Why I Love The Hobbit

Today marks 50 days until the release of The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies.  In honor of it, I'm posting this blog.  The Hobbit movies have become something that I hold near and dear to my heart.  While they started simply as movies about a story and world I already loved, the Hobbit films have become to represent the deep friendship that has been fostered between my college friends and me.

The Lord of the Rings films and the world of Middle-Earth was the glue that brought us together.  Our mutual love of the world of Middle-Earth brought us closer, and we eventually made it tradition to watch the films together every single semester.

In a way, we kind of fed off each other, and grew to love LOTR and Middle-Earth even more.  Throughout the years, we all bought different bits of memorabilia that came to sort of represent us.  Every semester, we constantly talked about LOTR and when our next viewing would be.  A few of us learned to read and write Dwarvish.  Between all of us, we compiled a library of LOTR soundtrack music that included every song and every moment from the films.  Listening to the music came to warm my heart in a special way that no other music could.

Then, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey.

We all kept up watching the production videos, always checking up on when the latest one was released.  Sometimes we would wait to watch them all together; other times, the idea of waiting was simply too much!  Either way, the anticipation for the Hobbit films came to define a unique part of our friendship.

The midnight premiere was crazy.  We sang “The Misty Mountains” in the car on the way there, memorizing it from the movie trailer.  After watching the film and passionately freaking out in the car ride home, we stayed up for hours into the morning discussing all of our varying thoughts of the movie.  Was it better?  Was it worse?  How about the special effects?  What about how the Orcs don’t speak English now?  That night was something we referenced so many other times throughout the years.  Even thinking about it now brings a smile to my face, because it was just such a great time with people that I cared about.

Next, The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug.

Of course, the anticipation for DOS was even greater now.  We had seen the first Hobbit movie, and now thinking of this one was even more exciting.  Senior year of college came.  We grew closer than ever before.  And we did the same thing watching production videos.  We played through numerous LOTR games.  More memorabilia.  More soundtrack music.  More LOTR marathons.  More memories with people I’ve come to love as my extended family.

The midnight premier had even more build up.  We listened to the credit song, “I See Fire,” by Ed Sheeran countless times before even watching the movie!  Arriving to the theater early, getting something to eat, and simply anticipating what we knew would be an amazing movie are memories I will forever hold within me.

And then, it blew us away.

While we all enjoyed the first Hobbit movie, this one was so much better than we could have ever thought.  Every scene was fun.  Every scene was exciting.  Every scene was something new.  And the sequence with Smaug was all that it promised to be, and more.  When the movie ended with a sudden black screen, the entire theater was silent, until I interrupted it by shouting, “WHAAAAAAT???” as loud as I could.  Everyone laughed, because it’s what we all were feeling!

More time went by, and we created more memories.  And then, graduation came.

Although we put it off as long as we could, our final goodbye was an incredibly emotional time.  Not being sure of when I would see this fellowship of friends next, after years of being together, was heartbreaking.  We all joked for months that “Into the West” by Annie Lennox, the credits song to The Return of the King, would be our graduation song.  It was so appropriate.  I will always view it as this.  It has come to represent our time at college.

Now, The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies.

While Middle-Earth is certainly not the only point of our friendship, it has come to represent our friendship.  When I see the Company of Dwarves in The Hobbit movies, I think of my friends and the memories we made.  When I watch Bilbo experiencing the world outside his home for the first time, I picture my friends and I experiencing it with him as we had so anticipated these movies.

I’ve come to love The Hobbit and Middle-Earth more and more since graduation.  I think of all the different places we were when we watched these films.  All the fun times we’ve had, and how The Hobbit films have had such a big role in those times.  I think of how it has given us a reason to come together again, from different states all across the country, to watch the final installment of the Hobbit trilogy together.

Now, listening to The Hobbit scores by Howard Shore evokes a certain emotion and feeling in me that nothing else seems to do.  Our love of Lord of the Rings, and subsequent journey into The Hobbit films, has come to signify our love for each other, and subsequent journey to always keep in touch.

Although it’s easy for me to view our separation sorrowfully, I know that through our time at college, and our love of Middle-Earth, a bond was formed between our fellowship that will never be broken.  I think of Frodo’s words at the end of The Return of the King.  Our fellowship, though now ended insofar as living together, is eternally bound by friendship and love. A love for one another that will always remain, and that will always grow, until the end of time, when we are once again united in the presence of our eternal King.