What Is Wrong with Peter Jackson’s Hobbit Films, Especially the Second One!

1. The Elves are sinister and antagonistic to the dwarves and Bilbo. 

In the first Jackson effort to make a movie of The Hobbit he committed this mistake.  He portrayed the elves of Rivendell as hostile to dwarves and mean-spirited.  He presented them as antagonistic to Thorin and his company.    One need only read The Hobbit’s chapter III - A Short Rest – to measure the depth of this distortion.  One paragraph from the chapter sums up their stay in Rivendell and the relationship between Bilbo, the Dwarves, and Gandalf and their hoist Elrond and his people.

“Now it is a strange thing, but things that are good to have and days that are good to spend are soon told about, and not much to listen to: while things that are uncomfortable, palpitating, and even gruesome, may make a good tale and take a deal of telling anyway.  They stayed long in that good house, fourteen days at least, and they found it hard to leave.  Bilbo would gladly have stopped there for ever and ever – even supposing a wish would have taken him right back to his hobbit-hole without trouble.  Yet there is little to tell about their stay.”  pp. 63 - 64

A few lines later their departure from Rivendell is chronicled as follows, “Now they rode away amid songs of farewell and good speed, with their hearts ready for more adventure, and with a knowledge of the road they must follow over the Misty Mountains to the land beyond.”  p. 65

Tolkien presented Elrond as fair faced and strong, a warrior who is a friend to Thorin and company.  Jackson’s first film completely misrepresents this. 

In the second film, the Elves are once more represented as menacing, their king almost evil.  In Tolkien’s book, the name sake of the movie - but hardly its inspiration, it is the dwarves who desperately try to make contact with the elves, chasing the magical forest folk through Mirkwood in a desperate effort to get their help.  Here is the description Tolkien himself gives of the elves of Mirkwood. 

“The feasting people were Wood-elves, of course.  These are not wicked folk.  If they have a fault it is distrust of strangers.  Though their magic was strong, even in those days they were wary.  They differed from the high Elves of the West, and were more dangerous and less wise.”   [There is nothing wrong with being dangerous.  In The Lord of the Rings, Gandalf explains to Frodo and his hobbit friends that they themselves are dangerous and that he, Gandalf, is more dangerous than any force in Middle Earth, except, perhaps, for the Dark Lord himself.]  “For most of them (together with their scattered relations in the hills and mountains) were descended from the ancient tribes that never went to Faerie in the West.  There the Light-elves and the Deep-elves (or Gnomes) and the Sea-elves lived for ages and grew fairer and wiser and more learned, and invented their magic and their cunning craft in the making of beautiful and marvelous things, before they came back into the Wide World.  In the Wide World the Wood-elves lingered in the twilight before the raising of the Sun and Moon; and afterwards they wandered in the forests that grew beneath the sunrise.  They loved best the edges of the woods, from which they could escape at times to hunt, or to ride and run over the open lands by moonlight or starlight; and after the coming of Men they took ever more and more to the gloaming and the dusk.  Still elves they were and remain, and that is Good People.”  p. 178

The Gray-elves of Mirkwood do distrust dwarves.   In The Silmarillion it tells that it was the dwarves who brought mistrust between their kind and the “Good People”.  From the treachery of Mim, the petty dwarf, to the murder of Thingol; to the destruction of Menegroth, and the responsibility for many evil things, it was always the dwarves that did the evil.  Thorin and his people were not party to these crimes – but the Elves' mistrust for Dwarves was earned and the stubbornness and greed of Thorin and his friends was to blame for the imprisonment of the company.  In response to Balin’s arrogant demands, the King of the elves explains his justice in holding the company: “It is a crime to wander in my realm without leave.  Do you forget that you were in my kingdom, using the road that my people made?  Did you not three times pursue and trouble my people in the forest and rouse the spiders with your riot and clamor?  After all the disturbance you have made I have a right to know what brings you here, and if you will not tell me now, I will keep you all in prison until you have learned sense and manners!”  (The Hobbit) p. 184.  He does not torture them – and although he locks them up for their “crimes” and their stubbornness –  he gives them the food and drink they crave.

A final point – Bilbo himself chooses the Elven King and his allies over Thorin and company; delivering to the Elven King and Bard the Arkenstone of Thrain.   In the battle of the Five Armies, Bilbo takes his stand with the Elves.  And it is the Elven King who, conducts Bilbo and Gandalf to the edge of Mirkwood, and who will eliminate the remaining goblins that have fled the battle.  At their parting, Bilbo gives the king a necklace of silver and pearls as payment for the “hospitality” that was given Bilbo in the elven halls. 

2. Everyone and everything is so dang dirty. 

a) Bree is described by Tolkien as: “some hundred stone houses of the Big Folk, mostly above the Road, nestling on the hillside with windows looking west.” (Fellowship of the Ring p. 162) The Prancing Pony Inn, itself is described as a “pleasant house “ (Fellowship p. 164), and when the Hobbits arrive - on the recommendation of Tom Bombadil, they wait outside “as someone began singing a merry song inside, and many cheerful voices joined loudly in the chorus.  They listened to this encouraging sound for a moment and then got off their ponies.  The song ended and there was a burst of laughter and clapping.” (Fellowship p. 164) 

In the movie, Bree is presented as some cross between a sewer and a slum.  The inn is full of evil people all of whom are filthy dirty.  Even Gandalf looks like he hasn’t had a bath in weeks. 

b) There is not a clean face in the movie – even the elves look moldy.  How odd for hobbits who so love to bathe that they sing songs about it.  See one of Bilbo’s favorite bath-songs on page 111 of the Fellowship of the Rings. 

The dwarves and Bilbo take a bath after escaping the goblins: “Then they took off their clothes and bathed in the river, which was shallow and clear and stony at the ford.  When they had dried in the sun, which was now strong and warm, they were refreshed . . .” (The Hobbit p 125)

3) Way too much violence and way too many Goblins.

 Bilbo and his companions do not see a goblin from the moment the eagles whisk them safely away to the Carrock, except for the one killed by Beorn when he went to the mountains to confirm the story of the killing of the Great Goblin.  What is particularly galling is that Bilbo is shown as killing goblins.  In The Hobbit, Bilbo only stings spiders.  This aspect of his character is important to who he is.  He is courageous and reliable but NOT a killer. 

The whole “movie production” battle along the river, between Legolas, that strange girl elf, the dwarves, and all those wargs and goblins is silly.  That Thranduil would allow goblins into his realm – while arresting dwarves and a hobbit –  is absurd in the first place, but that he would leave his son to faced scores of them in desperate battle is even more ridiculous.  The fact that all these ferocious goblins are so easily slaughtered; as fast as either elf maid, elf, or wounded dwarf takes a shot or swing at them, would be laughable, if it wasn’t so offensive.   Meanwhile, Bilbo and his buddies can bash and crash over cliffs and waterfalls that would kill anyone, all without a burse.

The whole interaction between Smaug and Bilbo, not to mention the “battle” he, Smaug, has with the dwarves; is ludicrous.  The Great Golden Dragon can’t even deal with one hobbit standing at his nose, or 10, (for some reason Jackson left three of them in Laketown), dwarves.   Once more we see our “heroes” bashing over cliffs without care and facing fire that melts gold without so much as singed beards.  Not only is there molten gold and dragon fire everywhere, but Thorin Oakenshield jumps in a wheel barrow and goes floating down a stream of the melted metal.  This is so incredulous as to be ridiculous.  How stupid does Jackson think his audience is?  Even if the temperature of the molten flow of gold did not melt the metal  of the wheel barrow, it would have been rendered a red hot frying pan and cooked up the “Mt. King” like so much bacon and eggs.

4) And by the way, where does the light in the caverns come from?

 It is a long journey down into the dark before the glow of the dragon gives a faint light to Bilbo’s creep into the mountain. 

5) Misrepresentation of Lake-town and Bard. 

Thorin and company were welcomed from the first in Laketown – where they crash the Master’s party and are almost immediately welcomed and well taken care of until they are sent on their way well provisioned.  “So one day, although autumn was now getting far on, and winds were cold, and leaves were falling fast, three large boats left Lake-town, laden with rowers, dwarfs, Mr. Baggins, and many provisions.  Horses and ponies had been sent round by circuitous paths to meet them at their appointed landing-place. “(The Hobbit p. 212)

Why is Lake-town a slum?  It is the prosperous center of trade, a pride of the growing influence of men in the world.  Jackson's world - which is NOT Tolkien's - is full of ruin and mess, as if he cannot picture anything beautiful.  Even his mountains are treeless and ugly.

As for the vulnerable spot in Smaug’s armor; it has nothing to do with a ballista.  It was a spot in his armpit were he did not apply an adequate layer of jewels from his hoard.  Bilbo saw this and when he reported it to the Dwarves, the thrush hears and takes the news to Bard.  Thus, Bilbo plays an important part in the defeat of the dragon. 

Bard is a captain of archers, and well respected in Laketown.  And most importantly he deals with Smaug with a regular long bow and a black arrow.  “Arrow!” said the bowman.  “Black arrow! I have saved you to the last.  You have never failed me and always I have recovered you.  I had you from my father and he from of old.  If ever you came from the forges of the true king under the Mountain, go now and speed well!  The dragon swooped once more lower than ever, and as he turned and dived down his belly glittered white with sparkling fires of gems in the moon—but not in one place.  The great bow twanged. The black arrow sped straight from the string, straight for the hollow by the left breast where the foreleg was flung wide.  In it smote and vanished, barb, shaft and feather, so fierce was its flight.” (The Hobbit pp. 260 – 261)

7) Finally, (although I could go on and on!)  is the whole Gandalf going off with Radagast to attack  Dol Guldur silliness.  

Gandalf did discover that Sauron was at Dol Guldur, but with the help of the White Council he drove him out.  (Although this is just what Sauron had planned.)  There was not battle between the two, and that Gandalf was captured and held there is a complete fabrication. 

Gandalf himself describes his adventure in Dol Guldur during his speech at the Council of Elrond: “Some here will remember that many years ago I myself dared to pass the doors of the Necromancer in Dol Guldur, and secretly explored his ways, and found thus that our fears were true: he was none other than Sauron, our Enemy of old, at length taking shape and power again. Some, too, will remember also that Saruman dissuaded us from open deeds against him, and for long we watched him only.  Then at last, as his shadow grew, Saruman yielded, and the Council put forth its strength and drove the evil out of Mirkwood – and that  was in the very year of the finding of this Ring: strange chance, if chance it was.  (Fellowship of the Ring p 263)

Not only is it implausible that Gandalf would have been captured – but even more fantastic is the thought that Sauron would have caged him and not destroyed him – as Gandalf is Sauron’s chief nemesis in Middle Earth.

Also, I am forced to consider all the wonderful things left out:  The gradual introduction of the company to Beorn, Beorn’s true character, the long and challenging journey through Mirkwood, all would have made wonderful movie scenes. Add to these painful omissions the absence of the forest revelries of the elves, Bilbo’s songs and effective rock throwing at the spiders, the careful packing of the Dwarves in the barrels, their warm welcome in Laketown, the journey to the Lonely Mountain, the meeting with the ravens, the interaction with the thrush. 

The most significant omission was Bilbo’s taking of the cup.  This is an intentional link that Tolkien makes to Beauwolf, a central factor in Tolkien’s purpose in writing the book in the first place.  If anything proves that Jackson knows little and understands even less about the purpose of Tolkien’s creations it is this error. 

As I sat through the film, I became more and more disappointed. Are the pages of The Hobbit to be thus polluted? * What was most discouraging was to think of the treasure and talent that had been thus squandered.  There will probably never be another attempt to make this wonderful book into a movie and more and more this perversion will come to be what the world thinks of when they thinks of The Hobbit – it can only harm Tolkien’s legacy.

*From Jane Austin’s Pride and Prejudice, Ch. 5 paragraph 63: “Are the shades of Pemberley to be thus polluted?”