#idk i just feel the need to justify my liking of botfa since as a movie it's kinda messy

[dwarvishring]

comforting is the word! To think back to the time an unexpected journey was released (and before) and then the rest of the trilogy is still something I hold so close to my heart. If you don't mind me asking which film from the trilogy is your favorite?

you wrote a simple question. forgive me for the long winded answer i’m about to give

the simple answer is i think auj is the best film out of all three, in terms of pacing and structure. it keeps the focus on the company, and bilbo actually feels like the main character. in my opinion, dos sidelined him for the white council + kili/tauriel/legolas + bard subplots, and 50% of botfa is a battle sequence. to be fair to those two movies, i understand auj was the movie that had what was closest to a decent planning stage, and out of the three movies it was the one less impacted when they made the switch from two to three films.

however, i recently watched the extended editions and botfa is a movie i really really enjoyed (the extended edition specifically as it includes key character moments that make the film feel more bilbo/company centric and has better pacing overall) and i think they handled the thorin/bilbo arc really beautifully.

i’ve said this before but while lotr is overall a darker story, it has a much more uplifting/hopeful ending, whilst the hobbit reads more like a tragedy. 

my personal interpreation about the movies is that they’re about home (i think most of us can agree on that). i think the key is that home isn’t ultimately a place, but people. bilbo is a person with a lovely house but no home. he’s got a comfortable hobbit hole on top of a beautiful hill, but friends and family are nowhere to be seen (family that he likes, mind you. sackville-bagginses don’t count). this is especially true if we considered the hobbit takes places not that long after bilbo’s parents, seemingly the family he was closest to, passed away. meanwhile thorin is a person with no house but with a home. he lost the place he lived in, but has family and friends that are extremely loyal to him. the company represents thorin’s literal family (kili & fili), his friends (dwalin, balin, etc) and just in general his people that he’s ultimately doing all this for.

at some point in the narrative both thorin and bilbo make the switch. bilbo is taken away from his house, and ends up becoming part of the company. they become his family and in a way become his home (this, i think, would’ve been made more clear had there been more focus on the company during dos and botfa), and thorin rids himself of his family (by being a dragon-sickness induced jackass) but wins back erebor (thorin’s house, devoid of anything but cold, hard gold)

because of the dragon sickness, thorin stops thinking of the company as his home the moment he starts doubting their loyalty. at this point he hangs onto bilbo (who is now part of the company) as the last thread of home, cause he’s convinced the hobbit woudn’t betray him. that’s the reason in the acorn scene and the mithril scene thorin has his few moments of lucidity when talking to bilbo. and the moment bilbo proves to be unloyal too is the moment where thorin truly loses himself and retreats away from everyone. the scene with dwalin highlights how alone he is by his own doing. only when he breaks free of the hold the dragon sickness had of him (by listening to the voices of the people he cares about) does he realize his house is worth next to nothing without the people, his home, inside of it.

bilbo leaves erebor only once thorin (the dwarf in the company bilbo has the strongest bond with and his biggest connection to the family the company had become) dies, and he goes back to an empty bag end where all the hobbits in bilbo’s old life are gleefylly auctioning his possessions off after a few months of him being gone instead of mourning him (like i said, if there were andy friends or family in bilbo’s life before the quest, they weren’t very good ones).

this is why to me these two moments in the film, while having wildly different contexts and happening at different points in their respective character arcs, mirror each other thematically. they’re both at their lowest point when they lose the home they had built but gained back the house they had been longing for.  i dont think at any point the concept of a house, bag end or erebor, is demonized either. just the concept of an empty house, with no people to call it a home. we know eventually 

and part of the tragedy, i think, is that it’s implied that bilbo, being at his lowest, finds comfort in the ring. he bounces from that low obviously, but i think it’s worth noting that when we see him again in lotr he has frodo, and gandalf, and to some extent his community, but even then he still seems to be missing something his home in the shire wasn’t able to provide even after all these years.

and i think botfa executes this theme wonderfully, and very effectively. i could go more in depth about thorin and bilbo’s relationship arc but this is the main reason i’ve gained such a big appreciation for botfa after watching it a few times. so while i think AUJ is a better film by virtue of being more carefully planned and executed, i usually enjoy them as unit and as a single narrative that i think starts and ends beautifully.