Lord of the Rings fans have plenty of reason for excitement these days as this December will see the release of the first part of director Peter Jackson's film adaptation of The Hobbit. However, in recent weeks rumors have been building that Jackson's duology had quietly expanded into a trilogy. Those rumors were confirmed yesterday when Jackson announced that he'll be adding one more Hobbit movie onto his already busy slate.
The big question now is whether this announcement is cause for further excitement or concern. Does one novel really need three movies to be properly adapted? Will audiences tolerate having to wait an extra year for the saga of Bilbo Baggins to wrap up? In this feature, we explore some of the pros and cons to lending the trilogy treatment to The Hobbit, as well as the storytelling choices Jackson will have to contend with as he prepares to commence shooting additional footage next year.
How to Break Up the Trilogy
One of the first questions to arise after yesterday's announcement was “How are they going to divide the three movies?” The adaptation process was much more straightforward with the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Each book became the source for one movie. With The Hobbit, however, one single book is being split into three discrete chunks. And given that The Hobbit is significantly shorter than any of the three LotR novels, many are worried that this story will be stretched too thin.
Obviously, plenty of material will need to be added, which will be discussed at greater length in the other sections. But simply in terms of dividing the book as neatly and elegantly as possible into three parts, Jackson may be in a better position than he was with a duology. Much like Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, there isn't an ideal halfway mark in the book. A duology is stuck either ending the first half on a weak note without a major conflict to usher the movie to its climax, or cramming a disproportionate amount of material into one film or the other. In the case of Deathly Hallows, the writers took the latter approach. The majority of the book was adapted in Part 1, while the final battle between Harry and Voldemort was greatly expanded to fill out Part 2.
But again, a three movie format puts The Hobbit in a better position. We picture the first movie hitting its climax with the battle in the Misty Mountains and Bilbo's fateful meeting with Gollum. As far as we can tell, none of the material seen in the first trailer is set beyond this point anyway. The second movie can explore the company's continued journey through the wilderness, their meeting with Beorn, and their hard trek through Mirkwood Forest. The climax of Part 2 would simultaneously center around Bilbo and the dwarves' escape from the Wood Elves and Gandalf's battle with the Necromancer in Dol Goldur. From there, the third and final chapter could focus on the arrival at the Lonely Mountain, the Battle of the Five Armies, and Bilbo's journey home.
Another option would be to retain the duology format and tackle a completely separate slate of material in the third movie. Part 3 could take place in between the Hobbit movies and the Lord of the Rings trilogy, bridging the gap between the two and exploring the events of that 50-year period. However, this option doesn't seem likely. Jackson has noted that an additional two months of filming will be required next year to complete the trilogy. While that's no small amount of extra footage, it doesn't seem adequate to craft an entirely new movie.
More Gandalf
Though set many decades before the Lord of the Rings trilogy, The Hobbit includes a number of familiar faces for fans to latch onto. Aside from Martin Freeman's younger, less worldly Bilbo Baggins, the most significant returning character is Gandalf. Once again, this elderly wizard arrives at Bag End to usher its owner on a long, strange, and life-altering journey.
Gandalf serves as a guide and protector for Bilbo and the dwarves in the early leg of their journey. However, he practically drops out of the story after a certain point, not returning until the climax of the book to lend his trademark timely assistance in battle.
One possible benefit to expanding the adaptation into a trilogy is that it allows Jackson to focus much more attention on Gandalf's exploits. The book is fairly cryptic about what those exploits involve, only revealing that Gandalf had concerns of his own and that he was locked in a battle with the Necromancer of Dol Goldur even as Bilbo and friends were escaping captivity in another part of Mirkwood Forest. With the movie, we'd like to see a more parallel storytelling approach taken. Rather than frame the entire story from Bilbo's point of view, Gandalf's adventures can serve as a counterpoint.
Luckily, we're not too worried about a lack of source material to inspire Gandalf's scenes. While The Hobbit itself might not have spent much time on Gandalf's side adventures, Tolkien's appendices and unfinished stories shed much more light on this material. In particular, the story “The Quest of Erebor” from Tolkien's Unfinished Tales casts the events of The Hobbit in a new light. There, Gandalf recounts his desire to eliminate Smaug the dragon as a potential ally to Sauron and his true reasons for wanting to include Bilbo in Thorin's traveling party. This tale acts as a more serious counterpoint to Bilbo's own recollections.
What does concern us is that the movie might take too many liberties with Gandalf in order to make him a more identifiable character. For instance, some of the footage in the first trailer seems to suggest that Gandalf and Galadriel have some sort of deeper bond, which is certainly not corroborated by anything Tolkien ever wrote. Bilbo should be the everyman hero of the movies, while Gandalf is Middle-earth's larger-than-life defender.
Revealing the Necromancer
As mentioned, Gandalf's conflict with the Necromancer of Dol Goldur forms a significant part of the conflict in The Hobbit, even though readers never experience the battle firsthand. But who is the Necromancer, and why is Gandalf so concerned with him?
As it turns out, the Necromancer is none other than Sauron, the shadowy villain who threatened Middle Earth throughout the Lord of the Rings trilogy. At this stage in Tolkien's timeline, Sauron is still physically weak and working to consolidate the power he lost in his war with the Last Alliance. Centuries before the events of The Hobbit, Sauron arrived in Mirkwood as “a shadow of fear” and established his fortress at Dol Goldur. It took many years for Gandalf to discover with certainty that the Necromancer and Sauron were one and the same, and more still for him to marshal allies such as Saruman, Elrond, and Galadriel to help him drive Sauron out of the region. As the Lord of the Rings movies showed us, those efforts proved to be too little, too late.
If the movies are to show an increased focus on Gandalf relative to the book, then it stands to reason we'll see more of the Necromancer as well. This creates an interesting challenge for Jackson. Sauron is a very vaguely defined villain throughout Tolkien's writing. In his finished works, Sauron is never more than a looming, faceless threat. Even the LotR movies broke with tradition by actually showing viewers what Sauron looked like. How much further should Jackson break with tradition? Will we see what the Necromancer looks like before his full power has returned? Will he actually speak to Gandalf and the members of the White Council? Will he have a distinct personality?
The possibilities are intriguing, but there's plenty of room for error in shining too much of a spotlight on the villain. Sauron is a villain who is defined by his mystique. The fact that he's such a vague, unseen presence in Tolkien's stories is part of his charm. By molding Sauron into more of a distinct character, Jackson runs the risk of destroying that charm. Like the Joker's origin in The Dark Knight, some things are better left unknown.
Tying the Franchise Together
The residents of Middle-earth tend to live longer than your average, contemporary human. The benefit there is that, even though these movies take place decades before the Lord of the Rings trilogy, many of our old favorites are perfectly capable of stopping by to make cameo appearances. Besides Gandalf, we know that characters like Galadriel, Elrond, and Legolas will be appearing in The Hobbit. Meanwhile, Elijah Wood and Ian Holm will be reprising their roles as Frodo Baggins and an elderly Bilbo, respectvely, in a series of framing sequences set in the period of the LotR movies.
More Hobbit movies means more room for these sorts of cameos and nods to the previous films. And naturally, this can be a good or bad thing depending on how Jackson chooses to handle the material. Our inner continuity nerd loves the idea of additional nods to these ancillary characters. And with the need to expand the plot of the Hobbit to legitimately fill three movies, this sort of material may be the best option. Rather than invent new obstacles for Bilbo and the dwarves to overcome, new scenes exploring the role of characters such as Galadriel may make for more elegant additions.
But again, we worry about the direction some of these scenes might take. There's always room for missteps when you veer too far from the source material. On the other hand, we'd rather see Jackson err on the side of experimentation than deliver three movies of painstaking, rigid adherence to the source material. The same people who made fun of the LotR movies for featuring nothing but people walking would have an absolute field day.
Jackson has specifically noted a desire to explore some of the material laid out in the appendices to The Return of the King. This material explores various tidbits of Middle-earth history in the years leading up to and following the LotR novels, including Aragorn's hunt for Gollum. Jackson actually mentioned said hunt as one piece of material he'd like to explore in the movies. However, that hunt occurs during the early chapters of The Fellowship of the Ring. Aragorn himself is a mere boy during the events of The Hobbit. Does this mean that the Bilbo/Frodo framing segments are just the tip of the iceberg as far as Jackson's approach to shifting chronology?
We hope not. At the end of the day, there needs to be a distinction between The Hobbit trilogy and the LotR trilogy. These three new movies have to be able to stand on their own in addition to serving as worthy prequels. Too much emphasis on bridging the gap is only going to drag down the story. The worst case scenario is that the third Hobbit film wraps up the conflict with Smaug midway through and devotes the remainder to building the groundwork for Fellowship. We don't want a Return of the King-style, rapid-fire series of endings. We want a rousing climax followed by a brief, purposeful wrap-up.
The Future of the Franchise
Reactions to the news about The Hobbit becoming a trilogy have been mixed. Many fans have taken heart that Jackson seems motivated by his love for the franchise and his desire to tell the best story possible, rather than studio pressure. Other cynics remain convinced that Warner Bros. arranged the move in order to fill the void left by now completed, lucrative franchises like Harry Potter and Christopher Nolan's Batman trilogy.
In the end, the motivations behind the decision matter less than the execution. For better or worse, Jackson's handling of the Hobbit trilogy will determine the ongoing future of Middle-earth in Hollywood. Will casual audiences maintain an interest in this story all the way through Christmas 2014? Is a year too long to wait in between each installment?
Jackson's relative success in handling the ancillary characters and adding story material not found within The Hobbit itself will determine how well suited Tolkien's stories are for further exploration. Can the movies still succeed when they explore less well-defined characters and conflicts? Jackson' success with adding to and filling out the story of The Hobbit could pave the way for even more movies devoted to further expanding Middle-earth. We'd love to see movies devoted to the first war against Sauron, key events from The Silmarillion, or even an actual sequel to Lord of the Rings. But first fans need proof that it's possible for a movie to do justice to the franchise by venturing into more unfamiliar territory.
Jesse is a writer for IGN Comics and various other IGN channels. Follow Jesse on Twitter, or find him on IGN.
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