Gloaming Crackle

So here’s one pretty awesome breakdown for the Hobbit movies.

Movie one (“The Lonely Mountain”? I’d say “There and Back Again”, except it’s more like… “There!”) basically traces the book itself, up through the defeat of Smaug. Nice, positive climax. They’ve done what it seems they’ve set out to do.

Movie two (“The White Council”?) rewinds a bit, to when Gandalf leaves halfway through the first movie. He joins with the Council — Elrond, Galadriel, Saruman, possibly some other movie-familiar faces — to discuss the Necromancer situation, and possibly, elusively, as to the status of a ring not unlike the one that he’s just seen in Bilbo’s hand, immediately before this in the narrative. Elrond might suggest a young, bright ranger he knows to seek out this Gollum creature and confirm some suspicions.

In the midst of the conversation, Gandalf relays the backstory as to how he came about the map in the basement of Dol Guldur, and his rationale for manipulating the Dwarves and that Hobbit to go after Smaug. Then they all go off to drive out the Necromancer. Somewhere in the midst of this, Gandalf hears of trouble at the Lonely Mountain. Rewind a bit again, to not long after we last saw Bilbo. And indeed, things are not well. Hence follows the rest of the novel — the standoff, the war.

And then perhaps an epilogue of some sort, where Bilbo returns to Bag End with his riches then is foisted with his young “nephew”, Frodo, when Frodo’s parents die. As a final note, perhaps, on a moonless night, a decrepit, shadowy figure begins to emerge from a cave in the Misty Mountains, with one thing on its mindses…

That seems to work pretty well. The first one is a rollicking road adventure, not like Fellowship without the angst. It’s what people remember of the book. The second tackles all the serious long-term considerations going on behind the scenes of and in the aftermath of the adventure — both in terms of narrative and in psychology. The greed on Thorin’s part. The mistrust amongst the races. Dark suggestions about this innocent ring that Bilbo has — suggesting the potential for his corruption. Even Gandalf doesn’t come off cleanly — setting up his self-doubt about his own darkness in Fellowship — though he does have all the best intentions. And in the midst of all this, Bilbo manages to show what he’s made of, helping to heal the wounds amongst all the races and presaging Gandalf’s future, reluctant manipulation of Frodo. Bilbo basically becomes the first hope against the dark times that are about to come.

From the way that Del Toro has been breaking the book down in terms of psychology and theme and metaphor, where all the fiction has to mean something greater — and where the tone is supposed to slowly slide into Lord of the Rings territory — I’d be surprised if it didn’t pan out roughly like this.

Edit: Oh, Ho. In case you’re not so up on what I’m talking about. I’d forgotten about the multiple Council meetings — which, yes, is where Gandalf’s manipulation business comes in. Anyway; no reason to show the earlier council. It’s enough to make it clear that they’ve met on this subject before, and that to date Saruman has been oddly stubborn.