The Fellowship of the Ring: the ultimate opening
Finally, what happens to the UE of FOTR now that we’ve removed not only “Concerning Hobbits” (except the shots of the party field preparations), but 29 seconds of voice-over narration? I think we’ll cut right from the end of Galadriel’s introduction (where the shots of Ian Holm finding the Ring will be replaced by the corresponding and doubtlessly very similar ones from AUJ, featuring Martin Freeman) to a shot of Bilbo at his desk. Only now he is not beginning to write his memoirs — he’s still working on them, precisely a year later, again on his birthday (another scene shot now but saved until the UE is being edited). And what is he writing about today? Exactly what Galadriel was just talking about.
“My birthday present,” I heard him whisper to himself. “That’s what we wants now, yes; we wants it!” I had no idea at the time, but what Gollum was talking about [cut to scenes from The Hobbit] was the very ring that I had found earlier and whose existence I had forgotten about, until I put my hand in my pocket and found it…” Cut back to Bilbo saying “unexpectedly.” simultaneous with the knock on the door; then the long shot of Bilbo calling “Frodo, there’s someone at the door!”, and continue with a new shot of Bilbo resuming writing. “My birthday present,” he whispered again. “It came to me on” — Bilbo stops, leans back, smiles, and as we cut to the start of the orphaned sequence of party field preparations, we hear him say in his own, not Gollum’s voice: “my birthday.”
When the party prep sequence ends, it’s interrupted by the second knock on the door, just as it is at present, and Bilbo will say “Frodo, the door! Sticklebats! Where is that boy?”, and we’ll cut to Frodo in the field to begin the familiar sequence, ending with Frodo saying “Half the Shire’s been invited …and the rest of them are turning up anyway.” And note how well this opening sets up Bilbo’s panic, a few minutes later, when he can’t find the Ring; no wonder he thinks to look for it. And as Bilbo is about to have enormous difficulty giving away the Ring on his birthday, the passage he has just written in his memoir is terrifically ironic.
There’s just one problem left now: the following 28 seconds of lovely footage of Gandalf’s cart making its way through Hobbiton has been shorn of its narration, since we’ve moved it to three movies previously. (It’s 28 seconds because we’re using a two-second longer shot of the cart on the bridge from the Theatrical Edition, but have removed the comic three-second shot illustrating “if it comes at all” that followed it). But this creates an opportunity to restore the conversation between Frodo and Gandalf that was unique to the TE, and for Gandalf to give Frodo a substantive answer to his question, one that will connect the two trilogies nicely.
The close-up footage of the opening of the conversation (Frodo: “What news of the outside world? Tell me everything.” Gandalf: “Everything? You’ve grown most curious for a hobbit. Most unnatural.”) will ideally be newly shot, as the shots of Gandalf in the TE during this sequence lack any background other than sky and hence were clearly afterthoughts shot in a studio rather than on location, while the reaction shots of Frodo were cribbed from unused footage which appeared later in the EE. But after that we can just use the sequence of four shots of the cart as seen in the EE, while Gandalf answers something like this (and yes, I’ve checked the timing):
“Well, what can I tell you? The dwarves of the Lonely Mountain have flourished, so much so that old Balin led some of them off on another perilous quest to regain ancient treasure. They still get along badly with the elves, of course; I do not think we shall see any friendship between those peoples in this age, alas. The affairs of men continue with little change. And the Powers that rule this Middle-earth, for good and evil? A few of The Wise know of Bilbo, but otherwise, they are scarcely aware of the existence of hobbits —” And then the great orphaned Gandalf close-up from the TE: “For which I am very thankful”, which replaces the shot of Bilbo saying “and there always will be” in the EE. We’ve now set up quite naturally the next sequence in the EE, beginning with a close-up of Frodo: “To tell you the truth, Bilbo’s been a bit odd lately…”
I believe that this revised history of Bilbo’s memoir makes nearly effortless sense. Bilbo is no longer leaving the day after he writes Frodo the letter, but I don’t think it’s a great stretch that he writes it without knowing when it will be delivered. He has resolved to tell the full truth in the memoir he is beginning, and what he wants to say to Frodo about that is clear now in his mind. So he wouldn’t wait to write the letter until it was time for Frodo to read it. He is probably contemplating leaving Bag End at some undefined point in the future, and he can probably also imagine never getting the courage to face Frodo, and leaving him the memoir and its cover letter to him in his will. And he wants to keep the memoir secret at least until he gets to the part where he failed to tell the whole truth — his lie to the Dwarves.
A year later, he still hasn’t reached that point, so he has made up his mind to go to Rivendell and finish there. He has, however, just gotten to the Gollum encounter, and that is compelling enough that he tries to get some work done on the book even as the party is imminent. In fact, that we see Bilbo writing the tale of finding the Ring on the morning of the Party, while being continually interrupted by party business, underscores how important it’s become to him. It’s only in this edition that we truly understand why Bilbo knows he needs a very long holiday.
