{"id":65835,"date":"2012-11-28T05:08:59","date_gmt":"2012-11-28T10:08:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/?p=65835"},"modified":"2012-11-30T01:49:44","modified_gmt":"2012-11-30T06:49:44","slug":"imagining-peter-jacksons-the-hobbit-part-two","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/2012\/11\/28\/65835-imagining-peter-jacksons-the-hobbit-part-two\/","title":{"rendered":"Imagining Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit: Part Two"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a> In Imagining Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit<\/i>, guest writer Eric M. Van<\/a> draws together the threads of known facts, and add a dash of logic to speculate on how Peter Jackson and his crew may have imagined their version of JRR Tolkien\u2019s The Hobbit. <\/p>\n

This second part of the series examines the unique adaptation challenges for Jackson and his fellow screenwriters that come from a sequel that’s a prequel \u2014 and whether they’ve had a six-movie Ultimate Edition in mind from the very start.<\/p>\n

Imagining Peter Jackson\u2019s The Hobbit<\/h3>\n

Part 2: the initial challenges<\/h4>\n

In the first installment of this series, I tried to solve all the mysteries regarding An Unexpected Journey that have been created by the many available clues: a host of questions concerning the revised history of Sauron\u2019s return to Middle Earth, the invented Radagast storyline, and the film\u2019s ending.<\/p>\n

What has been largely overlooked amidst this orgy of clue-driven speculation is that from the beginning The Hobbit has posed a set of unique adaptation challenges for Jackson and his fellow screenwriters. And I believe it is impossible to get a firm grasp of what the overall Hobbit trilogy might be like \u2014 what tales it might tell, and where it might tell them \u2014 without understanding these initial challenges.<\/p>\n

So my humble entry in the great Predict-the-Hobbit-trilogy sweepstakes will not continue with a simple chronological rundown of further plot points. Rather, I want to take a detailed look at each of the major adaptation challenges \u2014 I count eight \u2014 arranged more or less in the order they\u2019ll be encountered. I\u2019ll even interrupt the survey for an appreciation of the unique world of The Hobbit, which underlies one or two of those challenges (it all does come back to the books, after all!). I\u2019ll continue to make plenty of specific and sometimes bold guesses as to what we might see, but my chief goal is to give readers a sense of just what has needed to be done to turn The Hobbit into a companion to the existing film trilogy. And thus, when my guesses prove to be wrong (as I\u2019m sure many will be), I will still hopefully have cast some useful light on the different choices made by Jackson et al<\/em>.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Adaptation challenge one: the ex-prequel dilemma<\/h3>\n

\"\"<\/a>The Lord of the Rings was written as a sequel to The Hobbit, and because readers have always been advised to start with the earlier, simpler book, the vast majority first encountered Middle-earth in the earlier chronological tale. But that is not the experience that most contemporary viewers are about to have. Everyone who is unfamiliar with the books but has seen The Lord of the Rings already will be viewing The Hobbit as a prequel<\/em> \u2014 and considering how many more people see movies than read fiction these days, that proportion may be much larger than the average Tolkien fanatic imagines.<\/p>\n

ROTK sold an estimated 61.6 million tickets in the U.S., currently the seventh-best figure of the millennium after Avatar, The Avengers, The Dark Knight, Shrek 2, Spider-Man, and Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man\u2019s Chest. A 2002 British study of repeat movie viewing found that 11% of the LOTR:FOTR audience had seen it more than once, so it\u2019s very likely that ROTK was seen by upwards of 50 million viewers in the U.S., even before DVD rentals. By comparison, the seventh-best selling novel in English of the millennium (excluding books from the same series) is a tie between The Kite Runner and, ironically, The Lovely Bones, at an estimated 10 million copies each, worldwide. (If you\u2019re curious, the top six appear to be The Da Vinci Code, the last Harry Potter, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Twilight or a sequel, The Hunger Games, and Christian novel The Shack.) While the book has sold 150 million copies, that\u2019s a worldwide figure over nearly fifty years of continuous popularity, and many readers have bought it more than once. It seems almost certain that a majority of the 50 million U.S. viewers of ROTK had never read the books. <\/p>\n

By the way, this huge disparity in size between the audiences for movies and books explains the puzzling relative<\/em> lack of popularity of the movies. Seriously. The book is the most popular novel of all time, and the film adaptations are so successful that they appear to have the highest user ratings of any movies at Netflix. (Specifically, the extended editions of FOTR and ROTK do. Nor is this, by the way, an elitist audience \u2014 Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakwell has a higher rating than Annie Hall, and National Treasure: Book of Secrets bests 2001: A Space Odyssey). And yet ROTK ranks just 15th in ticket sales among movies of the VCR \/ DVD era (older movies had the benefit of many more repeat viewings and can\u2019t fairly be compared). There just aren\u2019t enough fans of even the most popular book to take you further up the list; the popularity of the book is essentially only a marketing hook. After that, the films are on their own \u2014 and LOTR is a bit more challenging in scope and complexity than Batman or Home Alone, which limits its audience despite its brilliance.<\/p>\n

So for the time being, the huge size of movie audiences means that The Hobbit film trilogy is functioning largely as a prequel. There are young viewers and a few older ones who will start here, and many viewers who know both stories already. The surprising majority, though, knows only the later story and is about to experience the earlier one for the first time. But as soon as all the movies have left theaters and are out on disk, this will change. Viewers new to the films will ask which trilogy they ought to see first, and for the most part they\u2019ll be given the same answer that readers have always been: they\u2019re best experienced in internal chronological order, and thus in the order of Tolkien\u2019s conception.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a> Some viewers, however, will opt to see the technologically less sophisticated trilogy first, so they\u2019ll start with LOTR. In particular, anyone who has a 3D TV is likely to want to see the 2D trilogy first and then the 3D, internal chronology be damned \u2014 after all, seeing them \u201cbackwards\u201d was good enough for an entire worldwide audience. As 3D TV achieves good market penetration (which should happen very quickly once glasses-free technology is perfected), this will become a very common viewing strategy. Meanwhile, however, the cost of 3D post-conversion will be dropping steadily, and the quality increasing. So at some point, a 3D conversion of LOTR will become financially and artistically irresistible. When that happens, the only argument for seeing the trilogies out of chronological order will disappear, and the best order for seeing them will experience another<\/em> switch. (The 3D conversion is when we\u2019ll finally see the necessary minor CGI improvements to LOTR, such as the upgrading of Gollum in FOTR to the design of the later films.) Second trilogy, first trilogy, second, and then finally first again: that\u2019s the fate of The Hobbit. <\/p>\n

And that means that the new trilogy has to be structured and told in a way that will work equally well regardless of the order in which the trilogies are viewed<\/em>. Some things will take care of themselves: the first appearance of the Nazg\u00fbl in FOTR is scary and a bit mysterious if you\u2019re seeing that trilogy first and (assuming the Nazg\u00fbl appear at the Battle of Dol Guldur), scary and oh-crap-that\u2019s-the-Nazg\u00fbl!-evoking if you\u2019re seeing it second. Other material needs to be handled with more care. For instance, the introduction of Sauron in this trilogy has to be separate from and equal to the one in LOTR, neither one rendering the other redundant, both of them able to function as either actual introduction or illuminating back-story. (This need to keep the trilogies functionally independent is why Thomas Monteath\u2019s suggestion elsewhere on this web site that The Hobbit frame story might continue onward and overlap the events of LOTR, thus filling in some of its gaps, is almost certainly wrong; it would permanently force viewers to watch the movies backwards.)<\/p>\n

Maintaining this narrative independence is, of course, a challenge faced by every prequel creator, and not everyone is up to it. For instance, it\u2019s widely agreed that The Chronicles of Narnia are best read in the order they were written rather than by internal chronology, and that one-volume collections which place The Magician\u2019s Nephew at the head of the sequence rather than The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe do readers a disservice. Many viewers watching the Star Wars saga in internal chronological order find that the once-stunning revelation at the end of The Empire Strikes Back has been at least somewhat spoiled by the seven hours already devoted to explaining it in detail. <\/p>\n

There\u2019s good reason to expect that Jackson et al<\/em> will do a much better job. Jackson\u2019s original desire was to film The Hobbit first; he only began with LOTR because the rights to the earlier book were a morass. As we are about to see, there is evidence within LOTR that Jackson always hoped or even expected to come back and adapt The Hobbit \u2014 a perfectly reasonable expectation given the money to be made. I therefore think that he has been aware, from the beginning, of the need to maintain equipoise between prequel and sequel in the two trilogies. There shouldn\u2019t be anything in one that significantly spoils something in the other, or that fails to makes sense, if you see them in the \u201cwrong\u201d order. <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Concerning \u201cConcerning Hobbits\u201d<\/h3>\n

\"\"<\/a> There is, however, one thing in the trilogies that\u2019s not going to work right once their optimum viewing order has finally stabilized, with The Hobbit first. The \u201cConcerning Hobbits\u201d segment of the FOTR Extended Edition (to use its DVD chapter title) will stand near the beginning of the fourth<\/em> movie, when it clearly belongs in a similar position in the first. Leave aside any questions about the origin of the passage (which I\u2019ll get to next.) It\u2019s just plain, simple, narrative common sense: if you have six movies about fictional beings known as hobbits and an x-minute sequence explaining who they are and what they like, that sequence goes at the beginning<\/em>, not in the middle. Unless you are creating a seriously postmodern narrative, \u201cthe introduction belongs at the start\u201d is a good storytelling principle to follow. (And though it happens to be true that The Lord of the Rings is my favorite film of all time and Memento is my second, I really don\u2019t want the logic of the latter invading the former. And if I don\u2019t, then neither do you.)<\/p>\n

Having established that, it is worth looking at the origin of \u201cConcerning Hobbits,\u201d and its relationship to both the opening pages of The Hobbit and to the Prologue of LOTR (from whose first section it borrows its title). All The Hobbit has to say about its eponymous denizens is contained in a mere four sentences, which interrupt the introduction of Belladonna Took on page two. Almost every phrase in this passage, however, is an echo of a more elaborate one in the first section of the LOTR prologue. According to this prologue, the published Hobbit is not \u201cadapted\u201d but merely \u201cderived\u201d from Bilbo\u2019s memoir \u201cThere and Back Again,\u201d which comprises the opening pages of The Red Book of Westmarch. In the Foreword to the First Edition of LOTR, Tolkien gives the reason for the loose adaptation: \u201cBilbo was not assiduous, nor an orderly narrator, and his account is involved and discursive, and sometimes confused.\u201d Tolkien the translator thus took huge liberties with the material, not just to turn it into a story for children, but to organize it better. Meanwhile, the prologue, with its much longer version of the same material, is derived from \u201cHobbit-lore\u201d\u2014which would of course include the Red Book itself.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s reasonable to conclude that Bilbo\u2019s memoir includes in its early pages a sustained introductory passage about Hobbits, as a discursion; that would explain why phrases like \u201ca little people\u201d and \u201cinclined to be fat\u201d show up verbatim in both The Hobbit (which is derived only from the memoir) and the LOTR Prologue. In The Hobbit, Tolkien hugely compressed the passage and amplified its discursive nature for comic effect by dropping it into the middle of a paragraph. Later, he incorporated it seriously and more fully into the LOTR Prologue, fleshing it out with material from other sources. When Jackson shows us Bilbo starting<\/em> his memoir with such a passage, it\u2019s thus not really an invention, even though the only phrases he borrows from the actual Red Book involve Hobbits loving \u201cpeace and quiet and good tilled earth\u201d and the world \u201cbeing after all full of strange creatures beyond count.\u201d He is simply being more generous to Bilbo by giving him enough sense to start with the introduction.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a> How can Jackson accomplish the same thing with the six movies, when the introduction is currently in the middle? The solution is radical, but I think unavoidable. The LOTR 3D conversion will be part of an Ultimate Edition of all six films. And at that point, \u201cConcerning Hobbits\u201d can be lifted from its current location, tweaked (I\u2019ll get to that), and moved to a corresponding one in the first movie. I believe that Jackson is already planning to do this, and what\u2019s more, that this is the sole rationale for framing the new trilogy as a tale told by Ian Holm as Old Bilbo<\/em>. The necessary introduction to Hobbits, the scene that must eventually stand at the beginning of all the films, has already been shot, and it has been shot in the form of an elderly Bilbo beginning to write his memoirs, and hence narrating the introduction. And that means that the new movie must be a flashback from that moment, showing us the contents of the memoir he is starting to write.<\/p>\n

If Jackson et al<\/em> weren\u2019t planning to eventually move \u201cConcerning Hobbits\u201d to the other trilogy, they could have left Old Bilbo and Frodo out of the new movie entirely, and introduced the idea of Bilbo writing his memoirs at the start of LOTR, when it happens chronologically. Admittedly, including Ian Holm and Elijah Wood in The Hobbit has been viewed by some as a commercial move, but that seems hardly necessary given the enormous popularity of LOTR. In fact, hard-core fans tend to complain about such moves when they feel they\u2019re pointless, which means that there was probably more downside than upside to bringing back Holm and Wood without a good reason. No, \u201cConcerning Hobbits\u201d needs to start all six films someday, and that means that Old Bilbo and Frodo were required<\/em> in AUJ for a frame story, one that could ultimately be integrated with the transplanted introduction.
\nHow might this work? How will the beginning of the Original Edition of AUJ be structured, how will it be modified in the Ultimate Edition (hereafter \u201cUE\u201d), and what will the UE of LOTR: FOTR look like once \u201cConcerning Hobbits\u201d has been removed? Let\u2019s address these questions one by one.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Framing The Hobbit<\/h3>\n

\"\"<\/a> Here\u2019s what we know about the AUJ frame story:<\/p>\n

\u2022 From the opening of the first trailer, we know that the new film includes a scene of Frodo stopping to speak briefly to Bilbo, outside the front door of Bag End. Since the \u201cNo admittance except on party business\u201d sign is visible, this is either in the days leading up to the The Long-Expected Party, or on the day itself.
\n\u2022 Also in the first trailer, we see a concerned Bilbo sitting in his study, apparently composing a letter to Frodo. We hear the text in voice-over: \u201cMy Dear Frodo. You asked me once if I had told you everything there was to know about my adventures. While I can honestly say that I have told you the truth, I may not have told you all of it.\u201d His serious demeanor here contrasts markedly with his carefree and playful one when he begins his memoir with \u201cConcerning Hobbits.\u201d
\n\u2022 From the TV ads, we know that the film includes Ian Holm as elderly Bilbo speaking (and almost certainly writing) the famous opening line of the novel.<\/p>\n

An obvious first question is whether, in the scene that opens the first trailer, Frodo is actually heading off to the woods where he will soon meet Gandalf in FOTR, while Bilbo is about to return to his study and begin to write his memoir. It certainly seems so at first glance. But if that\u2019s the case, why in FOTR does Bilbo call out for Frodo every time he\u2019s interrupted by a knock on the door? Doesn\u2019t he know Frodo\u2019s gone off to the woods, and doesn\u2019t he therefore know the answer to his question, \u201cwhere is that boy?\u201d On the other hand, perhaps by that time, Frodo had been gone so long that Bilbo expected him back already.<\/p>\n

Nor is it helpful to note that Frodo is not carrying a book with him when he sets off, but is reading one when he hears Gandalf singing \u201cThe Road Goes Ever On and On\u201d \u2014 because in the very next shot in FOTR, Frodo is running through the woods without the book, and we never see it again. This is probably a continuity error, but it could be explained by proposing that Frodo stashed the book back in a hiding place before running to meet Gandalf, and therefore the book was already in the woods. It would not surprise me if these questions are not<\/em> answered when we see the movie. The temporal relationship of the early frame scenes, as they exist in this version of The Hobbit, to the opening moments of LOTR might be meant<\/em> to be ambiguous \u2014 because everything\u2019s going to be rearranged in the UE.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a> We can then ask what\u2019s going on with the letter. First, note that it has always been unlikely that the frame consists of Bilbo telling<\/em> the story to Frodo, as many have assumed. When Gandalf arrives on Bilbo\u2019s birthday, Frodo tells him that Bilbo has been looking at old maps and locking himself in his study. He says nothing about having been regaled with the full and honest tale of Bilbo\u2019s adventures. And all he can conclude from Bilbo\u2019s odd behavior is that his uncle is \u201cup to something,\u201d so he clearly doesn\u2019t even know about the memoir Bilbo has begun. The unabridged Hobbit audiobook runs 11 hours, and the Jackson film trilogy will run at least eight, so Bilbo wouldn\u2019t have time to tell the tale to Frodo in the hours between Gandalf\u2019s arrival and the party.<\/p>\n

And in any case, Frodo already knows the story<\/em>; he just doesn\u2019t know all of it. This is made explicit by the letter, but it\u2019s already been well established. Frodo tells Bilbo that he spent his childhood imagining he was off with him on one of his adventures, and the scene of Bilbo enchanting a group of hobbit children at the Party with the Troll tale makes it clear how much he loves to talk about them. Frodo could probably write the memoir himself, omitting just the parts or aspects that Bilbo had. So the frame story has to involve the writing of the memoir rather than the telling of the story. Having Bilbo write Frodo what\u2019s essentially a cover letter<\/em> for the memoir is a clever way of bringing Frodo into it.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The Missing Truth<\/h3>\n

\"\"<\/a> So now we can ask: what are the parts or aspects of the story that Bilbo has never told Frodo, that he is planning to reveal for the first time in his memoir? There are two obvious possibilities. First, it\u2019s likely that Bilbo has never admitted that he was initially reluctant to go on the quest, made a fool of himself at the Unexpected Party, and was generally useless to the Dwarves until he saved them from the Mirkwood spiders. (In other words, the version Frodo has heard may be closer to the Rankin-Bass adaptation, where Bilbo is cocky and self-confident from the beginning, thus missing the entire point of the story.) It\u2019s quite possible that the conversation with Frodo that opens the frame story touches on Frodo\u2019s hero-worship of his adventurous uncle and creates some guilt in Bilbo over having misled him. Hence the memoir will set the story straight.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s also likely that Bilbo has omitted details concerning the finding of the Ring and his explanations of it to the Dwarves. In the books, there are in fact three<\/em> different versions of this story, and the \u201ctrue\u201d story doesn\u2019t actually appear, but is only alluded to. I think there\u2019s a good chance that Jackson will use the \u201ctrue\u201d story \u2014 and hence be more faithful to Tolkien than Tolkien.<\/p>\n

In the first version, Gollum agrees to give Bilbo a gift if Bilbo wins the riddle game, and when he can\u2019t find it, he instead agrees to show him the way out. Bilbo later tells this tale to the Dwarves, the first time omitting his finding the Ring, the second (in Mirkwood) including it. In Tolkien, this is entirely an invention of Bilbo\u2019s to strengthen his claim of ownership for the Ring, and it is the version he sets down in the Red Book of Westmarch. It is also, of course, the version in the first edition of The Hobbit.<\/p>\n

What actually seems to have happened is this. The encounter between Gollum and Bilbo is as told in the revised edition of The Hobbit. According to the LOTR Prologue, however, when Bilbo rejoins the Dwarves he lies to them, and tells them the story from the first edition. And he does so again in Mirkwood, simply adding the Ring. Gandalf disbelieves both versions and eventually gets the true story from Bilbo. This true story appears as supplementary material in the Red Book, probably added by Frodo.<\/p>\n

The third version of the story is an editorial invention<\/em> devised by Tolkien for the revised edition of The Hobbit, in order to circumvent the troubling matter of Bilbo\u2019s lie. Here the true story of the encounter with Gollum is given. However, when Bilbo rejoins the Dwarves, Tolkien has him tell them a version of the true story that simply omits the Ring, rather than having him lie. The entire passage of Bilbo\u2019s narration beginning with \u201cSo I said: \u2018what about your promise? Show me the way out!\u2019 But he came at me to kill me…\u201d and ending with \u201cSo I jumped over him and escaped, and ran down to the gate\u201d is not, according to Tolkien, based on the Red Book at all! Even within the fictional universe where Tolkien is just a translator of ancient texts, he made up this part himself.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a> This presents Jackson with a very interesting choice. What does Bilbo tell the Dwarves when he rejoins them? Does he tell them a Ring-free version of the truth, as in the published Hobbit? Or does he lie and tell them the \u201cfriendly Gollum\u201d version of the story, as Tolkien says he does in the LOTR Prologue? If Jackson does use the \u201ctrue\u201d version and incorporate Bilbo\u2019s lie to the Dwarves, he could add a scene or two where Gandalf questions Bilbo\u2019s story and eventually gets the true version from him. Going with the \u201ctrue\u201d version would be consistent with Jackson\u2019s continual emphasis on the Ring\u2019s evil power, and would help make the Ring a darker object than it is in the published book.<\/p>\n

Furthermore, in the frame story, Bilbo feels that the parts of the story he has left out are so shameful that he would rather not have to tell them to Frodo face-to-face. That\u2019s why he\u2019s writing the letter. This is absolutely something people do: write a letter saying \u201cI was deceitful to you and I hope you will forgive me by the time we next meet.\u201d It\u2019s a way to remove yourself from the other party\u2019s immediate emotional reaction, and instead only have to deal with them after they have come to terms with your confession.<\/p>\n

I think it\u2019s a stretch that Bilbo would feel this reluctant to face Frodo, if all he had done was mislead him about how heroic he was during the first half of the Quest. And clearly he has never lied to Frodo about the Gollum encounter, since in the letter he says that everything he has told him was true. But it\u2019s likely that he never told Frodo that he lied to the Dwarves about it \u2014 twice! \u2014 and that Gandalf had to browbeat the truth out of him. That might credibly be something he\u2019s so embarrassed about that he would rather tell it to Frodo in a letter than in person.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The frame assembled<\/h3>\n

\"\"<\/a>So here\u2019s how I envision the frame in the original edition of AUJ. First, there\u2019s a conversation between Old Bilbo and Frodo that will make Bilbo feel guilty about the things he has never told Frodo; it probably deals with Frodo\u2019s idolization of him rather than the Ring. Then, Bilbo composes the cover letter; his very serious demeanor here will be a bit of a puzzle at first. Next, he writes \u201cIn a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit\u201d and probably the rest of the famous opening paragraph \u2014 but not on the very first page of the Red Book, but rather on an inner leaf. (At what point he wrote the title page and \u201cConcerning Hobbits\u201d will be left unclear.) Then we fade to the story. And at first it seems that the missing truth that Bilbo is concerned about must be his lack of heroism; it\u2019s only later that we\u2019ll understand that his lies about the Ring were more troublesome, and hence understand why he looked so serious while penning the letter to Frodo. <\/p>\n

The history of that letter can be easily divined. When Bilbo leaves Bag End, Frodo has no idea that he\u2019s begun a memoir. And yet when Frodo first sees the Red Book in Rivendell, he is not surprised by its existence; in fact, he reacts to it as if it\u2019s something he has heard about, and has been looking forward to seeing. This has never jumped out at viewers as a plot hole because Frodo\u2019s reaction is subtle, but it\u2019s unquestionably there, now that we know to look for it. So Frodo has clearly read the letter in the interim. And if you look at the scene where Gandalf seals the Ring in its envelope while Frodo watches, there are already two sealed letters on that small table. (One wonders whether the other is to Sam, telling him to look after Frodo, or to the Sackville-Baggins, telling them to leave him alone.) <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>I don\u2019t think we\u2019ll ever see a scene where Frodo reads the letter, by the way; that he must have done so can be left for viewers to conclude. It\u2019s far from the largest such elision in the movies: note that Frodo acquires the Red Book from Bilbo on the return journey from Minas Tirith, and the only hint that they\u2019ve even seen each other is that the tracking shot showing the path of the journey on the map passes through Rivendell.<\/p>\n

Finally, here\u2019s one more good question. The frame doesn\u2019t consist of Bilbo telling his story to Frodo. Nor does it consist of Bilbo writing the entire memoir, because he writes most of it in Rivendell, and showing that in The Hobbit would thus be a spoiler for LOTR; it would violate the principle of trilogic independence. So what does that leave? I think the answer is that the story we see played out on the screen over eight hours is the one in Bilbo\u2019s head<\/em> as he starts to write the memoir. It\u2019s everything he remembers and everything he plans to write. This is a perfectly ordinary convention for flashbacks, one Jackson has already used for Gandalf\u2019s escape from Saruman, left untold to Frodo as he sits by his bedside in Rivendell. Gandalf pauses for just a second, and we see a one-minute flashback that covers hours of his life. So I don\u2019t think we\u2019ll return to the frame until late in the last movie, when we\u2019ll see that Bilbo is still at his writing desk, and still at the same early point in chapter 1. Having grasped the entire story in his mind, he\u2019s now ready to begin writing it.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Finally, the Ultimate Editions!<\/h3>\n

\"\"<\/a> The facts that are relevant to the Ultimate Editions are startling, especially considering that we\u2019ve lived with them already for a decade without grasping their import.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s start with Bilbo\u2019s opening narration in \u201cConcerning Hobbits.\u201d What\u2019s the date? His birthday, September 22nd. But the year is Shire Reckoning (S.R.) 1400<\/em>, and the Long Expected Party happened in 1401. This has escaped almost everyone\u2019s notice, and according to Google, the few folks who have spotted it think it\u2019s either a trivial mistake or a conscious rounding-down. Both seem very unlikely to me. Aragorn tells \u00c9owyn that he\u2019s 87 years old as the Rohirrim ride to Helm\u2019s Deep, and according to the book, he turned 88 the day before<\/em>. It\u2019s extremely unlikely that Aragorn would have noticed his birthday passing while helping Gandalf cure Th\u00e9oden of Saruman\u2019s possession spell, so \u201c87\u201d is the psychologically correct answer to \u00c9owyn\u2019s question. That\u2019s attention to detail.<\/p>\n

Nor has the year been reduced by one as a reflection of the timeline reduction we discussed in the previous installment. In the book, the Party is in S.R.1401 and the quest of Mt. Doom begins in 1418. In the movie, they\u2019re a year apart. You\u2019re either going to make that 1401 and 1402, or 1417 and 1418, which is to say you\u2019re going to pick either the year of the Party or the Quest as your baseline and adjust the other date. Putting the Party in 1400 and the Quest in 1401 makes no sense.<\/p>\n

If this really is 1400, that means it\u2019s a year before the Long Expected Party. That\u2019s right, Bilbo started his memoir on his 110th birthday<\/em> in S.R. 1400, and that\u2019s what will be revealed when the Ultimate Editions are assembled.<\/p>\n

Does this make any sense? Oh, does it ever.<\/p>\n

Bilbo is so overwhelmed by Party business that he has put up a sign forbidding admittance to Bag End for any other reason. Why, then, would he choose the morning of the Party to begin<\/em> writing his memoir? The acceptable answer, the one that makes the original edition just credible enough to pass, is that he got everything taken care of by the evening of the 21st. On the day of the Party itself, he can now afford to relax, and spend some time on a long-delayed private pursuit. But of course this is completely out of character for Bilbo. He\u2019s not that organized; it\u2019s much easier to believe that he\u2019d be busy right up until the party began. But if Bilbo began the memoir a year ago, there\u2019s no such problem.<\/p>\n

Frodo tells Gandalf that Bilbo has \u201clately \u2026 taken to locking himself in his study.\u201d And we\u2019ve established with the frame story that Bilbo wants to keep his memoir secret from Frodo at first, because it has some admissions he finds shameful. So Frodo\u2019s report makes sense\u2014but only if Bilbo has been writing the memoir for a while, not if he\u2019d started it that morning. He wouldn\u2019t be locking the study door if he were just sitting and contemplating writing his memoir. <\/p>\n

Admittedly, that Frodo says \u201clately\u201d implies that Bilbo has been secretive for less than a year, but I find it very credible that Frodo would have only noticed it within the last few months. When you\u2019re being secretive, you\u2019re careful at first about the secretiveness itself<\/em>; not only do you lock the study door, you only work when no one\u2019s around to notice that you\u2019ve locked it. After a while, though, you become lax\u2014and that\u2019s why Frodo has only recently realized that Bilbo is \u201cup to something\u201d (which includes, of course, not just writing the memoir but also planning his departure \u2014 but the latter wouldn\u2019t involve locking the study.)<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a> Most tellingly of all, Bilbo\u2019s exasperated comment to Gandalf that he wants to find somewhere quiet where he can finish<\/em> his book makes little sense if he in fact started it that morning<\/em>. It\u2019s not completely bizarre to complain about being unable to complete a huge project that you started just a few hours ago, but it makes much more sense if the project has been underway for a long while. <\/p>\n

Furthermore, if Bilbo started writing that morning, he doesn\u2019t yet know how much time he\u2019ll be able to devote to the book, or how much everyday life at Bag End will be a distraction from it. In fact, it\u2019s more likely that he\u2019d be optimistic about working on the book now that the Party and its associated ruckus were behind him \u2014 it\u2019s going to seem to him that he has some free time coming up. This complaint is much more rational if it\u2019s coming from someone who has already determined that everyday life at Bag End and working on the book are incompatible. <\/p>\n

The scenes between Gandalf and Bilbo have thus been cleverly written to make some barely acceptable<\/em> sense in the existing edit, where Bilbo starts the memoir on the morning of the Party. But they will make much more sense in the Ultimate Edition, when Bilbo starts the memoir a full year before the conversation with Gandalf, and three movies earlier. And since it always seemed likely that The Hobbit would happen someday, this eventual alteration in meaning has been intended by Jackson from the beginning<\/em>.<\/p>\n

And if that seems unlikely, consider the opening tracking shot on the map of Middle-Earth, the one that ends by pulling back to reveal a cluttered room in Bag End and then moves through a doorway to show Bilbo at his writing desk. In the version we know from LOTR, the track begins over the Misty Mountains\u2014as the location of Bilbo\u2019s finding the Ring, the obvious place to start for this movie. But why is the camera already moving south<\/em> when we crossfade to the map? <\/p>\n

I believe the answer is that the sequence is actually longer, and was shot so that it could be used in the final version of any future Hobbit movie (after all, the shot more or less shows Bilbo\u2019s journey in reverse). The full sequence, I would bet, begins with a shot of the representation of Erebor on the map, designed to crossfade from an actual shot of Erebor at the end of a historical prologue, just as the tracking shot on the map near the end of ROTK, showing the journey home, begins with a crossfade between Minas Tirith and its map representation. The shot would then track down to Lake-town, and through Mirkwood to the Misty Mountains \u2014 which is where we pick it up in the shorter LOTR version.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\u201cConcerning Hobbits,\u201d revised<\/h3>\n

\"\"<\/a> Besides the opening tracking shot, there are three other moments in \u201cConcerning Hobbits\u201d that are specific to LOTR and could conceivably require modification when the sequence is moved to the later \u2014 oops, I mean earlier \u2014 trilogy. The interrupting knocks on the door belong to the Long Expected Party, a year later, so we\u2019ll use an alternate or truncated take of the shot of Bilbo laughing at \u201cnor counted among the very wise,\u201d one without the very end of the shot, where he reacts to the first knock. <\/p>\n

There is a shot of Sam to illustrate the fact that \u201call hobbits share the love of things that grow,\u201d and in theory that\u2019s now in the wrong movie. But it plays no role in establishing his character for FOTR, and the prologue is filled with close-up shots of many other distinct hobbit faces, most of whom we never see again. The shot can thus can be left in when the sequence is moved to The Hobbit, as very long-range foreshadow and the subtlest of connecting threads between the tales \u2014 something to delight future viewers when they watch all six parts of the UE for the second time.<\/p>\n

The only truly problematical sequence in \u201cConcerning Hobbits\u201d proper is the final 19 seconds before Bilbo is interrupted for the second time by a knock on the door: the montage of preparations on the party field climaxing with the raising of the \u201cHappy Birthday Bilbo Baggins\u201d banner. As we\u2019ve moved the action back a full year, this no longer makes sense; Bilbo certainly didn\u2019t celebrate his birthday with a massive outdoor party two years in a row. The voice-over narration will thus need to be accompanied by new footage. \u201cAnd yes, no doubt to others, our ways seem quaint\u201d will be illustrated with some specific comic image, probably one already shot expressly for that purpose (but if not, you don\u2019t suppose they have any extra unused hobbit footage, do you?). <\/p>\n

The continuation is more interesting: \u201cbut today, of all days, it is brought home to me that it is no bad thing to celebrate a simple life\u201d could well be accompanied by a montage of a small, private 110th birthday party inside of Bag-End. In fact, that removes the unintended irony of celebrating a simple life with the most elaborate party in the history of the Shire.
\nAnd it\u2019s now that we run into one of the two major challenges of the re-edit, because in LOTR Bilbo\u2019s narration continues beyond the end of \u201cConcerning Hobbits\u201d for another 29 seconds, superimposed over four shots of Gandalf\u2019s cart making its way towards Bag End. <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a> But what was the purpose of this continuation? It begins with more of the same: \u201cSo life in the Shire goes on, very much as it has this past age, full of its own comings and goings, with change coming slowly, or not at all.\u201d (Note that in the AUJ UE, this will have to be illustrated by new hobbit footage.) But then it ceases to be about hobbits and becomes more personal. \u201cFor things are made to endure in the Shire, passing from one generation to the next.\u201d (This section also needs new footage, showing us Bag End and some of its contents.) \u201cThere has always been a Baggins living under the Hill…\u201d We see Bilbo sitting and looking very contemplative, and he says quietly \u201cAnd there always will be.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now, this works beautifully in the existing edit, because Bilbo is about to leave Bag End to Frodo, and that explains why is he is thinking such thoughts. But the next time we see Bilbo in the existing edition, he\u2019s in a panic over misplacing the Ring, and that doesn\u2019t follow at all. What would follow well, however, is a scene between Bilbo and Frodo, one where the close bond between them is evident. So this very effective moment in FOTR doubles as a secret segue from \u201cConcerning Hobbits\u201d to the first scene proper of the movie we\u2019ll be seeing this December. <\/p>\n

There\u2019s only one thing I can\u2019t make work here. Any shots in the AUJ frame story that show the \u201cNo admittance\u201d sign on the Bag End gate (such as the one that starts the first trailer) belong to 1401, rather than 1400. They might be omitted, inserted into the FOTR opening, or altered digitally to remove the sign. Or I might be wrong about most or all of this. That\u2019s one of the reasons I plan to see the movies.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The Fellowship of the Ring: the ultimate opening<\/h3>\n

\"\"<\/a> Finally, what happens to the UE of FOTR now that we\u2019ve removed not only \u201cConcerning Hobbits\u201d (except the shots of the party field preparations), but 29 seconds of voice-over narration? I think we\u2019ll cut right from the end of Galadriel\u2019s 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 \u2014 he\u2019s 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<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy birthday present,\u201d I heard him whisper to himself. \u201cThat\u2019s what we wants now, yes; we wants it!\u201d 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…\u201d <\/em> Cut back to Bilbo saying \u201cunexpectedly.\u201d<\/em> simultaneous with the knock on the door; then the long shot of Bilbo calling \u201cFrodo, there\u2019s someone at the door!\u201d<\/em>, and continue with a new shot of Bilbo resuming writing. \u201cMy birthday present,\u201d he whispered again. \u201cIt came to me on\u201d<\/em> \u2014 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\u2019s voice: \u201cmy birthday.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

When the party prep sequence ends, it\u2019s interrupted by the second knock on the door, just as it is at present, and Bilbo will say \u201cFrodo, the door! Sticklebats! Where is that boy?\u201d<\/em>, and we\u2019ll cut to Frodo in the field to begin the familiar sequence, ending with Frodo saying \u201cHalf the Shire\u2019s been invited \u2026and the rest of them are turning up anyway.\u201d And note how well this opening sets up Bilbo\u2019s panic, a few minutes later, when he can\u2019t find the Ring; no wonder he thinks to look for it. And as Bilbo is about to have enormous difficulty giving away<\/em> the Ring on his<\/em> birthday, the passage he has just written in his memoir is terrifically ironic.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s just one problem left now: the following 28 seconds of lovely footage of Gandalf\u2019s cart making its way through Hobbiton has been shorn of its narration, since we\u2019ve moved it to three movies previously. (It\u2019s 28 seconds because we\u2019re 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 \u201cif it comes at all\u201d 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. <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a> The close-up footage of the opening of the conversation (Frodo: \u201cWhat news of the outside world? Tell me everything.\u201d<\/em> Gandalf: \u201cEverything? You\u2019ve grown most curious for a hobbit. Most unnatural.\u201d<\/em>) 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\u2019ve checked the timing):<\/p>\n

\u201cWell, 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 \u2014\u201d<\/em> And then the great orphaned Gandalf close-up from the TE: \u201cFor which I am very thankful\u201d<\/em>, which replaces the shot of Bilbo saying \u201cand there always will be\u201d<\/em> in the EE. We\u2019ve now set up quite naturally the next sequence in the EE, beginning with a close-up of Frodo: \u201cTo tell you the truth, Bilbo\u2019s been a bit odd lately…\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

I believe that this revised history of Bilbo\u2019s memoir makes nearly effortless sense. Bilbo is no longer leaving the day after he writes Frodo the letter, but I don\u2019t think it\u2019s 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\u2019t 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 \u2014 his lie to the Dwarves.<\/p>\n

A year later, he still hasn\u2019t 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\u2019s become to him. It\u2019s only in this edition that we truly understand why Bilbo knows he needs a very long holiday.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Adaptation challenge two: the dragon dilemma<\/h3>\n

\"\"<\/a> If the three installments of LOTR are any guide, An Unexpected Journey will begin with a historical prologue, probably narrated by Galadriel. And it has to be about Dragons, as central to this tale as Rings of Power are to the one that follows \u2014 and, for future viewers who will begin with The Hobbit, a much more familiar fantasy element to hang a tale upon. The most important fact about Dragons is that they lust after treasure, and the most important fact about treasure is that Dwarves have more of it than anyone else does. And that brings us right into the essential back-story: Erebor, The King Under the Mountain, and the coming of Smaug. <\/p>\n

I don\u2019t think there\u2019s any question that you need to show Smaug in this opening sequence. You\u2019re looking for something visually spectacular that will grab viewers as strongly as possible, like the Battle of the Last Alliance on the slopes of Mt. Doom (moved there by Jackson from outside the gates of Mordor in large part to goose up the visuals). Smaug\u2019s attack on Erebor and Dale not only fits that bill perfectly, but is essential to the story. You\u2019re not going to communicate the key fact that Erebor was sacked and Dale destroyed by a dragon, without showing the dragon<\/em>. That\u2019s just cheating the audience.<\/p>\n

But this creates a huge problem. The first sight of Smaug the Magnificent in the second film should be a great, dramatic moment, one we\u2019ve been looking forward to. In fact, this seems even more obvious than the last point \u2014 I\u2019ve even heard it opined that Smaug will be saved for the second<\/em> film. (In the sense of Smaug as a character<\/em>, played by Benedict Cumberbatch via motion capture, this is of course true; what we\u2019re talking about here is the first film\u2019s need for CGI Smaug, from a distance.) <\/p>\n

[Editor’s note: we’re aware of Jackson’s statement at Comic-con that the audience would only see “a glimpse” of Smaug.]<\/p>\n

The solution is simple, and the key is in that appellation, The Magnificent<\/em>. The Smaug we see sacking Erebor and destroying Dale could be a young Smaug<\/em>, not yet Magnificent at all. The Smaug the Magnificent we meet a movie-and-a-half later has not only unexpectedly acquired his diamond waistcoat, but has grown considerably larger and, as he\u2019s aged, changed in other credible and really cool ways. Young Smaug is lean and sleek and feral and ripped; old Smaug is vast and crusty and brute but retains enough of young Smaug\u2019s musculature to be even more terrifying. It\u2019s one character, but two great character designs, and if done right it would make the first appearance of Smaug in the second movie just as thrilling as if we hadn\u2019t already seen him. You want this sight of Smaug to take the audience\u2019s breath away by exceeding all expectations, and the easiest way to do that is to give us a set of reasonable but false ones. In other words, I expect AUJ to open with the second-best<\/em> dragon in the history of SFX. Then just you wait.<\/p>\n

The third installment coming soon: Reconciling the Worlds of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings<\/i><\/p>\n

About the author:<\/b> Eric M. Van is well-known in the literary science fiction and fantasy community as the founding and longtime Program Chair of Readercon; in 2010 he and three colleagues became the only people ever to be nominated for the World Fantasy Award (Special Award\u2014Non-Professional) for running an sf convention. He moderated the Tolkien panel at the only World Fantasy Convention he\u2019s been to and has been on many Tolkien \/ Jackson panels at cons in the Boston area, including the Third Conference on Middle-Earth. He\u2019s also a fanatic film buff who has seen 111 movies released in 2011 (so far), and a writer who has been working for fifteen years on a big, intricately plotted fantasy novel\u2014so he\u2019s thought a lot about how narratives are constructed. Like everyone else, he has a blog<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The views in this post are his own, and do not necessarily represent those of TheOneRing.net or its staff. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In Imagining Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit, guest writer Eric M. Van draws together the threads of known facts,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":85,"featured_media":65828,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Has Peter Jackson had an Ultimate Edition combining The Hobbit: and LoTR from the very start?","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[499,331,7,4,5,74,148,149],"tags":[1788],"class_list":["post-65835","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-hobbit-movie-characters","category-greenbooks","category-hobbit-book","category-hobbit-movie","category-lotr-movies","category-jackson","category-hobbit","category-lotr","tag-library"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/11\/00-hobbit-gandalf.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1tLoH-h7R","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65835","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/85"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=65835"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65835\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":66320,"href":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65835\/revisions\/66320"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/65828"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65835"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65835"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65835"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}