Three Times The Hobbit?

[Boromir88]

Originally Posted by Legolas

If so, then where's Tom Bombadil and Old Man Willow? Radagast, and the Barrow-Wight? The Scouring of the Shire, Saruman's real demise? Why devote precious moments to the silly fan fiction sequences of Arwen, Aragorn, and his horse when there's a tale to be told?

I think with The Hobbit films, I'm going to miss that "we can't film the books line by line" attitude though. I mean, every rational person understood stuff was going to be cut for the films. I can appreciate a certain restraint in knowing you can't film everything. And even inventing your own material to improve the story you're telling on screen, is in and of itself not evil, or tarnishing of the books. What those inventions are and whether films are improved is of course a different matter.

Unfortunately most of Jackson's inventions were major, major differences, and just turned out to be closer to Morthoron's description...bad fan-fiction (Aragorn's "reluctant king" archetype, Frodo sending Sam home, Gimli's entire character...etc). Where the more subtle inventions are so minor, but I believe are actually good, they get overwhelmed by the refuse. Boromir sword-training Merry and Pippin comes to mind. An invention, but still simple and revealing the bond between Boromir, Merry and Pippin, that is present in the books.

The true disturbance, for me, wasn't what was cut and what was changed, but the perception that Jackson and company were being faithful when adapting Tolkien. It's really my big problem with the film Appendices, because you have Jackson, Walsh, and Boyens up there beating on about "we're doing this in the spirit of Tolkien" and "we're not interested in putting our on garbage in the films."...In the words of Lumbergh...rrrrriiiight.

Reading Jackson's announcements was pretty much the last "thanks, but no, I'll wait to bum the dvd off a friend." The attitude of "we finished watching the two films and there is so much more we want to show! We can't leave out these important parts to further flesh out the dwarf characters and Gandalf and Dol Guldur! The agony of having to make decisions of what to CUT!"

Serious? If you can't make convincing characters and tell a story like The Hobbit in two films, you just can't direct. Maybe WETA can make a visual masterpiece and Howard Shore can cover up even some of Jackson's most aggrivating fails, because it's impossible not to feel something with Shore's music, but as far as a story-telling ability? I'll pass.