The Hobbit is NOT a Prequel, So Don't Call It One

The Hobbit opens
December 14th.

On December 14th, New Line Cinema will release The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. Audiences have already watched the previews and said, "Okay, it's the prequel to Lord of the Rings," as their movie conditioning has become over the last fifteen years since Star Wars shat out The Phantom Menace. The problem is that audiences didn't know that it's really the other way around. Lord of the Rings is the sequel (technically, LOTR was supposed to be one book) for The Hobbit. If you've read any entry of this blog, you'll know my distain for the prequel (even with Prometheus in my top films of the year). So as the build up comes to The Hobbit's release, why are people (and New Line Cinema's marketing) referring to it like a prequel... the most horrible form of any "quel".

The dwarfs on the quest to Lonely Mountain.

The tale of Bibo Baggins (Martin Freeman), the mild mannered half-ling, sought out by the grey wizard Gandolf (Ian McKellen) to join in an adventure to Lonely Mountain. Baggins always enjoyed to little things in life and never took up in any adventures or excitement. However, Gandolf represents a group of dwarfs (led by Thorin Oakensield) who look to reclaim their fortune in the Lonely Mountain that was captured by a dragon Swaug. After some convincing by Gandolf, Bilbo leaves the Shire of Hobbiton and sees the rest of Middle-Earth. He encounters Trolls, goblins, giant spiders and wolves, but the one creature he meets and changes the world forever is Gollum. If you don't know who Gollum is by now, Google him dammit. In Gollum's caves, far below the caves of Goblins that were chasing them, Biblo battles Gollum with a game of riddles with the wager: Biblo's life or directions out. When Gollum loses, he returns to the caves, hoping to find his "birthday present", but it's nowhere to be found because Bilbo picked it up earlier. This moment was shown in the intro to the series in The Fellowship of the Ring, depicting the chapter "Riddles in the Dark" from The Hobbit. As a matter of fact, McKellen's Gandolf mutters "Riddles in the dark," in Fellowship while at Bilbo's house.

Peter Jackson wavered on directing The Hobbit,
but signed on and expanded it for a trilogy.

Unlike your typical "prequel", The Hobbit makes references to events that the Lord of the Rings expands on. The most notable is the ring, which isn't referred to as the Ring of Sauron at all. It simply made Bilbo invisible. Another aspect is that The Hobbit is being split into a trilogy. It's a bit unbelievable and could stretch the plot thin, but director Peter Jackson has earned the right to try it out. Though the less-is-more approach of Lord of the Rings may have worked better here. The other issue will be where to split the movies. The Lord of the Rings had definite parts to do it as all three books had definite conclusions (though Two Towers didn't use the book's ending). Where will the splits happen and can it keep audiences engaged? The Hobbit was written and turned into an animated 90 minute movie in 1977 with John Huston as the voice of Gandolf. Can it work as three epic films over 400 minutes?

Back to the title of this article, The Hobbit was written first and LOTR took up the cue from this initial offering by Tolkien. A true prequel's story does not exist at the time of the original's creation (case and point: Alien is to Prometheus). My point is a little hindered because technically Star Wars Episodes 1-3 existed, but not the stories finally presented. The Hobbit was always a pipe dream for LOTR fans (and having Ian McKellen reprise Gandolf was a bonus), but LOTR was the right call to do first. Unfortunately, prequels aren't the best quality (save X-Men: First Class and Prometheus as the few good ones), but The Hobbit isn't trying to show audiences "where it all began". It's telling Bilbo's story that was referenced numerous times in Fellowship of the Ring. There aren't many questions from LOTR that need to be answered- after all the Lonely Mountain isn't in Mordor. Therefore, it's really not a prequel in that aspect either. It won't end with the War for the Ring that was in the open of Fellowship of the Ring. That happened long before any of the events in The Hobbit. 

We'll see it soon as week's end, but one thing is for certain, The Hobbit is it's own story and not a story trying to jam information in to tell you how the characters you loved "got to" where you know them.  EVERY aspect in this wondrous book can be flushed out and enjoyable for all the fans, who were let down by Lord of the Rings at some point.