With Peter Jackson’s The Fellowship of the Ring nearing its 25th anniversary, there’s still one part of J.R.R. Tolkien’s text that is conspicuously absent from the Oscar-winning adaptation: the monstrous hobbit’s penchant for eating infants and devouring small children.
Obviously, for a PG-13 fantasy movie meant for the whole family to enjoy, omitting Gollum’s odious appetite was a wise move. Yet, for avid readers and Tolkien purists, leaving out Gollum’s dark nature from the story betrays the character and detracts from an otherwise faithful adaptation. In an attempt to broaden the movie’s wide appeal and make it as accessible as possible, Gollum’s devious history has been glossed over to make him appear less threatening.
Gollum’s Pursuit of the One Ring Shrouds His Cannibalistic Nature in ‘LOTR’
In Peter Jackson’s landmark, award-winning Lord of the Rings trilogy, Smeagol/Gollum (Andy Serkis) vies for possession of The One Ring with the hobbit Frodo Baggins (Elijah Wood) and his Hobbit friends. In The Fellowship of the Ring, Gollum finds the ring after it was lost for 2,500 years. When the hideous creature loses the ring, it’s found by Bilbo Baggins. Decades later, Bilbo gives the ring to Frodo and flees the Shire to evade Sauron’s Nazgûl.
Driven by vengeful greed, Gollum follows Frodo and his fellow Hobbits across Middle-earth to retrieve the ring. Frodo is warned that the ring holds great power and must be destroyed in the hot lava inside Mount Doom, prompting a treacherous pilgrimage of epic proportions. In The Two Towers, Gollum continues to stalk the hobbits to gain possession of the ring. Yet, once Frodo captures him, Gollum is forced to lead the hobbits from Mordor to Mount Doom.
Feeling betrayed along the way, Gollum changes his mind and leads the hobbits into a massive spider web so he can regain the ring for himself. While that’s fairly macabre for a PG-13 fantasy film, Gollum’s most disturbing behavior from the books is sanitized at best and completely ignored at worst.
J.R.R. Tolkien Envisioned Gollum as a Much Scarier & More Violent Character
Although Gollum’s wretched visage is off-putting, his wicked penchant for eating children is nowhere to be found in the films. The worst thing Gollum does in the Lord of the Rings movie trilogy is fatally strangling his old friend, Deagol, in The Return of the King. Yet, harking back to Tolkien’s first book in the trilogy, The Fellowship of the Ring, a haunting description of Gollum indicates his darkest nature. In one particular passage, Gandalf describes Gollum as:
“The Woodmen said that there was some new terror abroad, a ghost that drank blood. It climbed trees to find nests, it crept into holes to find the young; it slipped through windows to find cradles.”
What’s more unsettling? A ghost that drinks blood or an unknown menace creeping into nests and windows to steal the young from cradles and devour them without a second thought? Regardless, while it may upset avid readers and Tolkien loyalists, it was almost certainly the right decision by Jackson to leave that part of Gollum’s past from the movies. Including it would have most definitely disturbed children too much and led to far less commercial success.
Of course, as a horror movie enthusiast who made Bad Taste, Heavenly Creatures, The Frighteners, and the ultra-gory Dead Alive earlier in his career, the decision to leave Gollum’s cannibalistic urges out must have been difficult for Jackson. Even more restraint was shown by the Oscar-winning director when he made The Hobbit trilogy, also avoiding the opportunity to portray Gollum as a monster that eats hobbits and infants alike.
Gollum’s Nasty Habit Was Also Hinted at in ‘The Hobbit’
In chapter 5 of Tolkien’s The Hobbit, “Riddles of the Dark,” Gollum is described as having an insatiable appetite for Bilbo, planning to eat the hobbit without a lick of remorse. As Gollum spots Bilbo on a riverbank and boats toward the hobbit, a textual passage reads:
“Bless us and splash us, my precioussss! I guess it’s a choice feast; at least a tasty morsel it’d make us, gollum!” And when he said gollum he made a horrible swallowing noise in his throat. That is how he got his name, though he always called himself ‘my precious’.”
Although Gollum’s attempt to devour Bilbo was included in The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, it’s a far cry from ingesting an infant. That said, Gollum’s acquired taste for small creatures was also expressed in The History of the Hobbit, in which the slimy ghoul eats a Goblin-Imp (Orc toddler). Consider the following prose:
“No one would see him, no one would notice him, till he had his fingers on their throat. Only a few hours ago, he had worn it and caught a small goblin-imp. How it squeaked! He still had a bone or two left to gnaw, but he wanted something softer.”
In The Fellowship of the Ring, Gandalf’s accusation of Gollum’s cannibalism has long been viewed as a rumor. Yet, with Bilbo also accusing Gollum of eating youngsters in The Hobbit, that’s inculpatory evidence that is hard to ignore. Two separate characters giving testimony in two different books suggest that Gollum’s cannibalism was no hearsay at all, but rather a dark and deeply disturbing personality quirk that was properly left out of the films.
While it’s still two years away from being released, perhaps The Hunt for Gollum will address Gollum’s distasteful appetite.
This story originally appeared on Movieweb
