Well, Del Toro is a very successful & highly accomplished director - far more accomplished than Jackson, who could never have produced a work as complex, subtle & moving as Pan's Labyrinth. GDT has made commercially successful, populist movies (Hellboy) as well, so its hardly a case of a director only known so far for art movies. Del Toro's Middle-earth could well be far superior to Jackson's. What we're being offered at the moment seems to be simply more of the same - two more movies which are carbon copies of the Rings trilogy. And as I said, a Hobbit movie that simply reproduces the look & feel of the LotR films may draw in an audience on the strength of those movies, but would anyone really want to see a sequel to it that was yet another copy? A Hobbit movie should have its own look & feel - otherwise forget a director like GDT & just hire some hack sitcom director & tell him to copy Jackson.
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There are no wide-eyed virgins in the multi billion dollar business world. Harper-Collins and Houghton Mifflin are no different. They have a bottom line and have an eye to it at all times. Why else would they release a story that has been on my shelf for many years now and have the gall to advertise it as a new book? The name of the game is money money money. And anyone who thinks differently is denying reality.
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Things were different under Allen & Unwin.... Of course, Raynor Unwin was not only a close friend of Tolkien (& Christopher), but also a fan of his work. For instance, the launch of Unfinished Tales was a very muted affair because Christopher had asked for that - he wanted UT to be seen very much as a small scale book for serious students of Tolkien & at that time there was no expectation that HoM-e would follow. And, to give credit where its due, this is why CoH was presented as a 'new' work - you have to understand that there is a major difference between works like TH, LotR & The Sil & works like UT & HoM-e. The latter are 'academic' works, aimed at serious students of Tolkien's works. They aren't meant to be read by the general Tolkien fan - most of HoM-e is 'unreadable' - & I should know, 'cos I've read it: parts of it two or three times.
So, UT & HoM-e have to be set aside from the other M-e writings: TH, LotR, TS & CoH are aimed at the general reader, UT & HoM-e at the Tolkien student. And the main reason for that is that the latter works are complicated, repetitive, & require a lot of background knowledge about Tolkien & about his sources. Much of whats in the later parts of HoM-e was not written for publication:- it was written for Tolkien himself, because (as Raynor & others have pointed out) Tolkien thought on paper - he would often write long pieces, even essays, to get things straight in his mind, or clarify some aspect of a story, or even just to convince himself that something actually worked.