Chen G.
Mithlond
Feb 23 2019, 10:35am
Views: 30863
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His is just another Hero's Journey
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We've seen The Hero's Journey with Sam, with Frodo (to a point), with Aragorn; we've seen it in other tentpole franchises. Harry Potter very quickly morphed into a Hero's Journey, for instance.
A further difference to those characters (and to Bilbo's detriment) is also that Bilbo has no personal stakes in the story, apart from the possibility of dying or losing his comrades.
Thorin, by comparison, isn't undertaking The Hero's Journey. His heroic, certainly, as well as honourable; but he's also greedy, vain, cantankerous, isolationist, and zealous. That's a much more interesting character, and a very different one to what we've seen from this series so far. In that sense, it is different to The Lord of the Rings.
And unlike Bilbo, Thorin has personal stakes in the story. Its his homeland that needs reclaims, his vengenance (both upon Smaug and especially Azog) that needs be exacted, his grievance with Thranduil resolved and - most importantly - his demons that need be confronted.
That's what's so great about using the dragon as a red herring: letting him appear for a grand total of 20 minutes and killing him at the top of the third film - it drives home the idea that the true antagonist (until Sauron shows up) is Thorin himself.
Also, and again unlike what we've seen before, we've seen Hobbit protagonists, we've seen men as protagonists (within their respective subplots) and we've seen Elves. The time has come for a Dwarf protagonist and a Dwarf story to be told.
(This post was edited by Chen G. on Feb 23 2019, 10:38am)
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