The Hobbit

[Talavar]

It's a year away, but the first trailer for the Hobbit is on the interwebs!  http://trailers.apple.com/trailers/wb/thehobbit/

[MJB]

Yay.

[catwhowalksbyhimself]

That is an awesome trailer, lots of good things there.  Looks like the same quality we got in LoTR, and they even are doing the dwarves' song.   Very much looking forward to this.

[JeyNyce]

Looks good.  Was this suppose to be a two part movie or just one long one?

[Randomdays]

At last report, still a two parter. I'm interested is seeing on how they are going to change (or ruin) it since I read that some LOTR chracters are going to be in it. Galadrial and Legolas I think.

[catwhowalksbyhimself]

Galadrial is shown in the trailers.  Legolas should be there.  He is the son of the king of the wood elves featured heavily in the Hobbit, and his sons are mentioned as being present several times.  Legolas is one of his sons, hence he should be there for at least a cameo.

And it is still 2 movies.  This is the first one, The Hobbit--an Unexpected Journey, and the next one will be The Hobbit--There and Back Again.

[BentonGrey]

The trailer looks good, and I love the story, of course....but Peter Jackson lost my support forever with Return of the King.

[Talavar]

Oh, Benton ::shakes head::

The Hobbit is going to be two movies, with the actions of Gandalf that happen off-camera in the novel but that are described in Lord of the Rings being included.

[catwhowalksbyhimself]

Return of the King?  I thought it was as good as any of the others.   You aren't sore about the whole ghost thing are you?  At least they changed their minds about having Sauron himself come out to duel Aragon at the end.  They actually kept that scene, they just inserted a troll instead.

[B A D]

It looks good. The only thing that had me a little Meh was the part where Galadriel was Glomming  on Galdalf's face.

[oldmanwinters]

I actually prefer reading The Hobbit over The Lord of the Rings because it's a simple adventure story at the end of the day.  I'd rather not see the story over-blown into a multi-part cinematic epic that will function as a prequel to another epic.  LotR only got 1 movie per book (although if you watch the Extended Editions on DVD, it kinda feels like the length of two films per book), so Hobbit shouldn't be drawn out. 

However, I do admit I'm curious to see those "never before seen" Gandalf exploits brought to life.

[BentonGrey]

Denethor.

Faramir.

The ghosts were just symptomatic of the ills of that movie. 

[Talavar]

While I agree that Denethor did get the shaft in Return of the King, the ghost stuff was goofy, and that RotK had the most and worst changes (particularly in the Frodo/Sam/Gollum storyline) from the book of all the films, I don't remember any particularly about Faramir.  Most of the changes I remember about Faramir took place in the Two Towers film.

Despite getting a lot wrong, they got enough right that RotK is still a great movie.  Writing Peter Jackson off as dead to you because he mishandled a few components of a massive, complicated and nearly 12-hour movie (in the extended editions) is a ridiculously negative outlook.  So much is right about the Lord of the Rings movie trilogy that I can easily overlook what is wrong, and be excited about the Hobbit.

[catwhowalksbyhimself]

Well to be fair, my sister so hated the Faramir thing in Two Towers that she refuses to see or have anything else to do with any of the movies ever again.  Even mention the movies and she starts ranting about Faramir.  And this from a person that does NOT rant about anything.

[yell0w_lantern]

I sat through Fellowship in the theater but when I borrowed Two Towers I shut that off after 5 minutes. I won't even consider watching Return of the King. Making Arwen a grrrrrl, implying that Gandalf was a pot-head, Saruman hatching Uruk from cocoons, Elrond being an angry jerk... it's just... ugh! With Peter Jackson at the helm, this movie is dead to me.

[JeyNyce]

After reading these posts, I have to go and read the books

[UnkoMan]

After reading these posts, I'm glad I couldn't even get through the first book.
It left me being totally fine with the LotR movies.

[Talavar]

After reading these posts, I'm glad I couldn't even get through the first book.
It left me being totally fine with the LotR movies.

Hey, I love the books, and (mostly) love the movies.  The two are different animals, like always with adaptations.

[BentonGrey]

Talavar, that's the attitude a lot of folks have, but I don't buy it.  There's good and there's bad.  If you're going to tell a story, tell the story.  If you want to do your own thing, do that.  That's the same problem I had with Prince Caspian.  If you want to tell a story about fantasy creatures attacking a castle, tell that story, but if you want to tell C.S. Lewis' story, tell it.  Not everything translates directly, but these guys tend to throw the source out the window to follow either their own ego or some mistaken idea of what people can accept.  The blatant contempt Peter Jackson shows for his audience as he talks about the LoTR films in their commentaries (especially Return of the King) is enough by itself to give me pause about supporting his films.

Aside from the (to me) deeper issue of Jackson's betrayal of his source, I didn't find all that much to like in RoTK on its own merits as a movie.  It seemed to me to be a pretty flawed film, at times beautiful, at other times terrible.

Unko, you make me sad.

JeyNyce, you won't regret it.  They're three of the best books written in the twentieth century.

YL, you missed the really bad stuff in RoTK.  It's a shame, because Fellowship was an amazing film.

[Tomato]

ROTK was certainly an odd animal, and there's really no excuse for it... they had so much longer to polish that movie then any of the others, that the errors made are all the more head-scratchingly bizarre. Putting aside the changes from the source (which aren't relevant... I'm sorry, but I don't care about whether something was different then in the source as long as it works in the context of the film. Aragorn could have been leading an army of pink centaurs into battle and I would not have cared as long as it made sense in context.) the editing, pacing, and quality of the film compared to the other two is just choppy. Especially Aragorn's battle speech... whoever edited the sound on that thing should be fired from movies in general. I cringe at that scene time I hear it. Aragorn's voice fluctuates from a manly, kingly baritone to a bizzarely high pitched squeak... is Aragorn going through puberty while fighting the evil hordes of Sauron? WTF.

That said, I have enormous respect for many of the actors in this film, so I'll still go and see it. That, and truthfully I've always liked Hobbit more than LotR in general anyway.

[Talavar]

Talavar, that's the attitude a lot of folks have, but I don't buy it.  There's good and there's bad.  If you're going to tell a story, tell the story.  If you want to do your own thing, do that.  That's the same problem I had with Prince Caspian.  If you want to tell a story about fantasy creatures attacking a castle, tell that story, but if you want to tell C.S. Lewis' story, tell it.  Not everything translates directly, but these guys tend to throw the source out the window to follow either their own ego or some mistaken idea of what people can accept.  The blatant contempt Peter Jackson shows for his audience as he talks about the LoTR films in their commentaries (especially Return of the King) is enough by itself to give me pause about supporting his films.

Aside from the (to me) deeper issue of Jackson's betrayal of his source, I didn't find all that much to like in RoTK on its own merits as a movie.  It seemed to me to be a pretty flawed film, at times beautiful, at other times terrible.

I haven't listened to the commentaries, so I'm just speaking from the films themselves, and the films do tell the story of Lord of the Rings.  What was thrown out the window in the films from the original source?  Off the top of my head, I can think of a few: Tom Bombadil, the Barrowdowns (largely necessitated by the removal of Bombadil), Glorfindel, Elrond's sons, Radagast the Brown, Denethor's use of a palantir, and the scouring of the Shire.  None of these really effect the larger story, except perhaps the Scouring.  I agree that Denethor is poorly used in RotK (film), but it's largely irrelevant.  Radagast the Brown and Elrond's sons maybe get six lines of dialogue between them.  The scouring of the Shire though, losing it does effect the thematic ending of the novel, but I think enough of a sense of loss is generated in the film's 'epilogue' of Frodo leaving that the film stands up pretty well without it.

The rest are tweaks - changes of the source (without outright removing or throwing things away), and if you made a movie that had only these changes, and tried to pass it off as an original product, your children's children would end up in debt to the Tolkien estate.  Still, most of the changes in Return of the King do bother me to some extent - it definitely is the worst of the three films for those sorts of changes.  That having been said, there are a lot of great moments committed to film - Theoden's speech before their charge into battle, the desperate defence of Minas Tirith, Sam's bravery, and everything after the ring goes into the fire.  Enough is done well - and so very well - that I can forgive and overlook errors of corporate mismanagement, distrust of the larger audience, and errors of simple judgement, and remain very excited for the film adaptation of The Hobbit.

[catwhowalksbyhimself]

Talavar said what I was thinking, and far more eloquently then I even could.

There were in fact numerous other planned changes that were backed off on as the movie went in development because Jackson decided to stay closer to the book. Off the top of my head there was Arwen fighting at Helm's Deep (part of their wanting a romance in the films.  They settled for flashbacks instead, flashbacks based strongly on the appendices and other official material) and Aragorn dueling with Sauron at the Towers of the Teeth (scene was left in the movie, but Sauron was replaced with a troll)  There was a lot of other stuff too that they backed off on.

As for the scouring of the Shire, that was to keep the ending as short of possible.  Audiences don't want to sit through 30 minutes or more of ending, and the book has a LOT of ending stuff.  That's the same reason they removed the epilogue that had actually been filmed showing the fate of the characters.  I'm quite disappointed that they didn't add that back into the extended version though.

[BentonGrey]

Well, honestly, the Scouring of the Shire could have been an entire other film.  Yeah, without it you really lose a lot of the impact of the narrative about the cost of war that Tolkien brought home in that story.  However, you really couldn't do that terribly well in the film.  The loss of the Scouring was something I expected, something that saddened me, but also something that I understood.  As for other changes, I think you're missing something of the point Talavar.  Tom Bombadil can be excised from the story relatively easily, he has always been a bit of a strange fit, but the problems with these films don't just stem from bits cut out entirely, the stem from having part of the heart of the books corrupted or watered down.  Theoden goes from the powerful warrior king of the Rohirrim to the weak-willed old man of the films, even AFTER Gandalf pulls him out of the spell.  He's petty and panicky, and he doesn't come off as the leader he should be in the Two Towers.  Aragorn has uncertainty injected into his character, along with the whole "I don't want my destiny" theme.  Frodo has most of his greatness stripped from him, and the inner nobility of his spirit is pretty much excised wholesale.  Faramir is turned into a complete wuss, talk about lack of greatness.  There are many, many more.  And Denethor....Denethor...you say the change to him doesn't matter?  He goes from a complex, compelling character, a character who your heart really goes out to, who is interesting and utterly indicative of the wider world that Tolkien created, and Jackson turns him into a crazy, evil old man.  It's all of these things that change the tone of the films, subtly but critically. 

I understand WHY they made these changes.  Heck, Jackson discusses it in his commentaries, but the end results are a greatly lessened story and much weaker characters.  You see, they felt that the stakes of the ending of the world weren't enough to create the drama of the story, so they also needed to have soap opera drama like Aragorn's crisis of faith, Theoden's rejection of wisdom, etc.  They wouldn't let great characters be great, because of the belief that the modern world can't accept greatness.  Because of that idea, we're left with mediocrity.  Cat, you say it could have been worse?  Well, I believe you, but that doesn't mean that I can stomach the Hollywood-ized version that we received.  Some stories are too good to be "fixed" for whatever reason, and the Lord of the Rings is one of them.  There is that within the books that these movies capture very well, but there is also that within them which is missing on the screen, and the movies are poorer for its absence.

[Talavar]

I don't like most of those changes either, Benton, I just think what remains has enough good about it to still be quite good as a whole.  But most of those changes happen in Fellowship or Two Towers: Theoden's uncertainty, Aragorn's rejection of his fate, Faramir's mediocrity.  All three of those characters, I would argue, get some greatness restored in RotK - Theoden goes to his final battle with absolute certainty; Aragorn assumes his destiny and never falters; Faramir Frodo is an ongoing problem - his most heroic moments through all three movies have been handed off to other characters, and he's gullible and trusting - with none of the wisdom Tolkien subscribes to him until the film's very end.  These issues plague all three LotR films, and I accept them as faults and move on.

Denethor's treatment is one of my biggest problems with RotK; one of the most complex characters in the book gets reduced to a crazy, bitter old man.  That said - it doesn't really matter to the larger story. 

This line of yours: "There is that within the books that these movies capture very well, but there is also that within them which is missing on the screen, and the movies are poorer for its absence," I think is entirely true; but I think it's true for almost every movie adaptation of another source.  The Lord of the Rings could have been better; that said, I think they achieve a measure of the book's greatness, warts and all.

[catwhowalksbyhimself]

Part of the problem here, and part of what makes great literature so great, is that we read into it a reflection of ourselves.  We each see the same story in different way, picture the characters in our own vision.  When a film is made, the filmakers have to boil the story and its characters down to it's essence.  That is not going to be the same for everybody.  For me, the LoTR films are about as perfect an adaptation as you can get.  It is likely then that what I see in the characters and story is essentially the same as the film makers.  Benton has a completely different perspective on it, which the filmakers do not share, so he sees something very different form the story he knows and loves, while I see exactly the same story I know and love.  This is a problem that is unresolvable.

[BentonGrey]

Fair enough Talavar.  That is something I can respect.  I thought you were saying that these changes were insignificant to the soul of the story, and they are not, even if they don't affect the nuts and bolts business of the plot.  I see what you're saying now.  If you can still enjoy the films despite their flaws, 'warts and all' as you said, well and good.

Ehh Cat, the mixture of self and author that creates meaning is something that's been debated since before Aristotle.  Let's say that I'm more Platonic in my thinking than is fashionable these days.  Do readers have a part in the creation of meaning?  Of course, but I've always seen something else that is concrete in literature, meaning that is there whether a given reader sees it or not.  The rejection of that idea is part of how the folks in my field talked themselves out of jobs.   That said, if Peter Jackson and co. were just following a different interpretation of the text, that I could live with more easily.  The changes they made were, for the most part, made for the worst of reasons.  Thus they gall me even more.  Yes, filmaking requires adjustments of the texts adapted to the medium, but adapting and co-opting are different things.  I'd argue that the LotR films are an example of the latter, as are most of the Narnia films.  It's the difference between The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe and Prince Caspian.  Anyway, Cat and I see the world differently, so barring some personality switching, Saturday-morning-cartoon-esq head injury, I imagine that we will have to agree to disagree here.

[Tomato]

Ummm... not to rain on everyone's parade here, but I think we've gotten WAY off topic here. The point of this thread is the Hobbit... and I don't see how any of the minor changes that happened much later in the story affect the prequel, nor do I see them repeating the "mistakes" you guys are discussing. If the point of the changes was to inject flaws to make things more relateable, then Hobbit does not require change... from my admittedly distant recollection, most of the characters already are flawed. One of the major moral lessons toward the end of the book is how nonsensical war actually is, and the entire 5 zillion armies war at the end of the book begins entirely out of the selfishness of several of the title characters. If ANYTHING, I see Jackson going in the complete opposite direction... making the characters seem more noble so we'll actually root for them at the end even when they're fighting a war over pointless greed.

[catwhowalksbyhimself]

Not to mention they have two movies over one short book as opposed to one movie per long book, so they aren't likely to actually leave much out. In fact, they are adding a lot of the behind the scenes event revealed in LoTR and elsewhere back in. Of course, some fans aren't going to like that.  I also suspect that the movie version of the Hobbit will lose the books light tone and be more in keeping with the later books.

[BentonGrey]

Not to mention they have two movies over one short book as opposed to one movie per long book, so they aren't likely to actually leave much out. In fact, they are adding a lot of the behind the scenes event revealed in LoTR and elsewhere back in. Of course, some fans aren't going to like that.  I also suspect that the movie version of the Hobbit will lose the books light tone and be more in keeping with the later books.

Emphasis added.  It seems to me that it's almost inevitable.

[catwhowalksbyhimself]

Well, yeah, the movie will be aimed at fans at the LoTR movies, who will be expecting the same tone and style.  In fact, and in reading about the series recently, it is repeatedly noted that people reading the Hobbit then LoTR, or even reverse often find the change in tone and theme to actually be quite jarring and often find themselves disliking the changes if they liked what they read first.  In real life, there was just a large amount of time between the books so the children who ready the Hobbit were adults by the time LoTR was written.

For a move, this just wouldn't work.  The two have to be brought into line with each other.  You can already see some of this in the trailer with Gandalf and Thoren basically bargaining Bilbo's life away and the rather ominous conversation with Bilbo right after that scene.

If you prefer the original's tone, there's always the old cartoon.  It had some pretty good music too.  Come to think of it, they also did Return of the King (but not the other ones) so you might enjoy that too.