilbo saves the dwarves from the spiders, names Sting. First time Bilbo acts heroically on his own, without help from wizard or dwarves.
• Elfking dungeons, Bilbo saves the dwarves through the barrel gambit, sees the Lonely Mountain for the first time. Sets up the elven army showing up at the Battle of Five Armies, shows Bilbo using his wits to rescue the dwarves rather than relying on surprise, Sting, and the Ring (as he did with the spiders). No need for an elaborate river-barrel battle sequence with goblins and elves.
• Laketown. Introduction of Bard and Laketown. This can be simply "here's the dwarves out of the barrels, celebration in town while Bard looks on with misgiving, cut to dwarves heading to the mountain". The master of town can be shown playing the situation to his advantage in a single scene, most likely.
• Finding of secret door at Erebor, payoff of the moon runes. No need for a silly "well, we missed it so we're leaving, oh wait, the moon is reflecting the sunlight, so there it is," scene.
• Bilbo talks with Smaug and sees his weakness, communicates it to Bard via Thrush. No need for an elaborate dwarf/Smaug fight in the forges.
• Smaug attacks Laketown, Bard gets his weakness from the Thrush and kills him.
• Dwarves find Smaug is gone. Bilbo finds the Arkenstone but doesn't tell the others. Go to front gate and see armies outside.
• Negotiations leading up to the battle. Bilbo gives the Arkenstone to Bard and Thranduil to try to convince Thorin to peacefully resolve the situation. Break between Thorin and Bilbo.
• Battle of Five Armies. Gandalf shows up to band the elves, dwarves and men together against the wolves and goblins. The battle goes badly until..
• The Eagles show up to save the day. Bilbo knocked out.
• Aftermath of the battle. Bilbo sees Thorin before his death and they are reconciled. Dain becomes King under the Mountain and Bilbo gets his treasure.
• Bilbo returns home but discovers Hobbiton doesn't find him entirely respectable anymore.

Those are the scenes I see as vital to telling the story, and even they can be cut down to bare bones if necessary. Beorn doesn't need to be there, and neither does the White Council or Gandalf investigating Dol Guldur (though I liked those bits of the movies).

edited 21st Nov '17 8:59:12 AM by Bense

If it were me, one of the most important things to cut would be the number of Dwarves. Cutting them down from thirteen to, say, six or so, would be much more manageable when filming and allow each Dwarf to have something like a recognizable personality.

I'd also condense some of the stuff in the Lonely Mountain by having the one thing Bilbo steals from the treasure vault, rather than a cup, be the Arkenstone itself, which he sees glittering in the pile and picks up . . . and it's only after he's done so that he sees it was part of the treasure encrusted on Smaug's belly. This gets the nabbing of the Arkenstone out of the way early, and quickly and handily explains the one weak spot on Smaug's body.

Like I said, two movies would wrap it all neatly. If I had to do a single movie I'd cut and change:

• I'd probably keep the extended and more fleshed out dwarves reunion scene from An Unexpected Journey, so we get more of those characters.

• At some point we also get AUJ-style narration on the Dwarves glorious past.

• No "stone giant battle", except as a throaway reference (dwarves referring to a rockslide is "a stone giant battle"). Dwarves are instantly captured by the Goblins.

• Possibly cut Rivendell and give all of its moment to Gandalf.

• No Mirkwood spiders. Dwarves are instantly captured by elves after a few tense moments in the darkness of the forest. Instead it is Gollum who dubs Sting.

• Master of Laketown dies during Smaug's attack in Lake Town. Bard is declared leader afterwards.

• Elves arrive with reinforcements and food mere moments after Smaug's death. Thranduil and Bard have a chat and agree to (and subsequently proceed to) march upon the mountain in the same scene

• Basically condense every single interaction between Thorin and the sieging armies into a single scene, with Thranduil, Bard and Thorin having a parley outside the gates of Erebor. When there's a break in the peace talks, Bilbo hands Thranduil and Bard the Arkenstone to ensure the engotiations. When they resume, we get the bit Thorin loses his shit with Bilbo and prepares to murder him before Gandalf dramatically stops him.

• Dwarves arrive but right after come the Orcs and it all goes to shit.

• Rest proceeds as usual.

"All you Fascists bound to lose."

As stupid as it is to have 13 dwarves in the movie where you can only give a real personality to like five or six of them, that was a problem in the original book too. We barely got any sort of personality out of any of the dwarves that weren't Thorin, Fili, Kili, or others. Each one mainly just had one thing about them that you could use to recognize them. And even then I still missed a few in the movie. You can recognize Thorin, Fili (blond) Kili (dark haired) Dwalin (big warrior guy) Balin (oldest), Bofur (one with the funny hat) Ori (youngest), Bombur (fat one) Bifur (axe piece in his head) and...that's it. Aside from various beard styles there's really nothing to go on for all the others beyond just their looks. I couldn't really remember the names of the others that weren't the ones I just named.

I mean, yeah, none of the rest really contribute anything of significance, but there's 13 dwarves in the book and cutting out half of them would be a really big, if still minor, change.

I do agree that some of the fight scenes could be cut, like running from Smaug in the mountain (weren't all the dwarves waiting outside, rather than going in and getting smelled out?) and the barrel fight, along with a good bit with Bard's family (it gave Bard a lot more personality than him being just some random dude in the book, but still, no one really cares about his kids) and the Master, and especially all the bits with Alfrid. The stuff like the giant battle could also be cut, I think.

In the book, though, the text can skip over most of the Dwarves by saying all of them did this or all of them did that. It's a bit different from having them fill up the screen all the time.

The movies did a good job of differentiating the dwarves, and the extended versions do even better (and watching the extras included with the extended editions gives you even more). Yes, there's still too many to really keep track of, and Bombur doesn't even get any lines, but it's better than the book. That's probably the best achievement of the movie trilogy.

By far.

"All you Fascists bound to lose."

The first thing I'd cut is the scenes where the dwarves act like a bunch of toddlers. Yes, the scene where they upset Bilbo by throwing with his plates was in the book, but the movie emphasized the tragedy of them having lost their home, behaving like this in someone'e else's home just doesn't fit with that. And don't get me started on Rivendell. Are we really supposed to take those people seriously later on in the movie?

Mirkwood was an important part of the plot, but Legolas really didn't have to be there, and by involving Tauriel in a superfluous romance plot, they negated everything positive that the addition of a female character could have brought.

I don't mind the scenes the Dwarves act goofier. The movies approach is that Dwarves wear their feelings on their sleeves, so they're very blunt, rowdy and full of joy simultaneously with being full of sorrow and anger regarding Smaug. Their behavior in Bilbo's house is their notion of having fun and being friendly, and in their utmost defense, the movie shows they actually cleaned up and organized their plates whilst fucking around and singing "Blunt the Knives".

The movies even amplifies this by going in detail that most of the Company consists of lower class dwarves: by the movie's reckoning, Bifur, Bofur, Bombur are peasants, Óri, Nori and Dori are essentially the feudal meaning of the word Bourgeoisie (so, rich merchants without much noble blood).

Balin, Dwalin, Glóin and Óin are minor nobility (being Thorin's cousins three times and four times removed respectively), while Thorin, Fili and Kili are royal blood.

Their lack of finnesse, Thorin aside, is to be expected.

"All you Fascists bound to lose."

I wonder if someone's ever going to make a Star Wars: The Phantom Edit-style recut of the three movies.

Several people (or groups of people) have. The only version I've seen is one of those - all the Hobbit stuff in one movie and the added stuff from the appendices in a shorter companion film.

Interestingly, Rivendell in the book is a sort of inverse of the movie, in that it's the elves mocking the dwarves (particularly their beards) there. The dwarves are very serious in Rivendell and Gandalf even has to restrain the elves a bit from insulting them in their merrymaking.

Very different from the Rivendell in nearly every other installment of the Middle Earth story, really.

The Rivendell of Lord of the Rings, the residents were certainly playful, but never came across as "mischievous" like they do in The Hobbit.

Say to the others who did not follow through You're still our brothers, and we will fight for you

You could argue that the Rivendell of The Hobbit was 70 years before LotR, and that the elves had gotten generally more serious in the meantime, what with Sauron openly declaring himself.

Or it could be Bilbo acting as an Unreliable Narrator. Or Frodo just not mentioning how silly the Rivendell elves were when he was there.

edited 27th Nov '17 9:42:39 AM by Bense

You cannot justify breaking the code of Sacred Hospitality with them being lower class.

The complaining about the food and the music and the general rudeness, okay, but this scene where they make a fire out of the furniture - never.

That just doesn't work.

I don't mind that the Rivendell elves were changed to make them fit in better with the ones in Lot R, but with the dwarves, characterisation was sacrificed for comedy. (The same thing was annoying in Lot R, too, but at least Gimli never did anything that would have been against the principles of the original character.)

edited 27th Nov '17 9:47:14 AM by Gowan

Breaking Sacred Hospitality would be someone trying to murder/injure/rob someone grievously.

Making a fire out of furniture would have been odd if the Elves batted an eye at it. Elrond seems at worst mildly puzzled by their actions, so it doesn't really make a difference.

"All you Fascists bound to lose."

There was at least one bit in the extended version where the dwarves bathe in a fountain that apparently upsets the elves a good bit more.

They were probably upset by the bad CGI in the scene. So gouache!