Will of the ring inconsistency
 

I'm talking strictly from movie canon, but this is the part of AUJ that bugged me more than others.

In the prologue of FOTR we are told that the One Ring is found by someone it did not intend (though it intended to ditch Gollum). The problem is in AUJ, Bilbo falls over and the ring does that unlikely but obviously intended dropping onto Bilbo's finger that happened to Frodo in Bree.

Does this make sense to anyone else?

My understanding of the will of The One is that it is not of the same kind that a will of a human or another being with soul. The One does not possess an ego and cannot make decisions. Its will is Sauron's own potency detached that makes an impact on other's wills and minds in the way similar to a magnet pulling other magnets and everything made of iron. The Ring drives and gets driven.

It stayed almost dormant with Gollum since he had got subdued. The return of Sauron, probably, activated it so it allows Gollum to loose it. With Bilbo it is on the move and the direction is right but suddenly Sauron gets driven out of Dol Gudur. At that moment Sauron wants to find The One but is concerned with a possibility that someone else, mighty enough, can find it before he knows and this must have affected the Ring's own activity. At the same time Bilbo keeps his vigilance and doesn't allow the Ring to get lost on those occasions when it could be driven to evil creatures in close proximity (the Battle of Five Armies is probably the only such occasion as Smaug is not an option for the Ring).

That's how I see it. The Ring did not make a decision to abandon Gollum but the situation had ripen. It happens that some parasites in course of their natural development make their 'master' weak and slow - that makes the 'master' an easy victim of a predator who, in turn, becomes a new 'master' - a smart strategy but it doesn't mean a particular parasite make a decision to change its 'master'. With Bilbo the situation in which The One could make a progress towards its Lord just never happened, that's why, in my opinion, it remained with Bilbo for quite a while.

Well, if you go bookwise, there is no such problem. ;)

I suppose the Ring wants to be found. Preferably by some orc/goblin/troll chief, but any creature would do. It did not want to be found by someone who's nearly Gandalf's best friend. And this is the part that you find problematic. I suppose that if you really want to make an excuse for the movie, you could say that Bilbo was better than no one: Gollum did a pretty good job of keeping the Ring safe when it did not want to run away.

To be honest, though, I don't think that's much of an excuse. I suppose the movie makers just overlooked that detail.

What bothers me even more about the finding of the Ring is that in FOTR there is such a nice little flashback scene of Bilbo finding it, which was nothing like AUJ. This is the one part I wanted them to keep from LOTR. I think that the way it is shown in FOTR is truer to Bilbo finding the Ring against it's will - not when it's smiling at him and shining brighter than Sting.

I like to explain the two different versions of Bilbo finding the ring as being different 'traditions' caused by errors in manuscripts that were copied repeatedly for thousands of years after the event in question. A reason used by the old professor several times in his writing ;)

Jackson will do a lucas on it. Holm will be replaced by Freeman in the special editions released in 2020. ;)