[Legate of Amon Lanc]

Originally Posted by davem

Let's not get too precious about TH - its a children's book, & I doubt PJ will manage to outdo Tolkien's own Tra-la-la-ly's - or worse:

That is perfectly fine. I love the Hobbit and for me, with all the "childishness", it is a part of the universe as any other. But PJ is using different sort of humor, not childish, but he's using the "modern" stupid humor of all the current movies with animated children, talking cars, robots and Jar Jars. The stupid American movie humor. (Sorry Americans. But that's just how it is. Not that nowadays also others wouldn't do that, sadly.)

Originally Posted by davem

Radagast looks quite interesting - reminds me of accounts of Shamans the world over - & when TH was written neither Gandalf nor Radagast were Ainur. When Gandalf became one during the writing of LotR then so must his 'cousin', I'm much more comfortable with what I've seen of TH than with much of the LotR films. TH was a novel even Tolkien himself was a bit sniffy about:

But in PJ's universe Gandalf already is established that way, and Radagast should be as well. Of course, strictly speaking, in PJ's universe we never heard anything about Ainur, but basically we know of Saruman and Gandalf being those powerful wizards, Gandalf even with this "transcendent" dimension to him, so that should be taken into account when talking about Radagast too...

Originally Posted by Lalwendë

They are Northern, so they have Northern accents! It's perfectly correct! I've noticed other Dwarves who sound Irish/Scots and that's acceptable too. Posh accents have no place in Middle-earth. Note that even Gandalf still sounds a bit Northern and Bilbo isn't posh either. Crikey, a film cast with actors who sounded like Tolkien would need to have subtitles because everyone would be sat there going "Eh? What?" And posh Dwarves would be more wrong than all the wrong things put together from all the Tolkien adaptations

Look, I am not a native English speaker, so of course my choice is based only on my aesthetic impression And it is simply so that I get the impression very often some people are pretending to have some accent while they in fact don't and it sounds terrible. On top of that, this particular accent is not aesthetically pleasant, just like Pippin's isn't, if you ask me. Or not in the way he does it. It's annoying.

The problem with comedy is everyone has different tastes. Some will want Python-esque, but let's be honest, nobody has ever pulled off Python-esque except the Pythons themselves, and even then not in any way consistently. Python was funny because it traded on contemporary morals and politics and got laughs out of being shocking/smutty and The Hobbit is not the place for that in any way. What it can do is have silly and bizarre moments, which are something Tolkien specialised in. And with rabbit sleds in the mix, it sounds like that is going to happen.

Strikes me though that we have criticism that the films are going to be too dark and epic, but on the other hand, any hints of humour or light-heartedness get criticised. So from this I deduce that nothing will satisfy some as you cannot have it both ways

Well exactly! I think it is too extreme in both directions. Which is exactly wrong. And again, most of these epic fantasy/SF/thriller/whatever movies nowadays are like that, sadly. In one scene, you have the characters pretending how dead serious they all are, over-the-top sad music as somebody tells how their parents were murdered when he was five, and the next minute, a fat man eating crisps falls on top of their head from upstairs, telling some unlikely joke.

I think, in fact, with the Hobbit, the combination of the darkness behind might actually be good. Tolkien, after all, does work with all these "deeper, darker, older things in the background" (Moria, Durin, Necromancer - as he says himself). But the counterweight to this should not be Obelix falling from a tree, but some light, British humor. And the fairytale-elements should remain just that, fairytale. Fairytale borders the "unlikely", like Beorn's animals talking, but it isn't supposed to be outright stupid. "Weird" or "silly" does not equal "stupid". And again, PJ - no eye for nuances, the oldest and biggest problem of his.

Besides, a rabbit-sled is certainly enslaving the poor animals and forcing them to do hard labor Something Radagast would never do.

I'm only wondering, that just occured to me, whether PJ isn't trying to "make up for missing Tom Bombadil". Because this rabbit-sled approach seems more like that. Valar save us if that is his motive behind all this...

Originally Posted by MCRmyGirl4eva

I loved it. My question is: Will the elves be singing their silly little welcoming songs?

I'm afraid not. Which is a pity. Well, not in PJ's way of showing it, anyway. But I would welcome that ten times more than ten Obelixes.

Originally Posted by Mithalwen

But he is having it both ways... that was like two completely different films edited together.

Mith, you seem to be reading my mind on these issues. That is exactly the feeling I'm getting after this trailer.

Originally Posted by Zigûr

I also noticed that, in accordance with rumours that have been floating around, we seem to see nothing past the events of Chapter VI "Out of the Frying-Pan into the Fire" which suggests to me that the film may end as early as before Beorn! If this is borne out (Beorn out? No?) I think it's going to feel absolutely torturous as a trilogy - escaping Mirkwood seemed as good a place as any to split the story back when it was only two films.

Indeed! That was also something I haven't noticed until Lommy pointed that out to me, there seems to be Gandalf on top of a burning tree. So that's pretty neat (I hope he really gets to throw different-colored burning cones - heck, that is an opportunity for action scene with super CGI effects, and a justified one, so they'd better make the best of that!). As for Beorn, it seems that Radagast will be taking his place. Which is fine with me. (Or would be, if Radagast wasn't such a pitiful specimen... like I said.)

It really seems that we're going to end now somewhere either in front of Mirkwood or at the beginning of it... it really makes one wonder what remains for the future. I mean, sure there is still lot to happen, but most of the "dynamic" stuff happens before reaching Lake-Town. Agh, unless we are going to have hour and half long battle for Helm's... I mean, Erebor. Which is surely possible. No, not possible, likely. Well...

A cool moment to end the movie would be "Where are you? Balin! Dwalin! Thorin Oakenshield!" - after getting lost in Mirkwood. Bilbo alone in the darkness, fade out... certainly a way to make the audience expect the following one.

Query: Are we going to see "lesser spawn of Ungoliant", as in, is PJ going to bring us some homage to his "green dying person is being carefully wrapped in spider webs" scene? I'd expect that. (That's not negative, for once. I dislike the portrayal of it, personally - though half of it was because of Frodo making his drooling show of it again - but PJ's going to disappoint me greatly if he does not bring some "nudge nudge you have seen this before" moment.)