There was a bit of a flare to the attendant who gave us popcorn at the movie theater—just a bit of life that desired to emerge from beyond the staleness of employment. Instead of just scooping the popcorn into the large overpriced cup, he spun it around his finger like a six-gun fast draw and once full returned the scoop to a holster on the side of the popcorn maker. I told him I appreciated the flair as the young 17-year-old was glad I noticed. It was good to see today in the eyes of a young person someone not yet defeated but looking to the future with ambition and flair. It made our trip to see the bittersweet last Hobbit movie Battle of the Five Armies that much more wonderful.
My readers here know that I am likely to give the film a glaringly optimistic review because when something impresses me, I do get excited about it. Like the kid at the popcorn machine, I have spun such things around my fingers for several decades, and still do. When I see the same effort in the products I use, whether it is popcorn or a new movie, I enjoy the spectacle fully. And I did.
But there was constant sadness while watching this last film. It wasn’t the film’s fault—but it was in the presentation itself. All during the film I was thinking that this was the last time. It would be the last time I’d get to see such a fabulous Gandalf played by Ian McKellen, or a Bilbo Baggins played by Martin Freeman or any number of the other cast. These Peter Jackson films are just epic spectacles which made much more accessible the great work of J.R.R. Tolkien. On the business end of things, these Hobbit films almost didn’t get made with union trouble brewing and Tolkien family squabbles missing the point of the films entirely. If J.R.R. Tolkien were alive today he’d be impressed with Jackson’s efforts, but the parasitic studio system driven by union wage labor is lost to the central message of this latest film, that sickness that Thorin has throughout this last film, the greed of the gold and what it does to otherwise good minds was evident throughout the movie.
The metaphor of the movie was simple; the dragon Smaug protected the various races of Middle-Earth from their own internal greed by representing a greater threat which united them. The moment that the threat was removed, the various societies of Middle-Earth sought out the Lonely Mountain to bask in its treasures. It wasn’t lost to my eyes that some of the rewriting that Jackson had done in the film was intended to accentuate more fully the negative experience he had while bringing the Hobbit to life in the first place—particularly dealing with the Hollywood community. Due to his magnificent skill as a director he built on the Hobbit film set for all three movies a family atmosphere that caused the heavy actors like McKellen, Cate Blanchett and Hugo Weaving to cross over the union desire to picket the film as Jackson resisted the attempts from labor to take control. The labor unions involved knew what to expect out of the Hobbit films because the Lord of the Rings trilogy had been so successful winning so many Academy Awards. Not this time, the Hobbit films may be loved by the fans, but Hollywood internally is scoffing at Jackson and his cinema family who chose to stick together instead of giving way to the Wilshire Blvd thugs. There’ll be no awards for this Hobbit film of Five Armies, even though it deserves them. The politics of Hollywood won’t allow it. But Jackson cleverly applied his own frustrations to the characters barricaded into the Lonely Mountain and told the story much more potently than anything ever written by Tolkien because of that conflict.
The film was loaded with so many metaphors like the one previously described that it will continue to be unraveled for years to come. However, for me, it was sad to watch the last of each scene knowing that it may never come again that such an assembly of talent was put on the screen for the purpose of such a grand exploration of the nature of evil. From the music to the behind the line technicians, The Hobbit: Battle of the Five Armies represents the very best of what movie makers can pull out of their craft for the enjoyment of their audiences. There was never any remark of a sexual nature in any of the films, there was never any sophomoric humor presented, each movie culminating with this last one had a sincerity within that is extremely rare and comes largely by the fact that all the Jackson films are essentially foreign films from Wellington, New Zealand and not made anywhere else. They have a country innocence about them that is pure and good in virtually every way. While Hollywood itself will continue to have individual successes—as 2015 is shaping up to be a big financial year with a new Mad Max film, Jurassic World, and a new Avengers film ending the year with another Star Wars movie—the overall health of the industry is very sick. Of the movies mentioned they are all dust offs from an earlier time. There is nothing original about them and people are only going to pay for a dust-off so long and pay so much money. The vacuum of creative ability that is on the horizon from 2020 on is truly terrifying to a culture like the United States that loves its intellectual media—it’s music, its movies, its television and so forth. The Hobbit films are unique in that they are truly an honest and loving approach to a well established source material that was beloved to begin with—made only better through Jackson’s efforts. It will be a long time if ever that such a thing happens again.
So my wife and I sat to the very end of the very last credit until the theater lights came on and the cleanup crew came to prepare the place for the next showing. I really didn’t want to leave the theater because once we did the big screen experience of Jackson’s Hobbit films would be over forever for us. I wouldn’t make it back to the theater to see it again before it had its run, and I knew that Middle-Earth would never be shown so gloriously again on such a large format. Sure, many homes these days have nice theater systems which in many ways rival the movie theater experience. More and more I prefer those over the theater where it cost twenty dollars for two medium Cokes and a bucket of popcorn. But the kid at the counter who dished out the snack with some flair made the twenty bucks worth it, and Jackson made going to the movies fun for what feels to me like some of the last times.
Of the coming slate emerging from Hollywood in 2015 and 2016 there is a lot that I will personally be excited about. I love stories—particularly movies. I love books, I love folklore, mythology—I love anything that shows creative impulse even if such a thing shows itself in a Power Point presentation. I love to see minds on fire and often in really good movies, which is what you get to experience as a theater dweller, the effort is generally easy to see when it’s there. But at my age time is moving very quickly. Two years of movies won’t be enough to fill that hunger that I have and there aren’t a lot of promising films coming after this next slate of blockbusters. The Hobbit is one of those spectacles that are unusually good in every category of film production so it isn’t something to take lightly when seeing it at the movie theater.
I wish every movie was like the Battle of the Five Armies. To see Gandalf captured among a hidden evil with Galadriel coming to his rescue to vanquish the threat to a far off region to regroup for the future Lord of the Rings trilogy was the kind of stuff that makes you want to purchase a $20 dollar popcorn. But there isn’t much out there anymore that does and for that I felt like this last Hobbit film was more of a setting sun than just a trip to the movies as an encroaching darkness envelopes a creative culture that I truly enjoy—and will miss.
As some may be mystified when I make a lot to do about certain types of movies and I rate them exquisitely high, and then seemingly trail off into a different more contemporary direction for the next series of writings, there is a good reason for it. My wife and I have a number of hobbies we share together, she does a lot of personal crafts–and reads a lot, I read, write, and practice bullwhips—but one thing that we share intensely is a study of evil and the various forms it takes in society. We have intense discussions about parallel universes, and the numbers for infinity contemplating how evil manifests between dimensional planes and grabs lives into this little four-dimensional space we all share on earth. We make a point to see how evil burrows its way between the lines of reality like the roots of weeds and finds its way around a sidewalk brick and goes around solid objects rather than through them. I have often compared our waking world to a 24 frame per second movie—what we view we accept as our reality—however we are really witnessing 24 independent pictures per second which our mind paints together into a functioning comprehension. What exists between frames 18 to 19 or 20 and 21 is a black empty bar separating the pictures from one another which our minds ignore so that we can accept the reality presented in the framed pictures. Often evil lives and comes into our lives in those black spaces, it comes into our minds because we cannot behold two separate realities presented on the same metaphorical film strip at the same time—so we often accept the pleasant pictures of existence rather than try to understand what isn’t so pleasant. It is in that understanding that my wife and I share an intense passion and also gives insight into a world that is acting upon us—but is otherwise invisible.
Religion for me limits this exploration. I enjoy the magnitude of Biblical study and other religious examination into the roots of evil—primarily through mythology, folklore, and philosophy. But mankind’s explorations into evil did not stop in the Dark Ages when many of the religious texts of the world were surmised. They continue—even more so today than ever before in the realm of fiction. It is highly likely that in the distant future once the dust settles on the ages a bit that literary classics like J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit, Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion will become religions onto themselves—perhaps 2000 to 3000 years in the future. It should be noted that Tolkien considered himself a Christian, but had a deep need to understand the nature of evil as he witnessed it during two World Wars—so he invented a mythology that could explore evil in a way that the old mythology of Satan from The Bible did not go far enough. The desire of any modern society to focus the minds of mankind on ancient traditions and mythologies is so that emotional distance can be maintained between one age now gone and harmless and the new one where much is at stake and power is to be had. So long as the functioning myths of a society are on events 2000 years ago people generally do not see what is happening to them in the world of today as their focus is adrift. But in modern stories like the contemporary Hobbit, writers like Tolkien have tackled that problem directly with the type of story that can be directly applied from Middle-earth, to modern existence.
In the film The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, Gandalf discovers Black Speech graffiti imprinted on an old ruin, coinciding with a telepathic message from Galadriel imploring him to investigate the tombs of the Nazgul. When Peter Jackson went off on this subplot as the film’s director it has drawn a critical response from Tolkien purists who don’t feel that the work of The Simarillion should be included in the film adaption of The Hobbit. But Jackson did it anyway and I’m very happy that he did because it turned out for me to be one of the most intensely enjoyable parts of the film. Once the three Hobbit films are complete Jackson will have correctly connected the Lord of the Rings trilogy together with The Hobbit in a way that Tolkien didn’t live long enough to do, and that will bring the work to a new audience, which is of utmost importance. Once at the tomb Gandalf discovers that the Nazgûl have been revived by their one true master. This prompts Gandalf to visit the ruins of Dol Guldur which he discovers appears to be dilapidated beyond refute. But this is only an illusion as a spell has been cast over the place to keep its true form from being noticed by the outside world as a mounting army led by the ancient evil form of Sauron—who in this film is a Necromancer—a disembodied spirit organizing events in the world for his triumphant return as the one world ruler. The spell is meant to disguise these efforts so that they cannot be stopped while the rising evil is still vulnerable. The Necromancer confronts the solitary Gandalf and tells him that there is no light in the world that can stop darkness, which then provokes an epic battle of which Gandalf is not quite prepared to deal with.
The cosmological myth prefixed to The Silmarillion explains how the supreme being Eru initiated his creation by bringing into being innumerable spirits, “the offspring of his thought,” who were with him before anything else had been made. The being later known as Sauron thus originated as an “immortal (angelic) spirit.”[5] In his origin, Sauron therefore perceived the Creator directly. As Tolkien noted: “Sauron could not, of course, be a ‘sincere’ atheist. Though one of the minor spirits created before the world, he knew Eru, according to his measure.”[6]
In the terminology of Tolkien’s invented language of Quenya, these angelic spirits were called Ainur. Those who entered the physical world were called Valar, especially the most powerful ones. The lesser beings who entered the world, of whom Sauron was one, were called Maiar. In Tolkien’s letters, the author noted that Sauron “was of course a ‘divine‘ person (in the terms of this mythology; a lesser member of the race of Valar).”[7] Though less mighty than the chief Valar, he was more powerful than many of his fellow Maiar; Tolkien noted that he was of a “far higher order” than the Maiar who later came to Middle-earth as the WizardsGandalf and Saruman.[8] As created by Eru, the Ainur were all good and uncorrupt, as Elrond stated in The Lord of the Rings: “Nothing is evil in the beginning. Even Sauron was not so.”[9]
The Nazgûl (from Black Speechnazg, “ring”, and gûl, “wraith, spirit” (presumably related togul, “sorcery”); also called Ringwraiths, Ring-wraiths, Black Riders, Dark Riders, theNine Riders, or simply the Nine are fictional characters in J. R. R. Tolkien‘s Middle-earthlegendarium. They were nine Men who succumbed to Sauron‘s power and attained near-immortality as wraiths, servants bound to the power of the One Ring. They are first mentioned in The Lord of the Rings, originally published in 1954–1955. The book calls the Nazgûl Sauron’s “most terrible servants”.
After the success of The Hobbit, and prior to the publication of The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien’s publisher requested a sequel to The Hobbit, and Tolkien sent them an early draft of The Silmarillion. But through a misunderstanding, the publisher rejected the draft without fully reading it, with the result that Tolkien began work on “A Long Expected Party”, the first chapter of what he described at the time as “a new story about Hobbits“, which became The Lord of the Rings.[2]
The Silmarillion comprises five parts. The first part, Ainulindalë, tells of the creation of Eä, the “world that is“. Valaquenta, the second part, gives a description of the Valar and Maiar, the supernatural powers in Eä. The next section, Quenta Silmarillion, which forms the bulk of the collection, chronicles the history of the events before and during the First Age, including the wars over the Silmarils which gave the book its title. The fourth part, Akallabêth, relates the history of the Downfall of Númenor and its people, which takes place in the Second Age. The final part, Of the Rings of Power and the Third Age, is a brief account of the circumstances which led to and were presented in The Lord of the Rings.
According to Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, the Nazgûl arose as Sauron’s most powerful servants in the Second Age of Middle-earth. They were once mortal Men, three being “great lords” of Númenor. Sauron gave each of them one of nine Rings of Power. Ultimately, however, they were bound to the One Ring, and succumbed completely to its power and its seduction:
Those who used the Nine Rings became mighty in their day, kings, sorcerers, and warriors of old. They obtained glory and great wealth, yet it turned to their undoing. They had, as it seemed, unending life, yet life became unendurable to them. They could walk, if they would, unseen by all eyes in this world beneath the sun, and they could see things in worlds invisible to mortal men; but too often they beheld only the phantoms and delusions of Sauron. And one by one, sooner or later, according to their native strength and to the good or evil of their wills in the beginning, they fell under the thraldom of the ring that they bore and of the domination of the One which was Sauron’s. And they became forever invisible save to him that wore the Ruling Ring, and they entered into the realm of shadows. The Nazgûl were they, the Ringwraiths, the Úlairi, the Enemy’s most terrible servants; darkness went with them, and they cried with the voices of death. — The Silmarillion, “Of the Rings of Power and the Third Age”, 346
The corrupting effect of the rings extended the bearers’ earthly lives far beyond their normal lifespans. Some passages in the novel suggest that the Nazgûl wore their rings, while others suggest that Sauron actually held them.
In a letter from circa 1963 Tolkien says explicitly that Sauron held the rings:
They would have obeyed . . . any minor command of his that did not interfere with their errand — laid upon them by Sauron, who still through their nine rings (which he held) had primary control of their wills . . . — The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, Letter 246
They were by far the most powerful of his servants, and the most suitable for such a mission, since they were entirely enslaved to their Nine Rings, which he now himself held . . . — Unfinished Tales, p. 338
Tolkien’s world as it was portrayed in these massive volumes of work refers to a time on earth that has either long passed, or is in the distant future. It is hard to know in geologic time when these events have transpired. Robert Jordan in his Wheel of Time series took the work that Tolkien did several steps further and wrote 14 massive books, most of them the size of Lord of the Rings. In those books he actually wrote about a period of human history where man were once again regulated to horses and magic—but this was thousands of years after skyscrapers and flying cars, a society hundreds of years ahead of our present time. Society had risen and fallen and went through a rebirth phase—and this appears to be a possibility with the Tolkien work.
In our contemporary time we consider ourselves so sophisticated with our history, our educations, our iPhones, the internet, and modern weaponry, but we are infants looking at just a few frames of film and reality is much more than that. It isn’t hard to see contemporary evidence of the events discussed above happening in the real world around us every single day. However, in order to see them we need a kind of translation of what is happening between those frames of film in our lives—a way to understand them. Tolkien has offered that, and Peter Jackson has provided a proper interpretation in a visual medium that is very powerful, and reaches a lot of people. But evil is very real. We see it and deal with it every day, and it is not enough to pray for help to an interpretation of a God understood thousands of years ago and shaped by centuries of power-hungry churches and empires demanding compliant citizens broken easily by force and faith. Evil must be confronted directly, and we must piss in its eye and eradicate it from our lives the best we can—and before we do that—we must be able to see it, feel it, and touch it. Like Sauron’s stronghold Dol Guldur, the “Hill of Sorcery” the real nature of evil is hidden from our eyes. Study the reason for any public relations firm, and the practical function of them. They are primarily designed to deceive our eyes and minds away from the facts and to direct our attention away from the vile tasks that often accompany their clients. Study how this effect works in public schools and it will be easy to identify that there is a Dol Guldur in each of our communities spreading evil right under our noses, blinding our eyes to a truth that we cannot completely see. CLICK HERE FOR REAL WORLD PROOF OF THIS PHENOMENON.
As I left the movie with my family after the second Hobbit film ended I listened to the people leaving and later read some of the reviews. The assumption was that Peter Jackson was working purely for profit as Warner Brother execs wanted three billion dollar films out of the relatively small novel, The Hobbit—and Jackson was stretching things. Without question that was Warner Brother’s hope, and who could blame them. But Jackson saw a chance to make The Hobbit into what Tolkien likely would have wanted to do in 1937, but had not flushed it all out yet. Jackson simply combined the life work of Tolkien’s study on the nature of evil and put it into three massive three-hour films, two of which are completed at this time. Evil is more studied today than at any point in human history—the book stores are filled with the confrontation between good and evil—it is the central theme of our age. Yet, we are told by modern society that value judgments against evil should not be made—that we should accept those different from us—and when I hear such things—I see the shroud which protected Dol Guldur from the prying eyes of the outside world. And like Gandalf I poke and pry at those barriers because I suspect that evil is hiding behind such facades—and 9.999999999 times out of 10, I am right. It is not because of magic that I’m often right about these things, it is because my wife and I have a habit hobby of defining evil and spotting it from afar the way some people watch birds, or weather patterns. We enjoy it, and are always looking for where it conceals itself. And part of the way we fulfill that enterprise is by studying the various forms that fiction writers of modern myth have used to discover the metaphorical Dol Guldur’s of our lives—those frames around the film that we cannot register, but know are there.
When I witness an honest attempt to confront these problems I tend to get very excited not because what is seen, but what is not. The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug taken by itself as an action/fantasy film is decent fun. The effects are sometimes over-the-top, and silly, but the story is not about those things. The ultimate theme of the stories of Tolkien was an exploration of evil and the proper way to meet it with a happy productive life untouched by such forces. It is in this achievement that The Desolation of Smaug is an epic masterpiece that is heads and shoulders above everything else done like it—and the reason it will endure not just for years—but millenniums.
Unlike the fantasy world of Tolkien and his modern version of The Devil in Sauron, it is highly unlikely that only one such creature would evolve into such a state of evil over such a vast span of time, but many. For the context of a story only one such evil can exist otherwise there would be no real narrative flow. As my wife and I believe, there are thousands of Sauron’s in the real world every one of them just as bad as all the others. They may not have magic and sorcery in their arsenal of tools the way these fictional characters do, but they have other tools, and they use them. It is against those that we have a continued and enduring fight, and like Gandalf’s fight against the Necromancer at Dol Guldur it often feels like a tiny light surrounded by constant darkness. Gandalf’s response and valiant fight is why someone like he should be President of the United States and take such thrones of power away from the many who function from evil and desire with every sign of life in the smallest cells of their bodies to touch the One Power of Sauron. They desire such power for all the reasons that evil has ever spread over the lives of man—to be admired, and to shape one’s own destiny. Evil often hides itself behind illusions the same as the one that shrouded Dol Guldur—and only films like The Desolation of Smaug attempt to portray such a thing. So when a film does such a thing successfully, I give it an ambitious review not so much for the content and quality of the film, but for looking evil in the eye and giving it a form that people can relate to—so that they can confront it, and defeat it. And before evil can even be confronted, a firm understanding or right and wrong, good and bad, light and dark and the vileness of evil must be understood clearly. The living world is all about pairs of opposites, death is about unification. In the living world choices must be made—light or darkness—good or evil—one team against the other. There is no other way.
I would say that seeing The Desolation of Smaug is the most important commentary on modern politics that is available to anybody on planet earth presently. A student of politics, philosophy, and social organization could watch MSNBC, Fox News, Politically Incorrect on HBO and achieve a doctorate in psychology, history, and political science—read all the books by Glenn Beck, Bill O’Reilly, and Charles Krauthammer—listen to talk radio for the next 10 years, and there would not be a more accurate summation of the state of our world than in this Hobbit film. The simple line of dialogue between two of the elf characters in the film upon deciding if they should fight on behalf of light or let the world fall to darkness was uttered by, “when did we let evil become stronger than us.” That is what almost every human being is facing on the very day that you are reading this—what are the consequences of living our lives away from the light? How does evil spread? And what do we do about it when we are confronted with it?
The Desolation of Smaug is not just a simple morality tale speaking in generalizations about an ideal existence wrapped in fantasy. It is a commentary—a mythology of the problems experienced in our modern times. The setting has been changed to provide context in a similar way that Star Wars removed time and history with the opening, A Long Time Ago in a Galaxy Far, Far Away. The Hobbit is dealing with the very nature of evil, greed, and faulty living that is at the heart of every human being. It is literature on film, and is marvelous to behold.
Smaug as the centerpiece of this latest story is the embodiment of the kind of individual who has taken the world’s wealth by force and sits upon it guarding it religiously. He is the kind of bourgeois that added fuel to the fire of the communist movement where the common man wished to wrestle power back away from such dragons so that they could have their riches away from such greedy bastards. That is why Smaug is a European dragon that sits in this movie upon a pile of gold taken from the Dwarves and their mines. He loves it so much that he has buried himself within it so that he can worship it like a rodent burrows itself into the ground. Many real life wealthy people like Bill Gates, George Soros, Michael Bloomberg, and Warren Buffet give so much money to philanthropy advancing progressive causes because they feel guilt over their wealth. They wish to prove to the world that they are not dragons like Smaug even though in their wealth building years they behaved just like Smaug—rolling their bodies into their confiscated wealth. In the case of Gates, he made his money the correct way with a superior product—but discovered that the world saw him as a Smaug, just as the Dwarves in The Hobbit saw Smaug as a villain who took their wealth. Gates wished to prove that he was not such a Smaug so he began to give mast amounts of money to the public education system in America feeding the teacher unions. In many ways Gates became like the treacherous politicians in Laketown—living in constant fear of Smaug—scheming around the beast to carve their own way to power and wealth. For Gates and his idealism, he became a major supporter of Common Core which seeks to centralize the education process for society. A good intention with a sinister reality which allows corrupt teacher unions to control the kind of curriculum being taught to children—which opens the door for despots to shape the minds of society for the worst. In the film, once the dragon was no longer a threat, the kingdoms of the world now without the fear of Smaug immediately launched themselves into a power play for control of Middle-earth. Smaug as cruel as he was made out to be when confronted by Bilbo in The Lonely Mountain was caught between his own genius and ability to inflict cruelty, and his ability to keep the vast evil that the occupants of Middle-earth possess in check. Only a proper and effective mythology could communicate such a complicated concept.
Peter Jackson is such a great filmmaker. He knows instinctively much of what I write about here because his understanding of mythology allows him to think of things in the large view. He can make a film like the Hobbit movies with an ease that is unfathomable to most Hollywood directors—especially on the scale that this Desolation of Smaug is. Jackson gets it—and people sense that something important is going on in the movie which is why it has made over $500 million world-wide dollars in just two weeks at this point. When he completes the trilogy, of The Hobbit, along with the Lord of the Rings films, Jackson will have completed one of the greatest explorations into the nature of evil ever done by anybody anywhere. Of course Tolkien started the process with his great books, but Jackson has taken the baton and ran with it in a way that few people could ever hope to do, and he does it with a lack of pretension that is simply wonderful.
People who love fantasy stories like this generally are aware that the real world does not have much to offer them. Most of the time, they see too much, and can’t lie to themselves about the nature of reality. So they bury themselves in fantasy where they can relate to the characters that stand for justice, righteousness, and a fight against evil. Doing such things in the real world is considered unrealistic, naive, and foolhardy. So they turn to fantasy and lose themselves to the efforts of gaming, movies, books, and any other attribute a story can bring to a mind hungry for understanding. We all know a Smaug in our life—whether it is a rich uncle, an employer, or even a political power. Most of us think that such dragons must be killed and slayed so that the wealth of the world can return to us. But often—which is an ideal that the writer Ayn Rand was exploring around the same time that Tolkien was exploring Middle-earth—there is a need for such dragons as they prove to be more capable than the greed of the Dwarves, or residents of Laketown. The masses may not like the dragon, but often the dragon is more capable than the masses in dealing with the overwhelming pressure of greed—thus the line at the end of this film by Bilbo—“What have we done?” Bilbo means, we killed the dragon, but we seem to have slayed ourselves in the process.
The Desolation of Smaug is such an important film as it deals with a massive social commentary that is pertinent to our present time in such critical ways. Smaug is one of Ayn Rand’s characters who have failed at life. He is not an overman able to support the world without corruption who creates wealth with creative effort. Smaug took the created wealth of the dwarves with force, not creative effort—and spent the rest of his life guarding that gold because he was unable to create more of it. To Smaug, the wealth was finite, created by others and if he wanted to keep it, he had to hold it greedily with terror which of course everyone in Middle-earth resented. But without Smaug, the people of Middle-earth would be at war with one another constantly. Smaug focused their hate into a direction that only a fire-breathing massive dragon could carry. Bilbo because of his ability as a thief was able to spot a weakness in Smaug and let the people of Laketown know about it. Once that weakness was exploited, and Smaug was removed as a threat, the real work of Sauron, originally known as Malron the Admirable, could begin. Mariron was turned to evil by the Dark Lord Morgoth in the early days of the world, and ever after remained a foe of the Valar and the Free peoples of Middle Earth. We all know people like Sauron too. In fantasy fun is made of combating such figures with magic and battles with fantastic monsters, but the content of such people can be found on a local school board, or machine politics at any level and on both sides. The reason people flock to see these films is not an escape from reality, but to actually see reality as it is masked to us in the light of day.
The second Hobbit film, The Desolation of Smaug is a movie that everyone should see; its great cinema, wonderful story telling, and a visual art of the highest order. Nobody makes films better than these films, except for possibly the upcoming Star Wars films which deal with the same basic content, only in a future/past kind of way. On a scale of 1-5 I give this Hobbit film a 100. It is that good—but only if viewers enjoy exploring the hidden aspects of a society that is not so far away in Middle-earth, but right in front of us all—only not seen because of our educations, and prejudices–a world that can only be revealed to us through mythology.
By now everyone has probably seen for themselves why The Hobbit is such a magnificent movie, and why I have written so much about it. Peter Jackson is one of the great directors of our time in that he took one of the greatest books and put it on the screen as it was written which was no easy task. It is clear that The Hobbit is not just a movie like all the other entertainment options available at the theater, but is in a class by itself. It is also clear that many of the people who made it are finding the Christian parallels difficult to explain away out of fear that they might not work again in film industry run by producers who have become like Smoug in the movie—sitting on a pile of stolen gold. The dragon Smoug is drunk for power, which is the great theme of The Hobbit and it is difficult for people to see the movie and not see themselves in one of the characters. A powerful story always has this effect and is the sign of a lasting mythology. Those who don’t like The Hobbit are clearly seeing themselves as the villains of The Hobbit—they are like Smoug, the Orcs, or even the Ring Wraths who are trying to come back into the world from the land of the dead. The Hobbit covers within its story line all the various degrees of evil that can be easily seen in modern life and puts it into context—which is a great benefit to the minds of man. Many however who see The Hobbit are likely to see themselves as the Hobbit Bilbo Baggins as Glenn Beck did when he covered this new film and its literary legacy over time on a recent episode of The Blaze TV.The Hobbit is meant to appeal to those types of people and to provide them with courage as they navigate through the many evils that we all encounter in day-to-day life outside of books and movies. For me however, I do not relate to The Hobbits very much. They are way too timid for my liking—instead it is the wizard Gandalf that I directly relate to. It is Gandalf the Grey that I understand and why I love the story of The Hobbit so much.
Peter Jackson like J.R.R. Tolkien understood that if he came out and overtly proclaimed that the messages in The Hobbit were essentially Christian that the other religions of the world would take offense. Wisely, Jackson has avoided such comparisons during the making of the movie in New Zealand. Even more remarkable were the various labor disputes that my readers here will recognize with my frequent articles about teacher unions in The United States. The same type of radicalism is present in the film industry and it gets harder every year to deal with the increasing costs of making profitable movies as unionized labor has pushed up those costs to unsustainable heights. This is one of the reasons that The Walt Disney Company is now picking up so many profitable properties such as Marvel Comics and Star Wars, because they are mythmaking machines, and have the revenue streams to deal with the labor unions through other businesses such as theme parks—for now. But projects like The Hobbit to be as epic as it deserves has to be made as cheaply as possible—and it took the actors who played in The Hobbit to display a lot of courage to commit to these Hobbit films. On top of that, the Tolkien family was split over the success of the Jackson’s Lord of the Rings films and wanted to dissociate with Jackson’s work. Peter Jackson masterfully navigated all these production perils to tell the magnificent story of The Hobbit that can be shared with audiences. Without question the son of J.R.R. Tolkien, Christopher remembered the stories his father wrote for him to be much less action packed than Jackson presented in movie theaters, but ultimately Peter Jackson understood that Christopher is not unlike Bilbo Baggins himself, and is prone to out-bursts protecting his father’s legacy as he remembered it. So Jackson blew off the family rift to make the movie he envisioned anyway. You can read about some of these issues at this link:
So it is a small miracle that The Hobbit was even made—and it is a larger miracle that it was made so well by so many people. Actors know it is unpopular for them to play in a movie that is so obviously taking a stand on good and evil when the progressive labor unions they must join to work, and the other studios they hope to get work from are filled with progressive movie producers. Being involved with a movie like The Hobbit will earn the actors respect forever from millions of fans, but they will have their work in The Hobbit held against them in future roles and most of them will not get “rich” off their work in The Hobbit, so they will feel pain from their decision. The Hobbit will be blacklisted by the Academy Awards because of the labor dispute mentioned in the article above. There was a lot against The Hobbit; there was every excuse for the film to fall short which of course it didn’t.
But the Gandalf in me sees a bigger work at play here, and that is that The Hobbit is so incredibly needed by our present civilization. Evil is very much at work in our modern world and it rides the backs of progressives like Orcs ride the backs of those giant wolves in the film. Evil works within the collectivism of the labor unions, it works mindlessly in politics, in religion destroying stalemates, in sheer greed, and many who watch The Hobbit and hate it recognize that they are one of the villains in the movie—so Academy Award snubs should be expected and considered a privilege. The movie The Hobbit based religiously on the original work by J.R.R. Tolkien but upgraded enough to carry the mind of today’s youth, is about facing down evil and living to tell about it. Without this confrontation with evil, the world as we know it will crumble away into nothing, which is the entire point of the film.
There are a mere handful of films over Hollywood’s history that do what The Hobbit has done, films like It’s a Wonderful Life, The Sound of Music, and of course Star Wars, that so accurately captures the hopes and dreams of our society and paints a picture that is so clearly understood. The Hobbit is a special film because it steps up and over the many evil forces that desired with drool running down its mouth to stop goodness from being shown to a mass audience for the inspiration toward good that would fill the minds of millions with hope. The Hobbit provides genuine assurance without the distraction of obvious religion to separate the mind from the contents of a powerful story. It is in this way that evil finds that it cannot advance easily upon the minds of man—when those minds can see it coming a mile away, The Hobbit teaches in story form what that evil looks like and how it works so it can be seen in reality. That is why I love Gandalf so much, because he is able to assemble all the parts of the story to work toward an aim to thwart the work of evil, even when those evil doers are his own friends. Gandalf knows enough to protect himself with a simple Hobbit while he goes on his crusade on behalf of the good. And now audiences everywhere can do the same. This is why I most identify with Gandalf, and somehow I think that Peter Jackson does too. Jackson might tell the public that he is a simple Hobbit, so that he can make his films, but his mind is like that of Gandalf—a master manipulator on behalf of a good that nobody can yet see—but only the wise master of all things, a mediator between Heaven and Earth and crusader for everything that is good, and an enemy to all that is evil.
I have been writing about The Hobbit movie and its December release for over a year now and I have been very excited for its long-awaited arrival in theaters. My wife and I took my large family and some of their friends to see it during a prime time showing over the weekend, and before I get into any kind of review I need to provide some context. Our society is changing rapidly, and not all of it is bad. When religion was very strong in our society, it taught young and old alike about the nature of good and evil—which I spend a lot of time writing and thinking about. But in 2012 in a quest that really started in 1977 with the first Star Wars film, it is clear that mythological values in our society has moved from books into many other visual formats that explore more deeply than ever the nature of evil, and the necessity of good. I did not expect The Hobbit, An Unexpected Journey to be over-the-top excellent. I just expected it to be good and an enjoyable tribute to stories I have loved my entire lifetime. As stated in previous articles here at the OW I have allowed myself to enjoy on many nights the words of J.R.R. Tokens’ many works by candlelight, or on a backyard porch under swift moving nighttime clouds next to a lantern. So I have a passion already present for the material offered in The Hobbit. Aside from that, I also followed closely the development of the film through the legal hurdles it had to pass in order to arrive in theaters under Peter Jackson’s direction, which for a long time I never thought would happen—because of the stunning success of The Lord of the Rings trilogy a decade ago. So it was with some pent-up reverence that I took my family to the movies on December 15, 2012 and let me declare that The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey is an unexpected delight. The Hobbit as a film is jaw-dropping great and filled to the absolute brim with passion, rich storytelling, and a fully flushed out journey into Middle-Earth that will change the lives of many people who see it for the better. It is a stunningly fantastic movie—a cut from the tapestry of cinema that will set new heights of expectation from audiences permanently. I did not think it was possible to make a movie version of The Hobbit that exceeded, or even matched the effort of Lord of the Rings—but Peter Jackson has been successful in that daunting task and then some.
The Hobbit is essentially a treasure hunt that is triggered when a dragon pushes a society of dwarves from their home in the Lonely Mountain. Bilbo Baggins is recruited as a burglar/thief to penetrate the mountain and help remove the terrible dragon Smoug who is now residing there bathing his massive body in mountains of gold stolen from the dwarves. I will admit that reviewers did discourage me a bit when they reported that Warner Brothers had pushed Jackson into stretching the 300-page book of The Hobbit which is a kid’s book into three—three hour films, and that the first half of An Unexpected Journey was boring. For such reviewers, I can only say that they have become spoiled brats, and the action of The Hobbit was very intense at the end making the rather story driven beginning seem like a very different movie. But the beauty is that Jackson was able to make The Hobbit into a better story then the actual book was—which is almost never the case—without violating the literary material of Tolkien at all. Only under Peter Jackson’s direction could this have been done with such a close association with Lord of the Rings as The Hobbit takes place 60 years before the Rings films. The beginning is only boring compared to a very intense ending—more intense than any movie I can remember seeing—and I’ve seen most of them.
For me personally, I found the deep secrets and constant references to an evil that is slowly seething up into Middle-Earth to be fascinating in reference to the events of Lord of the Rings. The Hobbit takes the time to show how the seeds of evil are actually planted and how slowly over time they can emerge right under the noses of some of the wisest minds. In The Hobbit it is the wizard Gandalf who looks like a crazed fool in comparison to his mentor Sauruman the White Wizard, Elrond the Lord of Rivendell, and Galadriel co-ruler of Lothlórien. Gandalf in a scene that was one of my favorites attempts to tell these leaders of Middle-Earth of his devious plot to rid the Lonely Mountain of the dragon, but also to combat a seething evil that is emerging slowly in the cracks of society. It was my favorite scene in the film because I feel a lot like Gandalf in real life uttering the same kinds of warnings, schemes and mechanisms that I have involved myself in only to have a White Wizard type politician declare—“show me the proof of these allegations.” Evil does not grow within the honesty of critical assessment, and nobody but Gandalf and Galadriel can even remotely see it. Of course, we know that Gandalf was right and that 60 years later that evil will have arrived fully in Middle-Earth in the events of Lord of the Rings. In An Unexpected Journey Gandalf sees the evil before everyone else, and must face that realization alone—which is realistically, often the case.
In many ways Peter Jackson has done with The Hobbit what George Lucas did with the prequels of Star Wars and that is to pull back wide on Middle-Earth to tell of the events that led up to the Academy Award winning movies that were previously done. But Jackson has not violated the original Tolkien material to perform the task, he’s only added to it with previously unrelated Tolkien material about Middle-Earth which led to controversy with some critics. Usually in novel translations things get left out of a movie version of a great book. It is not often—if ever that things that were not specifically in the source novel find their way into the film version without deviating away from the source, but following it sincerely. This is what Jackson has done, and he did an absolutely marvelous job of it. Literally breath-taking in just how spectacular of a job he did—if viewers thought that Middle-Earth had been adequately flushed out in the Lord of the Rings films, The Hobbit will prove that there is much more to explore, and it is an exciting adventure all its own.
I am an old fan of these types of stories, and it is hard to impress me. But—The Hobbit impressed me in every category, music, visual effects, character development, mythological significance, plot validation; The Hobbit is successful in every single category of filmmaking splendor. And the characters go through one cliffhanger after another in some of the most astonishing conflicts that have ever taken place between characters on a movie screen. There is nothing like The Hobbit that has ever been done in any film to date. Many of the sequences step up and over Lord of the Rings in sheer brutality, and cinematic effectiveness. If the Academy Awards snub this film because of internal Hollywood politics, it will be a shame—because The Unexpected Journey deserves the same kind of respect that Return of the King garnered. This first Hobbit film is simply that good.
I’ve been on many camping trips, several going into the deep back country, and the general rule is to leave a campsite the way it was when you found it. Put rocks back where you found them, don’t leave behind any garbage, and make sure the area where your tent was pitched didn’t leave behind any evidence.
The same care was obviously taken during the production of The Hobbit. Showing care and respect for a natural setting is not the same as being a “tree hugging hippie.” Environmental extremism is not what I’d classify happening on this Hobbit set. But rational concern and appreciation for the settings they are trying to capture on film.
Of a particular interest in the above entry is the scene with the barrels being filmed. Anyone who knows the book The Hobbit, knows that this will be the scene where the Hobbits escape from the mountain prison.
This is yet another reason that The Hobbit will be a fantastic film. The personalities involved are having fun; they are being smart in how they go about the production without going overboard. I enjoy these wonderful little segments not so much for the documentation of the film that they are making and the content of that film, but for the adventure along the way. Watching this journey of making the film has turned out to be an adventure in itself that is as much fun, if not more so than an actual film.
Fantasy is the bridge that meets the world of reason with the perception of what one suspects is there, but does not yet have the facts, or the methods of obtaining those facts. Under such conditions we can never say with any certainty what something is. But in our rational minds we can spot truth even if it is laced in the play of fiction. It is because of these elements that I am fascinated by the production of The Hobbit directed by Peter Jackson where he takes viewers on a journey through the third video blog directly from the set. You can view my previous comments about The Hobbit by clicking on this link. You can see the next video below where Peter Jackson has traveled to London to film Christopher Lee in his pick-up shots at the legendary James Bond stages in England. There is so much to like about this clip as it is a wonderful trip into the history of film that crosses many genres to explore the significance of the dwarves in full make-up.
My enjoyment of fantasy films and books is not to say that I openly embrace the theories of mysticism, the practice of arbitrarily placing faith in ideals that do not have any roots in reality. To me, I see the theories of most modern economists, particularly those of the Federal Reserve to be more mystical than the actions of the dwarves and wizards of The Hobbit. I see blind faith into any idea to be mysticism, and that includes religions and even the political trends of global warming. Anything that is believed with an abandonment of fact is considered a form of mysticism. That includes the arbitrary statement that education funding must increase to improve education, because such statements have nothing to do with reality. The reality is that increases in funding do not improve education. Such statements are made because the participants who say those things want to believe it, not because things are actually that way in actuality.
To say that the earth is warming and therefore carbon credits must be sold to save it from mankind’s degradation is to place the same faith in fantasy and mysticism that one places in a religious figure, which is why such political measures are presented in the same fashion as a religion. People are asked to arbitrarily subscribe to a theory based on completely agnostic comprehension. They are asked to believe that the earth is in danger because “experts” told them this was the case. To me, these thought patterns are pure mysticism.
So the magic in a film like The Hobbit wielded by a wizard like Gandalf the Gray is not a lesser concept than anything proposed by a modern mystic such as those behind the global warming movement. All politicians who propose that they can heal the sick, bring riches to the poor and thus change the world for the better are simply making arbitrary claims rooted in pure mysticism. I find the literature of J.R.R. Tolkien to be more valid than those mystics who run for president or state governments. Because I have learned that I can’t believe anything that the average politician says, or the media that reports it. But I can trust in the sincerity of the characters in The Hobbit. There is a truth in their actions that point to observations not yet made with human eyes.
We are all children of the universe and we come into its existence learning greater and greater truths as each year meets us. We might not understand at age one the complexities we can fathom by age 19, or age 50. As time passes we develop the cognition to piece together observations based on reality. So with age we can be said to gain much wisdom. This is why the mystics seek to discredit the old and give power to the young, because the young are not yet developed and do not understand the tricks of the mystics. But the wise do. And in The Hobbit, it is Gandalf, the wise old wizard who embodies more truth even in his magic than most who live and breathe among us in the real world.
When I see these clips from The Hobbit I see an honesty present that is more real than a whole day of watching CSPAN on cable TV. There is less fiction in a fantasy set in an unspecified time in a fictional place called Middle-Earth, than in the suit and ties of modern politics. And that is why dear reader, I am spending so much time on this subject of the upcoming film called The Hobbit.
The mystics of our time point at fantasy stories like Lord of the Rings, and Star Wars and declare them to be harmless fantasies intended for light entertainment and escape. But the escape is not one from reality, but toward it. In these fantasies I do not seek them so diligently to leave the world of reality to immerse myself into their imaginative splendor. I seek these epic stories because there is a truth present in the actions of the characters that hint at knowledge not yet discovered through the mechanisms of deductive thinking. It is through the imagination that we see what our senses have not yet matured enough to see and the mystics of our time would have us cast away logic and drink ourselves drunk so that we are enchanted by their crooked tongues.
And even as one of the greatest film directors on the planet, Peter Jackson cannot help but be enchanted not by the film he is currently making, but by the memory of the great films of James Bond at the historic sound stage in England. Because as all story tellers and lovers of those epics know, there is truth in myth that shows the error of those actual mystics who wish to defy logic with every breath they take and word they squeeze through their teeth. It doesn’t matter if the fantasy is from The Hobbit and its magic wielding leader the wizard Gandalf, or the suave charisma of James Bond, there is truth in those fantastic movie characters that point to reality and those of us who are hungry for it.
I’m not really interested if what I’ve said here is too obscure for most to understand. I’m sure a handful of you will know what I’m saying, and a majority will be thoroughly baffled by my statements. That doesn’t matter because I’m writing to those select few who have developed the ability through their love of fictional fantasy to grasp complicated concepts. It is in those types of people who the world is not a mystery and the actions of the mystics are obvious. Because before one can see the big picture, they have to be able to grasp it in their mind and it is in fantasy that the tool for developing this ability manifests.
The world is full of false prophets and mystics at virtually every step in the human experience. Yet the answers are usually in all the places they tell you not to look. And they say not to look at fantasy films like The Hobbit for any grasp of reality. But in my experience, if it’s reality you seek, you will find it in those places of the imagination built with the scaffolding of observed logic.
This is a wonderful video that once again shows why Peter Jackson is currently the best in the business. All this behind the scenes stuff will do nothing to harm the final impression of the film, because the goal of the production is to shoot scenes that hide everything shown in these video clips with the content of the story. It is hard to see an endless supply of mountain ranges and pick the proper shots that fit perfectly into the context of a story created by J.R.R. Tolkien many years ago, yet the crew is doing just that with great attention to detail.
Both of those film adaptations suffer greatly by the weight of the mighty books. Great works of literature such as those are very, very difficult to translate into film. The film versions leave something to be desired because in the mind of the reader, it is very difficult to capture the essence of what images are painted across the mind conjured up by the words. Even the Harry Potter films suffered from this to some extent even with the big budget attempt. Brave New World and Atlas Shrugged have so many characters and the scope of the work is so vast that the production value comes across almost like a television show. The essence of the story still gets conveyed, but the theater experience as a separate entity does suffer.
In Tolkien’s work, which I find particularly attractive, the characters are smart. The wizards are wise, they read big ancient books, and the hobbits are cultured. So the detail to capture on film requires literally thousands upon thousands of craftsman to supply that added texture which Jackson effortlessly incorporates into his film version. The ability to juggle all these tasks while flying in a helicopter and finding just the right shots to reflect what Tolkien intended in literature, which will be ridiculed by a loving public all of whom interpreted the information independently, and is a truly laborious task. But as seen in that clip, Jackson is on top of every aspect of the production like a man who has already been there and done it. Yet he is doing it in the present.
It’s the mind of Jackson that makes this adaption of The Hobbit head and shoulders above similar attempts. I enjoy the effort that goes into just about any film, but one of such quality like The Hobbit begin and end on the set with the smallest detail and being at the front of the train in thinking.
Another interesting fragment to be taken from this short clip is the crew who left for vacation. One of the reasons that those who work in the film business tend to not be much grounded in a political philosophy is because they do travel the world so much and touch so many cultures while shooting on location. They are not particularly in love with capitalism or socialism or any variation in between. They just want to know when they get paid, and if they can get in and out of an airport. Political philosophy is up to “other people.” It works well for their nomadic lifestyles but caution should be used when listening to these actors when they give interviews and they are asked political questions. Chances are they don’t know much about politics. They might know something about Obama because they were invited to a fund raiser and had the opportunity to meet him, so in relation to other politicians, they probably don’t know much about what’s going on and will support Obama—because they shook his hand. Actors tend to become absorbed in whatever project they are working on, so the outside world gets lost to them.
Personally, I find these little breaks into the world of Peter Jackson’s production of The Hobbit to be welcome voyages into a land I wish so much the rest of the world could conceive. In films the cast and crew work so hard to make an idea come to life. The idea might be a fantasy about Hobbits, Wizards and dragons, but the reality is a group of individuals who make those ideas into a story that reflects the vision. Films—particularly ones adapted from classic literature are about big ideas that must be turned from a fantasy into a reality by minds that have so much vision that they can spot the elements in the randomness of the living world. And that is a talent worth celebrating as the quest for revisiting the wonders of Middle-Earth presses upon us in the months to come.
My normal readers might be mystified by my sudden fascination with The Hobbit, the film that is set to be released in December of 2012 for part one, then December 2013 as a two-part film adaption of the classic Tolkien novel. Well, aside from being a lover of great books, I love great movies, I love stories that articulate mythology because it is myth that builds or dismantles cultures. I concluded this during my 10 year independent study of comparative religion and mythology led by Joseph Campbell. My passion for life is in these topics, and my anger at politics at all levels is because I can see clearly that they are on a destructive path in the scheme of cultural understanding. Many people who share these passions with me withdrawal from political involvement. I see this as a flaw since observations seem wasteful if assistance to our current culture is not utilized.
But the more I interact with the people of the world the more I’m disappointed, which is why people who study such things retreat to mountain cabins or even caves to live out their days with stacks of books and very little social interaction. Because when you work hard to gain knowledge and elevate your consciousness, it becomes infuriating to deal with people who insist on being stupid, and insist on being at the back of the train.
When I meet people who insist on being in the front of the train, I find joy. And I begin to cheer for those people to be right, because it takes a lot of courage to exist at the front of the train of any mode of thinking. In regard to The Hobbit, it is a film production that is at the front of the train. It is a project of extreme quality as determined by Pirsig’s Metaphysics of Quality. Because of that, I will predict right now that The Hobbit will win Best Picture at the Academy Awards ceremony in the spring of 2013 as well as Best Director along with at least 5 other Academy Awards. Part 2 of The Hobbit will do the same in the spring of 2014. It is as clear to me as a freshly cleaned window that The Hobbit is a special film, because The Hobbit obeys all the elements of the Metaphysics of Quality, and anyone who wishes to study what it looks like in the real world as opposed to words on a printed page needs to just watch this Hobbit Blog from the set of that same film to study what being in the front of the train looks like and see quality before it’s creation.
The primary reason for The Hobbit’s success is Peter Jackson, the director. He functions from the front of the train as most successful people do. But the difference with Jackson is that he effortlessly is able to deal with all elements of his train, with ease. Keep in mind that the film he is working on has a budget of around $150 million dollars which is the same budget as the Lakota School System or any medium-sized corporation. The startling aspect of the above clip is that Jackson is not predatory in his dealings with his co-workers. He is loose, and addresses all departments of his film projects equally. Jackson knows he is way out in front of everyone else, that he’s on the cutting edge, but he does not feel the need to belittle the other members of the train, even those in the back who tend to bankroll these kinds of projects. Jackson deals with everyone well, and this is reflected in his films.
Movies to me are fascinating to study as little mini companies. They rise up like rain clouds then storm like there is no tomorrow then as quickly as they came are gone from the sky as though they were never there. They go through a typical business cycle in just a few years what a company like Boeing might go through over decades. In the clip above you are seeing the start of a company, the hiring, and basic implementation of the product by a small army of cast and crew. On a movie, thousands of people are suddenly employed; hand-picked by the producers to execute the product, so the quality of those decisions will ultimately determine the success of the venture.
Most film productions do their hiring from the back of the train. Jackson does his from the front. This is the prime difference in determining success or failure. It doesn’t matter if it’s a movie, a large company, or an advertising firm; they all share in the rules of the Metaphysics of Quality. If decisions are made by those at the front of the train they tend to work much better than those from the back. The science behind that concept requires study to understand the reason. But it does not take a mind from the back, middle or front of the train to observe quality and anyone with a mind can witness from the above clip that there is something special going on with The Hobbit.
Unfortunately people like Peter Jackson are rare. And I doubt that Jackson set out to learn and live the Metaphysics of Quality. Jackson is the benefactor of a number of unusual circumstances that prepared his mind to be simply the greatest film director in the modern world. And he is. History will prove it. Those two Hobbit films will bring joy to hundreds of millions of fans and will generate at least a billion dollars in revenue per film for a two-year period. The merchandising alone will carry the mythology of The Hobbit into mainstream culture that will transcend politics for years to come and society will benefit from that joy in immeasurable ways. And it all starts at the front of the train of thinking, in the clip seen above.
You see, because Jackson is at the front of the train he’s already achieved the success in his mind. He’s already arrived and it shows in his body language, his speeches, his general communication to the people under him. He doesn’t feel a need to comb his hair or dress in a particular way to impress anyone, because he doesn’t need to. Everyone else in the world is under him in thought and he knows it. But he doesn’t rub it in either. He knows that the people in the middle of the train, who are helping him make the films will understand where he’s going eventually, and they’ll arrive there of their own accord. The financiers in the back of the train with the media are scared as they always are. They are ready to jump off the train at the first sign of trouble. But when the box office receipts come in, they’ll be the first to take credit for the entire train. And Jackson knows it and does not show bitterness about the process. Because by the time all this happens, he’s already on to his next project well out of sight from those in the back of the train and Jackson doesn’t care. And society isn’t even on the train, they just watch it come and go in passive observation. Once it passes they might say they enjoyed it and will remember it far into the future. But they cannot take credit for its creation, or its motion. For them it’s just an experience.
So when I’m ready to fold up the chairs and take my books up to a mountain cabin and tell the world to go “fu** itself” these clips by Jackson remind me that not everyone is worth casting away as fools. Because Jackson reminds me that there are some good things to look forward to, and there are people worth knowing. Peter Jackson and his Hobbit films are examples of these. Traveling in the front of the train is usually a very difficult task because the rest of the train weighs you down. And most of the time it leaves those in the front feeling used and abused. But every now and then the situation works out really well, and Peter Jackson is among the best of the best at what he does, and I find his work refreshing, and his Hobbit Blogs more than entertaining. I see in them hope and it is how I recharge my own batteries for all the parasites that I feel I drag along behind me who refuse to move their feet or exercise their minds.
That’s why fighting from the front of the train is better than retreating off the train all together to read books and watch the worlds trains roll by in a valley below without being engaged. It doesn’t always feel that way, but it’s worth doing.
Sometimes the best way to see something clearly is to back up so you can put it in focus. It also helps to not view the world exclusively through one particular specialization of which one makes a living. Living life should be a constant adventure of always learning and expanding ones viewpoint, and not relegating a perception to just those within the field of one’s occupation. This is the role of philosophy and story tellers, people I enjoy spending time around more than any other, because they often see the bigger picture of things, excel in this skill and do society great justice when they share the fruits of their labor.
The dark story of making The Hobbit is one that has held the project up for years and is yet another story about how labor unions are corrosive organizations. And its statements like that which have blacklisted me from any future work within the Hollywood community. I made this choice consciously knowing that I will instead shift my attention in these middle years of my life to writing novels instead. So I am happy to let my whip work and other entertainment talents drift into the nature of that independent task of authorship. Because there is no going back now, I’ve said too much.
But what I said needed to be said. It’s the things that Peter Jackson doesn’t want, or need to say. It’s the things that the distributors at Warner Brothers can’t talk about even if their opinions are harsh on the matter privately. This is because a subtle harness is placed upon the entertainment industry and that harness is the exact same gag that exists on public education, and is preventing the open learning and creativity of millions of children from realizing their full potential. It is that of the labor unions.
During Lord of the Rings, the production could be said to be very successful because Peter Jackson as a director is extremely personable, grounded, and fantastic at multitasking. He kept his set fun which allowed for a bonding to occur between his technical staff and his actors which showed up on-screen in a tremendous way. It is unlikely that Lord of the Rings would have been such a great production if Jackson had not been the director, or if the entire film had not been shot in New Zealand.
My wife and I made serious plans to move to New Zealand in the early years of our marriage and live on a sailboat. So I understand the appeal of a country that as of now prides itself on rugged individuality. When one thinks of New Zealand government of any kind does not come to mind, just big open fields, mountains, horses and–sheep. But the one great thing that I’ll say about New Zealand that the film industry can’t say is that one of the reasons Lord of the Rings went together so impressively, and all members of the crew got along unusually well, and communication worked at all levels was the absence of a labor union in New Zealand involving the actors and technical unions. Before Lord of the Rings came out there were only a few major films to come out of New Zealand, The Man from Snowy River films, and the George Lucas spectacle Willow. So the labor unions didn’t protest too intensely when New Line Cinema aligned with Wingnut films to produce a massive three film adaptation to the Tolkien classic, the unions didn’t pay much attention. Jackson wisely shot the films back-to-back while Fellowship of the Ring was still in post production and had not yet hit theaters. The Lord of the Rings films were able to be made outside of the chaos of the usual Hollywood production without a lot of union influence in an almost campfire style production where everyone bonded on the set.
However, success breeds the looters, and after multiple Academy Awards the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance union from Australia decided it wanted to move over into the New Zealand market because they feared that such high-profile big budget films in the future would go to New Zealand instead of Australia where the Star Wars films were shot over similar concerns. These big productions could not be done in the United States, because there is too much hassle these days over labor disputes, so film companies run from unions out of necessity, and in this case New Zealand is the last far-flung corner of the globe without one of these labor unions controlling the industry, so The Hobbit will be the last of its kind. The unions took action against The Hobbit production joining with the Screen Actors Guild and four other international unions to boycott the production.
Peter Jackson in an effort to save his home country of New Zealand the thousands upon thousands of jobs The Hobbit would bring to craftsman and film personnel refused to buckle under the union pressure and called the union what it was, a bully looking for money, membership and power. He threatened to take the production of The Hobbit and its $300 million budget to Europe in order to make the film. You can read that article here:
Thankfully the whole situation settled as thousands of New Zealanders protested to keep The Hobbit production in New Zealand, so the unions backed off socially, and Jackson was able to go and make the film the way he likes to make them. For me personally it is very nice to see Peter walking around on his sets casually without all the egotistical authority that so many of his predecessors displayed. It’s Jackson’s directorial style to be very open, fair and forthcoming in his dealings with his cast and crew. Jackson is certainly a director who would suffer from too much outside control on his projects which is what the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance union was trying to do. They saw Jackson’s success and they wanted to loot off his back, off his creations, and his relationships so they could get a piece of the pie for themselves.
This is what teachers unions have done to our schools. It’s no different in any respect. A school cannot pick up and move like Jackson threatened to settle a union dispute. A community has a school and it’s fixed in place. So if a union infests it with their looting tendency, the community is forced to deal with the extortion measures they employ.
The Disney Company deals with the unions by tossing more money at the problem which is why the Pirate films are so expensive. Disney has the advantage of generating a tremendous amount of money through their subsidiary companies, so they can play that game. They are too big to fly under the radar like Jackson does today, or Spielberg and Lucas used to. Notice that as Spielberg became bigger and more successful over the years, that his films seemed to become more and more bogged down. He still makes pretty good films, but nothing like his final year as a master filmmaker in 1993 with the release of Jurassic Park and Schindler’s List. I know people get angry with Spielberg and Tim Burton (who I think is a fantastic director) for sucking up to the Obama administration now, and the Clinton administration’s back in the 90’s, but at the heart of that evil is a desire for creative people to make their movies as a wall of opposition known as the entertainment unions stand in the way. The union influence shows up in the final product and it does rob the production of some magic. The audience can tell the difference and it does affect Hollywood’s bottom line. They respond by making more comedies, and easy productions that aren’t overly complicated and can be shot around Los Angeles or Las Vegas–easy set ups. The creative minds behind the movies attempt to keep the protesting communists who run the labor unions at bay with appeasement. Disney throws money at unions to advance a project which works, but prevents smaller film makers from being able to compete on equal footing, because the unions hold all producers to the same standard as a company like Disney. Unless the filmmaker makes the film out of the country like Jackson has, they find themselves encumbered needlessly both creatively and financially.
As I see the previews and clips coming in from The Hobbit I am starting to get excited, because such films—stories of such depth are rare for all the reasons described, and are true treasures of our culture. I desire a world where people can speak and do business with each other without the looters standing in the way trying to make easy money for themselves. And yes, my comments here about the education unions have blacklisted me in entertainment which will go on forever. But I have other talents and I’ll use them to tell the story of how human beings get themselves into these fixes. It’s a difficult thing to balance out the need to make a living and then to make a living that is honest and true. Because the chances are, even if you are a wealthy film maker, if your love is to make movies you still need the industry system to make them, so you do your best to shut your mouth and put up with the parts you don’t like. You give money to the Obama administrations as a payoff to a mobster thug and hope they leave you alone politically. And the same holds true for the teaching profession. Or any profession that is controlled by labor unions, it’s hard to come out and speak against it, and to call it what it is, because the system is designed to exclude any voice of dissention. But I will do it, because I’ve already started the process, so I might as well see it through. And in the meantime, I will cheer with much vigor the upcoming film The Hobbit for all these reasons and more. Great stories are so few and far between, and I’m so excited about this one that I may just go get in line for it right now.
The Overmanwarrior 