So I just finished binging the extended Hobbit trilogy because social distancing and coronavirus (yes, I know, I'm still a horrible raccoon person, shut UP) and... I actually really enjoyed it? And I have some Thoughts about why.
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This is less evident if you just watch the first one, or if you watch all three with big gaps in between, but when you sit down like a trash goblin and mainline the trilogy (or, I guess, watch them close together but in a more normal way) they fit together really well.
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Out of all three films, I think Desolation of Smaug is the strongest: it has the best characterisation, the clearest narrative arc, and ends on a proper cliffhanger. I was initially puzzled about this latter part - why not just do the whole dragon bit in one film? - but:
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I think this was a deliberate choice, and one I think makes perfect sense if you look at the trilogy as a whole. Because Smaug isn't killed until the start of Five Armies, you can't come away from Desolation with a false, "happy" catharsis: you have to ride it out to the tragedy.
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And the tragedy is *important* because it highlights the futility of war, the loss and the pointlessness. Unlike LOTR, Five Armies doesn't end on a triumphant note. There's no big sappy climax that goes on and on while people congratulate each other. It's deaths & an empty house.
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Most of the fighting didn't need to happen at all, or happen that exact same way. I imagine plenty of people were upset to see heroic Thorin come down with dragon sickness and start acting like Denethor, but that's the *point*: that greed corrupts even good people -
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- and that, even if the subsequently lapse in humanity & judgement is only temporary, it can still have catastrophic consequences. The real evils of Five Armies are pride, selfishness, greed and hubris. Maybe it's just that I'm watching this during a pandemic, but that hits hard.
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The tragedy of Thorin isn't that he dies; it's that he becomes like his grandfather for just long enough, at just the wrong moment, to nearly undo everything he'd worked for, and to see innocents killed ahead of a bigger battle that he would always have needed to fight.
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Thorin's final lines to Bilbo - that the world would be a better place if more people valued gold above home - are the central thesis of the trilogy. Yet even when Bilbo, who personifies this, goes back to the Shire, he finds he's been presumed dead, his possessions being sold.
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To me, the terrible image of Bilbo, still mourning his friends, standing in the stripped-out shell of Bag End before we cut back to the framing device of him in old age, welcoming Gandalf's arrival at the start of Fellowship, was more emotionally effecting than the end of ROTK.
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Why does the battle of the five armies happen? Because, far away, two opposing powers - Sauron and Gandalf - set those wheels in motion. Everyone else was just caught in the middle, because that's what war is, and what it does. It's not triumphant; it's desperate and ugly.
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There's also an added poignancy to the trilogy, knowing that this terrible battle doesn't stop what happens down the line, in LOTR. Just like in real life, you can fight a terrible scrambling selfish war of necessity, of survival, and still have it recur for the next generation.
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Particularly given the fact that Tolkien served in WWI and lived to see WWII, this feels... powerful, somehow. Appropriate. Not at all like a distortion of the Hobbit, but an acknowledgement of the themes that ultimately governed his take on all Middle Earth.
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It's fun to clown on The Silmarillion as lots of wars over jewellery, but what sticks about Five Armies is that, even though it's the same premise, nobody truly gets what they want in the end, because the jewels are proven of hollow value next to the value of life.
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Thorin wants the Arkenstone; he only gets to hold it again in death, because of his hubris. Thranduil only gets involved to get his elvish jewels back, but seeks them so ruthlessly that he loses something greater: his son. Gold is hubris for characters minor and major.
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I'm always going to love the original LOTR films (and I may yet binge their extended editions too, because see above, re: raccoon person) but I think I might actually prefer the Hobbit trilogy - or its ending, at least - to the ending of Return of the King. It feels more human.
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The ending of LOTR is exhausting because it's exhaustive, trying to wrap up every lose end and show us how the world was fixed and made perfect forever - meaning, how it became narratively static. But at the ending of Five Armies, the world is still the world.
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Also, on a practical note, I liked that the Hobbit films, unlike LOTR, had visible background POC (the bar is SO LOW), had the women of Dale fight in the final battle, and, yes, introduced an extra female character because Tolkien was good at languages, not ladies.
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ANYWAY. I bought & binged the films because social distancing, figuring I could at least say I'd seen them and be done with it. I didn't expect to enjoy them as much as I did, and I'll be interested if there's anyone else who comes back to them with a different view.
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Seeing how low-ranked Five Armies is compared to the prior two, I can't help feeling that people were angry it was a tragedy instead of triumphant: that Thorin became flawed and cruel; that the hot dwarves died; that the world wasn't fixed by a pointless battle.
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It came out in 2014, which honestly feels like a lifetime ago, both personally and politically. But in 2020, as much as I want us to get that happy LOTR ending in the real world, acknowledging that sometimes you just get repeatedly screwed by selfish leaders feels realer to me.
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Sometimes you put your faith in someone who fucks up awfully, and even when they walk it back in the end, there's still consequences. Sometimes the best you can do is rebuild and be glad of the opportunity. And sometimes you go home to find it's been stolen from you.
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Which is why it matters all the more that Bilbo's treasure, the most important thing he takes home, is an acorn: something small to plant for the future. The seed of the spreading oak we see him laugh beneath in his eventual old age.
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There's plenty of bad in the world right now, and lots of us are chasing after Arkenstones in the hope that they'll magically fix the future. But maybe we just need acorns. Acorns, and hope. Kindness, and the courage to speak truth to power. To know when to let go of grudges.
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