Three Times The Hobbit?

[davem]

Its interesting how both LotR & TH end with an anti-climactic battle - LotR doesn't end (as with the film) with the epic battle & the fall of Sauron, but with the Scouring, which is a nasty, brutal fight between ordinary Hobbits & a bunch of thugs - and as SF writer China Mieville put it, you end up with a broken Saruman only capable of doing a little mischief in a mean way (as Mieville put it, 'You can't even get a decent Dark Lord any more').

Of course, the Battle of Five Armies is a devastating conflict, but it happens off-stage so the heroics go mostly unnoticed, & the main impression we are left with is of carnage & loss as Bilbo is lead through the corpse-strewn field to the dying Thorin, whose final words are to tell Bilbo that he was right after all, & that its the Hobbit's values that really matter, not battles or treasure. And yet, its fairly clear that what Jackson cares about are those very things - battle (on-screen) & treasure (profit).

If you re-tell LotR without the ugly brutal wastefulness of the Scouring, or depict the Battle of Five Armies on screen, then you don't get Tolkien. The Scouring shows us the ugly reality of war - not glorious battles, where heroes fall in noble self sacrifice to save the world from evil personified, but where ordinary people die in the streets & fields they grew up in, in front of their spouses & children, in order to make their little corner of the world a bit better for those they love.

Bilbo's lying senseless through the BoFA & only awakening after its all over, to then pick his way through the blood, stench & hacked up corpses, to watch his friend die an agonising death while telling him that, after all, it was all a bit bloody pointless when all was said & done, & that Bilbo's way is better, is to give the reader the death without the having given him even a glimpse of the glory. As far as Bilbo is concerned the dead might have been killed in an eruption of the Mountain, or by mass suicide. Death without glory is the way both books end when it comes to war.

And that is clearly what Jackson misses. Still, I'll be going to see the spectacle, because as with the LotR movies, I reckon something of Tolkien will come through. What is sad is that many people will see the film & not read the book, or if they do go on to read it, they will do so in the light of PJs take on it.