The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies

Wellington after the film industry collapses.

After "The Desolation of Smaug" my expectations for the third film in Peter Jackson's adaptation of "The Hobbit" were fairly abysmal, and the trailers, with all their Legolas and weaponised trolls, hadn't made me feel very optimistic. One might be surprised to learn, therefore, that my opinion of the final instalment is more positive than I expected because I actually felt like the first half of the film was reasonably decent. This of course puts me in the awkward halfway house, where I'm neither fully on board with those who think that the film was a non-stop disaster or with those who think that Peter Jackson and his team spew magic rainbows from their fingers as soon as they touch a camera. That's just the way it goes, of course, although it's probably only representative of how modernity's pillaging and misrepresentation of everything from its twentieth century heritage has worn me down, much like the armies in this film, in a war of attrition. My main issue with the film is similar to the one I had with the previous film, really: that there's too much drawn-out action in the second half of the film, in addition to some ongoing problems with narrative focus.

Who's this guy again?

It's recap time. As we all remember, at the end of the previous film Smaug wasn't having any of Thorin and Company's nonsense and as a result inexplicably decided that instead of turning them into Original Recipe Chicken right there he would instead piss off to Lake-Town and exact petty revenge on their allies instead. The depiction of the dragon's destruction of the watery city is fairly brutal and I did find the apocalyptic imagery reasonably confronting. I didn't really manage to comprehend how Bard escaped from his needlessly make-shift looking, tilted, over-the-canal prison, however, nor how Stephen Fry's Master temporarily survived his seemingly fatal squeezing in the rope used for said escape, but the main thing that struck me was the long focus on Tauriel and the plight of Bard's children: all well and good, but it is fairly odd to consider how all these invented characters (and Bain) get the spotlight here. I also must admit that the depiction of the Master of Lake-Town rather lacks Professor Tolkien's subtlety, does it not? He couldn't be more blatantly negligent and corrupt if he tried. In any event, Bard's method of slaying of the dragon is pretty ludicrous. It also ignores the foreshadowing of the ballista weapon depicted in the previous film. I don't know why these films, and action cinema in general at the moment, are so obsessed with weird contrived ways of portraying weapons and other devices. That being said, Smaug's death is pretty horrifying and all in all I thought this sequence was not bad as they go: the dragon's dead, but they're still in hot water, as it were.

"Do you have any bog roll? We're gasping out here."

Bard's unofficial assumption of the leadership of the people of Lake-Town was again portrayed reasonably. We of course have to deal with the issue of the rest of Thorin and company getting to Erebor, so they just grab a boat and piss off without bothering to help the people who sheltered them or anything, which I felt was a telling example of how in these films their efforts to both add to the story and retain the original storyline often mean things happen unnaturally or arbitrarily. We get some Kíli and Tauriel guff but I'll not dwell on that, because in all honesty it just didn't do anything for me. Legolas appears and disappears seemingly at random in these sequences, at first telling Tauriel that they have to go somewhere, then appearing again with the Lake Men later having not gone anywhere except with them. Eventually however they're informed that they need to head for Mount Gundabad although I can't remember how they figure out that it's important. One thing that annoyed me in all these sequences with the Lake Men was the invented character of Alfrid who kept showing up. Who cares? I didn't find him funny, and would have preferred if less screentime had been wasted on him - and by 'less' I mean 'no.' If they couldn't work Imrahil into "The Return of the King" this guy shouldn't get a spot.

"Get the barber, someone's going to think I'm a Dwarf."

The arrival of the remaining Dwarves at the Mountain means that we finally get a bit of time with Bilbo, who has barely appeared so far, although admittedly the book does indeed divert from him to dwell on the fortunes of the Lake Men at this point in the story. Thorin's dragon sickness is a pretty sudden change and I felt like it's another element which would have benefited from greater subtlety. I did appreciate the construction of the bulwark across the door of the mountain, however. Of course our main point of interest at this time is the rescue of Gandalf from Dol Guldur. It's a strange sequence, particularly insofar as Elrond and Saruman's fight with the Nazgûl seems rather pointless. Also, I don't know why the designs of the Ringwraiths were changed from the films of "The Lord of the Rings." Galadriel's confrontation with Sauron is interesting - it's nice to see him described as the "Servant of Morgoth" - but the way it's portrayed is confusing, especially because it seems to involve Galadriel's Elven Ring, and those were never really dealt with in the other films. In the books, of course, we learn that Sauron's departure from Dol Guldur was a ruse, but this just makes matters confusing. Is Sauron actually being driven away here, or leaving of his own volition?

"You can get the lot of us from Games Workshop
for the very reasonable price of £118."

The Lake Men come to Dale and meet up with Thranduil's forces. He's not very pleasant, is he? Nonetheless I liked Bard's failed parley with Thorin and the matter of honour. We see more of our Five Armies gathering as we see Azog's army marching in full armour without any apparent supply train towards the Mountain, and he sends Bolg off to Gundabad to get another army for some reason. Gandalf shows up in Dale, Bilbo gets horrified by Thorin's dragon sickness, has a chat with Balin, and pisses off to hand over the Arkenstone, we see more of the annoying Alfrid character and we get some more conversations about how they might avoid war. I know I'm rushing through this, but in all honesty I didn't find any of this particularly objectionable so really I don't have that much to mention. I liked that Bilbo was allowed to escape by the other Dwarves and the general sense of how irrational their situation was, thirteen of them trying to hold out against armies.

"I... think something just slid up the wrong way."

Then Billy Connolly shows up riding a pig. Here's another army with no supply train or anything just showing up for a fight. It's not very well established how Thorin was able to request Dáin's assistance, but we get distracted from this when Azog sets up a command post and brings forth his armies via... giant tunnelling worms. Uh huh. Right, well, this is the point at which I started to question things a little. Why don't the giant burrowing grubs just burrow straight into the mountain? Why don't they fight the Elves and Men and Dwarves? Who knows. What's more, loads and loads of different weird trolls with odd weapons show up like something out of Harry Potter. Don't get me wrong, I like Harry Potter, but it's a different thing to this. Suddenly we have all these massive, weird, fake-looking CGI trolls running all over the place carrying on and it honestly rather spoiled things for me, because I feel like the more realistic depictions of battlefield tactics (besides Elves jumping on Dwarves' heads) were reasonably interesting and confrontational. Besides, we saw in the first film that Trolls are killed by sunlight. What happened? They don't look much like the Olog-hai from "The Return of the King," so how come they're not all turning to stone?

Elvish Ferrari.

Dale's getting overrun, we get more nonsense with Alfrid, stuff with Bard's kids, all sorts of strange trolls and a general sense of despair as everything goes to hell in a handcart with more and more Orcs showing up, as they are wont to do. Now I was starting to get a bit frustrated. Bilbo of course gets knocked out during the battle and wakes up when it's over, but we see everything here in all its gory detail, albeit sanitised in the sense that apart from a few scrapes there's virtually no blood in the film. Dwalin confronts Thorin, who proceeds to have a strange hallucination about falling into a squashy golden floor which allows him to overcome his dragon-sickness somehow. I honestly preferred the part when he saw the acorn Bilbo was keeping. He discards all his fancy armour and the thirteen of them sally forth to lend their aid, Thorin realising that they ought to kill Azog in order to bring things to a conclusion. I'm not sure how valid that really is, but there you go. Big rams materialise out of nowhere and Thorin, Dwalin, Fíli and Kíli all race off to have their showdown with the Orc leaders atop the icy Ravenhill.

"What conditioner do you use?"

The problem is, it's really an extended sub-battle between Thorin and Azog and Legolas and Bolg. Fíli, who admittedly has been pretty inconsequential, is anticlimactically killed by Azog to piss off the others. The two Elves show up and Kíli too gets killed trying to defend Tauriel. Meanwhile Thorin is fighting Azog and it goes forever, with Azog insisting on using an improvised flail. Simultaneously, Legolas has an extremely set-piece-laden showdown with Bolg, involving riding on bats, knocking over towers and using collapsing towers as staircases in ways which I'm fairly sure don't gel terribly well with the laws of physics. There's also a pointless bit where "Goblin mercenaries" show up for no reason. Dwalin disappears at some point in all this, failing to help anyone. Probably snuck off for a cheeky piss to write his name in the snow. Bilbo arrives with the use of the Ring to reveal that it's a trap, what with the Gundabad army on route, but gets knocked out by Bolg's mace.

"Series 2 of Vicious still isn't done?"

In any event, I thought that Thorin's duel with Azog and Legolas' with Bolg were just way too long and drawn out. The first half of the film had been contemplative, relatively dialogue-heavy and somewhat character and plot driven. This is just an extended action set piece, and I realised that there'd been very little significant dialogue for ages. Legolas finally kills Bolg, while Thorin sacrifices himself to kill Azog, who uses a predictable method of playing dead for a bit of a shock. I found all this stuff pretty boring, although Bilbo's final conversation with Thorin, taken as it was more or less from the book, was reasonable. I was more interested in this than Thranduil's conversation with Tauriel, or the rather naff reference to Aragorn when Legolas inexplicably decides to go journeying.

"You're not even my real father!"

After this, however, there is little to no closure. The Dwarves all rank up in two rows, which they do a couple of times in the film, to farewell Bilbo, who heads home. There's nothing about what happens to Dale or the Lake Men, nothing about the re-establishment of the Kingdom Under the Mountain and really nothing about what the consequences are for the plans of Sauron. All that happens is that we see Gandalf and an obvious small body double for Martin Freeman riding through some fields. Bilbo lies about losing the Ring, Gandalf's final words from the book taken on a sinister aspect, and we get the auction, which was a nice conclusion, although I felt like the shots of Hobbiton make it look barely inhabited. I don't know if that was intentional. Finally, we segue back into the early scenes of "The Fellowship of the Ring," in which Gandalf's lines about Bilbo having not "aged a day" are notably absent, because Martin Freeman quite clearly would have had to have aged a day or two to become Ian Holm. So ends the Hobbit trilogy.

"Hence my nickname: 'Nicey' Ackerman."

I won't dwell on this much longer because I've said my piece as far as the film itself goes. I'm more interested in discussing the deviations from the source material. Before I get to that, my concluding thoughts are that I feel like the one main issue with the film is that the action sequences are overwrought - there's another horrible one I neglected to mention about Bard riding a cart down a narrow street - and the film succeeds when it focuses on characters, conversation and conflict rather than simply on stunt fights and effects shots. As usual, the source material gets pretty mangled, but that's to be expected. Overall, I'd probably come away from this saying that "The Battle of the Five Armies" is the best of the three Hobbit films, but it's still very flawed and inconsistent. The invented characters and plots don't add enough to the story to justify their heavy focus, there are some fairly obvious plot holes, the tone of the film changes too drastically between the first and second halves and it ends, in my opinion, rather anticlimactically. If the character of Alfrid, the Tauriel material and the different silly monsters were extricated it would probably be a stronger product overall, but that wouldn't change the fact that the film is fundamentally undermined by its efforts to hybridise Bilbo's narrative with that of Thorin's, when his isn't inherently important. I note that in an interview for this film Peter Jackson said "The Hobbit is the story of Thorin Oakenshield’s quest for the Lonely Mountain." No it isn't. It's the story of Bilbo's character development. The Mountain is just a plot device. Thorin is a supporting character used to explore the theme of greed. That's why these films don't work: it doesn't matter whether you do or don't alter the source material when you don't fundamentally understand the source material in the first place. Maybe it's just marketing speak and he knows it's not true, because no one could possibly read The Hobbit and think it was about anything other than Bilbo at a fundamental level. My final thoughts are really the same as those for the previous two films: there's some interesting material in here, but like Thorin's kingly armour the true greatness is hidden among material which should have been cast aside.

This is how I felt just before it started.

Story Notes 3 - Some final major changes from the Real Story and the Original Text
 

1. Fire and Water

Smaug's attack on Lake-Town is reminiscent of the book. In the book, however, Bard slays Smaug alone with his bow and the Black Arrow, an heirloom of his family. Smaug certainly never speaks to Bard. Also, in the book Smaug's weak spot is a place on his underbelly which is not encrusted with gems, not a place where a scale was knocked off long ago. I'm unsure why they cut the element of Smaug being festooned with jewels in this film. Bilbo sees this weak spot and tells the Dwarves. This information is overheard by a Thrush, which relays this information to Bard. As heir of Girion, Bard is surprised to discover that he understands bird-speech and thus learns of Smaug's weakness. As most of the talking animals were cut for the film, the Thrush from the earlier films has no presence here.

2. The Master of Lake-Town

It's worth mentioning that in the book the Master survives the destruction of the town and indeed almost to the end of the story. Balin informs Bilbo much later, at Bag End, that the Master was given gold by Bard to aid in the reconstruction of the town, but absconded with much of it into the wastes, where he was abandoned by his followers and died.
 

3. Fíli, Kíli, Óin and Bofur

In the book of course these four were with the rest of the company the whole time, so there was no need for them to head for the mountain later. 

4. Bard's children

In the book, nothing is said of Bard's children. We know from The Lord of the Rings that he had a son, Bain, as the son is named in the film, but he's not mentioned in The Hobbit and may not have even been born by that time. Nothing is mentioned regarding daughters. 

5. Alfrid

The character and everything he does is an invention of the filmmakers with nothing very comparable in the book apart from vague mentions of the Master's servants. 

6. Tauriel

Once again, Tauriel is also an invention of the filmmakers with no precedent in the book. There's no romance with Kíli and during these events the only noteworthy Elf is Thranduil, the Elvenking. 

7. Legolas

The character wasn't invented until the writing of The Lord of the Rings. While he may well have been present at the battle, he's never mentioned. He obviously wasn't at Lake-Town fighting Orcs, because that never happened in the book. Needless to say no Elves (Legolas or otherwise) make a scouting expedition to Mount Gundabad in the book either. It's actually more heavily implied that word travels through the communications of birds in the book.

8. Mount Gundabad

This was an ancient sacred site of the Dwarves at the northern end of the Misty Mountains where Durin the Deathless awoke during the First Age. It had been lost to Orcs since the Second Age. In the book, the only Orc army comes from Gundabad, where Bolg was ruler. No army came from Dol Guldur. In the film Gundabad is presented as a sort of gateway to Angmar, the old kingdom ruled by the Lord of the Nazgûl, but it wasn't really. The capital of Angmar was actually a place about which very little is known called Carn Dûm, which lay at the other end of the Mountains of Angmar, a westward branch of the northern end of the Misty Mountains which began near Gundabad. 

9. Azog and Bolg

As everyone probably knows, by the time of the events of The Hobbit Azog had been dead for nearly one hundred and fifty years, killed at the doors of Moria by Dáin Ironfoot at the conclusion of the Battle of Azanulbizar. His son Bolg ruled the Orcs of the Mountains from Gundabad. It is actually Bolg who mortally wounds Thorin in the Battle of the Five Armies, before being himself slain by Beorn in bear's shape. It's worth emphasising as well that while in the film they dance around the issue of Azog and Bolg being family, describing Bolg as the "spawn" of Azog, in the book Bolg is quite literally his son. Of course we've seen in the film adaptations of The Lord of the Rings this notion of Orcs being spawned out of amniotic sacs in some strange magical cloning facility. In fact, they quite simply reproduced sexually just like the Children of Ilúvatar (Elves and Men) of which they were corrupted versions. 

10. Dol Guldur, Angmar the Necromancer and the White Council

We know almost nothing about what actually happened when the White Council attacked Dol Guldur: if they came on their own, as happens here, or if they brought an army. Gandalf was not captured, of course - he'd been to Dol Guldur twice before, and came with the rest of the Council on this occasion. Nonetheless, we do know that "It was by the devices of Saruman," not Galadriel, that Sauron was driven from Dol Guldur, which incidentally was not a ruined fortress but rather a thriving stronghold of the Dark Lord. That being said, Sauron's departure from Dol Guldur was actually a ruse to lull the Council into a false sense of security. While Gandalf believed that Sauron wished to recapture the North and regain the lands of Angmar, it was actually his intention to depart for Mordor, which had been prepared for him by the Ringwraiths. As such it's also highly probable that the majority of the Ringwraiths, or perhaps all of them, were not present at Dol Guldur at that time, because they were busy down south at Minas Morgul preparing Mordor for Sauron's return. Later, when Sauron began using Dol Guldur again, at least two Ringwraiths were in charge of Dol Guldur, including Khamûl the Black Easterling. 

11. Gondor

Gondor's mentioned a couple of times in the film, the first being when Elrond states that they will need to be warned. Actually, Gondor had been in a state of limited conflict with Sauron's forces for about five hundred years since the Lord of the Nazgûl sent out an army from Minas Morgul to overrun Ithilien, Eastern Gondor. Minas Morgul itself had been conquered five hundred years before that, so Gondor had actually been dealing with Sauron's servants for a thousand years prior to this. Gandalf in the film claims that Sauron's reconquest of the North would threaten "even Gondor" but that's not terribly realistic. Angmar was very distant from Gondor, and Sauron's return to Mordor was a far more dangerous matter for them. It's also worth noting that from a writing point of view Gondor hadn't been invented when The Hobbit was written. Professor Tolkien at that point had not narrated the affairs of the Dúnedain after the downfall of Númenor, and didn't conceptualise Gondor, originally called 'Ond', until he came to write The Lord of the Rings. 

12. Legolas' mother and the War with Angmar

We know nothing whatsoever about Legolas' mother, and while Elves had been involved with the war against Angmar earlier in the Third Age, the Elves of Mirkwood weren't among them. There's never any indication in the book that Legolas' mother died or anything to that effect. 

13. Dwarves and Animals
In the film we see Dáin riding some kind of war-boar, and at another point Thorin and co take a leaf straight from Blizzard Entertainment and ride on big rams into battle. In actual fact, Dwarves are never described as employing cavalry. Furthermore, it's stated in "Of Dwarves and Men" if I recall correctly (in the final volume of The History of Middle-earth) that Dwarves weren't fond of animals in general, not even keeping pets such as dogs. We know they rode ponies for transport and used horse-drawn wagons but they never used cavalry or rode animals into battle. In any event cavalry in Middle-earth was true to history: people rode horses into battle. Showing people riding things like pigs and goats is a later Fantasy cliché. The only such unusual mounts in Professor Tolkien's narratives are when Orcs ride Wargs or wolves.

14. The Five Armies
While it's correct that three of the armies were Men, Elves and Dwarves, there weren't two armies of Orcs, and the one Orc army came from the Mountains, not from Dol Guldur. Rather, the other two armies were considered to be Orcs and Wolves, although admittedly some of the Wolves were being ridden by Orcs. Some interpretations argue that the Eagles were the fifth army and that the Orcs and Wolves were one. In any event, there was only one Orc army.

15. The Orcs of the Mountains
It's also worth noting that the Orc army, or Goblin army as it's called in the book, had actually come from the Misty Mountains, Mount Gundabad and the Grey Mountains to avenge the death of the Great Goblin and to try to claim the treasure. They weren't on a mission from Sauron. It's useful to explain that all Orcs at the end of the Third Age were, in one form or another, under Sauron's control, but Orc-realms like those in the Mountains still had their own leadership and waged their own wars independently from Sauron's commands. They were distinct from Sauron's personal "trained armies." At the same time, Sauron had united them in hatred of Elves and Men so they could be expected to serve his interests even when he wasn't telling them what to do. As a final note, judging by the Orc-captains seen and fought by the Fellowship in Moria over seventy years later, it appears that eventually Sauron did send Orcs of his own forces to take control of the Mountain Orcs so that they would more effectively serve his agenda.

16. Ravens
So how do Dáin and his Dwarves manage to show up at the mountain at that time? The reason is that in the book Thorin sent messages via talking Ravens to the Iron Hills. The Dwarves of the Lonely Mountain had enjoyed a long friendship with these talking birds. They lived, appropriately enough, on Ravenhill. In the book their leader is Roäc son of Carc, a very old Raven. He also serves as interpreter between the aforementioned talking Thrush (which spoke its own language) and the Dwarves to inform them of Smaug's death. Roäc counselled Thorin against aggression, but aided Thorin anyway because of his loyalty to the Dwarves.

17. Dáin Ironfoot
Dáin was indeed Lord of the Iron Hills and Thorin's cousin, his second cousin to be precise. They had the same great-grandfather, Dáin I. In the films he appears to be older than Thorin, but actually he was over twenty years younger than him. He didn't ride a pig and he wielded an axe in battle, not a hammer. We know this because the axe is mentioned when he kills Azog at the Battle of Azanulbizar. In the film Gandalf claims that he's less reasonable than Thorin, but in actual fact he comes across in the book as a good deal more wise, honourable and indeed heroic than most Dwarves, including Thorin. For instance, he had the wisdom to declare to Thorin's father Thráin after Azanulbizar that they would not re-enter Moria, due to the continuing presence of the Balrog, and after the Battle of the Five Armies he honoured Thorin's agreement with the Lake-Men. After the Battle of the Five Armies he, as next in line of Durin's Folk, became King Under the Mountain. Under his rule the Dwarves and their allies in the re-established Dale prospered again. He fell defending the body of King Brand, grandson of Bard, at the gates of Erebor when the Easterlings attacked Dale in the War of the Ring.

18. The Dwarves of the Iron Hills
The Iron Hills was what might be considered a "colony" of Dwarves a few days' march east of the Lonely Mountain. It was probably one of the easternmost points of "free" Middle-earth at that time. While it had been mined by the Dwarves for a very long time, it had become well-established as a settlement around the time of Thrór's re-founding of Erebor. In the Third Age, the Dwarves of Durin's Folk suffered many disasters. The first and greatest was losing Khazad-dûm, their ancestral city and kingdom in the Misty Mountains, to the Balrog, a demon which had hidden beneath the peaks since the end of the First Age. Afterwards they relocated to the Grey Mountains and the Lonely Mountain, but the original settlement in the Lonely Mountain was short-lived as the Grey Mountains were rich in gold and the Dwarves joined their kinsfolk there. Dragons, however, attacked the Grey Mountains from the North and the Dwarves were forced to flee another home. The dragons had killed King Dáin I and his second son Frór, so his first son and heir Thrór, Thorin's grandfather, led some of the Dwarves back to the Lonely Mountain, while the third son, Grór, Thrór's youngest brother, led the rest to the mines in the Iron Hills.
Eventually of course the Lonely Mountain was lost to Smaug, but the Iron Hills survived. Many Dwarves from Erebor resettled there, and the rest eventually settled far in the west in the Blue Mountains, which had also housed two Dwarf-kingdoms long ago in the First Age. Those had been destroyed at the end of that age. So Thorin was in the Blue Mountains, but the major Dwarf settlement was at the Iron Hills. Dáin Ironfoot became Lord after his grandfather Grór - Dáin's father Náin was killed by Azog in the Battle of Azanulbizar before the death of Grór - and seems to have spent effort in making sure their land was secure. Gandalf observed that before the Lonely Mountain was recovered, the Iron Hills was the only place of serious military strength in Rhovanion which would have been able to resist the forces of Sauron.
We get a description of the Iron Hills Dwarves too in the book which is rather different to their plate-armoured forms in the films. Note that there was no plate-armour in Middle-earth; this would have conflicted with the early medieval flavour of Professor Tolkien's writing, which evoked an age when mail was the best armour available. The Dwarves wore knee-length mail, metal mesh leggings, iron boots and iron caps, and each was equipped with both a two-handed mattock and a broadsword and shield as weaponry. Each also came bearing a heavy pack of supplies, a noteworthy contrast to the armies in the film which all show up from nowhere with no food or logistical equipment. The fact that Dáin was able to assemble an army of five hundred Dwarven soldiers, well-equipped and supplied, many of whom were veterans of the old war against Azog, suggests that he kept the Iron Hills in readiness for such evil days, further evidence towards the apparently extraordinary competence of Dáin.

19. Bilbo in Battle
In the book Bilbo is knocked out early in the battle and misses most of it. Incidentally, he spends it with Gandalf and Thranduil on one of the flanks, not running errands for Gandalf and the Dwarves.

20. The Final Duels
In the book there's no big multifaceted confrontation on Ravenhill. In fact that's where Bilbo and Gandalf were holding out with the Elves. Thorin actually fell to Bolg and his guards in a reckless charge through the valley between the arms of the mountain, after which  Beorn smashed through the Orc ranks, rescued Thorin, and returned to kill Bolg. While Thorin survived the battle and died later of his wounds, Fíli and Kíli were slain by Bolg and his guards while defending Thorin. The entire sequence with Kíli, Tauriel, Legolas, Thorin, Azog and Bolg in the film bears practically no relation to anything that happens in the book apart from the fact that Thorin is mortally wounded in combat with the Orc leader and his two nephews are slain defending him. In the book, of course, that leader is Bolg - Azog was long dead. 

21. Thranduil
In the book Thranduil and his Elves help Bard and the Lake-Men out of charity, not simply to recover some jewels, although he was interested in claiming the treasure.

22. Radagast
Radagast wasn't at the Battle of Five Armies, nor do we ever hear anything about him being involved in the attack on Dol Guldur. As I said in my article for the first film, there's no evidence that he was even a member of the White Council. He might have been, but it can't be proved. Personally I think he was probably a member "on paper," or at least was supposed to be a member, but never showed up to meetings. In any event, he wasn't around.

23. Were-worms
These are mentioned by Bilbo at the party at the beginning of the book, but that's the only time the phrase ever occurs. There's no evidence that they really existed outside of Hobbit legend, and they certainly weren't used by Orcs as a method of tunnelling, in the Battle or anywhere else.

24. The Return Journey
In the book Bilbo and Gandalf travel back to western Wilderland with Beorn and stay at his house before moving on to Rivendell and finally Hobbiton. Gandalf is still with Bilbo when he gets back to Bag End, although the book doesn't mention what he did when Bilbo discovered the auction and the declaration of his death. The book ends not with the events of The Lord of the Rings beginning but rather with Balin and Gandalf visiting Bilbo only a few years later, so that Bilbo, and by extension the reader, can discover what happened afterwards to the various characters.

25. 'The'
In the book it's just "the Battle of Five Armies." Not "The Five Armies." There's probably some lunatic corporate reason for that definite article. 

I think that's pretty much it. If I think of anything in the meantime I'll add it in, but nothing comes to mind. It appears that interest in these films has died down pretty rapidly in the public sphere since this final instalment, outside of the more enthusiastic film-fan forums. The thing I'm left with in hindsight is, I suppose, a vague sense of bafflement: one can only assume that Warner Bros.' interference was so substantial that the filmmakers had no choice, despite the vast resources at their disposal, to produce this ultimately unfulfilled trilogy. I know some people think they're as good as the earlier films (which I still happen to think are very flawed) and it's all a matter of taste but I just don't see it. There are characters ready for development who are never developed, while new characters are invented and given plentiful screentime. Plot threads are introduced that don't serve the interests of the main plot. Themes are contradicted by the manner of their representation. This is a badly fumbled trilogy, in my view, directed by a man who, at the end of the day, didn't really want to do it. As a consequence they're a messy, forgettable series of set pieces severely lacking in focus and conviction. Who knows what way Hollywood is going to repurpose Professor Tolkien's work next, but it wouldn't be a difficult job to learn from the mistakes of this lot.

"...a pit, a window into nothing."

"...I know you didn't like the film, but that's a bit strong."

The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug

A small snapshot taken from the Estate's legal investigation
into that whole "electronic gaming" issue.

In the year that has passed since the first instalment of Peter Jackson's misguided trilogy adaptation of The Hobbit hit the screen, I had some very mixed thoughts. Part of me naturally assumed that I simply ought to write off the rest of the films and spare myself. Another told me that, with my expectations as low as they were after "An Unexpected Journey" a healthy dose of spoilers would prepare me enough to allow me to enjoy the second film without becoming excessively frustrated with the changes from the source material. It was in this mindset that I went to see "The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug" and as such I feel as if I am capable of critiquing this film according to various categories. In brief, how does the film succeed as a typical brainless Hollywood CGI-fest action film? It would be enjoyable if it was about forty to sixty minutes shorter. As an adaptation of Professor Tolkien's classic adventure novel? Surprisingly adherent in terms of the plot progression, but needlessly inventive at other times. This is a film infected with the same neoliberal disease which is destroying modern culture year after year. As a prequel to Peter Jackson's earlier works? In this category the film probably fails the most, feeling cartoonish and impressively unrealistic for a fantasy film. So let's do a recap. I saw the film in 3D like last time, but also High Frame Rate, unlike last time. It looked like a pre-rendered video game cutscene. The 3D added nothing apart from perhaps one bit where I thought a large bee was getting awfully close.

Forget about your worries and your strife.

We begin in Bree to explore Thorin's initial encounter with Gandalf, although the first thing we get is a devastatingly unsubtle cameo from Peter Jackson munching a carrot much like in his adaptation of "The Fellowship of the Ring." But Hitchcock he ain't, and this opening scene is typical of this adaptation's urge to make everything more intense. Thorin's being watched by shady characters and Gandalf actually wants Thorin to round up all the Dwarves and attack the dragon! Does he want them to all get killed? The Arkenstone's McGuffin level has been drastically enhanced from the presentation in the book, however, and apparently Thorin's best bet is to sneak into the mountain and grab it - so that he can command the "Seven Armies of the Dwarves" (presumably a pseudo-reference to the Seven Houses of the source material) and march them all to their deaths at the hands of Smaug and his flame breath of maximum desolation. For this he will need a burglar.

This is how I felt.

So, appropriately enough, we cut to our actual hobbit, Bilbo peering out to see that they're still being chased by Azog the should-be-dead bionic Orc and his warg-riding chums from the end of the previous film. Gandalf, who in these films seems to have developed a habit of constantly saying sinister-sounding double-edged things, advises them to flee to a nearby house, the owner of which will either help or kill them. So off they trot to Beorn's house, where he chases them as a bear and they have to shut the door of his own house in his face. It's nap time for all good Dwarves and Bilbo has a play with his Ring, as we must establish its corruptive properties. Azog's son Bolg, replaced from an interesting red-bearded practical effects design which appeared in early promotional material with a boring CGI appearance shows up to summon Azog and friends to Dol Guldur. In the morning Beorn's all smiles (more or less) although now he too has been given an angsty backstory - apparently his family was tortured and killed by Azog, and only he escaped. They instantly borrow his ponies and vamoose, Beorn shadowing them as a bear. There was a chance here for Beorn and his bear buddies to have an awesome dust-up with some Orcs like in the book (although Bilbo never sees it happen) but sadly it was not to be.

"Legolas, fetch the struts for my eyebrows."

Now in the books upon reaching Mirkwood Gandalf pisses off because he has to meet up with the White Council to attempt to oust Sauron from Dol Guldur, but because the films haven't caught up to that point yet he inexplicably receives a long-range telepathic communication from Galadriel telling him to go to the "High Fells", a made-up location. He promptly does so and the Dwarves get a move on in the opposite direction. As they wander around and around a small Mirkwood set becoming disoriented things get a bit heated, and as every group of protagonists seems to have to do these days all the Dwarves start getting into a shouting and shoving contest with each other. Bilbo climbs a tree for a breath of air, reasonably closely evoking an actual scene from the book although I can state with the conviction of a proper nerd that the butterflies are the wrong colour (they should be black). Back downstairs the Dwarves have been trussed up by giant spiders much like the book, but Bilbo gets a chance to shine and cuts them free with newly-named Sting. Also because we need to further see the Ring's corruption we get to see him stab four or five shades of shit out of an unruly creepy-crawly before Legolas and that lady from Lost show up to help out. Kind of diminishes Bilbo's heroism a bit - they're mostly saved by the malign influence of the Ring and the timely intervention of a popular Elf character from earlier films - but I didn't mind the way they showed Bilbo's horror at his own actions, because his attacks on the spiders do seem rather brutal. Off the Dwarves trot to the halls of the Wood-Elves, Bilbo in invisible pursuit.

Scene Not-Appearing-In-This-Film

In the dungeons of the Elvenking the Dwarves get put under lock and key, although all within spitting distance of each other rather than far apart. Thorin has an interview with Thranduil himself, who is pure ham and cheese and looks like he would get neck pain from the weight of his eyebrows alone. He slithers around like Voldemort and reveals that he has some kind of hidden dragon wound or something. Who knows. He offers to let Thorin go in return for some jewels he's keen on, but our resident Dwarf king in exile is having none of it due to that stupid thing that happened in the prologue of the previous film where Thranduil showed up riding on a moose and then tilted his head when the dragon was attacking, so Thorin too is thrown in the dungeon, although not clapped in irons. Resident made-up-by-the-writers female character du jour Tauriel has a chat with Thranduil where there's some implied classism or racism between the Silvan Elves of Mirkwood and their adopted Sindar rulers, which was an interesting nod to the source material if not an especially accurate one. Thranduil basically doesn't want Tauriel hooking up with Legolas because she's a commoner for all intents and purposes. Tauriel goes and has a chin wag with Kíli, one of our "handsome Dwarves" on board for the benefit of the ladies and their chat is nice enough, if a little cringeworthy, but I'm missing Bilbo.

"It's in the Spirit of Tolkien. We had a seance and everything."

Reappearing, Bilbo nabs the guards' keys straight away and lets the Dwarves go. They all jump in barrels and escape from the cellars into the river somewhat like the book, although now the barrels are open so that they can have a big fight while escaping. Martin Freeman plays all this reasonably well, and some of his physical comedy when he realises he's accidentally left himself behind is amusing, and at this point I was finding everything reasonably engaging. Unfortunately for me, however, the boring Orc pursuers show up again. After the first film I've become deeply sick of the film cutting away to these Orcs speaking their made-up Black Speech. Azog's been in Dol Guldur arguing with Sauron on a podium above a pit like he's Darth Vader and Sauron's the Emperor in Star Wars V. He sends Bolg to go find the Dwarves now because apparently Sauron needs him to sit around in Dol Guldur twiddling his thumbs in preparation for a big war Sauron's supposedly brewing up. What a dick. Anyway after spying on Thranduil's Halls for a bit Bolg's now offing the Elves guarding the outer river-gate, and Kíli gets shot with a poison arrow so we can have a big angst-up over him even though we know he's going to die in the Battle of Five Armies anyway, assuming you've read the book, and you should have. The Dwarves plunge down the river, occasionally in first-person, like the log flume ride, but manage to procure enough weapons from the Orcs to be able to attack their pursuers on the bank while they're in barrels on the water, rarely tipping over and never sinking. This is helped by a bunch of CGI-Elves running around like monkeys jumping off branches and shooting arrows everywhere and a funny bit where Bombur goes kill crazy in his barrel. Eventually, however, the Dwarves get away, despite more and more and more Orcs constantly showing up.

The Lovechild of Thorin and Legolas.

Downriver the Dwarves hitch a ride with Bard the Bowman, who has been adapted as Bard the Bargeman and Bard the Smuggler, a rough-talking, scruffy bad boy dude to add to Thorin, Fíli, Kíli and Legolas as more oestrogen bait to keep the girls watching. I guess all the CGI action is for the blokes, but mostly if by 'bloke' you mean 'easily-pleased culture slave.' Bard floats them down to Lake-town and sneaks them in after much hilarity involving fish and a new character called Alfrid who is basically Wormtongue-lite and a bit where Dwalin climbs out of the toilet. Bard has been rewritten as less of a grump and more of a dangerous "people's hero" who is persona non grata in Lake-town, under close watch from the Master of the city who is played with typical bluster by Steven Fry, in his element wearing pseudo-Renaissance costume and a silly moustache. Thorin's not satisfied with Bard's provision of naff improvised weapons and resolves to break into the local armoury for some proper gear. This plan goes balls-up, however, due to the wounded Kíli, and they get caught and taken to the front of Steven Fry's house, where Thorin gives a big speech about gold. Bard's sussed out that Thorin's the heir of Durin and is probably going to go to Erebor and piss Smaug off so much that he kills them all, so he shows up to confront the Dwarves. The Master sides with Thorin however, seeing a good opportunity to curry popular favour with himself and against Bard, which I thought was a more or less decent compromise of the situation in the book with the film's expansion of Bard's story. We have, however, unfortunately lost focus on Bilbo again, Bard somehow assuming the role of our temporary protagonist as Thorin becomes less sympathetic. In a bit of weird inaccurate fan-wank, we hear about how Bard's ancestor Girion, the Lord of Dale, tried to kill Smaug during his original attack and failed. In this version the Black Arrow isn't Bard's personal weapon but apparently special ammunition for some kind of device called a "Dwarven wind-lance", the last of which is now on top of the Master's house. These are apparently like heat-seeking missiles for dragons, except they do jack.

Peter Jackson's summer home.

The Dwarves all get in a boat to head for the Mountain, Bilbo amusingly appearing in a pointy hat and ear warmers. Kíli's all pale and bordering on the Fellowship-film Frodo infection stage of gasping and moaning, so Thorin leaves him behind to get healed. Fíli sticks with his brother, and we get a nice mention of how Fíli is Thorin's heir, which I liked. Óin stays behind too to look after the situation because he's been turned into the Dwarves' resident healer for some reason and James Nesbitt aka Bofur gets left behind because he's Irish and therefore always drunk. Bilbo and the other Dwarves piss off. One minute they're on the lake, then they're on the slopes, now they're almost at the top of the mountain. We keep getting told that Durin's Day is approaching, which is weird because in the book the Dwarves had forgotten how to calculate it so I don't know how they know it now. Gandalf told the Dwarves to wait for him above the ruins of Dale but Thorin's too cool to wait for Gandalf, whose subplot I forgot to relate. He climbs up some implausible staircase on a New Zealand cliff-face and meets Sylvester McCoy so they can look at some tombs which supposedly belonged to the Nazgûl, one of the more irritating changes from the book. I'll get to that in the changes section. Then they ride off to Dol Guldur, where Gandalf sends Radagast off to get Galadriel and walks into the fortress casting some made-up Harry Potter-esque spell which makes a big light bubble appear which is meant to reveal secret things. It's typical of these films' weird approach to magic, which isn't even consistent with the earlier films. So anyway.

Try not to activate the boulder trap.

Up on t'mountain the light drops and Durin's Day apparently passes. Thorin has a big tanty and throws the key away, the Dwarves immediately abandoning the mission. Only Bilbo remains steadfast, discovering that the last light of Durin's Day is not sunlight but moonlight, discovering the keyhole, which Thorin promptly opens, allowing the Dwarves access to Erebor. Thorin decides to put Bilbo to work and sets him off to fetch the Arkenstone. Bilbo goes down to a hall full of money like an ocean in Scrooge McDuck's wet dream and accidentally wakes up Smaug, voiced by a typecast Benedict Cumberbatch. Bend My Dick Cucumber Patch knows someone's there, but Bilbo pops the Ring on to save his own skin for a bit, except for a point where he freaks out and then takes it off again for no well-explained reason. Smaug doesn't seem to especially care though, because he keeps chatting to him and not roasting him alive, most of his dialogue being a mish-mash of text from the book and made-up guff about Thorin and the Arkenstone and what not. The aspect featuring Smaug using his draconian powers of persuasion to try to turn Bilbo against his friends is only give limited attention, most of it being Smaug getting annoyed about Thorin's impertinence. How does he even know who Thorin is, let alone that he's "Oakenshield"? Does he get a newspaper delivered or something? I could understand him knowing Thrór, who was King when he attacked, but Thrór's grandson?

The Duck of Erebor.

Bilbo ends up narrowly avoiding a singed behind after Smaug loses patience, but Thorin decides to start acting like a prize tool, drawing sword 'pon our valiant hobbit until Smaug shows up in fury. What ensues is an endless runaround as the Dwarves dash hither and thither with their hands in the air trying to escape from the mountain. They find a blocked guard room full of char-grilled hundred year old Dwarven stiffs and Thorin concocts a plan. They flee to the forges where Thorin taunts Smaug so much that his dragon-fire instantly restarts all the foundries in the mountain somehow, and Bombur uses his big fat arse to puff some belows. At this point things really start getting dragged out. There's lots of running around, Bilbo implausibly surviving falling off collapsing masonry, Dwarves assembling makeshift explosives in about five minutes, and absurdity of absurdities, Thorin going into full-on Indiana Jones mode, riding a wheelbarrow along a river of molten gold, swinging on a chain and landing on the incredulous upturned reptilian snout of Smaug himself. I've expressed it briefly here, but it goes forever, especially since we keep cutting away to James Nesbitt floundering about in Lake-town, Bard getting captured and Bolg and his Orcish brethren showing up to harass Bard's kids and the stay-behind Dwarves until Legolas and "Tauriel" arrive to kill them all, apart from Bolg who gets away with Legolas in hot pursuit. Tauriel briefly transforms into film-Arwen to heal Kíli who mumbles some embarrassing things about love and other stuff which bounces off my icy, remorseless heart to put paid to the Lake-town business. Oh, also Steven Fry hits Bard in the face with a big piece of wood, which as we all know is one of Steven Fry's favourite pasttimes.

Bilbo tries to remember to be a good craftsman.

Back in the mountain, the Dwarves pull apart a big mould that is conveniently sitting around in some hallway, revealing a large statue of gold which temporarily enraptures Smaug before melting and covering him in molten metal. Apparently Thorin thought that a fire-breathing dragon would in any way be harmed by having hot metal poured on him. Smaug pops up right as rain and for reasons unknown instead of deep-frying Thorin, Bilbo and friends on the spot elects instead to piss off to Lake-town to exact some revenge by proxy, flapping off into the night and talking to himself. He's gone from a smooth-talking, crafty drake to an idiot who lets himself get covered in liquid gold and doesn't kill the foes right in front of him. Maybe he's read the book and realises Thorin can't snuff it until the next film.

"Production on Series 2 of Vicious was delayed for this?!?"

I forgot about Dol Guldur again! In Dol Guldur, Gandalf gets twatted about the face by Azog's big mace, much like Thorin before him, prior to having a confrontation with Sauron, who is sort of half the big eyeball from the films of The Lord of the Rings and half his armoured form from the prologue to "The Fellowship of the Ring" film. He pins Gandalf to the wall with his dastardly magic and puts him in a cage, but only after a laughably stupid shot where the camera inexplicably zooms over and over again through his head for no apparent reason.

Tears of joy from the toy people.

So anyway Smaug's flapping off to Lake-town to go have a Bard-becue. Bilbo staggers out behind him, covering some pretty considerable ground. As the dragon vanishes into the night, he despairs: "What have we done?" Boom, end titles. That's "The Desolation of Smaug." Is it any good? As I said at the start, if it was shorter. The final sequence in the mountain is way too long and full of absurd theatrics involving Thorin which fail to amuse from my point of view. It starts off well, but loses focus halfway through, not being willing to rely on Bilbo's character arc to carry the film, which in my opinion is a major failing. What's most frustrating, however, is the constant presence of Orcs, wave upon wave, who show up again and again to attack our heroes in various compromised situations in ways that have no bearing on the source material or really much relevance to anything. Why are they so desperate to stop Thorin? Who knows, really. It's boring and repetitive. The action sequence where the Dwarves try rather foolishly to kill Smaug is also tedious. It's all just CGI-fakery and there's no sense of tension or tangible danger. The strongest parts of the film are probably elements of Mirkwood, although the journey through is rushed, and certain bits of Lake-town, along with Bilbo's confrontation with Smaug to a certain extent. Regardless of Martin Freeman's performance - he's much better, naturally, at the comic moments than the serious ones - Bilbo's scenes are consistently the best and most interesting simply because he's the main character, although the film repeatedly forgets this and gets distracted. The filmmakers described a need to give the Dwarves greater characterisation compared to the book, but so much time is devoted to diversions, usually involving Orc-hunts that never happened in The Hobbit, the Appendices to The Lord of the Rings or anywhere else, along with Gandalf's pointless travels, Tauriel and whatever else, that the Dwarves still seem largely to be defined by their collection of silly haircuts. Thorin is boring, Gandalf is wasted, Azog is weirdly fetishized and looks like he's carved from white plastic, Bolg looks crap and Bard spends most of his time staring out windows looking serious when he's not ducking down alleyways looking shifty. Thranduil is ridiculously over-the-top. Legolas is present purely for pointless action. Tauriel is an enigma. If they wanted to bump the story's female presence above zero, why then did they give their one invented female presence a condescending, cliché love story with a Dwarf?

Elvish Magnum.

Even as an ongoing part of a prequel trilogy to Peter Jackson's adaptations to The Lord of the Rings it feels off, relying too much on unconvincing CGI and diverging further from the source material. It feels like if you threw the later, more stylised Harry Potter films really hard at the Indiana Jones tetralogy (yes, it's a tetralogy whether you like it or not) and stretched the end result out over nearly three hours. The action is over the top, many of the effects look dirt cheap apart from Smaug himself who presumably gobbled up most of the budget, and the storyline is full of video-game magic and pointless mystery and suspense. Not only does it feel far removed from Professor Tolkien's own work, it feels pretty far removed from the films of The Lord of the Rings. It's paced better and keeps some of its focus to more or less a superior degree than the first film, but it's still too long and becomes deeply schizophrenic sometime around the middle. Drop almost everything with the Orcs, Gandalf and the Elves, a bit of Bard, and the final silly action sequence in the mountain and you'd have a decent enough film. As it is it feels like Peter Jackson and co were compelled to make it go for so long just to make it seem consistent with the films of The Lord of the Rings. There's an enjoyable adventure piece lurking deep in here somewhere, but just like Benedragon Smaugberbatch you're going to need to shed a whole lot of greedily-hoarded trimming to find it.

My face when people claim that content from The Silmarillion is present.

Story Notes 2 - Some more major changes from the Real Story and the Original Text

1. The Arkenstone Again - This didn't have any kind of magical dwarf-ruling power. It was just a pretty jewel that inspired a great deal of greed.

2. A Chance Meeting - Gandalf didn't go looking for Thorin. Thorin was actually looking for him, and had certainly given up on hearing news of his father by that time. Gandalf didn't suggest Thorin try to attack the mountain, because it would have been a disaster, and as he states in the books, it would have been impossible to gather the Seven Houses of the Dwarves together again anyway. They'd had enough avenging Thrór back in the War of the Dwarves and Orcs, which had broken their strength. Throwing soldiers at a dragon wouldn't achieve anything.

3. Queer Lodgings - Beorn and his family were never prisoners of Azog, who was of course long dead by the time of The Hobbit. He actually had a lot of bear friends who may or may not have also been skin-changers with whom he hung out and apparently did bear dances around bonfires. In the end he came to be the Lord of a community of tough Men named after him - the Beornings - so there must have been other folk about. He certainly never chases the Dwarves into his own house, but is rather there in Man-shape when they arrive. The Dwarves' appearance is staggered by Gandalf so that Beorn doesn't become too annoyed. It's a funny scene that was abandoned in the adaptation.

4. Gandalf - In The Hobbit, Gandalf originally left just because Professor Tolkien thought he was too convenient and competent an ally for Bilbo and the Dwarves to have around all the time. He later embellished this such that Gandalf actually disappeared to assist the other members of the White Council in assailing Sauron at Dol Guldur. There is no such place in Middle-earth as the "High Fells" and the Nazgûl were certainly never entombed there because they were un-dead Ringwraiths who had never died, as I stated in my earlier review. The film of "The Fellowship of the Ring" even shows the Nine receiving their Rings of Power prior to Sauron's defeat at the end of the Second Age, which is when they passed into the shadows with him in the book, so how could they have ended up in tombs? It's a pointless contradiction of Professor Tolkien's story which has no reason to exist. Gandalf didn't investigate with Radagast, who didn't do much at all really, and he was never captured in Dol Guldur. By the time of The Hobbit, of course, he had already been there twice. On the second occasion he had received the key and map from Thorin's father Thráin and discerned that the Master of Dol Guldur was none other than Sauron himself. He almost certainly never had a direct confrontation with the Dark Lord while he was there. Sauron also had no intention of starting a war in the North. He was actually planning on abandoning Dol Guldur, at least in person, and returning to Mordor with the intention of destroying his enemies in Gondor.

5. Radagast - Once again, he had nothing to do with these events. He is mentioned exactly once in The Hobbit, by Gandalf to Beorn, who knew him. His use of the word "human" is again inconsistent with Professor Tolkien's explicit terminology ("Men"), a modern idiom also used incorrectly by Saruman in the previous film.

6. Azog - As established, Azog had been dead for nearly one hundred and fifty years by the time of The Hobbit. The idea that he was some kind of special commander for Sauron's armies has no precedent in the books - Sauron's armies were never commanded by wretched slaves like Orcs but high-ranking generals like the Lord of the Nazgûl. In fact in the books the Dwarves rather decisively destroy Azog's realm in the Misty Mountains, in complete contrast to his alleged prowess as a leader in this film. The idea of an Orc being on speaking terms with Sauron himself is equally unlikely in the books. Sauron was a fallen angel created directly by God Himself before time began. Orcs were a bit beneath him.

7. Bolg - The films fail to mention that Bolg is Azog's son. Like Azog, he had nothing directly to do with Sauron or Dol Guldur. He seems to have ruled the Orcs of the Mountains rather from Mount Gundabad, and set out to attack the Dwarves after Smaug's death to try to steal the treasure and avenge the death not of his father but of the Great Goblin, who was slain by Gandalf. He certainly never hunted the Dwarves on the forest river or Lake-town or anywhere else. He would not have even known any details about their journey beyond what little was discovered by the Great Goblin's people.

8. Flies and Spiders - Bilbo saved the Dwarves from the spiders all by himself without Elvish intervention. Thorin is captured by the Elves first, independently of the others, who are only rounded up later. Bilbo actually spends several weeks living invisibly in Thranduil's Halls trying to figure out how to save his companions. They are sealed in barrels upon their escape, and Bilbo actually spends most of the journey not knowing whether he has accidentally drowned his friends. Incidentally, there is an earlier incident in the forest where Bombur falls into an enchanted lake and enters a long, deep sleep during which he must be carried by the others which is entirely omitted in the film.

9. Butterflies - The butterflies are black in the book, not blue. Did I mention this?

10. Thranduil - He is named simply "The Elvenking" in The Hobbit and his son, Legolas, had not been invented when Professor Tolkien wrote that earlier book, although presumably he would have been present. His mistrust of Dwarves dated back to when he lived in Doriath in the First Age, for he was one of the Sindar, Grey-Elves, the folk of King Thingol. The Dwarves of Nogrod slew Thingol for possession of one of the Silmarils. Incidentally, the Dwarves of Nogrod were of an entirely different House to Thorin's people, the Longbeards, and in any event said conflict had transpired over six thousand years earlier. In the books Thranduil has no history with the dragons of the North and certainly had no inexplicable disguised facial scarring, nor is he recorded as having such massive eyebrows or such a camp demeanour. He is, however, still somewhat proud and definitely a bit greedy.

11. Tauriel - This character is purely an invention of the filmmakers and has no precedent in the book. Incidentally, the idea of an Elf-Dwarf romance doesn't really make sense. Elves and Men could marry and reproduce because their differences were spiritual. Physically, they were both human. Dwarves were made by the Vala Aulë before the First Age began in imitation of the idea of Elves and Men and were only granted free will as a favour from Eru, God. They were not really equivalent in the same way and probably couldn't reproduce together, effectively being two different "species." Gimli, of course, admires Galadriel for her beauty in The Lord of the Rings, but that's about the extent of it. In regards to Tauriel being a "lowly Silvan Elf" this reflects the composition of Elven society in both Mirkwood and Lothlórien, where spiritually "higher" Elves from the West ruled over "dark Elves" of the East. The Sindar were Grey Elves of Beleriand in the far West of Middle-earth in the First Age, who never went all the way to the Blessed Realm of the Valar over the Sea but did live in the light of Melian the Maia and the Silmaril during that Age. Thranduil of Mirkwood and Celeborn of Lórien were both of this sort (probably, in Celeborn's case). Silvan Elves (of which Tauriel was meant to be one) were Elves who only travelled West much later and thus never achieved the same level of spiritual enlightenment experienced by the Noldor or even the Sindar, which may explain how they tended to adopt these wiser and more powerful Elves as their leaders. By the Third Age, however, Elves tended not to discriminate based on such matters. That was more typical among some of the haughtier Noldor in the First Age.

12. Bard and the Black Arrow - In the books Bard isn't some kind of local hero but actually a rather unpopular, grumpy local. He is, however, descended from Girion, the old Lord of Dale, whose family escaped Smaug's fire. The Black Arrow was a personal possession of his which he always retrieved after using it for archery, not some contrived Dwarven dragon-killing weapon. His son is correctly named Bain in this film, although it may be mispronounced. In the books, Bain goes on to eventually succeed his father as King of refounded Dale after the death of Smaug. His son, Brand, fought alongside Dáin Ironfoot in the War of the Ring. Bard's never mentioned as having daughters or a dead wife in the book, incidentally. His son might not even have been born by the time of The Hobbit.

13. Lake-town - The character of Alfrid is made up but this is portrayed somewhat accurately. The Master was indeed a greedy, manipulative politician who sponsored Thorin's expedition largely to keep the favour of the citizens rather than any belief that it would succeed. Despite their ignominious arrival by barrel, Thorin and Company were received in honour and hosted in somewhat begrudging comfort by the Master, during which time Bilbo had a cold. The Men of the Lake were descended from the Men of Dale, whose language was represented by Old Norse by Professor Tolkien, and had a common ancestry with the Men of Rohan, so were probably imagined as having a more early-medieval Scandinavian flavour in design and appearance than the sort of Renaissance Muscovite imagery used in the film.

14. On the Doorstep - All thirteen Dwarves travelled to the Mountain. None were left behind and Kíli was certainly not wounded with a "Morgul arrow." The use of such weapons was restricted exclusively to the Nazgûl regardless, not common Orc archers. What effect it would have had on a Dwarf is questionable also, given that they were not affected by dark power in the same way that Men (and Hobbits) were. Such a wound would certainly have been beyond the skill of a rustic Wood-Elf like Tauriel to heal - observe that even in the films it took all the skill of Elrond himself to heal Frodo's wound! The Dwarves were not actually sure of when Durin's Day would occur, and certainly never thought they had missed their chance and gave up. Their journey up the mountain was also significantly more arduous, involving an outer base camp and a pulley system. They camped by the secret door for some time.

15. Not at Home - Bilbo's conversation with Smaug bears some similarity to the books, but the entire sequence featuring the Dwarves leading Smaug on a chase and trying to kill him with molten gold is purely an invention of the film. Incidentally, it was Bilbo who discovered Smaug's weakness: not a scale knocked away by Girion but rather a place where Smaug's underbelly had not become encrusted with jewels. This information was overheard by a thrush, who communicated this information to Bard who knew the tongue of such birds. Sadly such talking animal goodness is omitted in the films. Bilbo kept the Ring on for the entire conversation with Smaug, who did not know who he was or with whom he had come, and attacked Lake-town simply because, like the film, Bilbo let slip the name "barrel rider" in his riddling. As such Smaug thought he was being antagonised and robbed by Dwarves and Lake-men. He failed to discover the Dwarves, however, because they hid themselves inside the secret door after he himself left the mountain. As stated in the review proper, he didn't know what Bilbo was up to and probably didn't know who Thorin was, just that some of his treasure had been stolen.

16. Sources - Not a reference to the film but commentators upon it - there is no material from The Silmarillion, Unfinished Tales or the drafts, notes and essays published in The History of Middle-earth in these films. The filmmakers do not have the rights to these. They remain with Professor Tolkien's estate, managed by his son Christopher. Everything not derived from The Hobbit itself is either made up or sourced in some fashion from the Appendices to The Lord of the Rings. The reference to "Blue Wizards" in the previous film was skirting dangerous copyright grounds. I only state this in frustration that the padding in these films is somehow Professor Tolkien's fault or, in complete contrast, that it's still faithful to other material - it's not from his other works at all, and what is derived from elsewhere (usually the Appendices, to a very limited extent) has almost entirely been distorted beyond recognition, particular in terms of character positioning and narrative time-frame.

Bilbo witnesses 48 FPS for the first time.

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

An Unexpected Journey twenty minutes in.

Anyone who knows me knows that I like The Hobbit. It's arguably my favourite novel, and I've been known to assert, facetiously or otherwise, that it is the pinnacle of human literature. The works of J.R.R. Tolkien are one of my lasting passions, one of the few things about which I'm not cynical and derogatory, and I have a great deal of affection for them. Does that mean that I like the film adaptations? No! Of course not; what are they beyond being pale imitations of a source material which cannot be conveyed with any kind of accuracy through anything other than literature? The film adaptations of The Lord of the Rings are visually detailed but thematically shallow renditions of a vastly complex text dumbed down and generalised for an audience which only wants more and more of the same thing. They must be some of the most stupendously overrated films in existence. It was for these reasons that upon learning that Peter Jackson was making a film of The Hobbit I was suitably concerned.

One thing needs to be established first: The Hobbit should have been made before The Lord of the Rings. The plot of The Lord of the Rings ultimately owes too much to The Hobbit for its dramatic integrity to be fully realised alone; instead we get a version of the original turned into a prequel based on the film version of the text which is actually the sequel. This, the need to re-dress The Hobbit as a prequel to the films of The Lord of the Rings, is one of the main issues with the film, as well as its plot being tortured over three films instead of at the most two.

Ian Holm upon learning what happens to his face.

As such the film begins with a long-winded voice over. We appropriately start with Bilbo, but it's the older Bilbo from the time of The Lord of the Rings played by Ian Holm with some extremely distracting CG work on his face to presumably make him look less old. Seriously? We know Ian Holm's old; he can't look that much older than he did back in the late 90s or early 2000s when the earlier films were made, and even if he does, who cares? This is, however, representative of the overuse of a good deal of unnecessary CGI in the film. I suppose they really shot themselves in the foot by casting an old actor to play Bilbo in the earlier films anyway. Remember how Gandalf in The Fellowship of the Ring muses that Bilbo hasn't aged a day even though he visibly has between the opening monologue and the beginning of the action? Why did they do that? He's meant to have not aged between 50 and 111 anyway, so why bother casting an older actor to play the role rather than just using makeup later when necessary? Again a consequence of not doing The Hobbit first.

An Unexpected Journey forty minutes in.

So old Bilbo delivers this long-winded monologue about the Lonely Mountain and the Dwarves and how it was taken by the dragon, Smaug. I can't stand big abstract monologues for the sake of doing a story dump. It annoys me in the film adaptation of The Fellowship of the Ring and it annoys me here; it's just lazy storytelling designed to sucker people in by giving them some action early rather than delaying our gratification. Dale and Erebor look nice enough even if Erebor's interior is a bit of an excessive CGI extravaganza which stretches disbelief to the limit. I was impressed also by their maintenance of the Thrór-Thráin-Thorin family tree. We're only teased, somewhat effectively I suppose, with hints of the dragon. I'll give a comprehensive account of major changes from the real storyline of the source material at the end but they begin here.

"You are aware that I am not really a wizard?"

Once Bilbo's rather heavy-handedly established the goal of the forthcoming mission we return to Bag End for a conversation between Bilbo and Frodo. While Ian Holm and Elijah Wood seem to have assumed these old identities from a decade ago without difficulty it doesn't really excuse the fact that the whole scene is, really, quite pointless and mostly seems to exist to pad the film out. In my opinion the entire sequence should have been cut and we should have started with our true beginning, young Bilbo smoking outside Bag End and meeting Gandalf. This scene is more or less adapted in a straightforward fashion in terms of dialogue and action from the novel. What a coincidence that it's an example of one of the strongest scenes in the film! Professor Tolkien's own dialogue always sounds better. We follow this with the unexpected party and the introduction of the Dwarves.

Ever since they were first revealed I haven't been able to help but feel that the Dwarves are a little overdesigned and the film didn't change my opinion. I understand perfectly that they wanted to make them distinguishable, but wouldn't the differently-coloured hoods have helped with that? We get the "That's What Bilbo Baggins Hates" song, which is nice, although the general rowdiness and crudity of the Dwarves is a bit of a tired cliché, incidentally one which is at odds with Professor Tolkien's depiction of them as a bunch of stuffy middle-aged men, which I think could have been more interesting. It certainly would have been a more effective contrast to the flashback scenes of battle and war depicting the Dwarves in their wrath. That being said the Dwarves are generally likeable and sympathetic; an especially good job is done with Balin, as well as Fili and Kili despite the fact that they've obviously been done up to keep the girls interested.

An Unexpected Journey sixty minutes in.

One thing I might quibble about is the pronunciation of some of the Dwarves' names. These names are Old Norse in origin and derive from the Dvergatal or Dwarves' List in the Old Norse poem Völuspá. Óin and Glóin's names therefore according to the transcription of Old Norse Icelandic should be pronounced something like "Owin" and "Glowin", but in the film they're pronounced to rhyme with "coin" as if the accented o and the i were a single diphthong in modern English pronunciation. Now the BBC pronounced these names correctly in their radio adaptations of Professor Tolkien's work. It's surprising that, for all their efforts to pronounce Elvish somewhat correctly and so forth such a basic mistake was made in this film. Similarly the names of Thorin's father, Thráin, and his cousin, Dáin, should be pronounced something like "Thraa-in" and "Daa-in", but in this they're pronounced again as diphthongs to rhyme with "stain". It's a disappointing oversimplification, albeit one which ought only to be noticeable to Old Norse scholars.

"This big!"

This leads us to Thorin. In my opinion the characterisation of Thorin and his story arc is one of the film's more serious weaknesses. Thorin is transformed from this rather pompous, self-important and greedy but ultimately good character from the novel into a sort of proto-Aragorn, grim, dark and brooding, who steals focus and attention from Bilbo. The Dwarves seem to dread his arrival; instead of a humorous entrance with Bombur falling on top of him in the front hall he turns up after all the other Dwarves and in comparison to pretty much all of them is strikingly noble. Some of the members of the company, particularly Balin, Dwalin, Óin and Glóin really feel like Dwarves; stocky and solid types, bearded and weathered, and to me they were the ones who most strongly captured the feeling of Professor Tolkien's own characterisation, albeit still rather exaggerated.

"Only how many lines each?"

Thorin by contrast doesn't really feel like a Dwarf at all, much like his nephews Fili and Kili. I almost feel like this image of a "handsome Dwarf" is a contradiction in terms because despite the strength of characterisation they just feel like short Men. There is something of that indefinable "Dwarvishness" which is captured in, say, Balin, which isn't in Thorin, who looks like something out of a magazine and acts like every other boring anti-hero for the last thirty years. Instead of being a character whose outward grouchiness and greed conceals the soft harp-playing smoke-ring-blowing core he's an angsty warrior-king who's constantly chewing out anyone who second-guesses him: Bilbo, Fili and Kili, even Gandalf. It gets a bit boring after a while and just makes Thorin seem like a cookie-cutter anti-hero bad boy from the worn out Hollywood mould. He is of course given something more in his backstory. Now he, not Dáin, fought Azog at the gates of Moria; apparently Azog swore to "wipe out Durin's line", although it's never explained why. It's also never explained who Durin is, actually. Over the course of the first third of the film we receive two major Dwarf flashbacks and it really does seem a bit like too much. This causes us to become more and more distracted from Bilbo.

"Mr Bilbo, where are you off to?"
"I think my career might finally be taking off!"

Speaking of which, let's get back to Bilbo. Martin Freeman does a good job as our titular Hobbit, appearing suitably bewildered and bewuthered as it were. I do feel somewhat that his typical bemused sense of resignation at the absurdity of existence does somewhat grate with the characterisation of Bilbo, however, as a comfortable stay-at-home type having his eyes opened to the outside world. He often feels too world-weary already. He's good enough at seeming painfully middle-class and awkward when applicable as the adventure continues, although some of the times where he's openly hostile to the Dwarves invading his house or openly refuses the "call to adventure" in very strong terms don't always gel especially plausibly with the depiction of him being forced to abandon his reluctant, avoidant, passive-aggressive tendencies and embrace his "Tookish side". This is the problem which occurs when the film starts to deviate too drastically from Professor Tolkien's original narrative for the sake of padding or elaboration; eventually the original story they're following and the embellishments simply don't cooperate.

Speaking of embellishments, once we're finally out of the Shire these come to the fore and the sense of disconnectedness really begins. The first incident is in Balin's (somewhat altered from the source) account of the War of the Dwarves and Orcs and the Battle of Azanulbizar outside the gates of Moria, which I've already mentioned. By this point we're getting relentless amounts of Thorin, and Bilbo's starting to fall by the wayside. Following this we have another deviation to Radagast the Brown.

"The fourth series was definitely going to be the best."

A lot of apologists for this film have made the argument that the padding can't be criticised because it derives from Professor Tolkien's own work, particularly the Appendices to The Lord of the Rings. While this is to an extent true of the Battle of Azanulbizar flashback it's totally untrue of the Radagast the Brown diversion, which is completely spun out of whole cloth. The entire sequence of events with Radagast is another element which should have been completely omitted. Radagast is a typical Sylvester McCoy performance which is employed for some cheap laughs and a bit of side-plot development while giving an unsubtle and inaccurate acknowledgement to fans of the books. He bumbles around, cures a hedgehog, gets bothered by some spiders and goes to Dol Guldur. Later, after the incident with the trolls, he turns up to lead some hunting Orcs on a wild goose chase in a rather bizarre sequence where he seems to drive his rabbit-drawn sled around and around in circles while the Dwarves run on foot to Rivendell. Despite the fact that at some points he seems to be no more than a hundred feet away from the Dwarves the Orcs never seem to notice that their real quarry is right there. This is another sequence which could have been omitted, but it's time to get back to the Trolls.

After many hours of travelling they finally
got to Chapter 2.

The episode with the Trolls was a strong moment in the film; I felt that the Trolls were, with some reservations about the high-pitched squeaky one, well-portrayed and performed. While it was a shame that they changed the way the Trolls were defeated that's again a consequence of the three-film choice. One of the major tipping points of the novel is the stage at which Gandalf leaves Thorin and Company; he can no longer be the one who turns up and saves everybody, and as such Bilbo has to step up to becoming effectively the leader. By torturing the tale out over three films, however, we don't even get that far, so we have to accelerate Bilbo's development a little bit. The part where he distracts the Trolls was a little odd but at least it fit with the general idea of keeping them occupied until the sun came up. One thing I might note is the inherent ridiculousness of this entire episode. The Hobbit is a very episodic novel, and events don't begin to interrelate until late in the plot. The Troll affair is basically a silly incident where three giant cockneys truss up the Dwarves and get tricked into having an argument. While they did a good enough job in the film to use the Troll incident to imply the waxing of Sauron's strength it didn't exactly fit very well with the overall tone. Seeing Richard Armitage, serious as can be, tied up in a sack at the mercy of three big computer generated lads from the East End came across as even more ridiculous than it already is. This film puts itself in a difficult position by trying too hard to reconcile the more childlike tone and story structure of its source with the gravitas of its literary sequel and its own pretensions of legitimacy. It was one of several moments in the film that had me feeling vaguely unsettled. There's too much inconsistency.

Peter Jackson's house.

After the aforementioned chase with Radagast and his bizarre rabbit sled we get to Rivendell. Despite my complaints about the tone up until this point I was finding the film more or less enjoyable, Radagast bits aside. It was during this segment however that I found the film frustrating. Much of the action is taken up with a meeting of the White Council, or Council of the Wise, composed of Saruman, Gandalf, Galadriel and Elrond. Galadriel gets a bizarre moment where she seems to rotate on a Lazy Susan concealed beneath her dress. Saruman waffles on about the Dwarves and Gandalf and Galadriel have one of their telepathic conversations. I found this whole scene to be totally long-winded and unnecessary, just a fan-pleasing effort to bring back Galadriel and Saruman and serving little real purpose. The Council appears to oppose the Quest for no good reason and the whole thing is such a general waste of time that Bilbo and the Dwarves head off without even bothering to wait for Gandalf to catch up (I realise this was turned into a plot point, I'm being facetious). We're given some poorly-explained Necromancer side-plot that they could have made infinitely simpler for themselves and drastically improved the pacing and flow of the story if they'd simply followed what Professor Tolkien actually wrote. Radagast, incidentally, disappears with no explanation and isn't seen again.

Who are you again?

What frustrated me about this whole sequence, besides weird things like the Elves being vegetarians and stuff, was that we got to see so little of Bilbo. Besides Elrond reading Thorin's map we don't get to see Bilbo's wonder at the House of the Elves or his sense of discovering an amazing new place and so on. It's all glossed over for boring White Council exposition. I might as well also mention at this point that we're additionally getting cutaways involving these Orcs hunting Thorin. Why are they hunting Thorin? Who knows really. Azog wants to kill Thorin for cutting off his hand I guess. It's just more time wasting that could have been deleted, and more of a distraction from Bilbo. Who's story is this? What's going on?

One of the many harmless escapades
encountered by our heroes.

Anyway we finally get to the Misty Mountains. Can you believe this is only the fourth chapter of the novel? I was surprised at the inclusion of the stone giants, although I found the scene to be faintly ridiculous. The giants have a huge fight in which the Dwarves miraculously survive landslides and geological calamities which seem to recur frequently for the remainder of the film. Bilbo gets caught hanging off a cliff and Thorin gets annoyed at him, after which he tries to sneak off and leave. This seems to echo the "Go home, Sam" debacle which was shoehorned into the film version of The Return of the King (it has no precendent in the novel) and which further muddies Bilbo's characterisation. First Thorin's insulting him in Bag End (with a line Glóin delivers in the novel, incidentally, and gets reprimanded for by Gandalf; no such friendly support here), then he's helping the Dwarves with the Trolls, now Thorin hates him again. It's all over the place and inserted simply to exaggerate the sense of drama. Then it's down to Goblin Town.

"Hello Possums!"

This is the point where I started to feel like the film was really getting bogged down. Bilbo gets separated from the gang so that we can hasten to the Riddles in the Dark sequence, but the rest is just a CGI assault on the eyes where not entirely convincing Goblins ruled over by a motion capture Barry Humphries generally arse about. Gandalf shows up and there's a big chase, not just down a tunnel but with scaffolding and bridges and bizarre Mr Magoo esque moments with swinging beams and more falling down steep slopes. Is this a film or the log flume ride? It'd mostly be fine if it wasn't for the fact that we've already had a crazy chase sequence earlier with the unnecessary Radagast sled silliness, and even still it's a bit over the top. The film is so breathlessly desperate to be spectacular it starts to become tiring, like a drunk guy who gets a big laugh on one joke and so won't stop repeating it even when no one finds it funny anymore. The Great Goblin jumps up onto a bridge at the end like the second stage of a boss fight from a video game and is swiftly dispatched by Gandalf. Lots of this film feels like a game, really - intense chases and bursts of violence punctuated by cutscenes. The pacing is really all over the shop.

"A trilogy? Seriously?"

Where this suffers in particular is the interconnection of this sequence with the Riddles in the Dark. This is one of the strongest points of the film. I'm not a huge fan of Andy Serkis' Gollum; I find him too "cute" and funny despite all his creepiness. I'd prefer it if he was more seemingly ancient and wretched and sinister. I did like the employment of the shining eyes, however. Nonetheless the Riddle game was done well for a sequence which is essentially two people trying to outwit each other; it was conveyed visually with surprising effectiveness, but intercutting it with the Goblin Town events disrupts the pacing and the sense of anxiety and torturous uncertainty. Bilbo may have lost sight of Gandalf and the Dwarves but we haven't, so we lose our sense of his total isolation with this murderous villain. This also badly disrupts his escape from Gollum's cave and discovery of the powers of the One Ring, although the point at which he stops himself from killing Gollum is an effectively realised moment.

"Arr! Set sail for the Lonely Mountain!"

All that remains is the warg attack in the woods. For a start, Azog looks like crap. I thought his CGI body was very unconvincing and that the design used for him was dull. Giving Thorin a nemesis only confuses his motivations anyway. What is also bizarre is when Thorin strides out ready to confront Azog and gets completely owned, requiring Bilbo to save the day. I often didn't understand what they were trying to convey with Thorin; at times they seemed to be presenting him as this troubled but worthy leader, and at others he just looked like an incompetent idiot. There's also the ludicrous fakeout where he appears to be dead and then just blinks and gets up unharmed. His eventual acceptance of Bilbo is fairly heartwarming but it overemphasises the development for Thorin rather than Bilbo, who seems to change his mind about ditching the Quest once again for no particular reason. It's much more effective, I feel, in the original novel when Bilbo repeatedly calls the Dwarves out when they're being selfish and blaming him for their problems and reflects his increasing strength of character which simply isn't something we get here.

Blue Elvish Steel

All in all the film's an adequate adventure yarn but it's simply too long and when it tries to extrapolate the backstory in order to pad things out it unnecessarily mangles it and overcomplicates things. There isn't enough focus on the titular character, Bilbo - too much is given to Thorin and too much screentime is wasted on the White Council - and the general sense of pacing is off, from fight to fight and chase to chase interrupted by awkward exposition dumps which don't even accurately reflect Professor Tolkien's delicate story structure. The mood swings wildly from the facetious and absurd to the melodramatic and while the performances are generally strong they're made to follow unambitious Hollywood templates which make the entire story seem stale and inconsequential. We could have received a refreshing fish-out-of-water type tale of an isolated individual rediscovering himself with a supporting cast of grumbling associates. This could have been layered over a darker backdrop if necessary to hint at what we know to be coming in The Lord of the Rings rather than giving it a fanfare and making us forget about the rest of what's going on. Too much of the film reflects the need to drag things out over three instalments: extra chases and fights, made up and inconsistent characterisation, and badly paced scenes that should simply have been abandoned. Its excessive length and inconsistency are items of disappointing evidence for the dangers of corporate greed. Cut Old Bilbo and Frodo, most of the White Council material, Radagast in his entirety, and Azog, and have the explanation of the Dwarves' backstory slowly revealed over the course of things and you'd have a good adventure fantasy. It could even have still ended as early as it did in the novel's sequence of events and nonetheless been a perfectly fine adaptation with a two hour runtime; it's not like it was split into a trilogy and the first film only goes for eighty minutes or something, it's two and three quarter hours long! If they've got as much material as they claim and were really intent on a trilogy then surely rendering the story as, say, three two-hour films would be easy; couldn't they have cut some of this junk out? As it is it's only an adequate piece of cinema which struggles to decide what its plot and character focus is with some iffy special effects and a rather fatuous representation of the source material. It's primarily worth it for Bilbo; so much else should, like Mr. Baggins' pocket-handkerchiefs, have been left at home.

Me when someone claims the films are accurate to the books.

Story Notes - Some major changes from the Real Story and the Original Text

1. The Arkenstone - This wasn't taken by Thrór as a sign of his "divine right to rule"; that would sit very uneasily with Professor Tolkien's view of the role of providence. The Elves also didn't pay homage to the Dwarves. Incidentally, I don't know what the deal is with Thranduil's weird head tilt. The Elves didn't ditch the Dwarves when the dragon attacked, either; Thranduil's halls in Mirkwood were several days' march away and they had virtually nothing to do with the Dwarves. The actual enmity between the Elves and the Dwarves dated back to the First Age when the Dwarves of Nogrod sacked Doriath in Beleriand, where Thranduil lived, and stole one of the Silmarils; it had nothing to do with Thorin's people, the Dwarves of Durin's House. There was only a general uneasiness and distrust; neither side considered the other to be their enemy. The Elves of Thranduil of course had absolutely nothing to do with the Elves of Rivendell, which makes Thorin's antipathy for the household of Elrond even more inexplicable.

2. The Dwarves - in the novel while they are presented as doughty fighters in the early events they're mostly unarmed and ill-prepared for combat. They're also less distinguishable. Thorin is the leader, Balin is old, Fili and Kili are young, Bombur is fat and Dori is strong, but that's about it.

3. The Battle of Azanulbizar - it wasn't to reclaim Moria. Thrór, crazed after the loss of Erebor, went to Moria with only a servant, Nár, and there was decapitated by Azog the Orc who had taken rulership of the abandoned Dwarf mansions. Thráin and Thorin waged a long war with the Orcs of the Misty Mountains for revenge. In the end they confronted the Orcs at the gates of Moria and Dáin Ironfoot, Thorin's cousin, slew Azog, but the Dwarves could not reclaim their ancestral halls because despite their victory over the Orcs the Balrog of Morgoth still lurked inside, an enemy they had never had the strength to best. Incidentally this entire sequence was reserved for the Appendices of The Lord of the Rings and is only mentioned very much in passing in The Hobbit.

4. Durin - He was one of the first seven (yes, seven) Dwarves, and the original ancestor of Thorin and his family. He established Khazad-dûm (later known as Moria) in the Misty Mountains during the First Age, and many of his successors were so like him in appearance that they too were named Durin. It was Durin VI in the Third Age who was slain by the Balrog; a year later Moria was lost to that demon.

5. Radagast the Brown - Radagast appears exactly once in the entire storyline. During the events of The Fellowship of the Ring Saruman gave him a message that he requested Gandalf's presence at Isengard. Radagast delivered the message and promised to send whatever other news he could via his animal friends. It was because of this that Gwaihir the Windlord, one of the Great Eagles, was able to rescue Gandalf from the pinnacle of Orthanc. Radagast is mentioned but unseen in The Hobbit. That's it. That's everything Radagast does. According to everything published Radagast had absolutely nothing to do with the investigations into Dol Guldur and the Necromancer; these were entirely conducted by Gandalf prior to the events of The Hobbit. There isn't even any evidence that Radagast was a member of the White Council.

6. The chase sequence - The events in which the Dwarves are pursued from the Trolls' cave to Rivendell is entirely an invention of the film. In the novel the Dwarves have a completely peaceful journey from the Trollshaws to Rivendell.

7. The Trolls - in the novel it's Gandalf who keeps the Trolls distracted by impersonating each of them from a safe distance in order to prolong their argument.

8. The White Council - this was indeed composed of Gandalf, Saruman, Galadriel and Elrond, as well as Círdan the Shipwright, who is omitted in this film; he certainly has the smallest role in the text. It's worth noting in this sequence of the film that Saruman argues that Sauron was destroyed. This is inconsistent with the source material because the Wizards (or "Istari" to employ the Elvish term Saruman correctly uses in the film) were deliberately sent to Middle-earth by the Valar to oppose the will of Sauron. The Council knew Sauron was still active in Middle-earth, they simply for a long time didn't know where or what he was up to. Saruman never argued that Sauron had been destroyed; he definitely still considered him a threat. He simply, and falsely, argued that the One Ring had been irrecoverably lost because he desired to find it for himself, and delayed the attack on Dol Guldur in the hope that the Ring would reveal itself if its master was given time to regain his strength. By the time of The Hobbit the Council was already completely aware that Sauron was the lord of Dol Guldur. It's worth noting that when The Hobbit was written Professor Tolkien hadn't even invented Saruman or even Galadriel, whom he later retconned to play a fairly significant background role in The Silmarillion. The Council did not oppose the Quest for Erebor even slightly, and indeed had nothing to do with it whatsoever; Gandalf was really pulling a lot of strings. The Council didn't meet while Thorin and Company were at Rivendell (they didn't even always meet there, they also convened at Caras Galadhon and Isengard) and Gandalf accompanied Bilbo and the Dwarves from Rivendell without obstruction.

9. The Morgul Blade - no such incident ever occurred. The Witch-King of Angmar did indeed destroy the North Kingdom, Arnor, sister-kingdom of Gondor from The Lord of the Rings. This occurred much earlier in the Third Age. However, he was never sealed into a tomb or anything of the sort. The Witch-King of Angmar was the Lord of the Nazgûl, Captain of the Ringwraiths, and had never died. He was given one of the Nine Rings of Men by Sauron during the Second Age and gradually faded until he became a Wraith. He had no tomb because he was undead; his life was indefinitely prolonged by the Ring, even though his body faded away. After Sauron's defeat at the end of the Second Age he went into hiding with his master; later in the Third Age he took control of the evil realm of Angmar in the North and used it to destroy Arnor. Afterwards Angmar was defeated by an army from Gondor and the Elves of Rivendell and the Grey Havens. After this the Lord of the Nazgûl went South and conquered the city of Minas Ithil in Gondor, which became the city of Minas Morgul from which he began harassing Gondor (Arnor no longer being a problem) and preparing Mordor for the return of Sauron. He was never in a tomb, he never had anything personally to do with Dol Guldur or Mirkwood and he didn't die until Éowyn and Merry slew him in the Battle of the Pelennor Fields during the War of the Ring. How could he have a "Morgul Blade" if he was sealed away in tombs, not off ruling over Minas Morgul, the namesake of said blades?

10. Goblin Town - Professor Tolkien uses this segment to give a brief diversion about the technological advances of the Goblins, suggestive of his recurring theme of the dangers of progress for its own sake, especially in the areas of industry and weapons. For some reason the Goblin-Town of the film is a ramshackle cavern full of troglodytes; a disappointing case of point missed for the sake of spectacle in my opinion.

It's also worth mentioning that Bilbo was present with the Dwarves during their encounter with the Great Goblin and was only separated from them and met Gollum later during the escape.

11. Azog - as I mentioned above, by the time of The Hobbit Azog was dead; the rulership of the Orcs of the Mountains had passed to Bolg, his son. There's certainly no plot involving him hunting down Thorin or meetings on Weathertop or anything of the sort. Incidentally Bolg was quite heavily played up in the promotional material for the film and then failed to appear, which suggests to me that his role and Azog's were probably altered rather dramatically quite late in the day.

12. Thráin's Key - Gandalf was given the key and the map by Thráin, Thorin's father, in Dol Guldur while he was there seeking the identity of the tower's ruler. Thráin had been imprisoned there by Sauron who captured him to recover the last of the Seven Rings of the Dwarves. This eventually gave Gandalf the impetus he needed to get the Quest in motion; as the film mentions, it was important to prevent Smaug from being a weapon in Sauron's hands. The film never has Gandalf account for how he acquired the key, and so we are needlessly presented with Radagast investigating Dol Guldur when this could easily and more accurately have occurred through Gandalf.

13. The Necromancer - He was discovered to be Sauron by Gandalf some time before the events of The Hobbit. While Sauron operated under the guise of the "Necromancer of Dol Guldur" he was never perceived as someone who literally raised the dead (which is largely impossible according to the metaphysics of the story). Professor Tolkien rather chose the term for its more general connotations of an "evil sorcerer". In the film Saruman suggests that the Necromancer might be a merely "human" enemy. The term "human" is never used within the stories. The mortals are called Men and the immortals are Elves. Elves and Men (including Hobbits) could both be considered "human". The Necromancer is also accused of using "black magic" by Radagast and the White Council. "Magic" is essentially a meaningless term in Middle-earth; ignorant folk used it to describe those powers and arts employed by Elves, Wizards and the Enemy which were beyond their comprehension. It's certainly not a term members of the Wise would have used among themselves. A very minor point I know, but Galadriel makes an issue of it in the book so why can't I?

An Unexpected Journey two hours and forty-five minutes in.