I first read 'The Hobbit', 45 years ago, at age of 9.  From then until now.  I have to say my life has been much influenced by the works of it's author, J.R.R. Tolkien.  Including, first starting to play RPGs in 1976.

I remember in early 1998, not long after first getting online.  Of hearing the first rumours about the planned filming of LOTR.  I remember savoring each new bit of information like a drug addict, jonezing for his next fix.  An discovering the 'theonering.net', the LOTR Movie Nirvana.  Then watching TFOR for the first time at the midnight showing.  Such tears and laughter of joy were involved with that.  They did it right!  They didn't screw it up!

So when I go to see the midnight showing early on the 17th of this month.  It will indeed be the end of age, of sorts for me!  For over 2/3rd of my life, most people I knew didn't know anything about the works of Tolkien.  Nor wanted to.  Now it's main stream.
This message was last edited by the user at 20:19, Tue 09 Dec 2014.

Anyone else have anything to share on the subject?

Not really looking forward to it. I have been listening to the audiobook at work about a dozen times recently, and the hobbit movies are just at the weird point where they are too close to the book to be taken as a separate story, yet the differences are so big and often as to be constantly jarring.

I'd enjoy them a lot better if I weren't familiar with the book.

Best to think of the movies as a smershing together of the book and lots of information from information presented in other works but contemporaneous with the time period.

Personally, I don't care for it when a Director uses that old B.S. "artistic license."

Stick to the book . . . or don't make the movie. I love J.R.R. Tolkien and couldn't give a load of horse hockey for the Director's "vision." If his vision is so great, why doesn't he have a pot load of novels?

That's my biggest gripe with the LOTR movies as well.

There, I said it.

Contemporaneous is an awesome word.

I've always found the actual adaption to be as interesting as the movie or book themselves. I find it interesting how the different mediums tell the same(ish) stories through different methods.

I'm looking forward to the third movie.

I don't like Tokien.  I respect what he did for the fantasy genre but I can't stand reading his writing.  Didn't like the Hobbit when i read it.

Watched the lord of the rings trilogy, each one when it came out in the theater and then the extended version of each movie on DVD.  I will probably never watch any of them ever again.

I didn't see the first hobbit movie, i had no interest is going to the theater to watch half of a movie based on a story i didn't care for by an author i didn't like.

The movies are visually stunning, i have to give them that.

In reply to Mystic-Scholar (msg # 5):

There are some things you can do in a book, introspection / internal dialogs for instance, or narrative background, that are somewhere between clunky, hard, or outright impossible to do in a movie.

In reply to otghand (msg # 8):

This is true, but it goes far beyond that. People tend to think that books and movies are similar, because they both tell stories. But they're very, very different media and tell stories in completely different ways.

Film, and especially Western/commercial/mainstream/Hollywood films, have a very definite structure and very set (almost rote) rhythm. Writing a (good) screenplay is a lot closer to writing highly structured poetry than it is to writing fiction.

There are lots of things in books that you could film with very few literal changes, but that would just lie there dead on the screen, or interrupt the flow, or just feel boring or strange.

And that's before you get into the time constraints. Films have very definite limits on length, and so each portion of the film needs to fit into very small boxes.

It's fascinating process. And one of the reasons I enjoy adaptations so much.

In reply to otghand (msg # 8):

In the last chapter, of the last book, we "hear" the name Arwen.

Sorry, but I am not the least bit interested in having my "stories" screwed with, the satisfy female movie-goers.

Sorry ladies, but no, that is NOT how it happened. The Director of the movie LIED to you.

Ask for you money back.

In reply to Mystic-Scholar (msg # 10):

A movie is not the book, it is its own story based on the story in the book.  This has been true so long as movies have been made from books.

if the hobbit book was made into a movie exactly as is, it would be 45 minutes long with about 8 mins of dialogue and a lot of walking.

I love Tolkieen I first read them, and I don't completely agree with every change Jackson made, but I think he very much stuck to the over all spirit of the books, and made very entertaining and enjoyable movies to watch.  That's all you can really ask for.

Staying true to the book when converting to a film means keeping the characters and factions true to their roles, and not adding major characters or factions. (Minor background references, such as signs and text are acceptable).

I.E. not turning Azog from a mere reference, that killed and was then implied to be killed in return, into a force that chased characters throughout when the book didn't even have that force at all in any form.

Altering dialogue, or adding a conversation, or other minor things to illustrate things stated in the book (but would take too long or can't be reasonably shown on film), but that don't really alter the flow or tone of the story, are all things I see as acceptable in staying true to the book.

Ninjad edit, I would agree with that more on the lotr trilogy but not with the hobbit. Of course I'm far more familiar with the hobbit (the book) then the lotr trilogy.

I agree, some of the changes were unexpected and more invasive in Hobbit than LOTR.  As a tolkien nut, I also agree that changing Azog is a big change in the realm of middle earth lore.  But I honestly don't think it changes the feel of the story too much, if you keep in mind that Jackson is intentionally adding in the other events that tie the hobbit to the LOTR, and shifting the feel away from a children's book to something more serious like the LOTR.

Which is honestly something Tolien expressed a desire to do himself toward the end of his life.

There was nothing "implied about Azog's death. In Third Age 2799, after 6 years of war between the Dwarves of Durin's tribe and their Allie's against the Orc's Azog was slain at the Battle of Azanulbizar by Dain Ironfoot and Thror's murder avenged.

All the little things didn't bother me that much: Radagast's rabbit's, "Pretty" Dwarve's (they are rather good looking to be dwarves), Legolas who was never mentioned in the book (but was alive at the time). The "Tomb's" of Nazgul was silly. They were never "slain" in Saurons defeat or sealed away in tombs, they went into hiding in the east to await their masters return.

But the Zombie Albino Orc chasing Thorin and Company all over the place made me cringe and almost walk out of part 1 every time he came on the screen. If you must add this to the story why not use Azog's son Bolg who lead the Orc's and Warg's at the Battle of Five Army's 150 years after his fathers death?

In reply to darknash (msg # 15):

The main thing that bothered me about the orcs in the Hobbit is that they're CGI and the orcs from the first film trilogy were actors in costumes.

The ones in the first film were far more terrifying because there was a weight to their bodies, I'm more afraid for Aragorn in the fight on Amon Hen against Lurtz than I am any time orcs are barreling down on anyone in the Hobbit.

I'm bothered that of my two favourite dwarves (who I'll admit became badass after the Hobbit in the Lord of the Rings) one (Balin) is good (but*) and the other (Ori) is a snivelling and cross-eyed child apparently who fights with a slingshot. There are so many traits to Ori (could write in Elvish, COULD WRITE) that set him apart from the rank and file. How could would one scene where Bilbo (who also knows Elvish) and Ori compare phrases in their educations, or speak with elves in Rivendell briefly? Nope, never mind that he was the last dwarf to die in Moria!

*-Balin doesn't have his axe . . . the axe that was buried with him that Gimli uses from the Balin's Tomb scene onwards. He has instead some sort of broad chopped blade, which is worse since that's basically an axe and why couldn't they simply just use the axe!?

Balin gets the axe in Erebor.  My guess is he will use it in the third movie.


I never said anything about Azog being implied.  I know they changed it, a lot.  I don't really know why, but I don't think it ruins the movie.  I actually think he's a pretty cool villain.

I don't think the inclusion of the female elf warrior romance with Kili adds anything to the story, but it isn't so horrible that I can't enjoy all the other stuff, just like the new version of star wars will probably have things I don't like as much, but that won't keep me from enjoying watching x-wings fight in the big screen, something I haven't seen since I was 5.

and the detail stuff like Ori, or the past conflict between orcs and dwarves, are the type of thing Tolkien buffs get excited about, and the average viewer could care less.


I guess, ultimately, it comes down to if you don't enjoy it, don't watch it.  That's fine.  I enjoy them, so I will.  And we can all still enjoy the books, they didn't get destroyed when the movies came out.

I don't like those movies because there is a serious lack of funny hats the dwarves wear. Lame.

The point I was going for was that the movie itself had nothing really wrong with, but the relation between the movie and the book and ruin the enjoyment of the movie even if the movie itself doesn't have have anything bad about it.

I guess I disagree.  But I understand what you are saying.  But it happens all the time in movies.  The Bourne movies have almost nothing to do with the books once you pass the beginning of the second movie, but I enjoy them as movies despite them being completely different from books I enjoy as well.
I guess I feel Jackson stayed close to the spirit of the books, which is as much as can be expected from Hollywood.  The opposite would be a movie like Troy, which changed the feel and ending of a 3 thousand year old piece of literature.

In reply to Undeadbob (msg # 18):

Funny hats or the lack thereof are a perfectly acceptable criteria to judge movies by, no foolin'.

Really though, I enjoy the Hobbit movies as spectacles and I have fun seeing them at the theater with other people, but I also see them as fundamentally weaker films than the LOTR trilogy. I'm not a Tolkien nut or anything; I enjoyed reading the Hobbit quite a bit as a kid, but aside from that I don't have any particular nostalgia clouding my vision. I understand how essential it is to change things when you adapt a piece of fiction to another medium. This is more from the perspective of a film dork who likes to examine movies with a critical eye.

Mostly, I just find the pacing is all over the place, the over-reliance on CGI over practical effects can be a bit poor-looking, and some of the action scenes are kind of lame and weightless, not really tense or especially whimsical.

I still have fun watching them with people, and I'm not a nitpick-in-the-theater type. But talking about them online? Ehh, yeah, I can acknowledge the (in my opinion) flaws.

I guess the thing to remember is that any film adaptation, EVERY film adaptation, is a cultural artifact inspired by another cultural artifact. There is no way to 'perfectly' adapt one storytelling medium to another, even if we could all agree on what 'perfectly' means (which we can't), it would still be impossible.

For example, the one thing that I feel was lost in the LOTR film trilogy was the tone of the novel. The book had a lot of noble, high-minded people calmly and careful discussing noble and high-minded things and calmly making noble and high-minded decisions. That's one of the things I really enjoyed about it. In the films, there was a lot of fighting and bickering and yelling and in-fighting and self-doubt and such.

But the film is NOT the book. It's a movie inspired by a book. I don't want to go all McLuhan and start up with the 'the medium is the message' but it is true that a work can't really be separated by the means by which that work is communicated.

Movies (especially especially western mainstream movies) are not books. It's not even really fair to talk about what is gained and what is lost. They're just different. You might as well watch an opera inspired by a statue. Or a sonnet inspired by interpretive dance.

While they may be different, you can get a close approximation, or you can make things very different, or anywhere in between, however, once you make enough changes, one really has to wonder why you are even bothering. At that point, would it not be better to make something completely differentthat simply dhares the basic plot? Like Disney's take on fairy tales, recognizable for the tale they stem from, but so far different that they are more like similar stories rather then one based on the other, thus it doesn't have the original hanging over it.

I.E. I could take the lion king but write a similar story about dwarves and elves with the same premise. A dwarf king, his evil brother, and his son. Similar, but no one would be bothered by how different it is from the original.

So I consider a movie as true to the source when changes are minimized and done only to account for the difference in medium. Otherwise, quit pretending, and just make something "new" with it's own characters and world.

I'm confused about what you're trying to say here. Are you saying that an adaptation should make either no/few changes or LOTS of changes? That doesn't make a lot of sense. Every adaptation makes just as many changes as it needs to be the work that [whoever] wants it to be and no more and no less.


So why does Disney's The Frog Prince (or, even more egregiously, Pocahontas?) get a pass and not the Hobbit? My argument is that there's no clear defining line between 'some changes' and 'a lot of changes' and 'too many changes' and/or 'the wrong changes.' Every film adaptation should be looked as inspired by the book. in the same way that Disney fairy tale cartoons are inspired by 'the original' and no more.


You could also argue that the Lion King is mostly retreaded Hamlet and few would argue with you.


I would argue that every change is done solely to account for the difference in the medium, once you take into account the process(es) by which the two are created and sold. I don't think anyone is pretending, but rather making the best use of the material that they can, given the circumstances.

At the end of the day, one thing can be said of every movie, every TV show, and every book...  Some people will like it, some will hate it.  And, thanks to the miracle of personal taste, both sets of people will be right.

So what's the point in arguing about it?  If you like it, enjoy it.  If you don't, then there'll be something along in a little while that may be more to your taste.

Yeah, but it rarely works that way.  But it doesn't matter.  If you don't like them, don't see them.  Plenty of movies out there other people love that I don't enjoy, and vice versa.  Life goes on.



Or...exactly what Bigbadron said as I was typing this.

The Lion King is actually Hamlet (never seen or read the play or was made to study it at school but I know the basics and TLK was my favourite film growing up, I still think it's brilliant, so it would've been kind of impossible for me not to have learned that particular fact at some point ;)), so it is based on an already-existing story itself ;).

I don't mind film adaptations of books but I pretty much always find I like the book(s) better. I got bored with the Harry Potter films by Goblet of Fire, by which point they were missing out entire subplots. But that aside, I like the way you get more description and the private thoughts/opinions/emotions of characters in a book which you can't really put into a film. When they make a film of a book (or series of books) they always change some things but sometimes it's only little changes, sometimes they'll make huge alterations about characters and/or events, moving them around or removing htem entirely, or even making new stuff up and throwing that in. Sometimes it's okay, sometimes it's like what I've seen of the Eragon film...omg that film...

As for the Hobbit/LotR films, there are some changes in them that I don't like, some that I'm not fussed about...some I'm just kind of "Huh? Why did they do that?"...more so with the Hobbit, I think. I'm approaching the Hobbit films more as a silly couple of hours of fun than from a "serious" PoV, otherwise I don't think I'd even bother. Because you can totally float in a minecart thingy through a river of molten gold without being vapourised or anything :P. It also bugs me somewhat the constant little things they throw in which say "Hey, don't forget - this film is a prequel to Lord of the Rings!", like using a particular camera shot or having a character use a certain line which came up in the LotR films.

In reply to truemane (msg # 24):

- I'm saying there is a difference between making an adaptation and recycling the plot. There is a broad, fuzzy line in between that I find is usually awkward, thus I think one should stick to trying to remain on one side or the other. Either stick as close as you can to the source, or stop pretending to make an adaptation and go all out recycling of the plot using new characters and setting to set the new story apart.

-Now consider the above, Disney films are often recycling a story. They do not pretend to be adaptations of stories, or merely converting a story to a new medium (except perhaps their names), instead they use original characters and settings and details.

The Hobbit falls on that previously mentioned "fuzzy line." It doesn't seem to know whether it is trying to be original or if it is trying to copy a story to a new medium.

-Figured it came from somewhere, but that is beside the point.

-I simply can't agree with this. Why have the new character? Why the romance? Why have the dwarves split up at lake town? Why have Kili get injured? Why have the dwarves fight the dragon? These do not clarify anything from the book. They do not show the viewers anything the book said that was difficult to portray in film. They are so far beyond necessary that it is not funny. They have nothing to do with the original source, as such they are extraneous alterations. If they were merely recycling the plot, these changes wouldn't matter at all. But instead they said they were turning a book into a film and then proceeded to completely disregard the book.

-edit. I could say that "fuzzy line" is like the uncanny valley of computer graphics. Too similar to be taken alone, too different to ignore the alterations. As you go to one side or the other, (fewer alterations, or fewer similarities) and the show is less likely to be irritating.
This message was last edited by the user at 20:08, Thu 11 Dec 2014.

because the goal is to make an entertaining movie, not just read the book on screen.  I agree they are changes, I agree some of them are much more extreme than others, but unneeded?  they can't make the movie word for word the hobbit, so they HAVE to add content, or not make the movie.  And I don't really think any of the added content ruins the movie.  You may feel otherwise, which is fine.  But a movie will always change/add stuff, or it wouldn't be a movie.  (unless the story is already a play/screenplay, such as shakespeare's works, or anything written by Michael crichton.)

and saying they disregarded the bok is really overstating it.  Jackson is a Tolkien fan too, and I think he's done a great job of adapting them to film.  You may disagree with some of his choices, but he is sticking fairly well to the plot and the themes and the feel of the books.  He made 3 movies out of a children's book (and we don't need to gripe about that fact, it's been done to death).  There's definitely going to be more to it than what is written on those pages.

Rankin/Bass did an amazing job in an hour and a half. No, its not a line for line remake, but almost every line of dialogue is straight from the book. The one thing they did actually change as opposed to just omit was Thorin and Bilbo's final quarrel. The whole Arkenstone mess would've necessitated way too much extra exposition, so Bilbo and Thorin quarrel about the nature of courage instead just as Bilbo is deciding not to fight in The Battle of Five Armies.

To anyone looking for a good Hobbit movie that sticks to the script, that's my recommendation. The late 70's Rankin/Bass animated version.

I understand you have to change certain things, but Jackson makes sweeping, tone-affecting, world-altering changes for, to my mind, no seeming reason. Adding in new mainish characters, or worse, drastically altering an important character until they are almost unrecognizable.

His mistreatmant of Faramir still gets my goat. Also, unless I'm sorely mistaken (it has been a few years since I read Rings) weren't there only two elves left in Middle-Earth at the time of the Siege on Helm's Deep? Doesn't the book actually make kind of an enormous deal about that whole exodus thing? I can't imagine why that situation needed to be so fundamentally changed apart from someone, likely Jackson, sitting down and going, "Y'know, elves are really cool. I'd like more of them in my movie, and I need to find an easier way to make them seem less like a bunch a____les than actually going a litle bit into their history and nature to explain why they are acting this way." Sorry, got a little Ranty. I harbor some grievances.
This message was lightly edited by the user at 20:56, Wed 17 Dec 2014.

Afraid not.  While there was an exodus in progress, Lothlorien and Rivendell still had sizeable populations.

There were still a few Elven refuges left in Middle Earth during the War of the Ring, though many Elves had departed in the dark years after Gil-galad fell fighting Sauron at the foot of Orodruin and the Last Alliance of Elves and Men disbanded:  Cirdan's folk in the Grey Havens, Thranduil's Wood Elves in Mirkwood, Galadriel and the Elves of Lothlorien and Elrond's Last Homely House in Imladris.
This message was last edited by the user at 21:57, Wed 17 Dec 2014.

the elves of lorien acti ally seige and conquer dol goldur right around the same time as the battle of the pelennor fields.  and wood elves aren't leaving middle earth, they stay for centuries under lego las and then fade away.

Fair enough. Thanks for setting me straight, guys. I said it had been some time. Even with the corrections, it seems my impressiom of the scenario was close enough to regard the army of elves that ride up and save the day at Helm's Deep in the flick a mite silly.

Still, there was almost 0 reason for turning Faramir from one of the most admirable men in the land (as the only actual human to show any significant resistance to the temptations of The One Ring) to more or less a villain.
This message was last edited by the user at 23:28, Wed 17 Dec 2014.

There's a really good website for looking up any Middle Earth-related info (whether it comes up in the Hobbit, LotR, the Silmarillion, or any other book) called the Encyclopaedia of Arda if anyone is interested :).
I saw the new Hobbit film the other day - my partner had a couple of free cinema tickets he'd got from work (we don't bother with cinemas otherwise) so we went as a birthday thing for me and saw it. It wasn't bad. Naturally loads of stuff was changed and stuff but I won't put specifics here because spoilers ;).

I understand what you mean, but I thought they made him a very realistic and sympathetic character.  not the same guy as the book, but I thought he fit the story the movie was telling very well.

I'm not sure I'd agree that was portrayed as a villain. He was more a hindrance then a help in the film yes, but it always seemed to me that he felt that the hobbit was merely wanting to get away, rather than truly believing that the ring was a danger to use, until Frodo almost gave it to the wraith, then he truly understood that the ring could exert a measure of control over whoever holds it. That was my impression of the character from the film. He was a decent fellow who had no reason to regard Frodo as anything other then a simpleton farmer with mighty weapon that Frodo couldn't understand or was falsely superstitious about. He had no reason to believe that the ring had to be destroyed rather than used when he captured Frodo. Not in the film anyway.

I got the same read on Faramir (didn't realize the true power of the Ring)...which works for the way Jackson chose to tell the story...but doesn't jive at all with the notion (in the books) that Faramir actually had a better, more educated understanding of what the Ring was and could do than pretty much anyone else in Gondor.

I mean, how many generations of men...and specifically the Stewards of Gondor...retold the story of how Isildur failed to destroy the Ring and instead wandered off to be ambushed and killed in the wilds?  Faramir would have known that story...he should have had a pretty clear idea of just how dangerous the Ring was.  But Jackson was more interested in portraying the characters (at least the Men) as something that would fit in contemporary society...so Faramir was an obedient son whose education didn't teach him to look beyond the orders his father had given with regards to the ring, in the same way that Aragorn was not the King waiting for the right moment to return, but was instead a man in fear of his Fate and trying to avoid power and the temptations that come with it.  And Legolas was an X-Games all-star in a world that had never even heard of snowboarding, much less had time to perfect it.

heh.  Yeah, Legolas always hit me as a surfer in need of a board.  I love the movies, but he always stood out a a bit over the top.  Which makes me interested to see if the final hobbit movie will shed light on why he is portrayed so differently in these three.  He's much more like his father.

I didn't see the second Hobbit film, yet...but it strikes me as curious that Legolas was apparently more even-tempered and somber when he was a hundred years younger...*grin*

Isildur didn't wander off and get ambushed in the wilds. He was traveling overland to Arnor, the Gladden Fields are beside the Great River, near what became Rohan.

But yes, he failed to resist the ring and it killed him.

Nobody can resist the ring in the presence of the Cracks of Doom. That's why Frodo's mission was doomed to fail, and part of the reason Sauron never considered the ring could be destroyed.

Near the Cracks of Doom:

"Then suddenly, as before under the eaves of the Emyn Muil, Sam saw these tow rivals with other vision. A crouching shape, scarcely more than the shadow of a living thing, a creature now wholly ruined and defeated, yet still filled with a hideous lust and rage; and before it stood stern, untouchable now by pity, a figure robed in white, but at its breast it held a wheel of fire. Out of the fire there spoke a commanding  voice.

"'Begone, and trouble me no more! If you touch me ever agian, you shall be cast yourself into the Fire of Doom.'"

I believe the ring carried out Frodo's order.

In reply to darknash (msg # 41):

Yeah, I know...I was simplifying the details...*grin*

And OceanLake--I'd never thought about it in that light before.  Next time I read through LOTR, I may be watching for situations where Frodo's declarations end up foreshadowing results in similar fashion (I don't expect to see a lot of them, because for most of the tale, Frodo avoided using the Ring...but now I'm intrigued at the prospect.  Tolkien wove a lot of depth into his tales, and it actually wouldn't surprise me to find that happening at various points.)

all I have to say in regard to the final movie is

A). Really the battle with Smaug could just as easily been left in the last movie

B). they did an amazing job portraying the Dragon sickness

C). I think though well done and epic the final battle would have been better served following the ending in the book... Mano a Mano with Azog + Bolg is very well done... but watching Thorin fall riddles with spears from dozens of foes while making a valiant charge to break the bodyguard of {either Azog or Bolg } and having his death { along with the timely arrival of Beorn } Rally the other armies in an epic butt kicking of vengeance just seems more fitting to me

I'm still holding out for a movie based upon the book "The Silmarillion."

I spent most of the battle waiting for Beorn to show up, and it was kind of disappointing when he finally did - two seconds of "dropped onto orcs, om nom nom" and that was it - he didn't even get to have a go at anyone significant :(.
Also, they "reassigned" the five armies, unless I'm remembering it wrongly - it's supposed to be Men, Elves, Dwarves, Orcs, and Wargs, isn't it? Not Men, Elves, Dwarves, Orcs, and more Orcs. There was definitely only one Orc army in the book, I'm sure, because only Bolg was around to lead them. I suppose it's because the films have treated Wargs as non-sentient creatures serving as mounts to Orcs rather than an organised race with their own leader and stuff that they changed that.

the five armies in the book are men, dwarves, elves, orcs, and eagles.

I think that would have to be about 15 movies. Beren and Luthien would be a trilogy all on its own.

The eagles count as an army? I just thought they showed up at the end to clear up. I've always thought the Wargs were the fifth army, because their leader meets up with the orcs after he get humiliated and genrally annoyed after having a burning pine cone chucked at him during the "Fifteen birds in five fir trees" scene, and gathers together all the other Wargs in the area like Bolg does with the Orcs, then they unite and head for Erebor to nom anyone who happens to be there ;).

Decided to fact-check this one, actually, and Arda gives us this quote...

"So began a battle that none had expected; and it was called the Battle of Five Armies, and it was very terrible. Upon one side were the Goblins and the wild Wolves, and upon the other were Elves and Men and Dwarves."

...from this page...

http://www.glyphweb.com/arda/b/battleoffivearmies.html

...if you're interested :). It mentions Beorn and the eagles as showing up to help out, basically :).

My partner is a massive Tolkien-nut; and she does like the movies and follows news about them, and apparently there have been some quite major issues with the Tolkien Estate in regards to that. To the extent that Jackson has stated he's finished with the world of Middle-Earth.
This message was last edited by the user at 21:43, Sun 28 Dec 2014.

In reply to Misty Reynolds (msg # 45):

Absolutely my favorite. But the Silmarillion covers thousands of years, not a single "lifetime" . . . and the events in Lord of the Rings covers less than a year "real time."

They'd need more than one movie to encompass the Silmarillion.

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

They turned 'The Hobbit' into three movies, so why not?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

... 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.

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.

Meanwhile, on the desert planet Arrakis...

"Peter Jackson STOLE OUR WORMS!"

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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...

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.

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.

I watched a seven-year-old boy watch The Hobbit, An Unexpected Journey with full attention.

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.

In reply to facemaker329 (msg # 70):

Agreed.

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.

In reply to Eur512 (msg # 61):

Chuckle. That was certainly worth a why.

http://www.worldcrunch.com/cul...s10299/#.VKqlFCvF-nr

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.