FanFiltration said:
This is why I don't like the film as much as the other two installments. It's Bane. The performance comes off as comical and over the top. Something more reminiscent of the Burton / Schumacher films.
Schumacher's Bane would like a word with you.
Nah, the rippling muscles didn't come until Ep 3. AOTC Anakin is scrawny.
1) why object to Jackson's depiction of Dwarves but not Elves? In both TH and LOTR novels, Elves are depicted as being a very whimsical, light-hearted people, but in the films they're portrayed as serious and somber. If one is to find fault with one race's portrayal, why not the other?
Yeah, I see where you're coming from, but here's the difference between the two cases, as I see it. First, Tolkien moved steadily away from the whimsical portrayal of the elves as his thinking on Arda developed and evolved. The elves of LOTR are considerably less happy-go-lucky than the elves of the Hobbit, and that trend continues through his other writings, too. So the films' more somber portrayal has some textual basis. Second, where the films do depart in portraying the elves from the source material, it is done in a respectful manner. Making the dwarves into a bunch of crude jocks strikes me as a very disrespectful decision. Just because comic relief is sparse is no reason to turn Tolkien's noble dwarves into a race of Gungans.
As for the eagles, they are hardly different from the books, but the lack of development and the very "convenient" deus ex machina that they are makes me wonder if doing the films in the proper order instead of Star Wars order might have helped things make more sense with them and perhaps a number of other points as well.
You may be right, but I suspect that, from a purely pragmatic perspective, it never would've worked. The Hobbit is doing so well, in large part, by riding the coattails of LOTR. If the production order had been reversed, I suspect we never would have made it to the second trilogy.
darth_ender said:
I have to say that Sam was one of my favorite characters. Sam was underappreciated, but he really had a great deal to offer. He always seemed to ask all the right questions, and even if they seemed mundane initially, we'd know how important they were in the end. Sam was very passionate in his views and would press them in spite of anyone's contradictions. And when he really let forth his wrath, he had the ferocity of a troll! That's what I love about Sam.
ALLOL
Well, that was fast.
Sorry; meant to say "extended," not "theatrical."
The Mandarin said:
Who was this guy? What was his account's username? And why did he make you laugh a lot?
You're being pretty transparent, Sam.
Evidently, there will be an extended release with an additional 20-25 minutes of footage. I presume the same will apply to the following two installments, as well.
xhonzi said:
An aside- was the shot of Bilbo looking at old-and-busted Narsil in the trailer but not in the film?
Yup. I kept an eye out for that sequence in the theatre, but it never materialized. Here's hoping it shows up in the extended edition...
Ah, I knew of the few different breeds of half-orcs, but I thought goblin-men was used to describe Uruk-Hai when told from the perspective of characters who didn't know what a Uruk-Hai was. I took it as more of a descriptive name for something that appears to be a cross between an orc/goblin and a human (which of course, was a Uruk).
I looked into this a little further. Evidently, the term "goblin-men" only occurs once in Tolkien's writings. It's mentioned by Gamling during the Battle of the Hornburg:
But these creatures of Isengard, these half-orcs and goblin-men that the foul craft of Saruman has bred, they will not quail at the sun...
So, since the reference is pretty ambiguous, there's room for interpretation. On the one hand, would Gamling really have extensive knowledge of orc breeds? On the other hand, he seems to regard at least two different "types" in Saruman's army, which he would've been looking directly at. So perhaps there were two or more visually distinct breeds of half-orc in the attacking army...
Kerr's edits are very well edited. He's one of the more competent editors out there.
@ Akwat. I've always wanted to do an edit that follows the book chronology of events. Did you do that in yours?
Naw, I considered doing something like that but it's already been done (by Kerr), with mixed results IMO. Some of the installments work well, but others just drag (especially the Frodo-Sam stuff after the breaking of the fellowship). So I stuck with the narrative flow established by Jackson & Co. as a base, and edited it as necessary. Certainly not as novel an approach, but more watchable I think. (No disrespect intended toward Kerr, BTW. He's an extremely gifted faneditor and as a book fan I thoroughly enjoyed watching his edits...I just don't think, cinematically speaking, that particular approach works.)
I'm trying to think of which architecture you are referring to, however, as the only time I can recall seeing anything is in the Mines of Moria, and there we see little because it is so rundown.
My bad; "architecture" wasn't really the word I was looking for. I guess I had in mind the entire "look" of dwarven products throughout the films, including armor, weapons, rings, and architecture (in Moria). It's all very square and blocky, not very elegant or sophisticated. But this is a minor complaint; it's the "dumb jock" portrayals that annoy me the most.
Which fanedits did you do? I hadn't realized you'd released any (and truthfully I haven't even checked any LOTR edits out, but that could change). I'm truly interested.
I worked on my LOTR fanedits on and off for about three years, and just finished the trilogy last year. The idea was to bring them into closer conformity with the books, which has been done by several other faneditors, but none quite to my liking. I'm quite happy with my versions, but I never bothered releasing them online.
Questions regarding the trilogy and Jackson's films:
How do you feel about the Nazguls' portrayal?
How do you feel about Faramir?
What do you think about ommitting the Scouring of the Shire and Tom Bombadil?
In the same vein, how do you feel about the changes to Saruman's demise?
Here goes:
1. I thought the Nazgul were handled quite well. Was Jackson's handling of them controversial? If so, I'm drawing a blank; I don't recall any instances of gross discontinuity with their portrayal in the books.
2. I really, really disliked the alteration of Faramir's character. It's tied with Frodo's and Sam's "breakup" in ROTK for my most hated revision of the trilogy. I'm not really a hyper-purist and am comfortable with a fair amount of adaptational adjustment (provided it's beneficial to the film and done in good taste), but significantly altering a character should be taboo, IMO. Relatedly, I didn't care for the self-doubting Aragorn either, though it's by no means as offensive a change as turning Faramir into a Boromir-clone. Unsurprisingly, both of these changes have been either eliminated or significantly mitigated in my edits.
3. I had no problems with the ommission of Bombadil and the Scouring. As much as I love Tolkien and Fellowship, I must say the Bombadil material has always felt very out of place to me, and certainly would've been disruptive and bewildering in a cinematic adaptation. As for the scouring (which I love), I think Jackson & Co. could have handled the material really well, but where would they have put it? At the end of ROTK? Pretty anti-climactic. I would've liked to see the sequence filmed and released as a special feature, but I realize that would have been lots of effort for very little payoff from a production standpoint.
4. Saruman's demise. :Sigh: "The Voice of Saruman" is my very favorite chapter of all three books, and I didn't care for how it was handled in the film. I didn't mind moving the assassination to this point in the narrative; the ommission of the Scouring made that pretty much necessary. But the confrontation itself was butchered. None of the subtelty or magic of the sequence as written made it onto the screen. In the end I left this sequence in my edits slightly trimmed, but I really wish it had been handled better.
Right after seeing The Hobbit I mentioned to my three friends I saw it with that I thought it was interesting that the film split orcs and goblins into two different creatures, when in the books they are the same thing, having been called goblins in The Hobbit, and changed to orcs in LOTR (including Tolkien's forward, which recounts events of The Hobbit, now using the term orc in place of goblin). Upon mentioning this, all three of my friends slowly turned their heads toward me, eyebrows raised, and two of them in unison said, "No they're not! They've always been different!" They then explained that the Uruk-hai were a cross breed between goblins and orcs, and that goblins are stronger than orcs, but die when exposed to sunlight, and that the significance of the uruk-hai were that they had the mixed strength of goblins along with the orcs ability to walk in daylight.
Their confusion is somewhat understandable; the Goblin-Orc-Uruk relationship is a little murky, to say the least. IIRC, here's how it works in Tolkien's writings: Goblins and orcs are just two different names for the same creature. Cross an orc with a human, however, and you get a half-orc. Saruman's Uruk-Hai are a particular breed of half-orc that were stronger, smarter, and larger than regular orcs and could also withstand sunlight. Another product of Saruman's "orc husbandry" was a race called "goblin-men" which are only mentioned once or twice, and about whom very little is known. Most likely, they too were a specific breed of half-orc, distinct from both Uruk-Hai and from garden-variety half-orcs. (In the FOTR movie, Gandalf tells Elrond that the Uruk-Hai are a product of Saruman's cross-breeding orcs with goblin-men. I'm pretty sure, from a book standpoint, that this is erroneous.)
I also hated the inclusion of the anachronistic golf and croquet references. I think the golf joke worked fine for the book, but in a film made to be a prequel to the Lord of the Rings movies, it was really out of place.
Ordinarily I would agree on this point. But seeing as how these references were straight out of the book, somehow I can't bring myself to fault them. I couldn't help but smile when I heard these references in the theatre.
Following up on Ender's suggestion, here is a thread dedicated to the discussion of all things J. R. R. Tolkien & Middle Earth (which is probably my favorite fictional "universe" of all time). If you'd like to discuss anything about the books, the film adaptations, the Middle Earth universe itself, Professor Tolkien, or anything else related, this is the place to do it!
To kick off the discussion, since I've provided a positive review of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey elsewhere, I thought I'd mention a few things here that I didn't like about the film. (Spoilers ahead.)
1. The portrayal of the dwarves. This is one of the things that consistently annoyed me in Jackson's LOTR trilogy. Tolkien's dwarves are not particularly crude, vulgar or gluttonous, and there is no reason to portray them as such. Jackson's dwarves come across, much of the time, as a bunch of dumb jocks that like to drink a lot, scratch themselves inappropriately, burp and fart, and generally behave in a riotous frat-boy manner. Tolkien's dwarves were much more elegant, refined, and cultured. In my own fanedits of the LOTR trilogy, I cut down significantly on Gimli's dumbness. Eventually, I plan to apply the same treatment to The Hobbit trilogy.
Relatedly, the dwarves were also supposed to be the finest craftsmen in the world, so why is their architecture routinely depicted as square and blocky, while that of the elves is graceful, complex, and fluid? This is somewhat irksome to me.
2. Thorin's crappy attitude. Why did he have to be such a jerk this early in the narrative? There's plenty of time to explore that side of his character later on when he and Bilbo have their falling out over the Archenstone incident. Also, what's the deal with his raging anti-Elven prejudice? Again, there's room for Dwarven-Elven tensions to rise later on, in Mirkwood. There was absolutely no reason whatsoever to inject tension between Thorin's people and Elrond's. This was not only contrived, but it actually disrupted the flow of the narrative, IMO.
3. I liked the inclusion of Radagast, and Sylvester McCoy delivered a bang-up performance, as I knew he would. That being said, I feel they went a little over-the-top with these scenes. Why did the stuff in Radagast's house have to be so cutesy? And I could've done without the Warg-Bunny-Sled chase sequence. Just show Radagast heading off on sled and the wargs chasing after him, and then cut back to the party. No need to have an extended chase sequence, especially when it looks so silly.
4. The Great Goblin was handled well, overall. I didn't even mind his brief little musical number; it fits well with the lighter tone of the original novel. But what was up with his dialogue when confronting (and then being slain by) Gandalf? It seemed really poorly-written and out of place.
I'm sure there are others, but those are the only ones that spring to mind at present.
By contrast, here are a couple things that I've heard lots of fans complain about, but that didn't bother me in the least.
1. The expansion of the Azog character and accompanying storyline. This doesn't bother me because it takes an element that was present in the novel (the confrontation between Thorin's company and the Goblin-Warg alliance) and works it into the broader narrative in a way that adds depth and tension. Is it a wholesale invention of Jackson's? Sure, but it fits the story well IMO, and doesn't work against the spirit of the novel or undermind any of the characters.
2. Slight adjustments like Bilbo arguing with the Trolls instead of Gandalf, the dwarves putting up more of a fight rather than being captured immediately, etc. These changes were absolutely necessary, I think, in order to translate the material into the cinematic medium. Certain aspects of the Hobbit work "as written" in print, but wouldn't really translate well, and so require a bit of massaging. I think the development team did a good job of doing that without going overboard, in most cases.
I'm working on it as we speak, dude.
Edit: Done.
Perhaps that is the reason for leaving out the names (and I admit that it is my own conjecture that arrived at my conclusion), but to me it seems they could have easily simply not even tried to allude to their names ("...and then there are the two blue wizards.") or could have easily secured the rights to use just those names.
Hey, your conjecture is certainly plausible. :) I haven't actually looked into why Gandalf has his little memory lapse; perhaps it'll be discussed on the behind-the-scenes features on the eventual DVD release.
As for securing the rights to use just those names, however, I'd suggest you do a little light reading on the sordid history of Christopher Tolkien's (who heads up the Tolkien estate) relationship with Jackson's team. "Hostile" is an understatement; IIRC, he even cut all ties with one of his sons for daring to attend the premier of Fellowship! (Incidentally, while Christopher Tolkien has done us all a great service in editing and publishing many of his father's manuscripts, he really strikes me as a cruel and mean-spirited man. Quite a shame.)
I'll also admit that my Tolkein knowledge is rather limited, as I only read the trilogy for the first time in the past year (and the Hobbit for the first time in more than a decade last October). Anything beyond that stems from my reading the LOTR wiki. You seem much more knowledgeable in all things Tolkeinesque, and maybe you should start a Middle Earth thread. I know I'd enjoy it, but I feel unworthy to start it ;)
You're too kind, sir. Perhaps I will!
Also: Today would have been J. R. R. Tolkien's 121st birthday (a decade older than Bilbo in Fellowship of the Ring). Truly a gifted and visionary man. Happy Tolkien day, everyone!
So Tolkien agreed that the story needed to be aggressively rewritten to match, and that didn't seem to him to be disrespectful to the original book.
If Tolkien had indeed aggressively re-written The Hobbit to bring it into conformity with The Lord of the Rings (as he began to do in 1960), I would judge that to be very disrespectful to the original novel indeed (assuming said re-writing also entailed suppression of the original, a la George Lucas). As the situation currently stands, Tolkien's partial rewrite in the second and third editions can be forgiven on the basis that the original text is still accessible, and he even found a way to incorporate both the original and revised versions into the Middle Earth "canon" (with the 1937 edition reflecting the events as told by Bilbo and the 1951/1966 editions reflecting the events as they "actually happened").
Furthermore, surely there is something of a difference between an artist aggressively adjusting his own work and a third-party adapter doing the same thing?
Bit of trivia: Gandalf can't remember the names of the two blue wizards in the film. This is likely because their names were not completely consistent, and the only sources for their names are from incomplete stories. It was a joke based on the two different versions of their names.
Interesting. I had assumed Gandalf's memory loss had something to do with Jackson & Co. not owning the rights to the names Pallando and Alatar (they only have the rights to The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, including the Appendices; other of Tolkien's works on Middle Earth, like The Silmarillion and Unfinished Tales, are off limits).
^Agreed. Insofar as the written works are concerned, there is a massive tonal difference between The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Jackson didn't dissolve that tonal difference entirely (which would've been disrespectful to the novel), but neither did he preserve it entirely (which would've created significant tonal "whiplash" between the two film trilogies). Instead, he "split the difference," which IMO is probably the best approach he could've taken.
Just finished season 6 of Burn Notice. Anyone else think the show really went downhill this season? The first half (up until the end of the Anson Fullerton arc) is quite good, but afterwards it seems like the writers didn't really know where to go or what to do. The second half is bogged down with soap opera drama, which seems more like filler than anything else. With a few exceptions, the plot movements of second-half episodes seem really contrived, Olivia Riley is played so over-the-top that she comes across as hilariously unreal rather than intimidating (which, I presume, they were going for), and there's no significant movement or resolution until the very last episode. It's almost like the development team only had enough material for six episodes, and once they had exhausted it they just ran out the clock for the remainder of the season. Pretty disappointing.
Looks like Scoundrels has now been released. Anyone planning to buy a copy right away, or are you waiting for the paperback release? I'd love to jump right in ASAP, but sadly I just won't have enough spare time to devote to pleasure reading for a few months at least.
Apparently, they are all Bingowings.
For those that have seen the film, is it true that Thorin is much less of a douchebag than he is in the book?
More of a douchebag actually, in my opinion. It's one of the few things I disliked about the film.
darth_ender said:
Perhaps if he ever gets his ban lifted, I'd devote a whole thread telling him how to behave himself and not get banned.
Some 12-year-olds can be fairly articulate. I wouldn't rule out the possibility.