'THE HOBBIT' ADDS MORE DWARVES, BEORN, AND ... GALADRIEL? - Page 2

Tolkien's dwarves aren't exactly supposed to be prim and proper. They are often portrayed as pretty violent and petty little assholes. To paraphrase Gimli: "Very handy in a fight these lads...despite the fact that they're likely to murder your shit if your treasures are too tempting." Among the free peoples of Middle Earth if the Elves symbolize the more ethereal and soulful side of humanity, dwarves symbolize its earthier, more materialistic side. They love to eat, they love to drink, they love to boast about their deeds, which are oftentimes great indeed and you could very easily end up on their bad side. The way Gimli is portrayed isn't that huge a divergence from cannon. You could argue that it is much truer when it comes to how Legolas was portrayed.

He was fine in the first film and there were some good shots of his CG double in TTT, but generally it seemed they were very limited in how they could film him in pitched battles. Maybe it's just me but if it was obviously his stunt double (because I subconsciously knew JRD wasn't that short) it took me out of the movie, unlike Legolas or Aragorn who were at least human height.

Which is really what the conclusion of the first movie should be about, anyway.

In the books, Frodo was 50 when he left the Shire with Sam, Merry and Pippin.

Agreed. I have problems with making a two paragraph explanation by Gandalf where he went when he left Thorin's expedition on the borders of Mirkwood into a major plot line in the film. It's so brief it hardly qualifies as a subplot. It is going to have to be pretty much made up by Jackson and company, and I submit that when he made stuff out of whole cloth he was at his weakest in the LOTR films.
And the point you made in antoher post about Jackson totally missing the point of the book in "Lovely Bones" is well taken. Despite it's overlength I enjoyed King Kong, but was just WTF with what he did with Lovely Bones.

As much as I enjoyed King Kong in the theater, I've yet to watch it again at home. And I own both editions of the DVD.

This thread is making me glad I wasn't knee-deep in he internet for the development of the original trilogy. Holy nitpipcks, guys. Big broad fantasy films tend to err on the side of "less subtle". There's nothing really wrong with the Gimli height visual joke in TTT, or with his on-the-nose summation of the dead army in ROTK.

I think that's ultimately a subjective call. Posters here have cited good, solid reasons for hating the humor - almost all citing its LCD, cheap nature. It's forced humor that doesn't feel right and demeans the character.

And stelios - I agree that the dwarves weren't portrayed as "prim and proper" - but they certainly took themselves pretty damn seriously (see: Thorin Oakenshield and Dain Ironfoot) and, other than poor, fat Bombur, weren't cluelessly rude assholes. Gimli, especially in TTT and ROTK, is an embarrassment.

An embarrassment? You'd think it was Jar Jar you were talking about.

Gimli's not much better, for me.

Holy hyperbole, Batman. I think I'm going to have to avoid these threads in the run-up to THE HOBBIT if Gimli occasionally burping in between killing lots of things means he's almost as bad as Jar Jar Binks.

Yeah, hold the hyperbole back a bit buddy.

They're certainly going to make some stuff up, but it won't necessarily be out of whole cloth. There is a lot about those events in the appendixes and The Silmarillion.

Yeah, but there's little more than a paragraph about what happens with the Necromancer. It's literally, "They think it's Sauron, they find out it's Sauron, they drive him out, he runs off to Mordor." Not much more than that. No details how they did it, or even who was there.

Also, there's word now Orlando Bloom is close to being on-board. Now this makes a little more sense, because Legolas was the son of the Elven King Bilbo and the dwarves encounter in Mirkwood, and chronologically he was alive at the time.

Ding ding. In all seriousness, the nitpicks here are nothing like what you would have seen in LotR threads at the time the films were out. You're even luckier than you realize.

That said, I'm not sure that disliking a particular stupid visual joke and a bit of clunky writing constitutes heavy nitpicking. The visual height joke, like I said before, isn't fucking funny, and in fact the genuine warmth and humor of the subsequent height joke just underscores how bad that one moment is.

Of course movies like these tend to be broad and eschew subtlety. If I wasn't okay with that I'd probably hate them, but they rank pretty damn high in my list of "best films of 2000-2009". But you can be broad and unsubtle without being clunky, and both of those moments feel really clunky.

I would never, ever compare Gimli to Jar Jar. They're not close. If nothing else one is portrayed by John Rhys-fucking-Davies, and the other is a cartoon character whose voice is supplied by an Ahmed Best who sucked all the helium out of the balloons at a kid's birthday party. There's no comparison at all.

And Richard-- same story over here. Never bothered to watch either edition, not even with the temptation of a 60-inch TV.

Not Necromancer-related, per se, but in Tolkien's own Unfinished Tales book, there's a Hobbit short-story prequel which flashes back to the meetings Gandalf has with Thorin, where he convinces him that Bilbo's presence on the expedition will likely be the only thing that saves their asses in the end, against the dragon.

Not a bad vignette, and I can certainly see Jackson using it in the script. At the very least, it's a side-story that Tolkien actually wrote himself.

I found the most awkward bits of Gimli comedy relief to be the stuff that was added into the Extended editions. And by ROTK they were just throwing everything and the kitchen sink in there. Not surprising that some of it just seems better left in gag reels.

Yeah, but that's really unnecessary back-story. It'd be like inserting a scene at the beginning of Star Wars where Ben talks to Yoda about how important Luke is. We're told that through the natural flow of the story. Why put an awkward exclamation point on it?

What I meant was, either Jackson could directly depict it (which would take up probably 3-4 minutes of screentime at the very least), or else he could mine it for passing, in-dialogue references -- say, Thorin mentioning to Gandalf, "Remember when you convinced me back in Bree how vital this 'burglar' would be to our success?", or something similar.

If done well it could be a nice echo of Gandalf's exclamation point line from Fellowship: "My heart tells me that Gollum has some part to play yet, for good or ill, before this is over. The pity of Bilbo may rule the fate of many."

I have this weirdly funny feeling that, like Kong, it's going to be a good 20-25 minutes before the journey even gets underway. And part of the charm of The Hobbit is that it's a prime model example of a road movie--Bilbo gets yanked out of his perfect little existence without his permission, and slowly grows to the idea of having an adventure over the course of the adventure. It's simple. Tidy, even. Everything else just sounds and feels fluffy.

Yeah, the film runs a major risk of losing Tolkien's original storyline-momentum if Jackson decides to give us a full half-hour of Thorin sharpening his axe and Bilbo fixing Second Breakfast while dodging the Sackville-Bagginses before Gandalf finally ever shows up.

The Fellowship of the Ring could afford this. The Hobbit cannot.

But with it being two films, I fear Jackson will think he can afford it.

True.

I like the start of Fellowship in the Shire, and I wouldn't mind re-visiting that. I am thrilled that we'll see more of Gandalf the Grey (he was my favourite character in the movies and I could watch him all day) .I'm open to the idea of Jackson opening up the story, because I will be viewing the film adaptation as an extension of the LOTR films, rather than a self-contained story. I think most viewers will be expecting that too.

And I should point out that those worried about pacing need only look at how the LOTR books (with their practically leisurely pace in many parts) were condensed so efficiently in the films. Sure there was bloat in places - the books were guilty of that as well. Very often.

I'm aware of that, but the book =/= the movie. Elijah Wood's Frodo was clearly not fifty years old.

He was a fifty year old HOBBIT, not human.

If he was a Hobbit, why'd they cast a human like Elijah Wood?

I'd love The Hobbit to be self-contained. It's a companion to LotR, not the prelude. It should be its own beast, and I'd like to think audiences would be smart enough to realizes how the pieces fit into what they already know without spoon feeding us an extra film's worth of exposition. Some murmerings about unrest to the south, a few uncertain glances from Gandalf when observing Bilbo's ring, and Gollum should be ample connective tissue.

Not to mention, I know Lord of the Rings is the second highest selling work of fiction of the 20th century, but pound for pound, I know more people who read The Hobbit as a kid. It's almost like Narnia; everyone at some point has read it. I think people know what's up when it comes to this story, which is why I feel befuddled when I hear talk like this is going to be a hard sell without half the cast of LotR showing up.

There is no bloat in The Hobbit, hence why the bloating taking place to make it fill two films is being met with such resistance. Jackson streamlined the LotR trilogy very well--he was taking over a thousand pages of story and making it digestible. Here, he seems to be taking a three hundred page story and stretching it to the length of a thousand pages. It just seems to be counter-intuitive.

Conversely, tons of people thought LOTR would bomb because no one but nerds and old hippies had read (or remembered) the book. It ended up selling to an incredibly wide audience.

With that sentiment in mind (and the early hints such as these), it's amazing and wonderful that FOTR trusts it's audience. Other than the prologue -- which is really a clean and classy introduction into this world -- audiences are left to figure out what Middle-earth is and what hobbits are. It was a pretty complicated and heavy introduction, but people went along with it. There was a lot of exposition in the dialogue, but you still had to just go with the idea of hobbits, Ringwraiths, and whatever the hell Gollum was.

And come on -- there's the little bit of dialogue right there at the beginning of FOTR where Frodo and Gandalf laugh about Bilbo's past adventures. You already have the connection. Why spend a good hour reminding audiences it will all tie together?

I don't think there's any danger that audiences won't go "Ah-ha!" the moment Gandalf knocks on that little round door. Jackson didn't underestimate them the first time. Why do it now?

(I agree with you, Greg, if that's not clear!)

Greg and Elisabeth just nailed it.

Well, I for one am all for Jackson's exaggerations.
And Blanchett was simply the most perfect Galadriel that could be cast in any place and time.
My only concern is her age, and frankly I'm surprised there's been no mention of it so far.

That introduction is the single most-awesome, breathtaking experience I remember having in a movie theater.
I couldn't literally believe what I saw before my eyes: Armies, Dwarves, Orcs, Sauron, the Ring, The Elves, Middle Earth itself and its scope, tragedies and legends evoked by Blanchett's austere voice.
Incredible.

Where did we get this idea that there'll be an hour of introductions before the story starts? Not saying it won't happen of course, but it sounds like it's unsubstantiated guess that we're just running with. Are we engaging in what-if scenarios here? Because it's a bit silly to criticise Jackson on what we think he's going to do, isn't it?

I agree wholeheartedly that FOTR was the best film, as it didn't coddle the audience and was a pure 'fantasy quest' film (as opposed to the others, which I consider 'fantasy war' films). I have stated in other threads that the 'bloat' in TTT and ROTK was for the benefit of mainstream audiences (possibly at the behest of the studio), and that it was justified by the fact that more people went and saw TTT and ROTK than the first film (no mean feat in these times of rapidly diminished return franchises). And yes I know more money doesn't make them better films, but reality dictates that films costing this much reach out to a larger audience. And at the end of the day, more people were exposed to a really great story they may otherwise not have been.

It's definitely guessing on 'whaf-if' scenarios. But it's a bit justified considering what we know of Jackson's habits as he's gotten more and more successful as a commercial filmmaker. His ability to milk the sweet moments of his stories really kinda grew into a flaw as most people came to realize with King Kong.

I watched some of FOTR last night and found traces of Jackson 'overdoing' things during the fight with the cave troll in Balin's Tomb (Balin's Tomb, right?). It's that moment when the troll stabs Frodo and Jackson uses that "choppy slow-motion of significance" to put a lull in the chaos. It lingers and lingers on Frodo's constipated face as everyone stops to be sad about it. He collapses. They defeat the troll. Aragorn turns Frodo's limp body and he's all like, "Naw, man. I'm fine!" What a drama queen!

I know I'm sounding really negative here, but don't take it as such. That moment worked really well the first time I saw it. It just stands out to me differently knowing how Jackson's habits developed with more films.

Although, and this is just a technical niggle, I remember both of my Ballantine copies of The Hobbit growing up back in the '80s having, "The Enchanting Prelude to The Lord of the Rings" emblazoned across the covers, and Tolkien's own British publisher (Unwin) regarded it as a prelude from the 1950s on, too, IIRC. I'd be curious to learn Tolkien's own position on that, come to think of it.

Seeing as how Tolkien didn't know there'd be a LOTR when he wrote The Hobbit, I don't see how he would have conceived of it as a prelude. That's just marketing-speak.

Retroactively, though, he did pull a Lucas and rewrote the entire Gollum/Ring-section to fit in with the by-then-published LOTR trilogy in the '50s.

In the original 1938 version, it didn't match up with the events of Fellowship at all.

Sure. But in tone, style and scope, it's not even remotely close to LOTR, except for the early Shire-based chapters of FOTR. And I think that was more a deliberate easing in of the reader than an aborted attempt to write LOTR in the same style.

Leto's completely correct. The stories that jelled into LotR had been floating around in Tolkien's mind for many years, connected to what we know as The Silmarillion, prior to the publication of LotR (and even prior to The Hobbit).

After the success of The Hobbit, his publisher encouraged him to write a sequel...which took Tolkien almost 15 years. It's during that process that he 1) tied in those legends and tales with the events of The Hobbit and 2) retconned The Hobbit to better match LotR.

I'll just post this (from the Wikipedia entry on The Hobbit):

Exactly what Jackson seems on his way to doing.

I fear we may have a case of Star Wars Prequel-itis going on here. A great director of a well-regarded piece of movie history comes back to his greatest triumph and, through a series of bad decisions, manages to break the hearts of the fans.

I'm hoping this doesn't turn out to be the case. Don't let us down, Peter Jackson!

And if folks got a little self aware, they'd acknowledge that it's been a downward trajectory (artistically speaking) since then.


Lovely Bones<King Kong<Return of the King<Two Towers<Fellowship of the Ring


Although they filmed most of the Rings footage together, post production was in the wake of FOTR's success. The shaped those sequels separately. They were crafted by a Peter Jackson that was at different points in his life.

So where does that leave the Hobbit?


Well, while making LOTR, Jackson said he would have no interest in doing it because it was basically a children's tale. After the high fantasy of the rings, it just would feel like an anticlimactic endeavor. Then near the end of the release of the trilogy, he started it saying it would be nice to make the Hobbit film connect to his work.


IMHO, his heart will not be in this the way it was when his whole career rested on the big gamble that was the original trilogy.

We'll see.

Well I'm glad we all now know exactly what Peter Jackson is thinking and his film-making style on films he hasn't made yet. Thank goodness for CHUD messageboards!

Come now... you've never prejudged anything based on the evidence available? Never been sure that a movie would suck from just a trailer? Never thought some director was a poor match for the material? An actor miscast? Nobody is saying this is EXACTLY how it's going to turn out. It's just very very likely. It is absolutely substantiated guesswork. It's substantiated by Jackson's own work after FOTR, his decision to split a small story into 2 movies, and it's partially mirrored in the trajectory of Lucas' career. It's simply a practical way of looking at the way someone develops as an artist after an interesting mixture of successes and failures (one failure, actually).

Considering it (as a book) is only topped by the Bible in sales, I'm surprised it was so surprising to everyone. Granted, fantasy (besides Star Wars) never made a huge BO splash. Not even Lucas could duplicate his success with WILLOW (which is easily a LOTR knock-off).
Yep. Well, at least the Hobbit has likeable characters.

The three biggest pieces of evidence available suggest that Jackson knows EXACTLY what he's doing when it comes to Tolkien's world. This thread is crazy.

*Really*?

Look, these films are, first and foremost, part of the LOTR cinematic franchise. You're not going to get a straight, small, self-contained adaptation of THE HOBBIT here - the studio AND the majority of the audience want to see a precursor to LOTR. You guys aren't complaining about Jackson making bad films here, you're complaining about him potentially making films that you personally would have made differently. It's such a classic and obvious thing to do that I'm surprised to see so many doing it.

And the Lucas comparisons hold no water whatsoever. STAR WARS is Lucas' brainchild - everything flows from him. He's autonomous, and he essentially made the prequels he wanted to. AND he didn't direct a film in the twenty years between the first installment and TPM. I think people are so damn gunshy about this because of the tenuous prequel connection, and I think that's massively unfair to Jackson and WETA and even del Toro, whose work certainly isn't going to be abandoned wholesale at this juncture.

What Andrew said. I realise that there is room to debate this but a lot of it sounds a bit like puritan negativity, and I really don't think Jackson deserves that. Yes he has made flawed films - but you can't fault his ambition. The comparison to Lucas is immensely unfair and unhelpful to discussion. We can do better - this isn't IMDB.

It's true I am a bit biased towards Jackson, being a NZer and all. But I can't see a reason to be so down on this. It's just The Hobbit. I will always be peeved that there'll never be a proper cinematic adaptation of Ursula le Guin's A Wizard of Earthsea - which I hold in higher regard than The Hobbit. Jackson's new films are going to be huge, Weta will do some amazing work, the acting will be tremendous, the book will still exist unchanged - what's not to like about this situation?

What are the 3 biggest pieces of evidence? I feel like I missed something.

Anyway, I have no real dog in this. I've never read any of Tolkien's books. I thoroughly enjoyed and loved the LOTR trilogy as they came out for exactly the films they were. But I decided to jump into this discussion based on what many people believe The Hobbit should be (on the boards and friends of mine) and because I'm interested in the way Peter Jackson has evolved as a filmmaker.

So Jackson could make The Hobbit in a way that connects it more directly to his cinematic trilogy, and I would love it just as much. You're right that Jackson making the movie his way does not guarantee a 'bad movie;' Just one that doesn't jibe with the feelings many people have about the source material.

But you're not really using the 'studio and the audience's demands' as a justification for this, are you? Don't we often curse the studio system and the general audiences for this very thing with most other movies? In any case, I don't think it's directly relevant to Jackson's choices here. I think he's making choices that he wants to in order to connect to the material (if the quote about his initial reluctance to direct The Hobbit is true). And I certainly can't begrudge him that.

Hint: they're each three hours long.

Not at all. It's just the reality of the situation, and it's really stupid to think that Jackson could or should cater to the small fanbase clamouring for a little intimate slip of a HOBBIT film when the vast majority of the people that made LOTR such a beloved smash hit are more than happy for him to have a crack at it his way.

Ah! That was dense of me. Although the third movie (about 3 hours and 20 minutes long) got a lot of shit for all of the endings from casual audience members. Not from me, mind you. I loved all of the endings.

I think a lot of it comes down to how much the fans of the books and the films appreciated Jackson's loyalty to the spirit of the source material through the many interviews and the intimidating amount of special features on the extended edition documentaries.

For that person to now take a much smaller story (from what others have said) and try to "epic-ify" it to match a trilogy of his greatest successes after what he already did with King Kong and (what I heard he did with) The Lovely Bones... I think the skepticism is justified. He seems to be directly going against the spirit of the source material.

I LOVE Jackson's ambition. And I love it when he chooses the right moments to indulge in a story's most dramatic points. It's a touch that I think a lot of fantasy films are missing as of late. But I've felt that he's had a hard time keeping that ambition in control. I mean... just the idea of expanding the story of King Kong into 3 hours... I had a hard time making sense of that.