On December 14, people will be flowing into theatres to watch The Hobbit, the movie adaptation of a beloved book that is the prequel to the immensely popular Lord of the Rings trilogy. The devotion and passion from the fans of both J. R. R. Tolkien’s books and Peter Jackson’s movies are garnering enough hype for The Hobbit to be prematurely labeled the movie of the year. Because of this, it is an even greater shame that like many Hollywood productions, risk and artistic integrity are being abandoned in the interest of guaranteed profits.
The first money-grab was to ensure that fans will not only be paying to see The Hobbit this year, they’ll also be paying next year, and the year after that. Jackson had originally announced that The Hobbit would be split into two movies, following a new trend in book to movie adaptations to split the final movie into two parts. This was met with success in the film version of the whopping 759 page Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Jackson’s decision, however, was immediately met with concern, since The Hobbit is a children’s book of only 310 pages — half the size of Return of the King alone — and lacking the rich background and history that The Lord of the Rings is steeped in. However, the consensus was that Jackson’s superb work on Tolkien’s trilogy entitled him to some benefit of the doubt.
But then Jackson announced that The Hobbit would be not just two movies, it would be three — the entire length of The Lord of the Rings trilogy. This is both ridiculous and disappointing, not only because it’s most likely a ploy to squeeze more money out of fans, but because it seems unlikely that the films will now be as thematically powerful. Jackson claims to want time to explore more of Tolkien’s other stories, but this is misleading because he does not have the rights to either The Silmarillion, which contains the history of Middle Earth, or any of the Unfinished Tales, the collection of Tolkien’s short stories. If Jackson is choosing to add material not originally in The Hobbit, it must either be something that was mentioned in The Lord of the Rings or something that he came up with himself.
It was recently announced that one of Jackson’s changes is the addition of a new character: Tauriel, a female elf. The reason for this inclusion is that The Hobbit doesn’t include any women, and Jackson felt like he needed to give female audience members someone to relate to, as well as quell complaints of sexism because of the all-male cast of The Hobbit. Here the historical context of the original novel was not taken into account — Tolkien was fascinated with mythology and wrote his story to be in the vein of Arthurian Legend. It would hardly be sensible to accuse Arthur of sexism for not having a female knight at his round table. While a modern story should strive to live up to contemporary views of female equality, needlessly shoehorning a woman into a story purely for the sake of preserving equality does more harm than good.
The film studio is also checking romance off their list of things every movie apparently must have, with Tauriel confirmed as being romantically involved with the dwarf Kili. To broaden the film’s appeal even further, characters from The Lord of the Rings including Legolas, Galadriel and Saruman are being shoved into the story to draw in those who are fans of the movies but not the books.
In the newest trailer for the film, scenes of merry dwarves and hobbits are broken up by wizards and grumpy elves talking very sombrely. This change in tone from a jovial adventure to a serious drama seems to be an attempt to make the films better match the style of The Lord of the Rings. It is worth noting that Tolkien himself was once pressured to rewrite The Hobbit in a more serious tone in order to match The Lord of the Rings, but after multiple attempts he threw out the idea, saying it “just wasn’t The Hobbit.”
Now it’s not all bad. The effects and imagery are as stunning as ever, and to see Middle Earth rendered in such beautiful detail once more will be very enjoyable. Martin Freeman seems born to play a hobbit, and the humour of the dwarves looks bound to entertain kids and adults alike. In all likelihood, especially considering Jackson’s track record so far, it could likely be quite an enjoyable and well-made fantasy trilogy. However, since Jackson seems unhappy with the characters, plot, tone and length, then why is he working with the book to begin with? Why wouldn’t he just make an original fantasy story inspired by The Hobbit? Jackson would most likely be up for the task, and it would be tremendously exciting to have a new fantasy work of that scale. But the bottom line of a studio is profit, and it’s much safer to cash in on the love that thousands of people have for Tolkien’s novels than to strike new ground. In the end, we are left with a manipulative movie that is neither Tolkien’s The Hobbit nor an original work, and all opportunity for a truly amazing film is lost.