The Hobbit: Cubed

* This was originally posted on another blog I used to write for back when extending The Hobbit into 3 movies was just announced. The Hobbit: Battle of The Five Armies is now just about to be released and evaluated by the world. So we will all see how this decision ultimately panned out. *

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As has been widely reported already, Peter Jackson recently announced that looking at the finished first film in post, and thinking about the story with his writers, has convinced him to make his adaptation of The Hobbit a Trilogy. Cue instant internet nerd fanboy rage.

I. Am. Angry. Right. Now. Peter. Jackson. I. Will. Find. You. And. Kill. You.

I can't even trust you anymore. I cannot believe you're doing this to us. NO NO NO.

And that was my just my first reaction to this news. Now that I've had time to think it over...nope. Still the same. Betrayal might sound a little overly dramatic, but there is NO WAY to turn this into a trilogy without bringing in a bunch of stuff that was not IN the book.
Unless they want to delve into the history of the ring thoroughly...Silmarilian story pieces maybe. But I JUST AM SO MAD.

- bowties2

 Now this decision could be many things; it could be either solely a business decision (sort of like these things) , or possibly Peter Jackson's decision to fulfill his vision and tell more of a complete story. Most people tend to go with the former reason in this debate and the discussion calls into question the real worth and existence of a director's vision and where that sits versus the need for a director to make movies so he/she can do things like buy food and sleep in a house. But that's a subject for another article entirely and I'm not talking about that here.

What I am talking about is the nerd-fanboy-rage loaded upon Jackson and crew in the wake of this announcement and whether it is entirely justified? Are they pointing their fingers in the right direction?

A good place to start, as ever, is at the beginning:

In 1937 J.R.R Tolkein first published The Hobbit, after some years beforehand finding a scrap piece of paper in a student's Exam and writing down "In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit." Nowadays that famous origin sentence is recounted in pop culture circles alongside stories like the invention of the Nike swish on a restaurant napkin, and back in the 30's and 40's the impact of the book was no different, it was an absolute smash. The Hobbit was quickly heralded as a classic work of children's literature and after its huge success Tolkein's publisher soon started requesting a sequel. Around this time J.R.R began writing more myths and tales of Middle Earth and its history, he showed these to his publisher who then after reading these early notes suggested he write more about the Hobbits. This was possibly at the time purely a business decision and in some ways a sign of things that shall come to pass.

Tolkein saw his Publisher's point and agreed and soon after adapted and reworked his tales of old wars and more specifically the Ring of Power and began to conceive The Lord of The Rings almost as a remake or retelling of its predecessor, sharing elements of the same basic plot and themes somewhat akin to Sam Raimi's Evil Dead 2, Nintendo's Super Metroid, or Robert Rodriguez's Desperado.

After The Fellowship of The Ring was first released (in 1954) it was easy to notice the darker tone of it versus The Hobbit and this is reportedly because Tolkein cleverly wrote the Lord of the Rings for the same audience as had read The Hobbit previously, so those who were children when The Hobbit was published were then adults when it came time to read Lord of the Rings. Much in the same way that the Harry Potter series became progressively deeper and darker in tone as the series and its readers both developed and of course grew.

Certain readers and critics began to notice and comment on this stark difference in tone between the two works and this influenced Tolkein and his publishers, and this is where we get the Star Wars Syndrome style troubles really starting to begin.

  In order to try and make The Hobbit fit in more with the style of LOTR he began to retcon (a word learned and almost simultaneously vehemently despised by the Star Wars fanbase) The Hobbit in later editions to foreshadow themes and tonal aspects of its sequel. Most famously changing the character of Gollum in the 'riddles' chapter, making him much more aggressive and adding in dialogue to explain his reaction to losing his 'precious' ring: "Thief! Thief, Baggins! We hates it, we hates it, we hates it forever!"

In the late 1950's, on the strength of the success of The Lord of The Rings saga, J.R.R Tolkein began writing a sequel called The New Shadow, set almost a century later in the time of Eldarion, Aragorn's son, but ultimately abandoned this work after only just 30 pages. Perhaps Tolkein received some of the mid 20th century's equivalent of 'nerd fanboy rage' and as a result of it he knew when to quit. I imagine that 'nerd fanboy rage' might of been something like an angry letter addressed to Tolkein or some strongly worded phone calls inciting discussion on a local station on the wireless. This is all of course pure speculation with entirely no basis in fact, but it is plausible to think that at some point Tolkein himself might've realised that he had done enough and should really move on.

Unfortunately history tells us that he didn't move on entirely though, not from all his previous works anyway. In 1960 he began a new version of the Hobbit, attempting in a last ditch effort to finally and properly adapt The Hobbit to match its sequel. However he abandoned the new revision at only chapter three after he received criticism that it "just wasn't The Hobbit", implying it had lost much of its light-hearted tone and the overall spirit of the original. Now this evidence of 'nerd fanboy rage' was officially documented...well, I got it from Wikipedia you see.

Many years after The Hobbit's publication, and indeed a few years since Tolkein's death, Christopher Tolkein took over the reigns from his father and helped publish a work entitled Unfinished Tales that included a retconned backstory for the Hobbit along with many other stories, ruminations, and expansions on the mythology of Middle Earth that J.R.R. may or may not have ever intended to release to the public. This collection of posthumous publications, which began with the hefty and overly wordy The Silmarillion in 1980, then later included a 12 volume History of Middle Earth (pictured above), and most recently has ended for now with a two part History of the Hobbit in 2007, has really made George Lucas' engorgement of the Star Wars mythos appear in comparison not quite as offensive as everyone says and really quite ordinary.

Perhaps the further mining of Tolkein's literary archives could be 'blamed on' by some, and 'attributed to' by nicer others, to the popularity of Peter Jackson's films but where are the people telling Christopher Tolkein to just stop already? Where is the bedroom/basement nerd rage that's currently being hurled at Jackson and crew for deciding to make just one more movie? Surely he's not the one that really should be blamed when it's the source material he's using that is arguably unnecessarily inflated and almost sucked dry in this scenario? 

Now I would like to start this next paragraph by saying that personally I am really excited about The Hobbit becoming three movies. I'm of the camp that has faith in how Jackson and crew can serve the story and mythology and I agreed with every single deviation from, and indeed expansion upon, the source material that the filmmakers used to help shape the original trilogy. But really it's the particular source material that Jackson has been quoted saying that he's using for the basis of his third Hobbit film that bothers me. As I have previously illustrated here there is an immense wealth of brilliant mythology to draw from for this film that is said to act as a bridge between the two cinematic trilogies, The Quest of Erebor in Unfinished Tales comes to mind, so I can't understand why Jackson would say that he's mainly using the Appendices from The Return of the King as his main inspiration.

I have read those Appendices, I was on a high after finishing Return of The King so I just kept going. But as good as they are, making a movie based around some of the plot elements in those Appendices is the equivalent of expanding Harry Potter into another movie and basing it on content within Quidditch Through The Ages and Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (*2020 edit* Haha! That happened!). Both The Appendices and these Potter companions books are just examples of pieces of writing to expand upon the universe the work created. Sometimes adaptations in other media of these outer realms of a particular mythology do work, the Nintendo 64 game Shadows of the Empire or the Cartoon Network's Star Wars The Clone Wars series for example, but most of the time they're a complete waste of time, i.e the video game adaptation of one of the mythology expanding novels to a video game series: Halo: Reach.

Nobody remakes or adapts a videogame incorporating extra story elements from the original's instruction manual (please correct me if I'm wrong), or covers a single and includes extra lyrics from the original releases' liner notes. That second one is a little far fetched I know, but I think my point still stands.

I guess in conclusion, very little so far is known about what will ultimately become the third movie in the Hobbit trilogy. It could easily be patchy and fragmented as a result of its source material, but over on the flipside it could also serve to piece together the entire story and be absolutely brilliant. Not to mention create an incredible Movie Marathon. So I'm not angry or upset at Peter Jackson, or experiencing the pain of my blood boiling because of the mythology of Middle Earth being expanded upon in the world of Cinema. Instead I'm completely fine with this announcement because Jackson and his team are amazing at what they do and Jackson is the perfect director to make sure it is done right. As we've seen from the output of J.R.R. Tolkein and his progeny there is now a little too much mythology in the Middle Earth universe, but a great deal of it is worthy of being retold again by a talented storyteller like Peter Jackson.

Then again, I suppose he's still got time to do something stupid like hand over the third movie to Del Toro...

Danny