Retrospective: The Hobbit (1977) (Patreon)

Screened on 16mm by my friends Bob and Cara for their monthly movie night. Thanks, Bob and Cara. The lembas was the finest I've ever had.

In The Hobbit, Tolkien concludes one of the finest chapters he ever wrote with a mix of tenderness and suspense. "Riddles in the Dark" ends with Bilbo, frightened for his life, briefly thinking about murdering Gollum. Then he looks at his fellow halfling, a wretched, scared little creature whose only reason for living, the Ring, has left him. Bilbo then shows Gollum mercy, realizing the little dude deserves his compassion. But his fear doesn't leave him — he is still afraid that this vicious little gremlin will sniff him out and kill him. He manages to leap over Gollum and escape. Gollum curses him, declaring that he will hate the hobbit forever. The passage is crucial not only to The Hobbit but later in The Lord of the Rings, where Gandalf points out that Bilbo acquiring the Ring and showing mercy at the same time would protect him in the long-term. This is the passage where Gollum becomes an essential part of the Rings saga, and one of the most heartbreaking and moving characters in 20th Century literature.

In Rankin-Bass's television movie The Hobbit, all of this pathos is gone. Bilbo recognizes that he has Gollum's precious Ring, and watches his adversary collapse in agony. Instead of recognizing Gollum's torment, Bilbo jauntily bounds over him, shouting "ta-ta!" on his way out of the cave. It is stupid and cruel, reducing one of the greatest chapters of fantasy literature to a straightforward "get outta Dodge fast" sequence.

The rest of the film is no better. Rankin-Bass strip the book of its texture and drama, making changes almost but not quite as haphazardly as Bakshi's film would a year later. Some of my fellow moviegoers were asking me to explain Bilbo's motivation in this film (I had given an introduction to the movie, so it was a fair request). The pacing is turmoil, as the film shits out one maudlin pseudo-James Taylor ballad after another (with the admitted exception of the Goblin-Town banger). Without the Arkenstone, the Necromancer, or Beorn, the film is deprived of any real sense of danger or history. The film so undercooks the dwarves as characters that you pine for The Desolation of Smaug. The animation by the future Studio Ghibli team is quite good, but it's undermined by the ghastly character designs, especially the bizarre decision to give Bilbo vaginas for eyelids. This film, with its defanged bowdlerization of the source material, is inappropriate for people of all ages, especially children, who deserve more danger from their fairy tales.