Skip to main content

tolkiens legendarium - How did Bilbo Baggins find the One Ring exactly?


In the Fellowship of the Ring movie, it explains how Bilbo got the Ring:



Its time had now come. It abandoned Gollum. But then something happened that the Ring did not intend. It was picked up by the most unlikely creature imaginable. A hobbit, Bilbo Baggins, of the Shire.




Bilbo finding the Ring, from the LotR films


In The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey movie, Bilbo and a goblin fall after they fight. Bilbo wakes up under the mushrooms, the goblin is unconscious. Bilbo sees Gollum. He tries to drag the goblin to his own place for eating. The goblin struggles and Gollum starts to hit it until it dies. In this fight, the One Ring falls from Gollum's pocket. Gollum starts to drag the now unconscious goblin. Bilbo waits until he leaves, he stands up, picks his sword under the mushrooms and then see the Ring. He takes it and puts it in his pocket.


Bilbo finding the Ring, from the first Hobbit film


From The Hobbit: Book and Film Differences blog:



The Book: Bilbo awakens in total darkness; it's so dark he literally cannot tell the difference between having his eyes open or closed. He gropes around on all fours, and his hand accidentally brushes against a small ring of cold metal. He puts it in his pocket without thinking and continues on his way. He sits down for a moment. He feels for his pipe, then for his tobacco, but cannot find a match. That's the last straw for Bilbo Baggins' hopes, and he despairs for a moment. He draws his sword, and noticing that it "shone pale and dim before his eyes," found enough hope to continue. Using his sword as a source of light, he trots along.



Also there is a video from youtube which explain my question.


In my opinion, these three stories are quite different. I don't expect they all should be exact the same but I didn't expect they will be quite different.



Is there any reason makes this situation different each other in films and movies?



Answer



I don't think those three stories are particularly different. They all share the same core: Bilbo gets lost in the caves beneath the Misty Mountains, where he finds the Ring, after it was dropped by Gollum (or, more precisely, where it dropped itself away from Gollum). This is the essence - the ring wanted to leave Gollum and be picked up by someone else to take it away, and it was.


The rest is incidental - does it really matter if Bilbo groped around in the dark and found it, or saw it on the ground and found it? Does it matter if we saw the Ring fall from Gollum's pocket or only seen the end result of it? Not really. The essence remains the same.


As for the reasons for the differences - groping around blindly in the dark can make for a good narrative in a book, but is quite boring to see on screen. It's not surprising that Peter Jackson decided to liven it up with some action. And as for the bit in The Lord Of The Rings - well, it's merely an overview, not a detailed scene. Bilbo found it. End of story.


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Did the gatekeeper and the keymaster get intimate in Ghostbusters?

According to TVTropes ( usual warning, don't follow the link or you'll waste half your life in a twisty maze of content ): In Ghostbusters, it's strongly implied that Dana Barret, while possessed by Zuul the Gatekeeper, had sex with Louis Tully, who was possessed by Vinz Clortho the Keymaster (key, gate, get it?), in order to free Big Bad Gozer. In fact, a deleted scene from the movie has Venkman explicitly asking Dana if she and Louis "did it". I turned the quote into a spoiler since it contains really poor-taste joke, but the gist of it is that it's implied that as part of freeing Gozer , the two characters possessed by the Keymaster and the Gatekeeper had sex. Is there any canon confirmation or denial of this theory (canon meaning something from creators' interviews, DVD commentary, script, delete scenes etc...)? Answer The Richard Mueller novelisation and both versions of the script strongly suggest that they didn't have sex (or at the very l...

Why didn't The Doctor or Clara recognize Missy right away?

So after it was established that Missy is actually both the Master, and the "woman in the shop" who gave Clara the TARDIS number... ...why didn't The Doctor or Clara recognize her right away? I remember the Tenth Doctor in The Sound of Drums stating that Timelords had a way of recognizing other Timelords no matter if they had regenerated. And Clara should have recognized her as well... I'm hoping for a better explanation than "Moffat screwed up", and that I actually missed something after two watchthroughs of the episode. Answer There seems to be a lot of in-canon uncertainty as to the extent to which Time Lords can recognise one another which far pre-dates Moffat's tenure. From the Time Lords page on Wikipedia : Whether or not Time Lords can recognise each other across regenerations is not made entirely clear: In The War Games, the War Chief recognises the Second Doctor despite his regeneration and it is implied that the Doctor knows him when they fir...

story identification - Animation: floating island, flying pests

At least 20 years ago I watched a short animated film which stuck in my mind. The whole thing was wordless, possibly European, and I'm pretty sure I didn't imagine it... It featured a flying island which was inhabited by some creatures who (in my memory) reminded me of the Moomins. The island was frequently bothered by large winged animals who swooped around, although I don't think they did any actual damage. At the end one of the moomin creatures suddenly gets a weird feeling, feels forced to climb to the top of the island and then plunges down a shaft right through the centre - only to emerge at the bottom as one of the flyers. Answer Skywhales from 1983. The story begins with a man warning the tribe of approaching skywhales. The drummers then warn everybody of the hunt as everyone get prepared to set "sail". Except one man is found in his home sleeping as the noise wake him up. He then gets ready and is about to take his weapon as he hesitates then decides ...

warhammer40k - What evidence supposedly supports Tau as related to the Necrontyr?

I've heard of rumours saying that the Tau from Warhammer 40K are in fact the Necrontyr. Is there anything that supports this statement, in WH40K canon? I just found this, on 1d4 chan 1 : Helping Necrons? Or are they Necrontyr descendants? An often overlooked issue is that Tau have no warp signatures, just like Necrons, hate Warpspawns and Warp in general, just like Necrons, have the exact same skull shape,stature and short lives, and the overwhelming need for Technology and beam weapons, JUST LIKE NECRONS. GW may have planned a race that simply prepares a pacified, multiracial galaxy for Necrons to feast upon, supported by Ethereals that have a C'tan phase blade. Then there is a reference of "dark seed in east" by the Deceiver, so the tricky C'tan might give Tzeentch the finger in the JUST AS PLANNED competition. Or maybe GW just has so little creativity that they simply made a new civ conforming to an Old One's standards without knowing it. Is this the connec...