I have yet to be bored watching the 27-and-a-half-hour extended versions of the Lord of the Rings movie trilogy with the kids. It is truly an awe-inspiring cinematic masterpiece.
There is, however, one persistently annoying aspect of the trilogy that I am petitioning the studio to change on the next release and for the prequels that will appear soon. What’s that one annoying thing about the Lord of the Rings? You know what it is…
Hobbits.
I know, I know, hobbits are fairly integral to the plot, and especially so for the upcoming prequels (titled “The Hobbit,” Parts 1 and 2). We’re stuck with hobbits in these stories, and so the question is how they can be fixed.
In order to fix the hobbits, though, we must diagnose what exactly it is about them that makes us wish the Ringwraiths had finished them off in a bloody spectacle in the first part of the Lord of the Rings when they were foolishly cooking on that promontory.
The problem with the hobbits is not merely that the music shifts to weepy-give-me-a-hug music whenever Frodo and Sam get within two meters of one another. The main objection to the hobbits is, instead, a biological one…
Hobbits are lame. The hobbits in the movies are given the physical prowess of a regular human four-year-old with furry feet.
And that’s the problem.
Hobbits are small, yes. But that doesn’t mean that their only way of garnering respect from the other Middle Earth races is by cooking second breakfasts or getting completely wrecked and dancing on tables.
Small animals are not merely smaller, weaker, and slower versions of their larger-animal counterparts. Instead, small animals are more energetically active, sleep more, and possess many other consequences of scaling due to their smaller size. Small animals live their lives at a faster pace – they are quick, and practically impossible for much larger creatures to catch. In addition to being quick, small animals tend to be feisty, exhibiting morphological and behavioral specializations likely to rip, tear or stab something of importance on a larger animal’s body.
Have you ever tried to catch a tiny monkey? It’s practically impossible! Even chimpanzees can only do so with great tribal effort. And pity on you if you ever do manage to catch one; you’re likely to be licking your wounds a fraction of a second later. I’ll not even get into the inclination for smaller animals to defecate on bigger animals, something very relevant when trying to catch a monkey.
To illustrate the “quick and fierce” side of the small, take a look at the following two videos, the first showing a squirrel going for a deer’s jugular, and the second showing a bear deciding against tangling with a house cat.
We see, then, that small animals tend to be quick and feisty, and – unlike hobbits – decidedly NOT lame.
Imagine how much fun it would be to watch the Lord of the Rings movies, but with fleet, ferocious and blood-thirsty little hobbits replacing the plodding, pleading, thirsty little hobbits we have gotten to know and grudgingly love. (Please forward this to Peter Jackson.)
This first appeared on March 23, 2010, as a feature at ScientificBlogging.com.
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Mark Changizi is a professor of cognitive science at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and the author of The Vision Revolution (Benbella Books).
Love it, Mark. You want to head up a Hobbit Anti-Defamation League?
Jeeze, Hobbits live the most sedentary life in the world, they make even the most developed, western, modern society look forbearing. I think they eat like 15 meals a day.
Maybe they’re meant to be an allegory for your average modern people, who are sometimes capable of amazing feats.
I hadn’t thought of that. The moral would be that we can drink and sit around even MORE, and still have within us the power to do something great!
I’d love to see a remake sans soppy music and heavy on Hobbit dexterity…maybe even a deadly super-power or two. Would the Hobbit anti-defamation league consider lobbying for a vengeful/more-susceptible-to-temptation-like protagonist in the name of adding greater complexity and depth to the character?
Well, not to be ignorant or anything… like the writer of this letter, but have you even read the books? I haven’t, I can’t get through the dense writing of Tolkien and find it utterly boring, but I have tried on several occasions to read them. As far as I can tell, the portrayal of hobbits in the movie ADAPTION OF THE BOOKS, is entirely accurate to the books. Tolkien even says that they live a sheltered lifestyle. Nobody says that they are smaller versions of humans, Tolkien does say that they are closer related to humans than to dwarves or elves, but he never say that they are actually related in any way. I have read the Hobbit all the way through, and the qualities that you dislike are exactly what makes the hobbit good. Bilbo is completely out of his league and he knows it, but somehow, things just keep working out for him. In my opinion, the hobbits, and the shire are just fine, exactly as envisioned by Tolkien. I do have to agree that the parts with Frodo and Sam are pretty bad though. All they seem to do is cry if they even look at each other.
I read them all as a young man, and although I liked them, I agree they are flat and unemotional compared to what the movie pulls off. I haven’t done a careful analysis of whether the movie’s hobbit lameness is entirely the fault of the Tolkien or of Jackson. That’d make a great essay paper for an undegrad somewhere!
Hobbits are entirely the fault of Tolkien. Peter Jackson’s portrayal of them is the most accurate I’ve ever seen, but he can’t be blamed for that. I saw an interview with Tolkien once; he said they represented the westcountry (UK) farming community. Simple bumpkins who have no idea of what they could achieve if they only stopped gossiping about the small doings of their community and extended family and took a peek at the world beyond their small horizons.
The hobbits may be irritating , but at least Peter left out Tom Bombadil, who may be a ‘merry fellow in boots of yellow’, But amusing or believable he wasn’t.
Interesting. It’s been 20 years since I’ve read Tolkien, and still I wonder if Jackson might not taken whatever little wiggle room there may be. …e.g., maybe quickening them up a bit. And the weepy music — that wasn’t in the book!
Thanks!
Like you say about wanting some kind of compensation for their slowness and smallness. e.g Squirrel being a quick little bastard. The Hobbits do have a compensation…Resilience!! Awesome! Tough Skin! cause really, Boromir: a Pretty Sturdy, large man, caught a glimpse of the ring and was almost immediately corrupted, as was Galadriel: an Elven Queen. Yet Frodo, a hobbit, somehow managed to carry the thing around his neck all the way to Mordor and was only just corrupted at the very end. Not bad really.
Hobbit-lover.
Not having the attributes you argue for are why hobbits are extinct.
Dude, you have problems!!!!!!!!! Hobbits are awesome!!! They re not lame AT ALL!!!! I think you need to read the books again!!!! Seriously, dude!!!
A lame, lame critique. And your job requires you to present well-reasoned arguments? Laughable. (You never say who you are comparing the hobbits to when it comes to physical prowess, so I’ll assume you’re comparing them to humans.)
- First of all, the size ration of squirrel:deer and bear:cat is not hobbit:man. They differ by an order of magnitude; these examples don’t apply and you’re arguments concerning them are worth horse-poop.
- Moreover, hobbits are incredibly light-footed and hard to detect so they are indeed superior to humans in these areas.
- Hobbits gain everyone’s respect in middle earth not by getting wrecked at a party (people are supposed to get wrecked at parties, btw, Mark you party pooper), but by playing more than a crucial role in defeating Sauron and his forces. I don’t remember Aragorn and everyone honoring the hobbits when they got wrecked, but I do remember Aragorn saying to the gang “My friend, you bow before no one” at the end of The Return of the King after they had kicked some serious Mordor butt.
You try to be funny, Mark, and I’m sure you are a nice guy too. However, I’d suggest sticking to theoretical neurobiology. At least there is a decent chance that you’ll get good at it.
Oh, and I can only hope that your reply to this post is wittier than your reply to Isaac.
Hobbits are about half the height of a human, and so plausibly about an eighth of our mass. …or nearly an order of magnitude smaller. Sufficiently different that phylogenetic scaling differences — in morphology and behavior — would probably be very apparent. I hadn’t quite intended the videos to be a faithful mass-ratio example. Just an educational tool for a next generation of hobbit.