Written by How many of you are fans of the J.R.R. Tolkien? How many have read Lord of the Rings? How many have read The Hobbit? Well, it doesn’t take long to notice I’m a huge Tolkien nut when you enter my office and see all the characters from all the movies atop my bookshelf in the form of Pez figurines. It’s a funny thing when you make a book into a movie isn’t it? There’s so much material in the book that is often hard to reproduce the same story in film.
One interesting thing the director Peter Jackson has done with Tolkien’s works is to make both The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit into trilogies. Each movie is then given a specific title pertaining to its place in the overall plotline. Now whether or not you agree with what Peter Jackson is doing when he chooses these titles is a matter for another time, what I want to draw your attention to is the title to the second film in the Hobbit trilogy. It’s called – The Desolation of Smaug. It’s a perfect title for this second film because the word “desolation” draws attention to the utter misery the dragon Smaug brings upon the Dwarvish kingdom of Erebor and the neighboring city Dale. These kingdoms were wealthy beyond belief, sturdy, secure, seemingly safe. They were the kingdoms of renown in Middle Earth. Yet, when Smaug came, desolation came with him. Anguish, ruin, decay, despair, violence, poverty, isolation and bleakness came upon these people.
This is not so different to what took place in Nineveh; ruin, decay, anguish, violence, utter-misery, a whole people being cut off. Except in Nineveh’s case there was no dragon fire, there was something worse, the consuming fire of the wrath of God.
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