‘The Desolation of Smaug’: A gift that only mythology could give–a film of GREAT importance
Until I saw the new Hobbit film The Desolation of Smaug my favorite dragon film was the old 1981 flick, Dragonslayer. CLICK HERE TO REVIEW. I have been waiting for this Part II of The Hobbit series for a long time—so much so that I have avoided talking about it to keep my excitement level in check. The reason is that the attribute of human society that I most value is mythology, and there is no better exhibition of modern mythology than the Star Wars films and the Tolkien films by the great unpretentious filmmaker Peter Jackson. Mythology in films and novels can communicate complicated aspects of human culture that cannot be communicated any other way and are the hinge pins of modern philosophy—which is directly created by a society’s mythology. I don’t see The Desolation of Smaug as just another fantasy movie—I see it as a functioning mythology that says a lot about the state of our modern existence. A great storyteller like Jackson can pour so much value into a film like this that years of a similar education under an orthodox system of instruction will fail after many years of trying.
There are two basic kinds of dragons in classic mythology, the oriental dragon which is largely a symbol of rebirth, and the European dragon. I spoke about the oriental one the other day when discussing the upcoming film Godzilla. Godzilla is very much an oriental dragon in a modern context. Then there is the European version of dragon, the classic villain of so many movies from Sleeping Beauty to Fantasia, dragons in a European context represent human greed, arrogance, and corruption. If one wanted to understand the major differences between Eastern and Western cultures, their basic interpretations of dragons in mythology would be the place to begin. In the classic 1937 novel, The Hobbit, the dragon villain Smaug is a classic European dragon, and in this updated movie version, he is the king of all dragons ever filmed and put on a screen.
I would say that seeing The Desolation of Smaug is the most important commentary on modern politics that is available to anybody on planet earth presently. A student of politics, philosophy, and social organization could watch MSNBC, Fox News, Politically Incorrect on HBO and achieve a doctorate in psychology, history, and political science—read all the books by Glenn Beck, Bill O’Reilly, and Charles Krauthammer—listen to talk radio for the next 10 years, and there would not be a more accurate summation of the state of our world than in this Hobbit film. The simple line of dialogue between two of the elf characters in the film upon deciding if they should fight on behalf of light or let the world fall to darkness was uttered by, “when did we let evil become stronger than us.” That is what almost every human being is facing on the very day that you are reading this—what are the consequences of living our lives away from the light? How does evil spread? And what do we do about it when we are confronted with it?
The Desolation of Smaug is not just a simple morality tale speaking in generalizations about an ideal existence wrapped in fantasy. It is a commentary—a mythology of the problems experienced in our modern times. The setting has been changed to provide context in a similar way that Star Wars removed time and history with the opening, A Long Time Ago in a Galaxy Far, Far Away. The Hobbit is dealing with the very nature of evil, greed, and faulty living that is at the heart of every human being. It is literature on film, and is marvelous to behold.
Smaug as the centerpiece of this latest story is the embodiment of the kind of individual who has taken the world’s wealth by force and sits upon it guarding it religiously. He is the kind of bourgeois that added fuel to the fire of the communist movement where the common man wished to wrestle power back away from such dragons so that they could have their riches away from such greedy bastards. That is why Smaug is a European dragon that sits in this movie upon a pile of gold taken from the Dwarves and their mines. He loves it so much that he has buried himself within it so that he can worship it like a rodent burrows itself into the ground. Many real life wealthy people like Bill Gates, George Soros, Michael Bloomberg, and Warren Buffet give so much money to philanthropy advancing progressive causes because they feel guilt over their wealth. They wish to prove to the world that they are not dragons like Smaug even though in their wealth building years they behaved just like Smaug—rolling their bodies into their confiscated wealth. In the case of Gates, he made his money the correct way with a superior product—but discovered that the world saw him as a Smaug, just as the Dwarves in The Hobbit saw Smaug as a villain who took their wealth. Gates wished to prove that he was not such a Smaug so he began to give mast amounts of money to the public education system in America feeding the teacher unions. In many ways Gates became like the treacherous politicians in Laketown—living in constant fear of Smaug—scheming around the beast to carve their own way to power and wealth. For Gates and his idealism, he became a major supporter of Common Core which seeks to centralize the education process for society. A good intention with a sinister reality which allows corrupt teacher unions to control the kind of curriculum being taught to children—which opens the door for despots to shape the minds of society for the worst. In the film, once the dragon was no longer a threat, the kingdoms of the world now without the fear of Smaug immediately launched themselves into a power play for control of Middle-earth. Smaug as cruel as he was made out to be when confronted by Bilbo in The Lonely Mountain was caught between his own genius and ability to inflict cruelty, and his ability to keep the vast evil that the occupants of Middle-earth possess in check. Only a proper and effective mythology could communicate such a complicated concept.
Peter Jackson is such a great filmmaker. He knows instinctively much of what I write about here because his understanding of mythology allows him to think of things in the large view. He can make a film like the Hobbit movies with an ease that is unfathomable to most Hollywood directors—especially on the scale that this Desolation of Smaug is. Jackson gets it—and people sense that something important is going on in the movie which is why it has made over $500 million world-wide dollars in just two weeks at this point. When he completes the trilogy, of The Hobbit, along with the Lord of the Rings films, Jackson will have completed one of the greatest explorations into the nature of evil ever done by anybody anywhere. Of course Tolkien started the process with his great books, but Jackson has taken the baton and ran with it in a way that few people could ever hope to do, and he does it with a lack of pretension that is simply wonderful.
People who love fantasy stories like this generally are aware that the real world does not have much to offer them. Most of the time, they see too much, and can’t lie to themselves about the nature of reality. So they bury themselves in fantasy where they can relate to the characters that stand for justice, righteousness, and a fight against evil. Doing such things in the real world is considered unrealistic, naive, and foolhardy. So they turn to fantasy and lose themselves to the efforts of gaming, movies, books, and any other attribute a story can bring to a mind hungry for understanding. We all know a Smaug in our life—whether it is a rich uncle, an employer, or even a political power. Most of us think that such dragons must be killed and slayed so that the wealth of the world can return to us. But often—which is an ideal that the writer Ayn Rand was exploring around the same time that Tolkien was exploring Middle-earth—there is a need for such dragons as they prove to be more capable than the greed of the Dwarves, or residents of Laketown. The masses may not like the dragon, but often the dragon is more capable than the masses in dealing with the overwhelming pressure of greed—thus the line at the end of this film by Bilbo—“What have we done?” Bilbo means, we killed the dragon, but we seem to have slayed ourselves in the process.
The Desolation of Smaug is such an important film as it deals with a massive social commentary that is pertinent to our present time in such critical ways. Smaug is one of Ayn Rand’s characters who have failed at life. He is not an overman able to support the world without corruption who creates wealth with creative effort. Smaug took the created wealth of the dwarves with force, not creative effort—and spent the rest of his life guarding that gold because he was unable to create more of it. To Smaug, the wealth was finite, created by others and if he wanted to keep it, he had to hold it greedily with terror which of course everyone in Middle-earth resented. But without Smaug, the people of Middle-earth would be at war with one another constantly. Smaug focused their hate into a direction that only a fire-breathing massive dragon could carry. Bilbo because of his ability as a thief was able to spot a weakness in Smaug and let the people of Laketown know about it. Once that weakness was exploited, and Smaug was removed as a threat, the real work of Sauron, originally known as Malron the Admirable, could begin. Mariron was turned to evil by the Dark Lord Morgoth in the early days of the world, and ever after remained a foe of the Valar and the Free peoples of Middle Earth. We all know people like Sauron too. In fantasy fun is made of combating such figures with magic and battles with fantastic monsters, but the content of such people can be found on a local school board, or machine politics at any level and on both sides. The reason people flock to see these films is not an escape from reality, but to actually see reality as it is masked to us in the light of day.
The second Hobbit film, The Desolation of Smaug is a movie that everyone should see; its great cinema, wonderful story telling, and a visual art of the highest order. Nobody makes films better than these films, except for possibly the upcoming Star Wars films which deal with the same basic content, only in a future/past kind of way. On a scale of 1-5 I give this Hobbit film a 100. It is that good—but only if viewers enjoy exploring the hidden aspects of a society that is not so far away in Middle-earth, but right in front of us all—only not seen because of our educations, and prejudices–a world that can only be revealed to us through mythology.
To understand more fully how powerful mythologies are to all societies, CLICK HERE.
To read more about what I’ve said about The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, CLICK HERE.
Rich Hoffman
