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02:22, 29th March 2024 (GMT+0)

The Hobbit:The Battle of the Five Armies, the end of an Age!

Posted by TheSnowpanther
Misty Reynolds
member, 212 posts
Life is deadly. So am I,
but only when crossed.
Sun 28 Dec 2014
at 21:49
  • msg #53

Re: The Hobbit:The Battle of the Five Armies, the end of an Age!

In reply to Mystic-Scholar (msg # 52):

They turned 'The Hobbit' into three movies, so why not?
gladiusdei
member, 290 posts
Sun 28 Dec 2014
at 21:51
  • msg #54

Re: The Hobbit:The Battle of the Five Armies, the end of an Age!

the silmarillion would require serious adaptation.  It's written more like the bible than a screenplay.  I think a lot of the key scenes would be cool to see on screen, but I don't think the over-all book would work well as a movie.  Way too many characters and concepts to introduce,, even compared to LOTR.
facemaker329
member, 6521 posts
Gaming for over 30
years, and counting!
Mon 29 Dec 2014
at 12:20
  • msg #55

Re: The Hobbit:The Battle of the Five Armies, the end of an Age!

Really, the only way they could do an even remotely satisfactory job on The Silmarillion as a film adaptation would be to make a series of films that focused on specific events.  I just don't see any way of going from the creation of the world to the Elves leaving Valinor to the fall of Gondolin to the defeat of Morgoth to the rise and fall of Numenor in a single narrative...not if you want to actually tell the stories.  I know they made film adaptations of significant amounts of The Bible, but those had the benefit of being made for a society that generally had some degree of familiarity with the source material.  They couldn't bank on that for a Silmarillion adaptation.
TheWarriorPoet519
member, 1385 posts
Resident porch-squatting
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Mon 29 Dec 2014
at 17:30
  • msg #56

Re: The Hobbit:The Battle of the Five Armies, the end of an Age!

The Tolkien Estate has also said it wont permit any more film adaptations of Tolkien's work. Christopher Tolkien basically loathes what the films have done to the books literary heritage.
OceanLake
member, 876 posts
Mon 29 Dec 2014
at 18:48
  • msg #57

Re: The Hobbit:The Battle of the Five Armies, the end of an Age!

IMO, the LOTR movies should have stuck to the book. Every deviation and omission lessened the value of the mov (which were still very good). Omitting Tom Bombadil was bad; omitting the cleansing of the shire was worse.
Sir_Chivalry
member, 232 posts
Mon 29 Dec 2014
at 19:44
  • msg #58

Re: The Hobbit:The Battle of the Five Armies, the end of an Age!

Because another half hour of Tom Bombadil in Fellowship and another hour of hobbit guerilla tactics would have not ruined the narrative flow at all.

The issue is that literature and film run on different cycles. In literature each chapter is it's own rising, climax, falling and conclusion, slowly building. You can have time set aside to talk by a fire with a minor god of the woods if you want, the structure of those chapters are actually quite good. But in a film, no such mini cycle exists, you simply need to keep building. You have three acts to work with, not numerous chapters.
willvr
member, 558 posts
Mon 29 Dec 2014
at 22:03
  • msg #59

Re: The Hobbit:The Battle of the Five Armies, the end of an Age!

... I've had various 'discussions' with people about the branching off from the book the movies did. I think -mostly-; and the cleansing of the Shire and Tom Bombadil's omission both fall into this; the changes they made were necessary for adapting from a book to a movie. Occasionally I think they got it wrong - I disagree with the changes to Faramir for example; and not too fond of the surfing elf we get Legolas being in various parts.

The Hobbit is a different beast. I think the changes they made, especially when taking the parts that made the Desolation of Smaug movie; were unnecessary. Turning what should have been a dwarf (and hobbits) hero's tale into a tale about how awesome we can make elves... gaah.
OceanLake
member, 877 posts
Mon 29 Dec 2014
at 23:37
  • msg #60

Re: The Hobbit:The Battle of the Five Armies, the end of an Age!

I think maybe four movies instead of three. I also miss Faramir and Eowin's courtship. I liked the movies, as for what they should or should not have included, opinions differ.

It'd be interesting to read the opinions of anybody who first saw the movies and then read the books.
This message was last edited by the user at 23:38, Mon 29 Dec 2014.
Eur512
member, 663 posts
Tue 30 Dec 2014
at 02:09
  • msg #61

Re: The Hobbit:The Battle of the Five Armies, the end of an Age!

Meanwhile, on the desert planet Arrakis...

"Peter Jackson STOLE OUR WORMS!"
facemaker329
member, 6522 posts
Gaming for over 30
years, and counting!
Tue 30 Dec 2014
at 07:16
  • msg #62

Re: The Hobbit:The Battle of the Five Armies, the end of an Age!

In reply to Eur512 (msg # 61):

*laugh*  Yeah, that thought crossed my mind, too...

That's been my biggest gripe with the Hobbit trilogy.  There were a lot of changes made in LOTR, yes, but the majority of them were to try and make characters more 'conventional' to what a contemporary audience would expect to see (Aragorn being reluctant to accept his birthright not out of a concern that the time might not be right yet, but out of a fear that he might not be man enough to shoulder the burden, for instance), or to streamline a story that was already somewhere beyond monumental.

I know a lot of people resented the fact that there was nothing about Tom Bombadil in The Fellowship, but aside from tying LOTR to a greater whole of Tolkien's narrative material, he showed up for a couple of chapters and had no noticeable impact on the rest of the tale.  The Scouring of the Shire was entertaining to read, yes...but since the films never showed Saruman leaving Orthanc, they were already missing a critical element to that part of the narrative.  Likewise, they didn't have anything about Sam seeing the Shire being ransacked in Galadriel's bowl...and, really, did we need MORE of the five or six endings they stacked on top of each other?

But with the exception of Legolas being able to warp the laws of physics at will, apparently, they managed to avoid making up too much stuff.  Not so, with the Hobbit...characters that nobody had ever heard of before, creatures that I've certainly never read in any Tolkien material I've been through...and I'm not talking about stuff that was put together by cross-referencing other Tolkien works and extrapolating events that happened.  While LOTR tweaked Tolkien's work, The Hobbit wove a whole lotta Peter Jackson in with Tolkien.  I can see why the Tolkien estate would be annoyed.

I was lukewarm about An Unexpected Journey...just couldn't summon up the enthusiasm to see The Desolation of Smaug (and I even work at a movie theater and could have seen it for free).  I liked Battle of Five Armies...I did feel like it was heavily adulterated, though.  And I also feel like Jackson was working harder to make The Hobbit look like a prequel to LOTR than he was trying to tell the story Tolkien wrote.
gladiusdei
member, 291 posts
Tue 30 Dec 2014
at 15:31
  • msg #63

Re: The Hobbit:The Battle of the Five Armies, the end of an Age!

Tolkein wrote a lot of the stuff that connected the two books afterwards (like dol goldur), and said he wished he could go back and rewrite the hobbit to be more in line with lotr.  So Jackson was at least following what Tolkein wanted to do in that regard.  It also makes a lot more sense from a movie making standpoint.
facemaker329
member, 6523 posts
Gaming for over 30
years, and counting!
Tue 30 Dec 2014
at 19:18
  • msg #64

Re: The Hobbit:The Battle of the Five Armies, the end of an Age!

I'm okay with the fact that they inserted stuff from other Tolkien writings and extrapolated events based on them.  I'm not so okay with the whole Legolas-Tauriel-Kili (or was it Fili?) love triangle...for one thing, the fact that a dwarf fell in love with an elf (and she returned it) during The Hobbit cheapens the way in which Gimli and Legolas became friends during LOTR (which was supposed to be noteworthy due to the fact that such a thing hadn't happened in Middle Earth in centuries, if not millennia...since the time of Durin, basically...)

But if Jackson hadn't been so determined to try and come up with so much 'connective tissue' between the two series, he could easily have kept it down to two films, and eliminated the need to fabricate subplots and characters and creatures from scratch.  And it's not like the world needed a lot of hints about how The Hobbit led up to LOTR...anyone who saw LOTR already knew the relevant points of the backstory.

But, rather than streamlining the story the way he did for LOTR, Jackson turned The Hobbit into a bad case of storyteller bloat, pumping even more story into it than Tolkien ever intended (and story that wasn't told as well as Tolkien's elements).  That's what I mean when I say that Tolkien was adulterated in the process.
gladiusdei
member, 292 posts
Tue 30 Dec 2014
at 20:27
  • msg #65

Re: The Hobbit:The Battle of the Five Armies, the end of an Age!

well, to each his own I guess.  not like we can do anything about it now, except either enjoy them, or ignore them.  At least there won't be any more coming out to argue about.
facemaker329
member, 6524 posts
Gaming for over 30
years, and counting!
Tue 30 Dec 2014
at 21:20
  • msg #66

Re: The Hobbit:The Battle of the Five Armies, the end of an Age!

True enough.  And, like I said, I did enjoy the last Hobbit film, my nitpicking about Jackson's tweaks aside.  I would have enjoyed it MORE, of course...but I enjoyed it...enjoyed it enough that I'm actually considering watching Desolation of Smaug, now, which wasn't likely to happen otherwise.
willvr
member, 560 posts
Tue 30 Dec 2014
at 21:28
  • msg #67

Re: The Hobbit:The Battle of the Five Armies, the end of an Age!

Whilst I agree to a certain extent about Jackson adding stuff, from what I recall, it was the studio that insisted on it being 3 movies, as they wanted to use it to get them out of serious financial troubles. He originally was aiming for two.
facemaker329
member, 6525 posts
Gaming for over 30
years, and counting!
Tue 30 Dec 2014
at 23:24
  • msg #68

Re: The Hobbit:The Battle of the Five Armies, the end of an Age!

If true, that redeems him somewhat in my book...but I still think he could have focused more on the tale that Tolkien told and less on the stuff that was made up to pad out the film.  Or if he was going to make stuff up, he could have made stuff up that would have had relevance to later in the tale...for instance, I felt like the encounter of Bilbo and the dwarves with the trolls in AUE was over in the blink of an eye...pretty sure it would take me longer to read it out of the books than it took to show it on screen, and I'm a fast reader.

And in finding the trolls larder, and Sting, Glamdring, and Orcrist...plenty could have been made of the dwarves being reluctant to take elven weapons because of a history of bad blood between them.  A few minutes there would have been a strong set-up for tensions between Thorin and Elrond at Rivendell, and especially in Mirkwood.  And it would have made a lot more sense to me than adding all the nonsense of them being pursued by Azog from the moment they left the Shire...
willvr
member, 561 posts
Tue 30 Dec 2014
at 23:36
  • msg #69

Re: The Hobbit:The Battle of the Five Armies, the end of an Age!

I can't really disagree there; though I didn't mind Azog nearly as much as I disliked Tauriel. Actually, I quite liked him, and can accept his presence just like I accept the fact that we didn't see Tom Bombadil in the LotR movies - it adds to the tension; the drama, which makes for good cinematic viewing. And given they can't rely purely on people wanting to see the adaptation, but also on some people who never read the books? Yeah, I can accept it.

The love story between an elf and a dwarf I find much more confronting.
facemaker329
member, 6526 posts
Gaming for over 30
years, and counting!
Wed 31 Dec 2014
at 00:34
  • msg #70

Re: The Hobbit:The Battle of the Five Armies, the end of an Age!

I don't even have that much of a problem with the love story, itself...but it compromises the later story of Gimli and Legolas, in the same way that having Greedo shoot first implies that Han wasn't cold-blooded enough to shoot him without having been fired at first and thus compromises his 'conversion' to a full-on good guy throughout the Star Wars trilogy.

It would have been far better to play up the ages of mutual distrust between the two races, so that later, when they bridge the gap, it's that much more impressive.  And I feel like a lot of the stuff that Jackson added worked in that same way...yes, it was intended to increase the drama in The Hobbit, but it softened the overall narrative.  Focusing on Gundabad?  If all the goblins and orcs marched out of Gundabad to get wiped out at Erebor, then the threat in the north of Middle Earth is lessened...which flies in the face of the story presented in LOTR.  And if they had those 'earth-eaters' up north, why not take a few of them down to attack Gondor?

These are problems when you make 'prequels'...the natural instinct is to make each successive movie bigger and badder than the ones before, but when you start throwing elements into a prequel that would totally shift the balance of power in another part of the narrative (later in the overall story, but produced earlier on film), you compromise the effect of the earlier movie.  The Battle of Five Armies was supposed to be big and spectacular, yes...but it shouldn't have included anything bigger or badder than what appeared in LOTR, because THAT was supposed to be the grand, climactic battle for the Third Age of Middle Earth and the place where everyone pulled out all the stops and rolled out the proverbial big guns.
OceanLake
member, 879 posts
Wed 31 Dec 2014
at 01:18
  • msg #71

Re: The Hobbit:The Battle of the Five Armies, the end of an Age!

I watched a seven-year-old boy watch The Hobbit, An Unexpected Journey with full attention.
facemaker329
member, 6527 posts
Gaming for over 30
years, and counting!
Wed 31 Dec 2014
at 08:27
  • msg #72

Re: The Hobbit:The Battle of the Five Armies, the end of an Age!

If I was seven, I probably would have, too (if anyone had let me see it at seven years old).  But it's been decades since I was seven, and my tastes in storytelling have become significantly more sophisticated since then.  I no longer find myself entertained by things like wizards with bird poop caked in their hair, or giant rabbits pulling a sled over stone and grass.  And I find myself far more aware of story elements that don't blend in with the overall narrative.
Mystic-Scholar
member, 74 posts
Wed 31 Dec 2014
at 14:46
  • msg #73

Re: The Hobbit:The Battle of the Five Armies, the end of an Age!

In reply to facemaker329 (msg # 70):

Agreed.
habsin4
member, 678 posts
Putting old paper in new
boxes since 2005
Mon 5 Jan 2015
at 14:47
  • msg #74

Re: The Hobbit:The Battle of the Five Armies, the end of an Age!

I also grew up loving Tolkien's works (although I've never managed to finish the Silmarillion) and I was in dread of what Peter Jackson would do to the original LOTR movies. All I knew of him were movies like Bad Taste and Meet The Feebles, so I didn't have faith that the LOTR movies would be anything but junk. I was, to put it mildly, happily surprised by how amazingly well-done they were. Unfortunately, The Hobbit movies have been my concerns realized. I hated the first movie with a passion I rarely feel for Hollywood, and I'm not someone who cares if the movie stays true to the book. Just so many things about the movies were poorly done. The CGI? I mean, Jurassic Park had better CGI than Azog. The elf-dwarf love story, the necessity of tying it into the first movies in such a clumsy way. The video game-ness of it all, especially the escape from the goblin caverns. But the worst part was that they removed Bilbo's role in all of their early adventures. The troll fight (another horrible video game fight) would have been so much better if it happened like in the book.

Having said all that, I knew what to expect by the last movie and was less critical and just enjoyed it for what it was.
habsin4
member, 679 posts
Putting old paper in new
boxes since 2005
Mon 5 Jan 2015
at 14:51
  • msg #75

Re: The Hobbit:The Battle of the Five Armies, the end of an Age!

In reply to Eur512 (msg # 61):

Chuckle. That was certainly worth a why.
habsin4
member, 680 posts
Putting old paper in new
boxes since 2005
Mon 5 Jan 2015
at 14:54
  • msg #76

Re: The Hobbit:The Battle of the Five Armies, the end of an Age!

Mad Mick
member, 808 posts
Ain't sayin nothin
Got nothin to say
Mon 5 Jan 2015
at 16:33
  • msg #77

Re: The Hobbit:The Battle of the Five Armies, the end of an Age!



Thanks for posting this, habsin.  I read the Silmarillion back in college, but I passed on The Children of Hurin.  I'm going to have to read it now.
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