This is me, age 12, proud as heck of my Arwen Halloween costume. I have a signed and framed copy of the Fellowship of the Ring script on my wall. I still have a chain with a “One Ring” on it that I wore for luck to most of my university exams. Since I was a child, I have loved The Lord of the Rings.
Which is why I’m still heartbroken and disappointed over the trainwreck that was the final film in the Hobbit trilogy.
Let me begin by backtracking. I found my copy of The Hobbit in the gift shop of Stratford Ontario’s Festival Theatre after a production of The Sound of Music, and needless to say I remember the book more clearly than the play. My nine-year-old brain couldn’t get enough escapist fantasy, and Tolkien’s world spoke to me in a way that no fantastic world has been able to since. I received the trilogy a few months later, for my 10th birthday. The first of the LoTR films came out a few months after that, and suddenly Tolkien was a popular phenomenon. I loved Peter Jackson’s film adaptations, and was ecstatic when my mom let me skip school to see The Return of the King on release day (even though she wouldn’t let me go to a midnight screening, an idea which in retrospect seems like sound parenting). I never participated in conversations online, but I loved to talk about it with friends or random strangers in person. My love was vocal to the point that my elementary school nickname was “Mr. Frodo.”
While I wasn’t a part of the Rings fandom, it spawned my first exposure to boys doubting my legitimacy as a fan. These aren’t pleasant memories, exactly, but they’re satisfying in a way–every boy who dared question me walked away realizing that I knew as much as (if not more than) they did. I forced many a tiny dudebro to show me some respect, and that alone would be enough to earn it a special place in my heart.
As an adult, I can acknowledge flaws in Tolkien’s storytelling, and while reading the full Silmarillion was a chore, I still harbour a lot of affection for that world. Which is why I cry every time I watch the first Hobbit film. Is it a perfect film, or even a perfect adaptation? No, not even close. But it combines Tolkien’s whimsy with the “epic” scope of Jackson’s earlier films. It brought me back to Middle Earth for a new journey, and I accepted that changes needed to be made, so I was able to shrug many of them off to focus on goofy dwarves and fantastic musical sequences. The second film’s flaws were less forgivable; Jackson’s obvious love for elves above all other beings in Middle Earth really hurt the story, favouring elf battle sequences over objectively cooler stuff, like Beorn. The dwarves got so little screen time that we didn’t even get a reprise of the amazing Misty Mountains theme from the first film. By losing sight of the dwarves, and even Bilbo, the film lost sense of its heart.
I went into the final film, probably our last glimpse of Middle Earth, with low expectations. I knew characters were going to die, and given the emotional attachment that lingered from the first movie, I figured that I’d be upset regardless.
I was so, so wrong.
Not only did the emotional beats fall flat, my theatre–presumably filled with other nerds who came out for the opening night screening–erupted with laughter every time the film tried to be serious or heartfelt. So much care went into the battle sequences that the emotional moments felt like an afterthought, something performed out of obligation and done with as quickly as possible. Bafflingly pointless Alfrid gets more screen-time than the ostensible focus of the narrative, leaving the dwarves to mainly stand around somberly until they’re all but forgotten. Never mind a resolution to the conflict driving this whole quest, we need to see Legolas perform ten more minutes of increasingly-absurd acrobatics.
Why are you even IN this movie???
I don’t mean this to be a review, I’ll leave that to folks whose opinions are less coloured by their emotions, but it’s been a long time since I’ve felt this disillusioned by a film. Despite its faults, the first Hobbit film was fun and I participated in fandom this time around. As a result, I saw fanart that was more emotionally devastating than the final film. Maybe it’s unreasonable that I got as invested as I did, or that my hopes–as low as they were after the mediocre second film–got up at all. But I can’t help it; these stories have been with me for more than half of my life. We nerds put so much of ourselves into the things we love that even with low expectations, we set ourselves up to be let down. When movie-going ceases to be about passive enjoyment, we run the risk that our vision won’t match with the filmmakers’, especially where adaptations are concerned. Sometimes changes can seem egregious even if they aren’t objectively bad for the film because they’re different from what we want or expect.
This doesn’t mean, of course, that I plan on trying to stop myself from investing emotionally in fiction, even if a bad story will make me angry for days (the world should prepare itself for my wrath if the Avengers sequel is as bad as I think it will be). Investing in a good story can be emotionally rewarding; emotional-devastation-by-fiction is hugely cathartic. But when something so terrible comes along, you feel like you’ve lost more significant than your time and money. I’m sure some Bilbo/Thorin shippers loved this movie, but I’ll be forever disappointed that my last journey to Middle Earth was so pedestrian and bland.
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