Quote Originally Posted by Loony BoB View Post
Haven't read all of the thread, but did anyone else think that the burning tree moment's music had so much Liberi Fatali / One Winged Angel going for it? I couldn't help but laugh at the time. I'm sure it's more that all three songs are mutually influenced by something else, but yeah, good times.
It was actually one of the many musical continuity bits which Howard Shore (the composer) used to bridge the score material in Hobbit with his work in LotR trilogy. The music heard in that burning tree scene is based on the Ring/Mordor themes in LotR (with slight variations), and I think it's interesting that Shore used such an ominous theme for such a seemingly heroic moment. I was overall very happy to hear bits and pieces of LotR's themes and variations of those throughout the film. I was glad that Gollum's material received some nice development too, and I can't wait to hear more of the Erebor theme in future Hobbit films as that place gains more prominence in the story.

(SPOILER)I believe the use of Mordor material in the burning tree scene is likely musically foreshadowing some Ring/Thorin connection in the next film and how this noble character is twisted over the course of the story as we learn of his darker, greedy side (assuming they're bold enough to use the Ring instead of sticking to the canon material; then again, they already changed the dwarves' original motivations from the book, so everything's free game now). Considering that Tolkien didn't even think of the Ring as evil when he was writing the Hobbit, I wonder how Jackson is going to portray the events now that we do have the knowledge that the Ring is very much evil. Maybe we'll see it trying to corrupt Thorin, Bilbo or others. Or perhaps Jackson will be careful and not go over the line with it because the fan outrage might be too much to bear. Personally I'd be happy to see such scenes to establish the Ring's power; after all, one of the changes in LotR's film version that I liked over the book was Jackson making Faramir struggle with the Ring instead of him being an "incorruptible" person and how that helped show that not even the noble ones are beyond the Ring's power whether it's humans like Faramir or elves like Galadriel.