Knights & Knaves Alehouse

No film now or in the future is ever going to be 100% authentic to the original material even if you had Tolkien himself in the directors chair. Sure, there's always things thats are going to irritate you ( I.e. Orcs crawling up walls in Moria) but it's as a whole is what's important and no better person in the world could of done them better at that time then then Peter Jackson. Honestly, it was only a few years ago New Line was going to make some dreadfully shitty version of The Hobbit. At least with Jackson and del Toro you have a good chance of a film measuring up with the others. With anyone else and another studio backing it up the chances are dam slim it will be half as watchable.

I'm sure that the Hobbit movies are going to be great sweeping epics, and I look forward to seeing them and reveling in the resurgence of fantasy film in the last decade.

!!!

(and there's always a gigantic 'but' isn't there. )

The Hobbit wasn't that kind of book. The Hobbit was instead a road story (maybe the ultimate road story) filled with subtlety and atmosphere to spare. It's also pretty light fare, best told from a rocking chair by the fire, pipe in hand, with an English rain forming puddles in the garden outside. Jackson's vision is larger than life (and therefore fit the LotR, which was a great vast world); Del Toro is a mature modern fantasist: brilliant but not wimsical. Pan's Labyrinth may be one of the top twenty best fantasy movies of all time, but it's heavy . In a strange way, I think that the Where the Wild Things Are movie could possibly have more of the correct 'vibe' for The Hobbit than what we'll see from Jackson/Del Toro, but we'll have to see on both accounts.

(I should also go on the record saying that I think that Jim Henson/Frank Oz - had it been their intention to make it their crowning achievement - could have done a very acceptable interpretation of The Hobbit. The Dark Crystal (for me) was the litmus test that showed me thier brilliance. RIP Jim.)

- Wheggi

You know with all this talk, I'm suddenly seeing "Bard's arrow" opening up a space/time rift and porting in a svelte Professor Tolkien to slide down the neck of Smaug while torching his smoking pipe to light up a belt of grenades then slam dunk them down Smaug's throat....

geneweigel wrote:You know with all this talk, I'm suddenly seeing "Bard's arrow" opening up a space/time rift and porting in a svelte Professor Tolkien to slide down the neck of Smaug while torching his smoking pipe to light up a belt of grenades then slam dunk them down Smaug's throat....

You've been reading my DM notes. Bastid!

Actually, I only pull that Hunter S. stuff in my games once.. maybe twice a year.

Wheggi wrote:Jackson's vision is larger than life (and therefore fit the LotR, which was a great vast world); Del Toro is a mature modern fantasist: brilliant but not wimsical. Pan's Labyrinth may be one of the top twenty best fantasy movies of all time, but it's heavy . In a strange way, I think that the Where the Wild Things Are movie could possibly have more of the correct 'vibe' for The Hobbit than what we'll see from Jackson/Del Toro, but we'll have to see on both accounts.]

Spike Jones (who directed the upcoming Wild things film) is a tallented director, but I don't think he would of been a good fit for the Hobbit the way del Toro is who has shown he's capable of making these kinds of movie and literarily lives and breaths fantasy and horror. Maybe if they started first with the Hobbit it could work. But the fact is a certain cinematic aesthetic has now been established with the previous films. Maybe when they remake them in 30 or more years, but not now.

If anything, I'm happy that el toro is making it and maybe it will FINALLY convince the suits and moneyguys at Universal to let him make At The Mountains of Madness.

(shrug) In all likelihood, I will see "The Hobbit" when it is released. I am a long time fan of LotR (first read in 1971 & read many times since then) and I liked the PJ tirilogy just fine. Would I have done it different? Sure. I will probably say the same thing about "The Hobbit" duology of films after I've seen them, but I will see them just the same.

The films, whether great or awful, can't take the experience of reading Tolkien's work for the first time away from me.

Last week, I gave my ten year old neice, The Sword of Shanarra to read. I thought is would be at about her level. She asked what it was about, and I told her that it was something like The Lord of the Rings. She said, "Oh, you mean like if the Lord of the Rings was a book?"

heh..

I first read The Hobbit in 6th grade... 1973/74.

I first read LOTR in 8th grade... 1975/76.

I first read The Silmarillion in 9th grade... 1977.



I saw the first "Jacksonian LOTR movie" when it hit the theatres.

I have yet to see either of the others.


I am probably not going to see this version of The Hobbit either.



I won't waste time nor harass electrons by elucidating further.

Palmer wrote:Last week, I gave my ten year old neice, The Sword of Shanarra to read. I thought is would be at about her level. She asked what it was about, and I told her that it was something like The Lord of the Rings. She said, "Oh, you mean like if the Lord of the Rings was a book?"

That's ironic on SO many levels.

I'm with BlackBat242 - if Jackson, Walsh, and Boyens have a hand in the script then I'm not wasting any more money on their kids' future drug habits.

BlackBat242 wrote:I first read The Hobbit in 6th grade... 1973/74.

I first read LOTR in 8th grade... 1975/76.

I first read The Silmarillion in 9th grade... 1977.



I saw the first "Jacksonian LOTR movie" when it hit the theatres.

I have yet to see either of the others.


I am probably not going to see this version of The Hobbit either.



I won't waste time nor harass electrons by elucidating further.

While the years are different, I was at about the same age when I tackled the above-listed works. I, however, did slog through the Jackson "adaptations" of The Two Towers" and "The Return of the King".

You didn't miss anything, BB. In video collections, I tend to be a completist. I have the xtended version of the Fellowship and the Two Towers. I couldn't bring myself to purchase Return because it was so freakin' bad.

ROTK was not bad. You want to see bad, go watch Twilight or the last Indiana Jones film. Even that Watchmen film was a disappointment and practically 99% of the comic's original dialog was use--and it was still awful!

there was a lot of TTT and ROTK that were great. The sequence with Shagrath was e just as good as it was described by Tolkein and the whole final destruction of Sauron's tower was even better then it was described in the book. Just because it was written doesn't necessarily mean it's good to begin with. Take for instance Tom Bombadil. Who did noting for the story and Tolkien himself said was not an important character. Jackson was ever the wise of not shooting those scenes in the book yet felt entitled to keep some presence of him and made his cameo very brief ( thank the gods).

BlackBat242 wrote:I first read The Hobbit in 6th grade... 1973/74.

I first read LOTR in 8th grade... 1975/76.

I first read The Silmarillion in 9th grade... 1977.



I saw the first "Jacksonian LOTR movie" when it hit the theatres.

I have yet to see either of the others.


I am probably not going to see this version of The Hobbit either.



I won't waste time nor harass electrons by elucidating further.

Same here except that I first read The Hobbit in 4th grade, first read LOTR in 6th grade (though I may have been in 7th by the time I finished ROTK) and have never read The Silmarillion (though I've had a copy dutifully sitting on my bookshelf for 20+ years).

I never understood all the Tom Bombadil hate. From the time I read LoTR in 9th grade (I read The Hobbit & LoTR back to back that year), I thought ol' Tom was pretty cool cat. Everybody's running around all stressed-out, and here's Tom and his old lady hanging out, and he don't even give a good gods damned about no silly ol' ring.

Tom's an unimportant character, eh? Without ol' Tom, Frodo's playin' bridge with a barrow wight for eternity. I'd like to see the quote by the professor stating Tom's non-importance. He was important enough, apparently, to be included in Fellowship.

I expected Tom to be excised from the film. Bakshi did it, and apparently a lot others don't get Tom either. That's cool. Different strokes .. and all that.

TheRedPriest wrote:I never understood all the Tom Bombadil hate. From the time I read LoTR in 9th grade (I read The Hobbit & LoTR back to back that year), I thought ol' Tom was pretty cool cat. Everybody's running around all stressed-out, and here's Tom and his old lady hanging out, and he don't even give a good gods damned about no silly ol' ring.

Tom's an unimportant character, eh? Without ol' Tom, Frodo's playin' bridge with a barrow wight for eternity. I'd like to see the quote by the professor stating Tom's non-importance. He was important enough, apparently, to be included in Fellowship.

I expected Tom to be excised from the film. Bakshi did it, and apparently a lot others don't get Tom either. That's cool. Different strokes .. and all that.

What I'd read of The Professor's notes on Bombadil is that he was very important. Perhaps not to the specific plot of the destruction of the Ring but a critical being within the world of Middle Earth.

But, since most people don't actually understand Tolkien's work, I'm not surprised that there is a lot of Bombadil Dislike.

TheRedPriest wrote:ITom's an unimportant character, eh? Without ol' Tom, Frodo's playin' bridge with a barrow wight for eternity. I'd like to see the quote by the professor stating Tom's non-importance.

I'm sure Tolkein could of thought up another way to intervene other then using Mr. Happy-go-lucky. The character is just some oddity and not well thought out as Tolkein has (slightly) admitted and basically is just " there" for the sake that he's part of Middle Earth. Even Tolkein himself didn't completely understand who the character was or represented.

From Tolkien himself:

"Tom Bombadil is not an important person — to the narrative. I suppose he has some importance as a 'comment.' I mean, I do not really write like that: he is just an invention (who first appeared in The Oxford Magazine about 1933), and he represents something that I feel important, though I would not be prepared to analyse the feeling precisely. I would not, however, have left him in, if he did not have some kind of function."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Bombadil

And yeah, I " get him" . He's the " old hippy" who doesn't give a hoot and is not touched or bothered by the world ( although I'm sure he would be quite upset if he found an Orc'ish spear sticking out of Goldberry's neck) Without trying to insult the Professor's great work too much, I have seen this character type done better by others and wish he would of done the same.