In Lord of the Rings -- the movie -- two young hobbits meet extremely powerful denizens of the ancient world -- the Ents -- and actually trick them into joining a fight they had decided against joining. It's easily their most self-activated moment in the series -- they weren't operating under anyone's instructions; there was no way to know whether Gandalf would have approved of their actions or not. They simply had a vision of their own world coming tumbling down as a result of the Ents' decision, and, infuriated, decided to further test the Ents on how resolved they would be in their detached independence if they saw with their own eyes the devastation Saruman the wizard had already incurred on Middle Earth. In the books, Tolkien tries to inscribe both hobbits at the finish of their adventures, as not really having changed all that much. But if such was declared at the end of the movie series, it would read false -- "no," we would say, "we saw so...