I grew up with hobbits and trolls thanks to J.R.R. Tolkien. So, although I had read and heard some polarizing views of Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit, I was eager to see it, which I did. I liked it a lot.

I’m also reading the book to my eight-year-old right now. We were racing to finish it before the movie, but I learned there would be a trilogy, so we were ahead of the pace.

(I recommend it as one of the best books to read aloud to your children [although parents of daughters, know that female characters are scarce]. Ah, the memories. Years ago, I read it to my middle son when he was very young. During our reading he was locked in, rapt, no wavering of attention, and I started thinking, “Man, look at the focus. I have a budding genius on my hands!” Then two-thirds of the way through I read a line, “And then Bilbo Baggins…”, and he looked at me and asked, “Who’s Bilbo Baggins?” I love that kid.)

That we weren’t finished this time before the movie didn’t matter much anyway. As I realized quickly sitting with those 3-D glasses on, as with many films, if you watch The Hobbit and think too closely of the books, you’ll be disoriented, frustrated, and maybe disappointed. Loyalists may feel betrayed. But if you watch The Hobbit to see  – and accept – Jackson’s interpretation of Tolkien, you’re going to be happy. I was.

Of course, though, the book is fresh in my mind, so as I watched, I couldn’t help but think of many of Jackson’s decisions: “Why?” He turned the tale into something it wasn’t at all in the book. Hey, it’s his high-level artistic vision, but I still wondered, “Why?”

A key decision was to introduce an overt antagonist, a prime villain who is totally absent from the book. As a predictable result, there is lots of battling. Now, The Hobbit is in the swords & sorcery genre, so you know those swords are going to be a-wielded in whatever version you encounter it. But Jackson made the almost quaint first third of the book very battle focused.

I don’t want to give too much away, but there is a great chapter in the book in which the dwarves and Bilbo encounter three mountain trolls. In the book, the trolls waylay the dwarves mainly through stealth and a tussle that is more donnybrook than war. These dwarves in the book aren’t the the sturdiest of adventurers, so a bunch of sacks serve as good weapons against them. In the movie, there’s a big fight.

Later in the book, the heroes are treed by goblins and their evil mounts, the worgs. It’s menacing, but there’s lots of almost comical jeering and taunting. In the movie, this scene is resolved with prideful, hand-to-hand battle.

The movie sets up significant tension between Bilbo and dwarven leader Thorin; it’s there in the book but is far more acute in the film. In the book Bilbo wins the dwarves over mainly with cleverness and some luck. In the movie, he has to stand toe-to-toe with the awesome new villain before the dwarves really accept him.

In other words, in Jackson’s film, Bilbo’s evolution follows that of most film protagonists nowadays: He has to become a bad-ass.

Watching mind-numbing trailers of other films before The Hobbit, I see that’s how it is. Jackson’s certainly not the worst transgressor, but we live in a culture steeped in violence. Comic book villains in movies blow up hospitals. They’re terrorists. Our sports – violent. (Okay, maybe human beings are just violent and we now have mass media to transmit and satisfy our innate blood lust. I can’t romanticize a phony past, what with lions eating of Christians and the baiting of bears in merry old England. We can be a deplorable species.)

Tarantino whines when discussing violent movies and our culture of violence. Video game makers whine when discussing violent video games and our culture of violence. The NRAs whine when discussing guns and our culture of violence.

The conversation is amping up now after more public shootings, and we should keep talking. I don’t want to cast illogical, causal blame on any one of the above, but we have to recognize that those who make their money or gain social or political prestige through violence have, simply put, a conflict of interest in these discussions.

For sure, our violent films are also incredibly reductive. Settle scores with a punch in the jaw, a bullet, a beheading – and drop in a clever one-liner as you go, a movie staple that the film Hobbit follows well.

At the film’s end, we get more cinematized goodies. The adventurers, fresh from a harrowing encounter with the main bad guy, see in the distance The Lonely Mountain, their destination. A thrush flies toward it. The camera follows the bird to that forbidden place. However, our group was just dropped off by a bunch of giant eagles. Why not just pay these avian worthies a fair price and fly there? (I mean, if a little thrush can make it…)

No. We have two more movies, and we need to plod on. There’s a lot more blood to be shed: We have an ultraviolent enemy who kills his own when they fail. So our heroes will walk it, battling all the way. That’s how you prove your mettle in these parts.

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Scott Warnock

Scott Warnock is a writer and teacher who lives in South Jersey. He is a professor of English at Drexel University, where he is also the Associate Dean of Undergraduate Education in the College of Arts and Sciences. Father of three and husband of one, Scott is president of a local high school education foundation and spent many years coaching youth sports.

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