Re watching the Hobbit movies, and I’m struck by how utterly useless the dwarves were. A few dwarves in the company managed to rack up some kills, but they never won a battle. They were mostly just alternately captured and freed a lot. Bilbo accomplished quite a bit, as did Gandalf, Bard, and some elves. But I come away thinking that if Gandalf and Bilbo had just gone to the mountains solo, it would have gone far better. Am I forgetting some contributions from Thorin and company?
Thorin, Balin, Dwalin, maybe a few others, were the only ones with real combat experience. The rest were miner and craftsmen types.
Meat shield/aggro for Bilbo.
Ha!
I saw the Thread title and assumed this was about Snow White. I suppose the exact same question could be asked of both stories.
In both stories, the titular protagonist could not have managed nearly a third so well without the dwarves.
Me, too.
Yeah, me too. Oops.
Picture some post-WW1 heir in exile, whose grandfather had been ruler of a now-defunct kingdom. Thorin had once been in line for the throne, and had been reduced to blacksmithing and mining coal. The original novel makes clear that Thorin had assembled a motley band of whoever was willing to follow him on his quest, one that the rest of dwarvedom had given up as a lost cause. That said, I’ve often maintained that they would have all come out ahead if they had simply hanged Bombur at the beginning.
In the larger story, taking out Smaug was very helpful to the ultimate effort against Sauron, who could have used Smaug as an ally had he survived. In one of the Appendices, Gandalf speculates upon this possibility.
During the actual War of the Ring, the dwarves from the Lonely Mountain, and from the Iron Hills, fought several battles against the Orcs from the northern Misty Mountains, who might otherwise have assisted in the siege of Lorien. So, even if Smaug didn’t ally with Sauron, having him out of the way benefited the war effort.
Why is it there are one or two rather hot human-looking dwarves, and the rest look like they have rubber Halloween masks on their heads? Do dwarves automatically become grotesque looking when they reach a certain age? (I guess they wanted to shoehorn some romantic tension into the story with the Elves and the hot dwarf, but still!)
Dwarves are not unique in having their hotness steeply decline with age. 
I spent a couple of days in Russia, back in the early 90s, and was impressed at how strong a divide there was between young and good looking and old and haggard. Russia didn’t seem to allow for people to gracefully age.
I’m Russian myself! (My own immigrant grandmother looked like the anti-litter crying Indian, from commercials years ago, when she was about 70.)… Vodka, smoking, poverty, bad diet, lack of beautification products, hard labor, depression, and 9 month long winters will catch up with you, fast. Those Russian mail order brides are wise to get out of there while they’re young.
Very useful. Don’t sell them short.
Every epic journey needs comic relief.
StG
What do you mean, how useful were they? They didn’t have to be useful. It was their quest! Gandalf and Bilbo were just the hired help. (Well, Bilbo was. I don’t remember if they offered Gandalf anything, and he’d probably have been insulted if they did. And he had motivations of his own for being, shall we say, a consultant on that particular quest.) How useful are you when the plumber shows up to your house? If the dwarves hadn’t bothered to go along, I doubt Bilbo would have, and Gandalf would have had to find some other excuse for getting people to do his dirty work.
If only the Dwarves had taken out Smaug.
[golf clap]
Very deadly in short sprints; they’re wasted on cross-country.
Ten lashes for you.
While they weren’t exactly useful throughout the journey (or rather, they were but always seemed to need Bilbo as a tie-breaker when things went pear-shaped - but then it’s easy to look useful when you happen to carry the world’s most powerful magical artifact ;)), one notes the battle of Five Armies was not called the Battle of Four Armies and Some Forgettable Tossers. All-mithril gear is a hell of a force multiplier.
Thorin and Company weren’t one of the Five Armies though. Mentioned in another thread recently, these were:
Dwarves, Elves and Men
Goblins and Wargs
The Company, along with the Eagles and Beorn, were supernumeraries.