Adventure re-signifies the world
"The Hobbit — The Desolation of Smaug", the autonomy of cinema and the fundamental differences between Peter Jackson and J.R.R. Tolkien
In December, The Atlantic’s editor and writer, Christopher Orr, commented on The Hobbit — The Desolation of Smaug, the second part of the Peter Jackson’s trilogy that adapts to the screen the book The Hobbit, by J.R.R. Tolkien. The critic understands that the movie is no more than “bad fan fiction”. Indeed, it is not only an adaptation; Jackson reinvents the story. His narrative has new characters and a new development. To Orr, this is enough to dismiss the work as creative megalomania of a fan that has access to Hollywood studios. But is this true? This column intends to defend the autonomy of each creation, in order to see what their fundamental, and not cosmetic, differences are. I already offer the conclusion: in Tolkien, we are fascinated by adventure alone; in Jackson, we are suffocated by Destiny.
The Atlantic’s thesis is based on the following: a film adaptation must represent the original work, communicate it precisely. This is particularly noticeable in the first paragraph of the article: “There are two obvious ways a director can go wrong in adapting a work with a large and ardent pre-existing fan base. He (or she) can feel so constrained by expectations that he makes his adaptation too literal, a book-on-film. Or he can get carried away riffing on the original story, pulling in references from related works and assuming that fans’ appetites for additional material are, for all intents and purposes, insatiable”. There’s a scale here: the good director, we may believe, puts himself in the middle, he doesn’t create too much or too little.
The critic’s mistake is to suppose that the spectator has always in sight the original work. Indeed, the movie trilogy The Hobbit is independent from the book with the same name, even if the first is created upon the other. The cinematographic production is not made to be compared to the original one; neither does the public need to prove they have read Tolkien books to buy the tickets. The movie exposes itself alone: we must judge it in this regard. Reading the books — or even giving attention to movie reviews like this one and The Atlantic’s — adds perspective, nevertheless, it neither saves nor condemns.
The Desolation of Smaug is dynamic and fun, and this is its principal value. It has a more ludic tone, less somber, than The Lord of The Rings — that is the way through which the director translates the childlike, naïve traits on Tolkien’s earlier work. A carriage pulled by rabbits, a barrel playing bowling with orcs, absurdly ingenious deeds — all add up to the film being taken less seriously, on purpose, and seen more as a fantastic adventure, in the lightest sense of the word.
Actually, what Jackson has always in sight is his first trilogy, The Lord of the Rings. Tolkien wrote with no weight on his shoulders. The three books he would write after that would build a complex universe upon the initial one. Jackson couldn’t (or didn’t want to) have this possibility. Be it by industry or his own impositions, he had to adapt his proposal to a prequel of the previous films (which is “commercially safer”, as it has been used before by Star Wars, among others). Thus, he complied with an internal coherence: everything, or almost everything, occurs as an anticipation, even an explanation, of the older ones. It is reasonable to see these movies as six parts of one work, and judge them in this way.
So, the preparation of the black armies is the first move of a coming conflict. So, Gandalf proposes to take back the mountain invaded by the dragon already as a strategy to overcome the evil he foresees. In Jackson, by no means is it only a trip for the gold, neither are there fortuitous and ephemerons combats between the races — there is one trip and there is one war. The two trilogies are movements of the same narrative. It is one way only.
Perhaps at this point we can see the essential problem of the movie in relation to the book, aside from other specific ones. As long as everything leads to a final act, it is as if everything has been determined and occurs according to a Destiny. There is no way out, the moving of History unavoidably moves the characters. The original Hobbit leaves no legacy to The Lord of the Rings. If Bilbo’s trip had been fifteen steps away and back home, it would be all the same for the books that follow. His there and back again path is an adventure, not a mission.
More important than including new scenes and characters, what is lost in the movie is the central element of the original story: in Tolkien we are fascinated by the plain and simple adventure; in Jackson, Destiny suffocates us all around.
Ways of Going Wrong in Adaptations
I have this criterion: an adaptation is bad if it reduces the original work, if the first changes the second in such a way that it loses its fundamental attributes. Is this the case of The Hobbit — The Desolation of Smaug?
On the one hand, it is not. We can see since The Silmarillion, and through both books, that we have been dealing with the development of a single theme, which comes to an end adjusting the Middle-Earth Creation to its early harmony. The movies have in some way this predestination, and by this translate Tolkien.
On the other hand, it is. Even if we exaggerate when we say that all that happens is the fulfillment of destiny, Gandalf does indeed assume the role of a great maestro, guiding each one to their duty. In Jackson, is there any way outside the magician´s plan? In The Lord of the Rings, the original, I feel a bigger lack of control. The Society of the Ring is a desperate mission, in which the less appropriate of beings has the highest obligation. If getting to Mordor is Frodo’s destiny, it doesn’t mean this is a goal he is fit for; this is a burden he can’t get rid of.
The forces of History are against the Society of the Ring, The Lord of the Rings is about changing what everything suggests is the destiny — as The Hobbit begins and ends with the enrichment of the day to day, which before seemed closed and satisfactory. The world doesn’t justify adventure; adventure re-signifies the world.
