Of Hobbits and Things

I’m sitting here watching the final 30 minutes of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey and trying to figure out if I like the Azok story line. In a nut, it’s a subplot within the movie, and I suspect the next 2, where an old enemy of Thorin son of Thrain’s tries to settle old scores. It’s also entirely the creation of Jackson, as far as I’m aware.

I suppose something like this was made necessary when the decision was made to create 3 movies, instead of 1. The Hobbit as told by Tolkien is a short book and pretty fast paced as I recall. There just isn’t 3 movies worth of material there.

But I suppose there is the framework for that much if enough “seasoning” is added to the plot, and the Azok storyline certainly fits that bill. I might even be tempted to say it fits it well. The final confrontation in this movie is certainly riveting.

It’s certainly a less offensive modification than Jackson’s epic blunder in The Lord of the Rings where he completely hosed the Ents. I can’t speak for the rest of the LOTR fans out there, but the Ents were one of my favorite characters from the source material and seeing Jackson completely screw them up was a pretty shocking offense considering all the other things Jackson did so well.

How did Jackson screw them up? For starters, he made them seem stupid and they were anything but in the book. Treebeard’s line to Pippin in the movie when Pippin tricks him into going by Isengard with “The closer we are to danger, the farther we are from harm” is “That makes no sense, but then you are very small.”

Say what? A being that has lived for centuries is tricked like that?

Also, for a keeper of the trees, how does Treebeard not know that Saruman has been strip mining that area? Worst of all, in the books Treebeard and the other Ents recognize that the war is there business and that if Sauron is allowed to return to power there will be no where safe for them either.

Jackson uses a cheap emotional trick to get them to fight and repeatedly makes the Ents seem oafish and foolish. How long did it take to call the Entmoot in the movie? Then, Treebeard sees the desctruction Saruman has wrought, screams, and just like that Ents are crawling out of the forest? Where’s the consistency?

There are other modifications that I thought unfortunate as well. He changed Aragorn’s character from a confident “My time has come” king-to-be to a hesitant and troubled man whom almost seems afraid to act. The book’s version of the character was clearly superior, in my opinion. The love story modification also soiled the Elves, I felt. Elrond isn’t the sort to play the “you can’t marry that guy ’cause I don’t like it” card. It’s behavior that doesn’t fit the character. And the scene in The Two Towers where Frodo is almost turned into a snack for a Nazgul? What the heck was that about?

I suppose that, overall, it says a lot about the source material that in spite of these transgressions, and there are others, the story is still awesome to behold. The scene with the Balrog in The Fellowship of the Ring is absolutely perfect, right down to “Fly! You fools!” I didn’t mind some of the made up confrontation between Saruman and Gandalf prior to Gandalf’s becoming “The White” either.

Perhaps all this means is that, somewhere down the road, we’ll get a remake where they fix some of these poetic license decisions. While I’ve enjoyed all 4 movies immensely, they aren’t perfect.