The next two Hobbit movies:
In The Lord of the Rings in order to increase the potency of the Ring Tolkien came up with the idea that Bilbo made up the story about it being offered to him by Gollum as a present, when the Hobbit first told the story to the Dwarves, in order to clear himself of the name ‘thief’ that Gollum gave him for running off with the Ring. This is while Gollum made up the story up about the Ring being given to him as a birthday present by his grandmother, when being interrogated by Gandalf after Aragorn captures him, so to clear himself of the name of ‘murderer’ for slaying Deagol in order to gain possession of the Ring. However, these are things that are probably not going to be referred to in the movies to come with Bilbo possibly not telling anyone about the Ring in his possession until sixty years later when the Ring increases in potency for him again, and he tells Gandalf of his possession of it. Meanwhile, if there is any reference to Aragorn hunting Gollum and Gandalf interrogating Gollum at all because of what Bilbo tells Gandalf (say at the end of the final movie by Gandalf to Elrond and/or Galadriel) it probably will not refer to Gollum making up his story.
These things point yet again to how stories can be embellished, which is demonstrated also at the beginning of The Lord of the Rings when the Hobbits drinking with Hamfast Gamgee in The Ivy Bush Inn speculate about whether it might have been Drogo’s weight or Primula pushing him in the river and him pulling her in after him that caused Frodo’s parents to drown in the Brandywine River when they go boating. And this, in turn, suggests the speculation that could have happened in Smeagol and Deagol’s Holbytlan society in the Vales of Anduin when Smeagol returns from his fishing-trip with the Ring without Deagol, before Smeagol is exiled from this society.
Meanwhile, it is quite possible that the second movie will begin with Bilbo dreaming about the Eye of the Necromancer/Sauron and about Smaug talking incomprehensibly to him to suggest that the reason why the Ring left Gollum was because it had felt the call of its Master and was trying to get back to him, which led to Smaug waking up in his lair at the end of the first movie because the Necromancer/Sauron is drawing all evil to him and so is the Ring. This suggests that the second movie could possibly be about Bilbo gradually discovering the Ring’s potency and how this finally becomes clear to him at the movie’s end in his ‘conversation’ with Smaug.
This is while, in the third movie, Bilbo possibly discovers that this potency comes from Sauron at the point when the White Council seems to defeat Sauron and consequently the Ring becomes dormant for the next sixty years until Sauron rises again with the only effect it having on Bilbo is to increase his longevity. This also would explain why Gollum feasibly could have had a sense of the Necromancer/Sauron’s power to raise the dead when he bears the Ring. Hence at the beginning of the first of The Hobbit movies when Bilbo is seen writing to Frodo telling him about what really happened in his quest he could be doing it with the intention of giving the Ring to Frodo because he is now too old to bear the responsibility of it and he is doing this on Gandalf’s advice with the understanding that Gandalf will take care of Frodo.
Conclusion:
These things of course might make it more difficult for The Hobbit movies to potentially illustrate how more of Tolkien’s story-telling could have been portrayed in them, which is perhaps a discussion I might attempt after seeing the second and third movies.
In the meantime, bearing in mind both The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit movie productions’ employment of linguist specialists attune to Old and Middle English and Old Icelandic literature, as I referred to above, the potential of the movies is such that they could have delivered more of Tolkien’s story-telling than they have, and more than they probably will, if they took more into account that Tolkien was a philologist who specialized in Old and Middle English and Old Icelandic and how that specialty formed his story-telling. This has been demonstrated in The Lord of the Rings movies having had a better reception than The Hobbit movies have to date because the promotion of the former was embedded in the literary canon that the books came from and how that contributed to the movies’ development. Meanwhile, the promotion of the latter has to date been too embedded in the cinematography used in bringing the story to the audience, which was not received too well by all of the movie viewers, which, in turn, demonstrates that, as such, the cinematography is limited in portraying story-telling like Tolkien’s.
This reiterates why Christopher Tolkien said that the books were peculiarly unsuitable for dramatic visual transformation but that was also a question of art, which is perhaps why he has had verses of his father’s published in recent times, in which he explains where his father’s story-telling comes from. And perhaps this is in the Tolkien Estate’s mind in having taken out lawsuits against Saul Zaentz Ltd et al so to demonstrate that the general use of the etymologies that the books draws on cannot be restricted by the copyright attached to the movie franchises when testing whether or not there are parts of that copyright which breach the intentions of the original deed of sale of the books’ film rights. This is so that the Estate can continue to promote Tolkien’s story-telling.
Hence, it is not enough to say that The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit movies did a lot for Tolkien because his heirs allegedly made a lot of money out of any increase in book sales that consequentially may have happened. This is because this does not only omit to take into account how the advent of the movies also created extra publishing costs but also the effects that it has had on what actually constitutes Tolkien’s story-telling.
Brian lives in Wellington New Zealand on the main drag to both Victoria University where he was taught Old and Middle English and Old Icelandic at undergraduate level by an Oxford University PhD graduate and the Embassy Theatre where the red carpet rolled out for all New Zealand premieres for The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit movies.
