N.C. Harrison examines the anti-materialistic message of the second installment of Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit.
*The following contains spoilers for The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug*
Decemember 13th, 2013, left me more excited than any day in recent memory. This was, partially, because I got to eat a Bayou Bleu pizza (shrimp, bleu cheese and pesto), along with garlic dough bites, at my favorite restaurant in the world. Mostly, however, my elation came about as a result of getting to see The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug in theaters, finally.
The Hobbit, for as long as I can remember, has been my absolute favorite book. Heck, I’d go so far as to say that it might even be my favorite story. This obsession began when I was about three years old and saw the Rankin-Bass adaptation of this classic on the Disney channel. The animation, done by Toei Studios, was lush and unlike anything I had ever seen before–not surprising considering my experience at that point consisted of Golden Age Disney cartoons and Hanna Barbera, mostly. The voice work, especially Brother Theodore’s Gollum and Richard Boone’s Smaug, thrilled and terrified me. Tolkien’s poetry set to music, sprinkled throughout the movie, seemed more gripping and real than anything my young mind had ever experienced. I fully agreed with Bilbo’s assessment, “There is magic in this music and it moves me.”
I read The Hobbit a few years later, when I was in fourth grade, and fell more even more deeply in love with the world that J.R.R. Tolkien had created. Now, at almost thirty years old, after having read The Lord of the Rings numerous times (along with so many other fantasy novels, so many of them so much worse) and having finished two low-fantasy novellas of my own, I cannot imagine anything making me happier than crafting an epic cycle of my own and, maybe, having it touch someone the way that The Hobbit (and so many others, especially R.A. Salvatore’s The Woods Out Back) began inspiring me on my Granny’s dinosaurian, 1970s era couch so many years ago.
Modernity tells us that greed is good, that he who dies with the most toys wins. Maybe he wins, yeah… but, when it’s all over, he who dies with the most toys… is still dead. Dead on a great big pile of toys, maybe, but still rotting.
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The first movie in Peter Jackson’s Hobbit trilogy, released last year, was great, too. A combination of built up excitement and truly excellent company buoyed me on the crest of a wave so high that I didn’t really pick up many of the film’s details until a DVD viewing, months later. This time, just like when I was a tiny child, it was the music which carried me away and, as Gandalf told Bilbo in the Rankin-Bass film, made me, “feel the love of beautiful things.”
The song, in this case, is Ed Sheeran’s “I See Fire,” a mid-tempo, folk-rock number that plays over the film’s closing credits and encapsulates everything that the movie tries to tell us during its two and a half hour running time. The Dwarves, Thorin and Co., are seeking to recover the treasure of Erebor (and their homeland, under the mountain) from the desolation of the dragon. These are tangible, major goals but they are not, in the final analysis, what ends up mattering to Thorin and his companions. This is best displayed in a scene between Thorin and his nephews, Fili and Kili, when the company is preparing to leave the town of Esgaroth so that they can reach the mountain before the last light of Durin’s Day falls.
The Arkenstone, a magical gem in the hoard and a badge of Thorin’s office as King Under the Mountain, has already begun to work its eldritch power on a Dwarf’s heart and mind. Kili, having been wounded by a Morgoth arrow shot by an Orc during the escape from Mirkwood, is unable to keep up with the company and must stay behind in Laketown. Thorin, eaten up with desire for the hoard–the jewel especially–tells Kili that the quest can wait for no one Dwarf, not even one of his kin. Fili, Thorin’s heir, departs the company to remain with his brother in Esgaroth, claiming that his uncle has forgotten what is important due to his lust for the treasure and the reclaimation of their homeland. Two others remain to aid him.
When the movie ends, after much effort and many machinations have failed to slay Smaug and the great red wyrm is on his way to destroy Laketown, the remaining members of the company gaze out from Erebor’s great gate as the firestorm prepares to descend on the small community. They have, in all probabilty, sealed the deaths of their companions–along with countless innocents–and Bilbo Baggins expresses the feelings of the entire company by muttering, “What have we done?” Not only will four of their companions be lost, but the company will be broken when they die separate from their brothers in arms.
This is expressed beautifully in the song when Sheeran sings, “If this is to end in fire, then we all should burn together,” and “If we should die tonight, then we all should die together.” Although his madness for the gold and revenge upon Smaug has caused Thorin to forget what was important, up until this point, even to the extent of threatening Bilbo with a sword, the stress of battling the beast with all he had and coming up short–just as his grandfather, in possession of a ring of power, had–has caused him to come to his senses and realize what he has unleashed. The arrow has flown, though, and all they can do now is to watch, as Sheeran sings “flames burn auburn over the mountain side” or, as Tolkien himself wrote, “the dragon’s ire, more fierce than fire, lay low their towers and houses frail.”
This powerful scene, in conjunction with the song, could serve to remind any of us–definitely serves to remind me–of what is important and what I should be focusing on. Modernity tells us that greed is good, that he who dies with the most toys wins. Maybe he wins, yeah… but, when it’s all over, he who dies with the most toys… is still dead. Dead on a great big pile of toys, maybe, but still rotting. The things which really matter, like kith, kin and the love which binds us all together, cannot be measured like a treasure hoard. There is definitely magic in this music, still, and it still moves me.
Photo–Flickr/Sarah G.
I reckon you ain’t seen nothin’ yet. I think that the 3rd film will be a genuinely deep and strong anti-materialistic work…
My guess as to why Jackson decided in the end to make 3 films is (apart perhaps from wanting to make loads of money – slight contradiction there…) that the only way to give the strongest anti-materialistic material, that in the final pages of THE HOBBIT, its due, will be to do it at length…
See https://www.facebook.com/notes/rupert-read/the-hobbit-outline-of-a-values-analysis/10153710937750301?
I’m very much looking forward to the third piece of the movie… the situation around Erebor is interesting as Tolkien’s take on political relationships, in general, and I think that a full movie is needed to “show” that rather than the few lines in the book necessary to tell it, so there’s that first of all. I am also hoping that they keep the full text of Thorin’s “Child of the kindly west” speech, about Bilbo, in… that really sells and summarizes much of the book’s message.