Great Expectations

I'm back in Middle-earth this week, thanks to the home video release of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. To celebrate, I burned two of my Audible credits to pick up the unabridged Rob Inglis narrations of The Two Towers and The Return of the King. As a result, I now carry all of The Lord of the Rings on audio, and am thinking of making yet another run at the series, this time on audio.

How many copies of The Lord of the Rings do I actually need? It depends: how many are there?

I honestly don't know how many times this will make for me reading LOTR. I first picked it up in January 1978, I believe, and have read it at 2-5 year intervals ever since. My last one was in 2009, when I was laid up with a back injury, so it's about time again.

I'm writing today because, in the midst of my internet snooping about The Hobbit movie, I've discovered several reviews that expressed disappointment about the film. Chief among these disappointments is the fact that the first Hobbit movie pales in comparison to The Lord of the Rings films. Blame for this goes all over the map, including, but not limited to, Peter Jackson's obsession with too much detail, stretching too little material over too much screen time, too much dependance on fighting and walking sequences, and so on.

So far, no one I've found has hit on what I think is the real reason someone might find The Hobbit a disappointment after The Lord of the Rings: as a story, The Hobbit isn't in the same league as The Lord of the Rings.

Tolkien started dabbling in Middle-earth as a young soldier in the first World War. The Hobbit itself didn't come about until the early 1930s, when, as the famous story goes, professor Tolkien scribbled the line "In a hole in the ground there lived a Hobbit" on the back of an examination booklet. In 1933, the book was published to an enthusiastic enough reception that Tolkien was asked for a sequel. Five years after finishing The Hobbit, he began writing The Lord of the Rings. It was published in the latter part of the 1940s, after about 12 years of work.

Twelve years versus two or three. A children's story versus a novel. An inexperienced writer versus a well-seasoned one. An adventure story versus a fabricated history. All of these are, I think, solid reasons why one should not expect as much from the story of The Hobbit as one does The Lord of the Rings.

As a story, The Hobbit is delightful, but it is not in the same league as its successor. In fact, several of my copies of The Hobbit, including my cherished original, label it as "The Enchanting Prelude to The Lord of the Rings." The Lord of the Rings is that rarest of birds: a sequel that eclipses its progenitor. As such, The Hobbit cannot fail to be a bit of a let-down if one happens to stumble across it after reading or watching the sweeping epic that is LOTR.

Second, I'm not entirely sure it was wise to spread The Hobbit, which is thinner than the thinnest of the LOTR books, across three nearly three-hour films. Mind you, I'm not complaining — I will take as much as PJ wants to give me. But for those who's lives were not inexorably changed by Tolkien's world; for those whom it is (shudder) "just a story," it could be seen as killing them with kindness.

Happily, I do not share their fate. I am delighted to have fresh PJ/Tolkien in my life, and indeed, am a few minutes away from a sneak preview of The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug. Sadly, in a few short years, it will all be over. I very much doubt that PJ will want to make another 3-film epic of The Silmarillion, even if he could get the rights to it (a very large if indeed). Eventually, the final Extended Cut of The Hobbit: There and Back Again will be released, followed, very likely, by an anniversary cut of LOTR, including new footage from The Hobbit cycle. After that, I fear it will be over.

But for now, we will, in the words of Gandalf, "make the most of the time that is given to us." And now, if you will excuse me, I have a conference call to New Zealand waiting for me.