Peter Jackson’s film ‘Hunt for Gollum’ is probably a hidden Aragorn epic
The news is out: Peter Jackson and his Lord of the Rings collaborators will produce a new film set in Middle-earth, with Andy Serkis directing and reprising his role as Gollum, and the working title is Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum.
So there is only one question: what exactly could it be about? Featuring true experts on the text like Philippa Boyens, Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh, there’s one thing that immediately comes to mind: a 50-day slog in which Aragorn captured Gollum in a swamp and carried him nearly 900 miles overland dragged until they reached the court prisons of the elven king Thranduil.
So there are actually two questions: What is The Hunt for Gollum about? And How do you turn that into a great movie?
Most of what we know about this period in the lives of Aragorn and Gollum comes from the text of The Company of the Ringof some comments during the Council of Elrond regarding Gandalf’s long quest to verify whether Bilbo’s ring was indeed the legendary One.
Jackson’s film shortens this period for brevity, but in Tolkien’s text 17 years pass between Bilbo’s birthday, when Frodo receives the Ring, and the scene in which Gandalf returns to see if he has kept it a secret (kept it safe). Gandalf spent much of that time searching for Gollum so he could interrogate the creature about how he obtained the Ring. To this end he recruited Aragorn’s skills as a tracker.
But finding Gollum across Middle-earth turned out to be a real needle-in-a-haystack thing, and they eventually decided to give up. Gandalf went to Gondor to read ancient texts, and Aragorn headed west, back to his rangers. Then, by chance, Aragorn found Gollum’s tracks the Dead Marshes and caught him.
It then took him over a month and a half to drag his prisoner to civilization so that Gandalf could interrogate him. You know that scene where Sam and Frodo drag Gollum along while he screams like hell’s own toddler? Imagine that, but for seven weeks. Tolkien makes it extremely – perhaps hilariously – clear that this was not fun.
“He was covered in green slime,” Aragorn tells the Council. ‘He will never love me, I fear; for he bit me, and I was not gentle. I never got more out of his mouth than the traces of his teeth. I thought it was the worst part of my entire journey, the way back, watching him day and night, making him walk in front of me with a halter around his neck, gagged, until he was tamed by lack of drink and food, always towards Mirkhout. I finally took him there and gave him to the Elves, for we had agreed that this would happen; and I was glad to be rid of his company, for he stank.”
You heard it from the mouth of Aragorn II, King Elessar Telcontar, chieftain of the Dúnedain of the North, Isildur’s heir, Elendil’s heir, High King of Gondor and Arnor, King of the West.
Gollum: “He stunk.”
This intermezzo is actually the only one in Lord of the Rings that corresponds to a ‘hunt’ for Gollum. No one else is really chasing him! Sure, he was tortured by Sauron, but only after he walked freely into Mordor. He eventually escaped from the prisons of Mirkwood, but the elves lost his trail almost immediately.
If we’re really talking about Aragorn’s terrible, terrible, no good, very bad month here: are Viggo Mortensen and Ian McKellen coming back to play Aragorn and Gandalf? What about Lee Pace and Orlando Bloom as Mirkwood’s King Thandruil and Legolas? Tolkien fans have put together a well-known unofficial version The hunt for Gollum film in 2009, but only 38 minutes long. How on earth does this one-paragraph saga get expanded into a feature-length blockbuster?
If it were anyone other than Boyens, Jackson, Walsh and Serkis, it would be easy to dismiss the whole idea to begin with. But the group has at least a 50% gold track record of producing Lord of the Rings movies – maybe they can make the world’s worst buddy road trip movie work.