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Originally Posted by the phantom
We are the general film-going public ... what you and I expect from movies in general is no different than what others expect.
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You an I are a miniscule percentage of the film-going public. If the film studios suspect that "love interests" sell films, then there is probably something in it. Perhaps you and I (and most here no doubt) are slightly out of kilter with the majority in this regard.
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Perhaps it answers why there isn't a love interest in the story- but it doesn't address my query in the least.
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Of course it does. Most people first read The Hobbit as children. If not, they are quite aware that it is a children's tale when they do read it. So, either way, the reader does not expect a "love interest" to be present in it. This would apply equally if
The Hobbit were made as a film for children.
I tried to think of successful "adventure" type films that have no "love interest". It's present in all the
Star Wars films, the
Indiana Jones films, the
Terminator films,
Spider-Man and
The Hulk. All I could come up with off the top of my head were
some war films (such as
Saving Private Ryan and
Black Hawk Down) and
some horror films (such as the
Alien films, if we overlook a slight dalliance between Ripley and the Charles Dance character in the third film).
The Hobbit would, as a film, fall into neither of these categories (although war and, potentially, horror would feature as aspects of it).
But I wonder whether I (and others) have pinpointed the issue quite as precisely as we might. Perhaps the absence of a "love interest" would not matter too much. There are probably a good number of films in which this aspect is absent that I have overlooked. Perhaps the real issue is the absence of any strong female characters (indeed the absence of any female characters of note at all). Save for the aforementioned war films (and others in the genre), I cannot think of a single film that does not have at least one female character in a fairly major role. And it's difficult to see how this might be addressed in
The Hobbit without including the White Council scenes and playing up Galadriel's role in them or changing the gender of at least one of the major characters.
Ms Thorin, anyone ...!!?
