The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings Trilogies

This Thanksgiving holiday, I devoted a massive amount of time to rewatching all three Hobbit movies, then all three Lord of the Rings movies—the extended versions, of course, because those are the only true versions—and that’s a total of 20 hours and 28 minutes worth of Tolkieny goodness, people.

After all, why not? Why shouldn’t I rewatch them? They are precious to me…

The story of The Hobbit Trilogy goes like this…

Bilbo Baggins of Bag End is a Hobbit like most Hobbits, living a quiet and peaceful life in a house under a hill in the Shire. That is, until the day he is hired, somewhat against his will, to fill the role of a burglar in a party of adventurers. Along with the wandering wizard, Gandalf the Grey, and the dwarves of the Blue Mountains, Balin, Dwalin, Fíli, Kíli, Dori, Nori, Ori, Óin, Glóin, Bifur, Bofur, and Bombur, led by Thorin Oakenshield, son of Thrain, son of Thror, the King Under The Mountain, Bilbo must travel east across the wild lands of Middle-Earth to the Lonely Mountain, on a quest for revenge against the fearsome old dragon Smaug, and to reclaim the lost Dwarven Kingdom of Erebor. Along the way, Bilbo happens to find a simple golden ring, a ring to which the fate of the whole world is tied.

Simply put, the Hobbit Trilogy is the definition of excess.

On the whole, they are obviously far less inspired than the Lord of the Rings trilogy, hampered by too much overdone CGI in too many places, weighed down by set pieces that go on for too long, and hobbled by what I can only assume was a studio mandate to tie this story’s adaptation more directly into the Lord of the Rings trilogy than it was in the books, and to also make it into a trilogy while doing it.

But still…

The original book The Hobbit is truly one of the great stories of fantasy adventure, full of fun and excitement and humor, as well as some iconic moments and characters. The films have that same magic, and even a few inspired decisions for the adaptation.

A few.

On occasion. Certainly not all the time, but on occasion.

For instance, I love how they added character details to the various dwarves. In the book, when it comes to the thirteen Dwarves in the Company, Thorin is pretty much the only actual character of the bunch. The films make an effort to differentiate them all from each other, moving them away from being nothing but the kind of alliterative joke that Tolkien enjoyed, and highlighting their individual personalities more. I also liked how most of the Dwarves are very obviously not warriors either, but regular folk. As Balin notes “merchants, miners, tinkerers, toy-makers, hardly the stuff of legend,” but they’re all a part of a dwarven diaspora, all displaced by a catastrophe, just a few brave souls who answered the call to try to reclaim their long-lost homeland, willing to venture into the unknown, to risk it all on a small hope and a great dream.

I loved that.

I really liked a lot of the added-in LOTR plot tie-in stuff too. The extra insight into Gandalf and his motivations was great. It added depth to the world, and it somewhat lessened the obvious deus ex machina role he played in the original story. And really, how can you not love seeing Gandalf, Galadriel, Elrond, and Saruman the White in action together like the original Superfriends? That was a blast.

I also liked how they played up the message of how unchecked wealth corrupts the soul, much like as the Lord of the Rings trilogy shows with unchecked power. “Don’t underestimate the evil of gold.” That seems pretty in line with Tolkien’s general anti-military industrial complex views. And yes, even if it did go on too long, the Battle of the Five Armies still had some pretty fun stuff in it. I mean, there was dwarven cavalry on big horned goats, and Dain Ironfoot was riding an armored boar…

That’s just awesome.

Finally, maybe most importantly, unlike The Silmarillion, The Hobbit really is an essential prequel to the Lord of the Rings trilogy, and all the excess, and the obvious studio money-grab intent of it, can’t completely obscure that.

Besides, it’s just fun.

Now, stupid whiny fan babies will doff their fedora and snark that “it’s a single book so it should’ve been a single movie.” All I hear whenever some dipshit nerd pushes his greasy finger-smudged glasses up his nose and announces this crap like some fucking sage-atop-the-mountain is someone revealing either their gross misunderstanding of how stories work in general, their complete lack of familiarity with the events of the actual story, or both.

Yes, it’s fair to say that the Hobbit films’ guiding light at every single turn was obviously “more is better,” and that is obviously just… a really bad guiding light. Especially as it’s directly responsible for the fact that there’s way too much goofy falling down in these films in general.

Still, I believe a good editor could find two actually great movies within this trilogy’s excess, buried like the Arkenstone was in the vast pile of riches that was the jealousy-guarded horde of the great dragon, the chiefest and greatest of calamities, the terrible, the tremendous, the tyrannical, Smaug. And much like the Heart of the Mountain, all it would take to find those good versions is a little courage, the courage to make a few hard decisions on where to cut, and how deeply. Kill your darlings, my friends. Always kill your darlings.

But yeah, like I said…

There’s way too much goofy falling down in these films.

The story of the Lord of the Rings trilogy goes like this…

Sixty years after the events of the Hobbit, the Great Third Age is coming to an end, soon the age of the elf, the time of magic, will pass to the age of man. But that future rests in the fate of the One Ring. Lost for centuries, the forces of Sauron have begun to search for it again, for should Sauron regain the One Ring, then all of Middle-Earth will be swallowed in a new Age of Darkness.

But the ring has already been found, and fate has placed it in the hands of a young Hobbit named Frodo Baggins, who inherited the Ring from his uncle Bilbo. In order to save Middle-Earth, Frodo, as the Ringbearer—along with the wizard Gandalf the Grey, and the Ranger Aragorn, as well as Boromir, Captain of Gondor, the dwarven warrior Gimli, son of Gloin, the elven archer Legolas, and of course, three Hobbits, Meriadoc “Merry” Brandybuck, Peregrine “Pippin” Took, and the ever loyal gardener, Samwise Gamgee—must travel across Middle-Earth, through fire, darkness, and gathering war, to the blighted lands of Mordor, and there, destroy the One Ring by casting it into the fires of Mount Doom from whence it was forged.

The Lord of the Rings trilogy is peak cinema.

A mixture of craft, dedication, attention to detail, and a willingness to work, to innovate, to create, that resulted in such extravagance, such spectacle, and all done with so much apparent love, and on such an incredible scale? What more can be said about this stunning cinematic achievement that hasn’t already been said? It is pure wonder, pure excitement, pure entertainment. They are long films, yes, but they never feel like there’s wasted time, at least, not to me. To me, they are the perfect blend of entertainment and artistry, as well as a spot-on adaptation of the source material, well-aware of what needed to be saved, what needed to be better explained, and most importantly, what needed to be cut.

All this while telling a story steeped in the romance of dying age.

Set in a time when the age of wonder has nearly passed, its great works lying in weathered ruin, sinking into the mud, the names and deeds they memorialized erased from all knowledge, never to be known again, the heroes of our story are small things moving among the sun-bleached bones of fallen giants, “lesser sons of greater sires.” There’s a feeling of sadness to it all, the sadness of an inevitable end, like a damp fall slowly turning into a dreary winter, and that sadness permeates everything. But it is also suffused with hope, a faint hope, but still… a hope for a new beginning, a new day, a feeling exemplified in the beginning notes of the feadóg stáin whistle that opens the Concerning Hobbits theme. It’s a feeling that, even if that small hope is tinged with the knowledge that no matter what, should a better day actually dawn, there will still be something beautiful that is gone from the world forever, that even if that is true, that faint hope is still reason enough to strive for that better day.

Twenty years later, and that still totally works for me.

But to be fair, an undeniable part of why these films still work is because they are just packed with iconic moments…

Bilbo’s Eleventy-first Birthday. Riddles in the dark. The Watchtower at Amon Sul. Arwen summoning the flood of white horses at the Ford of Bruinen. The Council of Elrond and the forming of the Fellowship. The journey into the long dark of Moria. Fool of a Took! Drums in the deep. You shall not pass! All shall love me and despair! Boromir stands, and falls. Gandalf returns at turn of the tide. The Healing of Theoden. Sméagol and Gollum. The Ent’s March on Isengard. The Horn of Helm Hammerhand sounding in the Deep on last time. Sam explaining what really matters. The Lighting of the Beacons. The White Rider. Pippin singing to Denethor. Shelob the Spider. The Ride of the Rohirrim. Eowyn slaying the Witch-King of Angmar before the walls of the white city, Minas Tirith. The Mouth of Sauron and the Black Gates of Mordor. Sam carrying Frodo up the slope of Mount Doom. The pity of Bilbo saving the world. Aragorn bowing to the Hobbits. The last ship to depart from the Grey Havens.

Iconic.

This trilogy was a massive undertaking, a sprawling and huge effort, and an incredibly well-made set of films. It is unlikely that we will ever see such work on this scale ever again, certainly not one that is successful with both audiences and critics alike, and definitely not one that so deftly sticks the landing, all while making it look easy.

They’re just flat-out fantastic movies.

Plus… “What is the House of Rohan, but a thatched barn where brigands drink in the reek and their brats roll on the floor with the dogs,” is a truly epic burn.

And we should all aspire to have a moment in our lives where you can legitimately say: “I threw down my enemy, and smote his ruin upon the mountainside.” That’s how you’ll know you’ve lived a good life, one where you don’t suffer fools gladly, one where you live by the words: “Be silent! Keep your forked tongue behind your teeth. I have not passed through fire and death to bandy crooked words with a witless worm!”

Another vicious burn…

It’s true, The Hobbit trilogy doesn’t completely work, and certainly does not reach the incredible heights of The Lords of the Rings trilogy, but it’s not as off as I remember, and regardless, all together, they’re a great experience. Loved it.

Big thumbs up.

But there is one thing that bothers me…

“Looks like meat’s back on the menu, boys!” This is said by an Uruk-Hai in the Two Towers, after ending an argument between him and some hangry Orcs—as to whether or not they could eat all of Merry and Pippin or just part of them—and he ends the argument by cutting off an orc’s head, and the suddenly available meat in question is the headless orc. That’s not an odd thing for an Uruk-Hai to do, but it’s definitely an odd thing for a Uruk-Hai to say.

Uruk-Hai are the result of the cursed and tortured crossbreeding of Man and Orc. Much like regular Orcs, they are evil brutish creatures, born of filth and hatred, and are said to "worm their way out of the ground like maggots" at birth. These Orcs and Uruk-Hai in particular are creatures of Saruman, and the Uruk-Hai in particular are only a few days or weeks old.

So… for one of them to say “meat’s back on the menu,” that implies that these Uruk-Hai and the Orcs have all eaten in a restaurant, a restaurant with menus, menus that vary daily, depending on current supplies.

I’m just saying…