Books to Movies: The Hobbit Trilogy and a Movie's Pay-offs

"The Return Journey"

The final sequences in The Hobbit trilogy are quite lovely.

 

And WAY too short.

 

I think Jackson may have been worried about the "Han Solo" problem: too many "little Aragorn" moments being used to segue to the next trilogy.

 

Han Solo problem or not, I think Jackson should have provided more bridges to The Lord of the Rings. 

 

More problematically, I think The Hobbit trilogy suffers from a lack of wrap-ups. It doesn't pay off all of its set-ups.

 

When a scriptwriter/director "translates" a book to film, I allow that the scriptwriter/director will/should add in stuff.

 

But if stuff is added in, it needs to be addressed.

 

Take the live action Little Mermaid. The script adds in some really interesting hints--that Eric, the prince, is adopted. That he washed ashore. That he may have some connection in his childhood to the sea.

 

And then...nothing. Those hints are never paid off. It's just additional information to explain him, I suppose.

 

Kili and Tauriel are the same. I pretty much figured that Jackson would keep in Kili's death (he and Fili also die in the book). But I was a little startled at the abruptness. We don't even learn what Tauriel does next. She and the king exchange words; he tells Legolas to find Aragorn and then...

 

Eh?

 

Paying off Tauriel could have been done in any number of interesting ways:

• She goes to Moria with Balin to honor Kili's memory. 
• She takes Kili's stone back to his mum. 
• She carries Kili's stone with her to the Undying Lands.
• She marries Beorn, who goes on in Tolkien's universe to either gather a community or produce kids (the Beornings) though he has no followers or mate or kids in the book.
  
• She marries Bard since they have both lost someone and she gets along with his kids. She becomes the de facto queen of Dale.

The need to pay off Tauriel isn't about romance. It's about storytelling. 

 

Set something up--pay something off.

 

Granted, there are a lot of threads to pay off here. But I would have favored less time on the very boring war and more time on the ending, including a few more relaxed scenes to slow the action down and leave the narrative on a high note. 

 

In the book, for instance, a few dwarfs come to visit Bilbo at the end. Such a scene still could have segued to older Bilbo sitting on the bench smoking his pipe. 

 

Despite my criticisms, I'm a fan of Jackson's. I've mentioned elsewhere that I enjoy viewing multiple interpretations of a text. I get irritated when a movie merely uses the title of a text (that's a lot of wasted money) or (as with Agatha Christie) gets taken over by writers who think they can "improve" on classic ideas. 

 

But I appreciate movies where the creators obviously love the material and have invested in that material. And I love the raw, uneven nature of Jackson's trilogies. They are big and wild and imperfect and absolutely wonderful.

 

On to the next trilogy!