The Sword and Laser discussion

The Hobbit has been revised a number of times since its first publication. Most of the changes are minor spelling and grammar corrections, but in a number of cases Tolkien went back and altered the text to conform with Lord of the Rings. The most significant change came with the second edition in which the Riddles in the Dark chapter was almost completely rewritten.

In the original version, Gollum isn't such a bad guy. Yes, he wants to eat Bilbo, but that's just his nature -- he's not some twisted-hobbit whose been corrupted by the Ring but just a creature who was born and raised under the mountains. When Gollum agrees to the riddle contest, he genuinely intends to give Bilbo the Ring as a prize, and when he finds it missing he abjectly apologizes and offers to lead Bilbo out of the tunnels instead. They part on perfectly amicable terms.

When Tolkien later decided to make the Ring into pure, weapons-grade evil, he found Gollum's behavior no longer made sense, so he rewrote the chapter into what we have now with the murderous Gollum who never intended to let Bilbo go no matter how the game finished. If you look at the preface for The Hobbit, Tolkien even mentions the earlier version and claims it was a lie that Bilbo made up which has now been corrected.

The odd thing is, I have no problem with this change -- to me the version we have now is ideal and the original sounds awful. But is that because this is the version I read as a kid, or is it genuinely better. If there'd been an Internet in the 1950s, would people have complained about how Tolkien completely destroyed Gollum's character with the revision and demanded he republish the original text as it appeared in 1937?

The original book was very much a childrens story. After the LOTR it became part of a bigger story and needed to fit in better. I have no problems with the changes, they make the whole thing better.

Oooooh, that's interesting. I always felt there was something odd about that chapter; it always seemed a little out of place in the rest of novel, a little more aware of what follows than most of the story. Now I know why.

I'm torn as to which I prefer. The original would have felt more in keeping, and there wouldn't have been that odd sense of something having been altered, but I do enjoy the danger Bilbo is in in the current version.

My version has some notes about the revisions in the front and calls out Riddles in Dark as one of heavy revision.

I forgot all about it, and I had planned to go look into it further. Thanks for saving me some research.

Having never read the original (is it possible to do so online somewhere?) I feel like the chapter as it is revised fits. But it's hard to be bothered by something changing when you don't know how it's been changed.

My edition mentions that there were meant to much more extensive revisions in order to bring The Hobbit more in-line with Lord of the Rings, but as Tolkien was working on it he just felt that his revisions changed the book into something that it was never meant to be and so he scrapped them.

There is a great copy available courtesy of Northwestern University Library.

Riddles in the Dark - Side by Side comparison. Revisions are marked in blue text.

I didn't know all of that. Very interesting and the change makes more sense in the whole context of the LOTR saga. Awesome!

Mapleson wrote: "There is a great copy available courtesy of Northwestern University Library.

Riddles in the Dark - Side by Side comparison. Revisions are marked in blue text."

Awesome. Thanks!

Mapleson wrote: "There is a great copy available courtesy of Northwestern University Library.

Riddles in the Dark - Side by Side comparison. Revisions are marked in blue text."

I had never read the original "Riddle in the Dark". Thanks for the link!

I think from people's responses as well as my own feelings on the matter, this proves that not all "Lucasing" is necessarily bad. In this case, Tolkien had a legitimate plot reason for rewriting the chapter that improves the series as a whole (and making Gollum's later motivations make a whole lot more sense). This in contrast to changes to Star Wars, which were mostly superficial but at other times ended up making no damn sense.

Mapleson wrote: "There is a great copy available courtesy of Northwestern University Library.

Riddles in the Dark - Side by Side comparison. Revisions are marked in blue text."

Awesome link. Thumbs up!

George wrote: "I think from people's responses as well as my own feelings on the matter, this proves that not all "Lucasing" is necessarily bad. In this case, Tolkien had a legitimate plot reason for rewriting t..."

I think part of the reason most people don't mind the "Lucasing" (great term by the way George) is because the explanation of the revision makes incredible sense in relation to all the other works. What Bilbo would have lied about is the ring, downplaying it so the others wouldn't think to take the precious from him. If the ring makes people obsessively protective, it makes sense that Bilbo would lie about it. Also, since the original story is written by Bilbo, but then completed by Frodo, within the storyline, the revision makes sense. People generally don't mind revisions for the sake of the story.

Lucas on the other hand tends to revise things to make a profit and not for the betterment of the story. It could be argued that most revisions he made were monetarily driven exclusively and as such create a lesser story slightly than what was previously. Han shooting first makes him an even more compelling character throughout the rest of the story of Star Wars.

Tolkien changed things to create a better narrative line, Lucas changed things to create a greater revenue source. I don't mind the changes Tolkien makes because the explanation is perfect.

Rob wrote: "Having never read the original (is it possible to do so online somewhere?) I feel like the chapter as it is revised fits. But it's hard to be bothered by something changing when you don't know how it's been changed. "

And this is why George Lucas is praying that all of our VHS and Laserdisc copies of Star Wars get consumed in a holy fire of righteousness.

John wrote: "Tolkien changed things to create a better narrative line, Lucas changed things to create a greater revenue source. I don't mind the changes Tolkien makes because the explanation is perfect. "

I can't agree with you there. I don't think Lucas needed the money. He just couldn't stop tweaking his story until he saw it as perfect and damn what anybody else thinks. How dare he make his movies the way he wanted to...

For the Tolkien/Lucas analogy to be complete, it would need to be the case that all books can only be viewed through 'book-viewer' machines - some of these machines are in public spaces where you buy a ticket, some are smaller machines you use to view books at home. The original version of the Hobbit is released when the book-viewing machines at home are vastly inferior to the public book-viewing machines - print is much smaller, pages are sometimes blurry, etc. The release of the original Hobbit is a huge pop-culture and financial-success phenomenon, changing the book-making industry.

When Tolkien releases his revised Hobbit decades later, the book-viewing machines at home use a new format of book that come close to matching the quality of the public book-viewing machines. You can only read the original Hobbit through the now-painful experience of the old, private book-viewing machines. When the British Library asks for a copy of his award-winning original version, to be preserved for historical purposes, Tolkien refuses, sending them his revised instead. Tolkien earlier spoke against the "colorization" of older books, and the importance of preserving books in their original form as historical and cultural artifacts, but now publicly wishes for the utter destruction of his own original version, hoping it will be erased from history.

I've ranted about this before on the boards, so I'll just repeat myself a bit here. ;) Creators always have a right to revise and rework their creations. But it's Lucas determination to completely erase his original that's so frustrating, especially given its immense pop-culture and industry-changing impact - it deserves historical preservation. I would be happy to just roll my eyes at endless Special Edition tweaking and leave it at that, IF the original was also available in a high quality format.

Even if all the SE changes were excellent (in the way that I feel the Gollum changes in the Hobbit are excellent), I would still believe that the original films deserve quality preservation.

One can only hope that with the hand-off of the Star Wars franchise to Disney, that we might see a high quality preservation of the original films released (source material for a restoration exist despite Lucas' claim that the original film sources were hopelessly altered during the making of the SE). Surely people at Disney have done the math on all the longing-for-the-truly-original-trilogy fans (like myself) who have been waiting for, and would buy, such a release.

BTW, the The Annotated Hobbit details many other interesting revisions Tolkien made to the Hobbit to align it more with LOTR (and sometimes just to correct goofs) - though the Gollum scene is definitely the most significant.

I don't put much faith in a company who locks their movies away in some fictional "vault" in an attempt to create incentive to purchase it now.

Rob wrote: "I don't put much faith in a company who locks their movies away in some fictional "vault" in an attempt to create incentive to purchase it now."

Yes, but a high quality release of the original trilogy has already been in a Lucas vault forever....even through a vault-release lens, the inflated incentive via delayed release has been already been built. ;)

Jlawrence wrote: "For the Tolkien/Lucas analogy to be complete, it would need to be the case that all books can only be viewed through 'book-viewer' machines - some of these machines are in public spaces where you b..."

That was well put together.