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Seven Things We Want From The Hobbit
by Tom Burns
 It's hard to imagine, after the awe-inspiring success of the Lord of the Rings movie trilogy and barrage of legal debacles that followed its release (hope you enjoy that crow you're eating, Robert Shaye), that Peter Jackson is actually going to be returning to Middle-Earth for not just one, but two more films - one based on Tolkien's classic The Hobbit and the other... um, we're still not sure. (What exactly is a "bridge" film? Will it be "The Young Aragorn Adventures"?) Fine, Pete's not directing the new Hobbit-centric movies, but he is producing (and assumedly co-writing) them, and he's found a tremendous director, Pan's Labyrinth's Guillermo Del Toro, to follow in his footsteps. We'd never want to suggest that Del Toro is merely acting as Jackson's surrogate - particularly since he'd probably send giant cockroaches and Hellboy after us - but we're confident that Del Toro is a smart enough filmmaker that he'll take what he needs from Jackson and his WETA Workshop and find his own way down the rest of the Hobbit-hole.
And, while The Hobbit isn't scheduled to be released until sometime in 2011, Hobbit fever is already spreading like wildfire, with Jackson and Del Toro scheduled to host an hour-long web chat to field fan questions about the movies on Saturday the 24th. (You can register for the chat here.) Now that this opportunity to talk directly to the filmmakers has presented itself, it's gotten us at The Deadbolt thinking about what we really want to see from a film version of The Hobbit. The Hobbit is one of the classic works of children's literature, holding a warm place in our hearts that's reserved only for such youth-defining books as Where The Wild Things Are and The Phantom Tollbooth. While the other LOTR books are canonical works of modern fantasy, The Hobbit transcends the fantasy genre and is, unquestionably, the most universal work Tolkien ever wrote. With that in mind, we have a whole different set of expectations for Guillermo Del Toro's The Hobbit than we had for Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring. We're much less concerned about battles and Balrogs and much more concerned about preserving the most memorable qualities of one of our favorite childhood fables.
The Seven Things That Any Good Hobbit Adaptation Must Have:
1. It has to be funny.
Sure, J.R.R. Tolkien was no Jim J. Bullock or Carlos Mencia (please note the sarcasm, Tolk-heads), but The Hobbit is a surprisingly funny book. The text is filled with slapstick, verbal puns, and wacky moments (the introduction of Thorin's dwarf gang and the ensuing breakfast debacle at Bilbo's house, for one) that you probably wouldn't expect after watching Peter Jackson's earnestly stoic Lord of the Rings trilogy. Let's be honest, while we all love the LOTR movies, humor isn't exactly their forte. In fact, aside from some anachronistic dwarf-tossing humor and Legolas and Gimli's running death toll, there's barely a chuckle in the whole trilogy. So, we're a bit nervous that, in an attempt to make The Hobbit fit in stylistically, that all the good-natured funny stuff is going to be tossed by the wayside. I mean, honestly, how exactly is Guillermo Del Toro going to handle the trolls tossing dwarves into sacks, sitting on them, and debating how to eat them without a wink and smile? If treated seriously, that scene will be borderline ridiculous. It doesn't help that Del Toro isn't really known for comedy (well, Mimic was funny for different reasons), and Jackson's sense of humor is far too in-your-face and wrong for Tolkien (watch Meet the Feebles and tell us if we're wrong). Just remember - The Hobbit is, by the intention of its author, a lighter, funnier, more family-friendly work than The Two Towers. Either embrace the light-heartedness or don't even bother.
2. It needs to work as a stand-alone film.
It would be a mistake to treat The Hobbit like LOTR 4: The Prequel. We're not saying that continuity and carry-overs should be ignored - we love that Ian McKellen and Andy Serkis are returning - but while Fellowship, Two Towers, and Return of the King were written as a trilogy, The Hobbit was written as a stand-alone adventure. More than any of the LOTR movies, this film needs to stand tall on its own merits. That means Del Toro can't assume that we know anything about Middle-Earth before we enter the theatre, and the story needs to have a definite beginning, middle, and end. We know that there's this nebulous "Hobbit sequel," based on a hodge-podge of Tolkien works, that's being filmed at the same time, but man, will we be pissed if The Hobbit ends with a "To Be Continued..." The Hobbit is a perfectly contained story that begins and ends at Bag End, and is short enough that it doesn't need two movies to tell the tale. This has the potential to be one of the ultimate all-ages fantasy adventures of all time - just like the original book - so let's not taint its appeal by retro-fitting the story to make it a part of the Peter Jackson LOTR mini-series.
3. The whole movie can't be about the Battle of the Five Armies.
 Don't get us wrong. We've been hard on Peter Jackson in our previous two sections, but we desperately love, love, love the Lord of the Rings movies. They, honest-to-god, definitely compete with the original Star Wars series (not the crap-tastic prequel trilogy) for the "best movie trilogy EVER" title. But, as much as we love Jackson's LOTR, The Hobbit was one of our favorite books growing up, so we treasure it a lot more than an Orlando Bloom movie, hence the tough love. And here's another hard truth that it might be difficult for WETA to swallow - the Battle of the Five Armies can't dominate the whole damn film. Yes, the final battle between the goblins and wargs and the armies of men, elves, and dwarves DOES bring the story to a general close and resolves the conflicts between most of the main characters, but it literally takes place during ONE chapter of the original book. We're totally fine with the battle closing the movie, but it can't be transformed into a Helm's Deep-sized uber-war that concerns most of the narrative, like it did in Two Towers. The Five Armies battle gives The Hobbit a very cool high-octane action note to close on, but Bilbo's journey and the confrontation with Smaug are infinitely more important. But Peter Jackson loves his epic-scale castle sieges, so we're a bit worried. Let's hope that Del Toro has a better sense of what's driving the story of The Hobbit, and, if the battle takes up more than 35 minutes of screen-time, we'll be very, very disappointed.
Seven Things We Want From The Hobbit Page 2
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