Tolkien take away

Now that they have drawn to a close, it will be hard for even director Peter Jackson’s most die-hard fans to look back on his sprawling Hobbit prequels with real affection.

Let’s first stipulate that The Lord of the Rings films were brilliant—by far the best fantasy franchise ever to grace the big screen. Yet with the exception of brief Merry-Pippin subplots, there wasn’t a lot of larkishness to the films. Which was as it should be, as there wasn’t a lot of larkishness to the books.

The novel The Hobbit, on the other hand, is practically all lark. Even the scariest moments, such as Bilbo and Gollum’s riddle contest on the dark lake, have a stamp of whimsy about them. Yet for all that he does well, Peter Jackson doesn’t particularly trade on whimsy.

And so, he gave us the blustery, elderly, often buffoonish Thorin Oakenshield (Richard Armitage) reborn as a shorter version of Aragorn. He gave us romance (Hello? A warrior elf maiden and Kili the dwarf?!) where no romance ought to be. And he gave us blood-spattering, head-severing warfare that pushes the bounds of the films’ PG-13 ratings in what was originally a children’s fairy tale.

This isn’t merely grousing about Jackson taking liberties with the text. Many of his invented elements, such as finding places for Galadriel and Legolas in the plot, are emotionally satisfying and fit within his overall vision. But it is Jackson’s vision, not Tolkien’s. And it’s a vision that severely shunts aside Tolkien’s Christian themes and airy tone to make room for grand battles and grave mythic side stories.

It would have been fun to see what a more playful director whose sensibilities are more in line with the source material—like Alfonso Cuarón, who made the best of the Harry Potter films—might have done with the story. Maybe in a decade or so the time will be right for another, lighter adaptation. Bonus: By then, the wonderful Martin Freeman, the best thing about Jackson’s Hobbit, will be nearly the age Bilbo was in the books.