One of the primary aspects, to my mind, of Tolkien's opening chapters in LotR is the establishment of the Shire as a comfortable, homely place, one that is worth saving, albeit one which is not without its faults. I also feel that he seeks to establish Hobbits in general (and the main characters in particular) as characters that we the readers can identify with, so that we can feel more involved in subsequent events, as portrayed from their perspective. Certainly, there is much in the Shire that readers can identify with, and this would have been even more true of English readers at the time Tolkien was writing - place-names, familiar landscapes, pubs, mail service etc. (See the
Chapter-by-Chapter discussion of the early chapters for more detail.)
How well do you think that Jackson manages to achieve the same effect, if at all? Clearly, the Shire is portrayed as an idyllic place, although again not utterly perfect. But it seems to me to be a place that many in today's audiences will find difficult to identify with. Perhaps it is sufficient that it is presented as a desirable place to live. What do people think?
Also, do we get the feeling here that the Hobbits are to be the central characters in this tale? Are they the ones that we feel that we, as viewers, will be able to identify with the most? Are they the humble "everymen" of Tolkien's book travelling out of a safe, homely place into an unknown faery/heroic world where they will meet danger and find themselves ennobled by it? Or simply just some of the main characters that we will meet in the film. I get the sense that, since Aragorn, Faramir and some of the other principal characters are less "idealised" in the film than they are in the book, that Jackson was not so concerned to establish the Hobbits as the viewers' main point of reference.
Of the principal Hobbits in the film, I suppose that it is Sam who most closely takes on the role of providing "viewer perspective", but I wonder if that is because he is probably the film character who most closely resembles his book counterpart. In the book, Merry and Pippin, less the comedy characters of the film, take on part of this role too and the reader is therefore able more closely to identify with their development as characters. Do you think that their "slapstick" portrayal here (as
alatar astutely puts it) contributes to or detracts from the more serious roles that they take on later in the film trilogy?