The Hobbit That Might Have Been With Guillermo del Toro – Screen Rant

Guillermo del Toro was initially set as the director of The Hobbit movies - and his version of the films would have proved very different.

If Guillermo del Toro would have directedThe Hobbitas originally planned, the films might have been quite different. The imaginative and visionary director would have brought his particular voice to the film, infusing it with majesty, fantasy, and whimsy.

Del Toro took some time prepping for the film, collaborating with Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh, the minds behindThe Lord of the Rings. The three of them worked together to get the film green-lit by MGM, which was suffering financially at the time, while del Toro worked tirelessly on the sets, creatures, and structure of the film. Del Toro had his own vision for the film, which differed from Jackson's trilogy while still paying homage to its legacy. Del Toro was not a big fan of the books by J.R.R. Tolkien, but immensely enjoyed Jackson's work, so he planned on honoring it.

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Time wound on, and del Toro stepped away from the film. He was heartbroken by the decision, but he said it had to be done. Jackson went on to direct the movies, turning the one novel into three films that he had to rush to make while undoing all of del Toro's work, which was mostly the former director's intellectual property. Jackson was given mere months to prepare, where heonce had years forThe Lord of the Rings. Audiences were denied the chance to see what the creative and talented del Toro would have done with the picture, but there is enough information to speculate on the details.

In del Toro's original vision,The Hobbitwould have been split into two movies, as he felt anything more than twomight feel bloated. The first would contain the bulk of the story from the novel,exploring Bilbo's journey and adventure with the dwarves. Smaug would have been introduced in the first film, as would Azog.Del Toro believed that the first film needed to have a different tone than the second one, committing to the feel of a fairy tale. His aim was to alter the aesthetic ofThe Hobbitfrom the look and feel of theLord of theRings trilogy, making something different. He gathered sketches from older editions of the novel and paintings from fans of the works of Tolkien to inspire the texture and details of the piece. The design of the wargs, for example, was new, as Guillermo felt that Jackson's design was a little too close to real-world wolves, and Guillermo wanted to emulate the demon wolves found in Norse mythology.

The second film would have been transitional, melding not only the story but the aesthetic into a look that tied in with Jackson'sLord of the Ringstrilogy. The artists would need to blend Guillermo's architecture and beasts with Jackson's, bringing the visual storytelling to a familiar place for fans. The film would have borrowed from the appendices in theLord of the Rings novels to flush out the space betweenThe HobbitandFellowship of the Ring, utilizing pieces of the story withGandalf to connect the two, including the White Council and the Dol Guldur additions, which was something del Toro planned from the beginning.

As to where the films would split, del Toro said that it should be obvious to fans."What we're doing is because we have the relationship between Bilbo and Thorin and all the dwarves, there is a logical place for that relationship. There is a moment in the book where something is accomplished that allows us to say, 'Okay, on to the next one after this.'" It is likely the first movie would follow Bilbo, Gandalf, and the dwarves all the way through the Misty Mountains and then to Beorn's house, right up to the edge of Mirkwood. It is here that Gandalf takes his leave to go and reckon with Dol Guldur, leaving Bilbo to figure things out for himself. Bilbo has the admiration of the dwarves for getting out of the goblin lair, following that up with a rescue from the elves. The exact place of the split was never revealed, however, so fans can merely speculate.

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With his knack for telling gothic fairy tales featuring children, del Toro's idea to transform the tone into one of a dark piece of children's folklore would likely have worked well. He said that his film would contain, "A world that is slightly more golden at the beginning, a very innocent environment, and the film would need to take you from a time of more purity to a darker reality throughout the film, but in the spirit of the book." Del Toro's talents lie in expressing the loneliness and horror in the loss of innocence, which his film would focus on. It would also draw parallels to Word War I, a conflict in which Tolkien fought. Del Toro has in the past used the fantastical to say something profound about the historical, telling strange and tragic fables about children against the backdrop of the Spanish Civil War inThe Devil's Backboneand Pan's Labyrinth.

Del Toro's interpretation would have also captured the childlike innocence ofThe Hobbitas opposed to its more adult sequels. In the book, Tolkien had no notion of making the ring an object of enormous, world-ending evil. The ring Bilbo finds is a simple trick ring, merely turning the bearer invisible. This is what del Toro would have done, showing the difference in stakes between the first story and the remaining three.The Hobbitwas originally intended for children, reading one chapter a night, and del Toro wanted to retain that tone.

Del Toro had a dogged commitment to keeping the film very close in mood and detail to the novel. His two planned films would have followed the story in a meaningful way, using a color code to designate the passage of time as well as Bilbo's personal journey. His aesthetic would have been fanciful and macabre, focusing on favorite scenes like the contest of riddles between Gollum and Bilbo, which del Toro considers the most beautiful in the book. He also planned to illuminate the strength of the bond between Bilbo and Thorin. There wasn't much time in the three movies to show their close friendship, but del Toro had plans to highlight the generosity of spirit between the two.

The director was concerned about the lack of female characters in the film andsupported the creation of Tauriel, the elven warrior. The movie needed a warrior, and del Toro thought that Tauriel should fill that role. He intended to honor the book's introduction of Bard and his aloof presence with not a lot of characterization, so Tauriel would have been inserted into the story much in the way Bard was.

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Del Toro very much wanted his own original design for the dragon in the film. He wanted the eyes to be difficult to locate, hidden within an enormous horned head to add tension to the moments when Bilbo is sneaking around. The mouth was to be very human-like, expressive, and articulate, with some thin, silky spines that almost resembled fur. The belly would have been slithery and soft, showing a surprising vulnerability.

The director understood that the design of the dragon would ruffle some feathers. Audiences have a very particular vision of a dragon in their heads, particularly when it comes to western mythology, and del Toro's desire to make something totally new and strange and unfamiliar was bold but controversial. He admitted to discomfort and tension over the design, saying that he knew it was not what people wanted.

As Tolkien was a veteran of World War I, he detested depictions of war, particularly if they were glamorous or romantic. In his children's tale, he did not want a battle to rage on, showing them that war was epic or entertaining. Instead, he had the point of view character, Bilbo, completely unconscious for the entirety of the battle, only told about the major events after the fact. This was something del Toro completely agreed with and wanted to honor, despite pressure from the studio to show a major battle scene. The three-page 6,000-warrior conflict would have remained a minimal part of the story with perhaps only a small cameo from Legolas.

The battle would have not been, as was the tagline of the thirdHobbitfilm, "the defining chapter." Instead, the focus would be on the characterization of the hobbit Bilbo, setting the plot aside in favor of story and character. Though the battle would have been greatly set aside, del Toro and Jackson did spend time brainstorming possibilities for what could be shown and what kinds of creatures would be present. He claimed that he, Jackson, and Walsh had a lot of childlike energy between them, talking excitedly late into the night. "We have a very well-funded sandbox," he said. It is not sure exactly how much del Toro would have been able to omit given studio pressure and how attached big-budget films are to action scenes, but a more couched approach would have served the film well and taken up far less time.

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Significantly, del Toro wanted all of the actors from Jackson's trilogy to reprise their roles. He wanted the filmsparticularly the first oneto feel different and more ethereal, but he thought it a disservice to the fans if there wasn't a bit of familiarity. He did want to add new faces such as Brian Blessed as Thorin, Ron Perlman as Smaug or Beorn, Ian McShane as a dwarf, and Doug Jones as Thranduil, but pushed for Ian Holm to reprise Bilbo. (His notion to cast Sylvester McCoy as Radagast the Brown stuck, and the beloved actor wound up in the film.) Though not a fan in general of epic fantasy, del Toro knew what audiences wanted to see and how they would expect the stories to match up.

The appendices included afterReturn of the Kingdetail the sixty years between the events ofThe HobbitandFellowship of the Ring, so some of those details such as the awakening of Mount Doom andSauron's return to Mordor may have been peppered into the end of del Toro's films. He also intended to include the White Council, which appears in the appendices, not inThe Hobbit. Including the White Council makes narrative sense for Gandalf, and also helps to illustrate the through-line between the two stories. Had del Toro been in charge, the Council would have likely only appeared in the second film, used in particular to infuse a bit of the connection missing from the books.

In November 2009, the script was delayed and the production timeline was set back to 2010. The script was still unfinished and no casting decisions had been made, pushing things back further. Guillermo decided to step back from The Hobbitin 2010. Because MGM had not yet greenlit the project, he was afraid all his hard work would be thrown away if the studio got too frustrated. He kept putting off quitting, but ultimately he was unable to stay. He handed it over, not knowing who would be put in charge of the project. "I have incredible heartache. I feel terrible about it. I was hanging by the thread of my arm for so long that at the end of the day, you have to cut it off," he said.

Del Toro spent two years on the production of the film, and when all was said and done, he had an entire production, set, creatures, and aesthetic ready, but no script and no green light that would allow for casting. As the production continued to balloon, Guillermo del Toro saw his future projects hemorrhaging and fading away, and so he made the difficult choice to step away, leaving the world without his version of The Hobbit.

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Elise Hanson is an award-winning playwright and novelist from Salt Lake City. She lives with her husband and three cats.

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The Hobbit That Might Have Been With Guillermo del Toro - Screen Rant