Books to Movies: Riddles in the Dark and More on Pacing

"Riddles in the Dark"

In the movie, Bilbo is both more aware of Gollum's murderous nature and more aware that he is taking/stealing Gollum's ring. 

Bilbo's sense of guilt exists in all the books. To an extent, that guilt informs his willingness to give the ring "back" or, at least, away in Fellowship (LOTR).

There is more obvious continuity regarding the Ring between Jackson's The Hobbit and LOTR. In The Desolation of Smaug, Bilbo begins to experience the negative influence of the ring. The ill-effects take longer to exert themselves in the books (after all, Sauron has just been temporarily banished, sent packing back to Mordor).

 

The slight change to how Gollum loses the ring makes an important change to the pacing in the film, as in, it speeds up the action. In the book, Gollum goes to find the ring and then returns while Bilbo is waiting for him. In the film, he goes after Bilbo as soon as he makes the intuitive leap to what Bilbo carries.

 

The exchange between Gollum and Bilbo, Serkis and Freeman, two ultimate Everymen, is fantastic, of course, with strong comedic timing, and it captures something that Gandalf mentions in LOTR: that for all their antagonism, Gollum and Bilbo understand each other quite well, including the riddles they exchange.

 

The pacing does strike me as odd, however. The surrounding scenes are CHASE CHASE CHASE. Without knowing the importance of the ring, the scenes between Bilbo and Gollum might seem out of sync. But since, as mentioned earlier, I find chases generally tedious, I don't mind the change in pace (despite finding it odd).

 

And the scenes are lovingly and exactly rendered, including Bilbo's decision not to kill Gollum, which, again, is expressed entirely through excellent body language--just as Gollum's painful loneliness is expressed entirely through excellently rendered body language. 

 

I've often wondered what the film would look like if it was massively cut to mostly only Freeman's scenes. I don't demand such a cut--I like all the extras, even the parts I ignore--but it would be an interesting exercise in editing. It would also create a narrative approach that I enjoy: a point of view that is restricted to a single character. 

 

That is, rather than seeing the dwarfs being chased, we would see only Bilbo. He would then escape. He would then be surprised to encounter the dwarfs. The viewer would THEN be told what happened. 

 

I don't hold it against Jackson that he didn't take this approach. For one, Bilbo encountering the dwarfs after the fact would entail either lots of dialog or a flashback and flashbacks can disrupt pacing even more than cuts between quiet confrontations and action sequences. 

 

And action sequences do satisfy those people who like CHASE-CHASE-CHASE.