Jackson to do The Hobbit, after all?

I get the scouring has some themes worth hitting, but lets be honest, the pacing of the book is all sorts of messed up. Even cutting the scouring there is a ‘too many endings’ thing going. Certainly the scouring was a chance to show the growth of Merry and Pippen, which is probably the biggest loss, but it would play poorly on film. Either you don’t do it justice, and do it in 5 minutes, or you tack half an hour into an already long film.

I just don’t think there is a way to do it without compromising the film or the story. We come off the grand global scale conflict that is resolved, and end with a small scale conflict that lacks the same tension and urgency, especially since the ones fighting it were critical pieces of said global conflict. The book just doesn’t really properly scale down the conflict, to show the more personal stakes. It is, I feel, one of the lower quality inclusions in the book.

As you note, Tolkien’s prose is of a different style, but often not up to that task. Honestly his style works better for the type of stories that the Silmarillion tells. Because his interest is not in the action, not in the intrapersonal, but rather on the world. How the sweep of history changes peoples, changes civilizations. How languages evolve, how history passes to legend, and how the stories change in the retelling. It is what he did best. LotR is at its best in scenes like the gates of Moria, it is a scene that Tolkien could do better than almost any before, or since. Because it is that history and legend driving the story in the now.

As for the core of the natural world, yeah some is lost. I personally would have loved more on Fangorn, the Entwives, and the destruction of Saruman. But the reality is I think that, from a movie perspective, the scouring of the Shire would feel a bit of a repeat of themes, one that adds another conflict in what is the dénouement.

Personally I would still rather argue the finer points of the LotR trilogy than The Hobbit because… I got bored with the first and never watched the other two.

Scouring is I would argue “hard to understand” to modern sensibilities and relies on (imo) a kind of 19th gentlemanly propriety that seems very hard to comprehend today. Saurman kills (tens, hundreds, thousands? It’s hard to tell how many/few people are in Tolkien’s world.) Then they let him go anyway, because he’s one of the Good and the Great. Then he goes to The Shire and screws everything up and kills people… and they let him go because he’s one of the Good and the Great. He ends up getting ‘done in’ by his own sniveling weasel, as if he carries some awful curse or is so far beyond mere mortals the best you can do is shoe him into the next land.

It very much reminds me of Napoleon. “Oh, old chap, here’s an island for you, we’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t kill millions of people in your wars.” “Oh, bother, he’s at it again. Send him to another island… farther away.”

After WW2 I just don’t think we have the stomach to keep letting the High and Mighty go about their business with impunity and it feels like an anachronism today.

I agree, and that’s one of the reasons I like the movies. I don’t want hours of film that captures the tone of the books, because it would be boring as watching paint dry. Books can do that, movies can’t, at least not for me. And I’m pretty sure that’s true for 90% of the movie-goers out there.

In a similar vein, I actually like parts of the Hobbit movies. They just extended them too far, and with those extensions added some incredibly stupid stuff. Cut it down to about 2 hours, keeping the bits that are actually book-related, and it would be fine.

I watched Part 2. I think I’m more impressed with the movies now. I didn’t know they were made in such a rush, with no pre-production time whatsoever, having to lay down the train tracks in front of a moving train. I’m amazed that the movies turned out as good as they did with that kind of setup, and with interference from the studios as well.

Just in brief and to speak more straightforwardly it wasn’t the Scouring itself that i’m doubting but modern audiences accepting that the cause of it was the untouchability of Saruman, letting him go and do whatever he wants to do, over and over, no matter the cost, because he’s An Important Fellow. IE, you could have the Scouring without Saruman and i think modern audiences would accept that just fine.

That’s something worth considering. Had the natural destruction and problems come as a side effect of the war, it would play better. It would work better to use it as a way to show their struggles, how the war was won, but the troubles were not over. We get that with Frodo, but to have the other hobbits have side effects would be a nice thematic element.

But, again, it would take time to develop, and I don’t know you could do it justice without bloating and ruining pacing.

All it would have taken was 5 minutes of film time (not book time).

Rider X appears and say they’ve seen armies of Morder moving to blah blah blah… and then…

[concerned faces, glancing to Merry and Pippin]

… a smaller force slipped through to the south. It looks like they’re heading to the Shire.

[Merry and Pippin bolt up]

Oh no, we have to save the Shire!

[Gandalf wise speech time]

If we don’t stop Mordor tomorrow it won’t matter if we save the Shire today!

[Merry and Pippin get consoled by Frodo]

blah blah we have to do this chin up buttercup

[Sam cheers them up with second breakfast. Hobbits.]

Then you can see the Scouring at the end.

I really enjoyed these videos. Seriously I spend less than 1% of my time listening to other people talk about stuff. I don’t even like watching the news and would prefer to read about it but these videos… are, I like her style a lot, and I watched the whole thing. I normally can’t even get past ten minutes of someone reviewing a movie, a game… anything. The idea of a podcast still makes me laugh but this worked for me, so thank you for sharing.

Complete topic shift, but her other videos are excellent as well. I particularly liked the ones about Transformers*, including “Why Is It So Hard To Remember What Happens In Transformers?” It was eye-opening!

*(but of course, the Transformers movies will never do justice to the original novels)

Those five minuteses add up quickly! Five minutes here… five minutes there… when do you stop?

I’ll add my voice to the chorus of "you go girl"s for those videos. I was a little confused that there was no expansion on the bit near the end about NZ actors being screwed over, but I suppose we’re all Internet denizens who can go search it ourselves. Pretty much all of the rest was great, including the “studio mandate” ending.

Doesn’t the 2nd video end with a joke about it being expanded to 3 eps? And that the NZ actor stuff is going to be in that one?

Unless I completely misread it, it’s not a joke, and yes!

I’m going to have to do that now. The last Transformer movie I tried was the one with the knights a dragon and I think Merlin was drunk or… something. I got maybe 8 minutes in when I switched to something else, on a plane because I just couldn’t do it.

Liked these two videos but I think I’ve had enough of the funny faces and the voices and the cutesy stuff to check out any more.

I will wait to watch the videos until I have seen the movies.

Part 3 out of 2 is out.

And now I’m depressed.

I really liked her as well. I mentioned these at home and it turns out my oldest daughter has been watching her videos for years. Who knew.

I just watched part 3, and isn’t what happened in New Zealand basically what happens with any industry anywhere? It happens in the US when city A offers better tax breaks etc for some factory than city B.

There is a reason TV shows are shot in Vancouver BC.

And more recently, in the U.S., in the state of Georgia. It seemed like everything has been filmed in Georgia lately.