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Formendacil · 10-21-2011, 01:56 PM

My first thought reading this thread was that it was strongly reminiscent of the Okay, so what do you think NOW? thread here in the forum, which resurfaced about a month ago. However, I do notice one major difference, which is a rather interesting one to consider: that thread only looked back at The Lord of the Rings, whereas this asks what one can say about anticipations and expectations for The Hobbit in that light.

For myself, ten years has meant that I am not quite so vengefully critical of the LotR movies as I once was--I'm also not 14 anymore, and I suspect that makes a momentous difference. Thus, I am not as bloodshot with fear that PJ will botch Tolkien's work and ruin it forever; indeed, I take a somewhat longer view, which suggests that the book is more than robust enough to survive whatever butcheries the movie makes of it, and--at the very least--my own fondness for it will not suffer.

All that being said, I am also a cannier old man now, and ten years of reflection on what PJ did in the movies does not make me an optimist about what to expect from The Hobbit adaptations. As a general rule, I thought PJ's films were superb where they remained faithful to the books, defensibly good where they abridged them, and at their most dubious when they added to them. In addition, I felt that the best (and most faithful) of the three was The Fellowship, and that it got progressively "less Tolkien" from there. I don't know if one can really extrapolate much from this, since the three films were shot together, but if it DOES reflect anything from post-production or from the success of the previous films going ever more to PJ's head as the latter ones were being polished, the overall trajectory doesn't bode well for The Hobbit--ESPECIALLY since The Hobbit, by being made into two movies, rather than one, looks likely to have a whole lot more fabrication/addition than the LotR movies.

All that being said, however, perhaps the biggest difference is that for the LotR movies, I sat in line in a Canadian December to attend a first night showing. This time around, I'll probably make it to the second or third weekend... and apart from suggesting that I'm busier as an adult than a teenager, it also suggests that the movie adaptation simply doesn't matter to me anymore--in other words, I'll go out of curiosity to see what they've done with Tolkien's work and not out of fear that they'll destroy it. Now that I'm older and wiser, I don't really think they can.

10-21-2011, 01:56 PM	#4
Formendacil Dead Serious Join Date: Jan 2005 Location: Perched on Thangorodrim's towers. Posts: 3,347	My first thought reading this thread was that it was strongly reminiscent of the Okay, so what do you think NOW? thread here in the forum, which resurfaced about a month ago. However, I do notice one major difference, which is a rather interesting one to consider: that thread only looked back at The Lord of the Rings, whereas this asks what one can say about anticipations and expectations for The Hobbit in that light. For myself, ten years has meant that I am not quite so vengefully critical of the LotR movies as I once was--I'm also not 14 anymore, and I suspect that makes a momentous difference. Thus, I am not as bloodshot with fear that PJ will botch Tolkien's work and ruin it forever; indeed, I take a somewhat longer view, which suggests that the book is more than robust enough to survive whatever butcheries the movie makes of it, and--at the very least--my own fondness for it will not suffer. All that being said, I am also a cannier old man now, and ten years of reflection on what PJ did in the movies does not make me an optimist about what to expect from The Hobbit adaptations. As a general rule, I thought PJ's films were superb where they remained faithful to the books, defensibly good where they abridged them, and at their most dubious when they added to them. In addition, I felt that the best (and most faithful) of the three was The Fellowship, and that it got progressively "less Tolkien" from there. I don't know if one can really extrapolate much from this, since the three films were shot together, but if it DOES reflect anything from post-production or from the success of the previous films going ever more to PJ's head as the latter ones were being polished, the overall trajectory doesn't bode well for The Hobbit--ESPECIALLY since The Hobbit, by being made into two movies, rather than one, looks likely to have a whole lot more fabrication/addition than the LotR movies. All that being said, however, perhaps the biggest difference is that for the LotR movies, I sat in line in a Canadian December to attend a first night showing. This time around, I'll probably make it to the second or third weekend... and apart from suggesting that I'm busier as an adult than a teenager, it also suggests that the movie adaptation simply doesn't matter to me anymore--in other words, I'll go out of curiosity to see what they've done with Tolkien's work and not out of fear that they'll destroy it. Now that I'm older and wiser, I don't really think they can. __________________ I prefer history, true or feigned.