This is Your Hobbit on Steroids

or, An Over-long Expected Movie

[Yes, there will be some spoilers.]

All joking aside, I enjoyed the first part of Peter Jackson's three movie Hobbit adaptation. Yes, it's a deeply flawed movie, and I'll get to some of those flaws in a moment, but Martin Freeman is brilliant as Biblo and there are some truly brilliant visuals at times. The riddle game scene in particular was very, very good. I've probably read The Hobbit a dozen times over the years, and as a child I watched the terrible 1970's Hobbit movie numerous times, so I both love the story and am tremendously glad to see it done better than the old version. Further, my beefs with Jackson as in some sense enabled by his own work. While there are parts of the Lord of the Rings movies that make me cringe these days, the fact remains that they significantly raised the (previously shockingly low) bar for Fantasy on the big screen.

The biggest problem, I think, with the Hobbit movie is that it is too long. Having given himself three three hour movies in which to tell a story whose original is far shorter than even one volume of The Lord of the Rings, Jackson finds himself more able to insert his own content (loosely based on the appendices of The Lord of the Rings) and most of this is pretty inferior. The sheer quantity of story in The Lord of the Rings kept Jackson's instincts more in check. I think the movie would have been significantly stronger is much of the "extra" material had simply been cut: The execrable (literally) sections with Radagast, the White Orc (it's a bad sign when the story slows down whenever the extra antagonist who's been added to increase tension appears), the White Council.

Other over-long portions resulted from Jackson's need to expand anything resembling an action scene to the Nth degree. The scene of Smaug's arrival is okay as a prequel if one wants to start that way, but shoehorning in a battle at the gates of Moria did nothing for the story. The stone giant battle added nothing to the story and simply added an extra scene of action so unbelievable as to pull one out of the story. And the gimmicky escape-from-the-goblin-kingdom scene seemed like a scene from the video game that somehow made its way into the movie.

What's good in the movie is, in the main, quite good. But I felt that by simply cutting it down to about two hours it would have been a much stronger film.

The main thematic change which concerns me, especially as it gives me pause as to what will occur in the later movies, is a subtle shift in the character of Bilbo and his relationship with the dwarves. In the book, Biblo has an adventurous streak which is offended when he's describes as being "more like a grocer than a burglar", but he remains very much a hobbit, if an adventurous one. As such, he is never a warrior. He is courageous and loyal, yes, and the dwarves come to respect him deeply for these qualities, but he remains inherently peaceful.

The movie can't quite stand to leave this alone. Thus, in one of the last scenes of this movie we see Thorin wade into battle against a band of orcs while the rest of the dwarves seek shelter in a tree. Thorin looks like he's about to be killed when Bilbo, who till now has been scorned by Thorin as so much baggage, draws his little sword and rushes into battle. Bilbo's fierce defense of the wounded Thorin against a crowd of wargs and orcs inspires the other dwarves who then raise their battle cry and charge into battle after him.

Bilbo having saved Thorin's life in battle, and the whole company having been rescued by eagles, Thorin sheds man-tears and embraces Bilbo, declaring that he had never been more wrong than when he had questioned Bilbo.

In other words, rather than the dwarves coming to respect Bilbo for being a courageous yet non-warlike hobbit, in the movie Bilbo wins respect by becoming a warrior, by becoming more like the dwarves. (Actually, I think Jackson way overemphasizes the warrior element of the dwarves. But they are, at least, capable of being warriors in the book, even if that isn't their primary character.) In addition to not being like the book, it seems to me that this is a weaker and less interestingly character choice, and a concession to the unstated but frequent trope that worth in adventure stories is wholly synonymous with martial prowess.

There Is No Shire Party

If imitation is a form of flattery, it must be some sort of testament to a writer's skill when partisans of both sides of an issue become intent upon placing each other as the villains of the same work of fiction. Some examples of this are, perhaps, unsurprising. The original Big Brother of George Orwell's 1984 is such a wonderfully universal government baddie that it is little wonder that those on both the right and left see each other as being like it.

However, one of the odder (to me) manifestations of this trend is the tendency of those on both right and left who are of a certain SF/F geek stripe (and political and genre geekdom do seem to go together more often than one might imagine) to identify themselves with the Shire of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, and to identify their opponent with the modernizing and destructive elements who take over the Shire under Lotho Sackville-Baggins and "Sharky" (Saruman) while Frodo and his friends are away, and who are driven out in the Scouring of the Shire.

For those less familiar with those aspects of the story that didn't make the movie version: While Frodo and this three friends Sam, Merry and Pippin are off on the quest to destroy the One Ring, Frodo's cousin Lotho uses the influence and affluence of belonging to one of the Shire's leading families to run the Shire into a bit of a ditch. Most of the crops are exported, including nearly all the pipeweed, leaving Hobbits themselves with little left for themselves. Various "improvement" projects are undertaken, such as knocking down the picturesque old mill on the river in Hobbiton and putting up a large new brick structure which belches smoke and pollutes the river. Many trees are cut down, and dreary-looking brick buildings are thrown up. When people complain, "big men" (non-Hobbits) are brought in, and the previously harmless core of sheriffs is used to institute a half-penny police state. Finally, a shadowy figure known as Sharky is heard to have taken over, and Lotho is not heard from much, though he is said to still be in charge.

When Frodo and his friends return, the sheriffs attempt to arrest them for being out after dark and not following rules. However, they quickly unite with old friends such as Farmer Cotton (father of Rosie, whom Sam eventually marries) and his sons and raise the Shire. There is a brief battle between hobbits and the big men in the employ of Sharky, and it turns out that Sharky is none other than Saruman, who has slunk away from Treebeard's custody to cause what suffering he can for the returning hobbits by destroying the Shire as much as possible. Saruman is killed, despite Frodo's attempts to forgive and spare him, and the four friends devote much of their energy in their first years after returning to setting things to rights again in the Shire.

At first glance, you can see elements which both rightists and leftists can use to pin the spoiling of the Shire on those like their opponents. For the rightists, Lotho and Sharkey set up a "big government" with a centralized authority publishing rules on everything from when you're allowed out on the streets to the quantities of beer and fuel which can be consumed. Market freedom is also restricted, with the central authority collecting all production for "sharing", which mostly results in it being shipped out of the Shire for sale in order to line the pockets of those in charge. I think it's fair to say that Tolkien sees centralized power, economic planning and redistribution of resources enforced by the government as usually being tools for corruption rather than means towards the common good. He also clearly has a certain kind of limited government ideal (though not a classically liberal rights-based one) in that the right order which he sees are returning is one in which the King of Gondor keeps marauders away from the Shire and yet leaves it an essential un-governed area, while the post of Mayor in Hobbiton is a mainly honorary one whose duties center around presiding at banquets.

At the same time, leftists point out that one of the primary grievances against Lotho and the big men he brings in to run the Shire is that they set about maximizing production and exports while disrupting society and destroying the environment (cutting down trees, polluting the river and air, building ugly brick structures and generally making noise). They see this as an indictment of 'big business' and an endorsement of environmentalism. Further, the very same intrusive rule making and enforcement which rightists see as symbolizing intrusive "big government", leftists see as the jack-booted police tactics of rightists.

Perhaps there is some extent to which both sides can be seen as having valid points here, but I think the thing which one should be most clear on is that Tolkien's societal vision expressed in the Shire is one which does not fall within the spectrum of either modern leftism or modern rightism. In letters and interviews, Tolkien described himself as being a bit of a Hobbit, and in many ways the Shire represents an idealized version of the English country village life which Tolkien remembered from the turn of the century, when he was 8-10 years old. The Shire represents an admixture of Tolkien's memories of the few years of his childhood spent in a country village, in an area on the cusp of modernization, with a vaguely medieval era.

There is, in modern America, no political faction in support of a return to a pre-industrial society and economy -- and this is probably just as well since such a return is arguably both impossible and undesirable. There is, I think, real value to questioning whether all that is new is necessarily good and examining what we are giving up as we discard the old for the new. However, there is not (and arguably cannot be) an ideology in favor of returning to a Shire-like existence -- in part because such a society never existed in the first place. Further, I would argue that modern ideology, by its nature, is out of keeping with Tolkien's societal vision. The very idea of having an ideology is something contrary to the society portrayed in the Shire.

Pagan Tragedy as Christian Antecedant

Matthew Lickona links to this outstanding piece inspired by the newly released Tolkien book, The Children of Hurin.

It is too simple to consider Tolkien's protagonist Turin as a conflation of Siegfried and Beowulf, but the defining moments in Turin's bitter life refer clearly to the older myths, with a crucial difference: the same qualities that make Siegfried and Beowulf exemplars to the pagans instead make Turin a victim of dark forces, and a menace to all who love him. Tolkien was the anti-Wagner, and Turin is the anti-Siegfried, the anti-Beowulf. Tolkien reconstructed a mythology for the English not (as Wainwright and other suggest) because he thought it might make them proud of themselves, but rather because he believed that the actual pagan mythology was not good enough to be a predecessor to Christianity.

Read the whole thing.