What really surprised me about the Jackson movies is that leaving aside the silly cartoon action sequences, the movies did something that the book never managed: it got me to feel emotionally attached to the dwarf leader, and to Bilbo. I was really moved at the end of the first movie. That’s something I never would have expected from an adaptation of a book that was completely devoid of any emotion (at least for me). So, yes, he added a lot of silliness, but he actually had me emotionally invested in nearly all the main characters, including the humans in the second movie.
Razgon
1862
Nor me- I find it to be an overblown movie which has little to do with what I loved reading when I was younger.
In fact, I remember hating Thorin and most of the dwarves because they’re such spoiled bratty shits by the end of the book.
Razgon
1864
I always thought that was the point - showing how dwarves were in the universe Tolkien created. Its no coincidence that tons of other fantasy material portrays dwarves as greedy golddiggers who are like children in their antics. Also, bear in mind that this is common in children stories - exaggerate the bad traits to make a point.
Actually, I think he meant that people prefer the Lord of the Rings trilogy to The Hobbit, as books, because of the more adult tone.
I agree with your sentiments about Jackson’s Hobbit regardless, but I thought I’d clarify what it seems he meant. He’s still wrong, of course, since I love The Hobbit book far more than the Lord of the Rings books precisely because of its whimsical tone. The tonal inconsistency of Peter Jackson’s Hobbit movies is probably the thing I dislike most about them. They’re at once darker than the book & sillier than the Lord of the Rings movies.
haha, so true. Funny to think about it this way.
“Rise of the Shire”: All hail our Kung-Fu Hobbit overlords.
Could get a pron spin off, too!
I thought we already had that with Lord of the Rings?
You know what they really remind me of? The bad comics that proliferated in the 90’s, when “artists” like Liefeld pumped everything to the XTREME (a dark and simultaneously silly process) but ruined what was good about the underlying premises of their books by doing so.
I attribute this mostly to the actors, but I think it’s why I am (just barely) still in the pro-Jackson camp. Tolkien’s prose was frankly pretty dry; and his characterizations were…let’s be charitable and go with “austere.” This is in keeping with the mythic source material from which he drew inspiration; the Prose Edda and its ilk don’t exactly spend a lot of time on their characters’ rich inner lives. But it’s also why I always felt a bit too emotionally detached from the Hobbit and LotR when I read them to be fully invested in the characters. Which is why I respect Tolkien’s work more than I actually enjoyed it.
The Hobbit films are turgid, overblown, bloated messes. Tonally they’re all over the map, too: one minute you get a silly kids’ romp with singing goblins and hare-driven bobsleds; the next minute it’s all severed heads and midget angst about lost glories. But they also manage to present me with characters I actually give a shit about, which is more than I can say about the average Hollywood blockbuster. [Sidebar: would you kindly go fuck yourself, Michael Bay?] In particular, I think Richard Armitage’s Thorin makes a better flawed hero (in the Greek tragedy sense) than Viggo’s Aragorn, who was a little too perfect. And Bilbo actually gets shit done, as opposed to Frodo, who just whinges a lot and expects Sam to take care of everything.
I always found it amusing how Boromir is the bad guy in Fellowship, but in Game of Thrones, Sean Bean’s nearly identical character, who may actually have more human flaws, is basically the good guy*. Tolkien presents us with characters of mythical moral purity. It absolutely works while I’m watching the movies or reading the books, but when I take a few steps back, it’s almost Catholic to a fault. (And maybe it only works while I’m reading them because I was raised in that Catholic “Anything less than perfection is a sin!” environment?)
*Disclaimer: I have only seen 1-2 episodes of Game of Thrones.
Soma
1874
Wait, what? Boromir in Fellowship isn’t a bad guy per se, he is seduced by the power just like almost everyone else. By the time of The Two Towers he is pretty much the hero of Gondor while Aragorn is shrinking from his responsibilities (which is Jackson’s interpretation, I can’t remember that bit in the book).
Thorin in the films, as I remembered it, is pretty ill-tempered to start with, and with a huge chip on his shoulder, and only grudgingly accepted Bilbo.
I think this is where I am in relation to the Hobbit movies. I was in the minority that liked the first, also in the minority that didn’t like the second as much, and really hopeful the third one pulls it together/out. The cart/wagon scenes in the trailer don’t give me too much hope, though. So far, I think I would have preferred a Fellowship/Two Towers-esque series, more restrained but also more wonder. Watching the Billy Boyd video with all the scenes cut together really brings out starkly what the Hobbit movies are missing, and hopefully, as someone said upthread, we can get a Phantom Edit version that takes out most of the Rube Goldberg action sequences (and Monty Python’s Laketown).
Sarkus
1877
The reviews starting to drop seem reasonably good, so it doesn’t look like a total flop ending to the trilogy. RT has it at 72%, which is better than the first film and about on par with the second.
I figure I might as well see it in theatres to finish the trilogy; its not like I go to the movies all that much anymore.
I know I’ve said this at least once, and though I know nothing about video editing, I’d actually love to take a stab at this project- edit all the movies down into one that mirrors the book as much as possible.
I haven’t made or watched a new fanedit in some time, but I’m guessing it’s already been done for the first two.
I imagine someone will splice all three films into a single Hobbit-book-content-only movie when the last DVD comes out.
newbrof
1880
Why? Why need movies replicate books? If I want Tolkien, I read the books (re-read The Hobbit a year ago)… If I want Jackson, I watch his movies.
The more they are different, the better… I hope in 20-30 years, there will be a new movie trilogie of LOTR with a totally different approach… I would be excited!
or maybe HBO could do a series…
Sometimes it’s great when movies differ from books. Blade Runner is better than the book; A Scandal in Belgravia is better than the book; Willy Wonka is better than the book. (Maybe Fantastic Mr Fox & Minority Report, too?)
There are even some points (Faramir, Aragorn, & Treebeard’s more flawed character arcs, for instance) on which the Lord of the Rings movies arguably do better than the books, but in the case of The Hobbit, it was clear: the things not in the book weren’t nearly as good & the things not even inspired by Tolkien were even worse.
Movies absolutely do not have to bend to their source material. They often shouldn’t. But this is a case of Tolkien being a better writer than Jackson.
I’m not going to subject you to a screed on this topic, which would be repetitive (you can find my thoughts somewhere in the first dozen or so pages of this thread if you care), but I could not disagree more that the film version is better. Each to his own, of course.
