Today New Line Cinema revealed Tauriel, an elf warrior from Mirkwood, part of Peter Jackson’s Hobbit cast.
It’s part of the build-up to the new movie, but the character never existed in any of Tolkien’s works, and when I add that to the rather loose adaptation of the first movie, I can’t help thinking that the liberties apparently taken with Tolkien’s charming childrens’ tale have turned it into something else.
I do kind of wonder. But I’ve been a Jackson fan for years, and a Tolkien fan for even longer.So in the interests of helping a fellow Kiwi I thought I might provide a list of characters I’ve invented that never appeared in The Hobbit but who might – perhaps – be suitable for the movie version. I hope I’m not too late.
Tyhmä Nimi – legendary King of the Dwarfs and part-time truck driver known for making magic rings disappear, only to have them ‘reappear’ about 48 hours later.
Sierain Sormella – northern Elf who wields the legendary Sword of Cutting, named Kauttaviiva, known to the Dwarfs as Khlunk, also called ‘Erittäin terävä teräväkärkiset laite‘ on alternate Wednesdays.
Wendy – escaped from another kids’ book after being kidnapped in Hyde Park. (Actually, I didn’t invent this character.)
Glugg – large CGI-style Orc with a big nose. Has no obvious story function.
Kala Kalakauppias – an Elvish fisherman who could appear on the far left in Scene 3.
Copyright © Matthew Wright 2013
Matthew Wright 
Now with these characters in a movie I’ll watch! 😀
They probably introduced this character so there will be a strong female role, seeing as there isn’t one in the book (do I hear someone yelling Tolkien’s a sexist?).
To be fair, Jackson did it with LOTR as well. In the book it was Glorfindel who took Frodo to Rivendell, not Arwen. And, while I haven’t read it in a while, I can’t remember a romance between Aragorn and Eowyn the way it was shown in the movie.
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Thanks! Cool! You’re right. I think that for all his genius, Tolkien wasn’t good with female characters and I recall Phillipa Boyens commenting along these lines years ago at a local film school talk,(which I’d crashed). They had to amp up Arwen in LOTR to make the story meet modern sensibilities. And there’s nothing wrong with adding strong female characters. The problem I have (as a kind of majorly pure Tolkien fan) is that the Jackson version of The Hobbit is SO far from the original book that adding more non-Tolkien characters is just underscoring the divergence. I guess at the end of the day what counts is whether it’s a good movie. The first part wasn’t, particularly – to me, at least – but there is always hope for the second – and, given Jackson’s genius, for the directors’ cut of the first, when he completes it.
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Actually Matthew, Kala Kalakauppias is not a character but rather a real person that lives on the corner of my street. He’s a chewing gum remover from Peckham. He just looks like an elvish fisherman, in scene 3 he actually wore no makeup.
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Can I get his autograph? 🙂
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It’ll cost you!
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ROFL, Matthew! It’s too tempting, isn’t it? I’m going to back Peter Jackson on this one, though. Yes, his Hobbit is a bit different from the book, but there is a lot of stuff in the Hobbit that happens ‘off’, so to speak and this version is mostly just putting that back in. And with regard to the girls, again, I think it’s arguable (as the Jackson team do) that the women are important, but Tolkien was just lousy at giving them page-time, so this is helping him out a bit.
And let’s face it, I am so in love with all of the brilliant, brilliant Weta folks and what they can do with this magnificent world that I am happy for them to make as many as they like. Also, the world can always do with more Dwarf singing, for mine!
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Besides the issue regarding the lack of strong female characters in Tolkien’s original works I suspect that the key reason for the addition of new characters and plots in the Hobbit films are simply commerical. I wonder how different Tolkien’s works would’ve been if making money was his primary concern?
Kind of on topic, I was recently talking to my father about Ken Follett’s ‘World Without End’ novel which was recently turned into a fantastic 8 part mini-series set during the start of the ‘Hundred Years’ War. It is a long novel (1000 plus pages) and you can see how there really is the content there for 8 shows, but we joked that had it been given to Peter Jackson then there would likely be 24 episodes!
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It’s interesting to speculate on Tolkien’s ouvre had it been written for commercial gain – I suspect it might not have taken off the way it did if it’d been too closely tailored to market… or it might have turned out like those dreadful “Sword of Shannara” books…
Have you ever read “Bored of the Rings”, incidentally? Harvard Lampoon – skewers Tolkien completely and, the authors insist, was written purely to improve the scale of their bank accounts. Most of the late 1960s pop-references are a bit dated now, but it’s still LOL stuff.,
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I do know the parody you are referring to! I haven’t read it but a friend of mine used to quote from it all the time and have us in hysterics.
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Thine pen cuts deeper than the sharpest sword. Too funny, dude!
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Thanks! I confess I’m as much a fan of the Harvard Lampoon’s “Bored of the Rings” as I am of Tolkien… 🙂
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