A 'darker' Hobbit

[Nogrod]

I think that one of the problems resides in this bussiness of drawing lines of faithfulness between movies and books in the first place. Cinema is a different media from literature.

Not to talk of rendering an epos like LotR into a different media. You're never going to accomplish that and thence dicussing about faithfulness isn't exactly to the point?

But that does not mean that the value-meters you Sauron brought forwards are any good either. There are reasons (a lot of them) to say PJ's movies were beautiful to look at but shallow. But these reasons need not tie themselves to the "faithfulness" aspect. They were shallow as cinema.

The box-office ratings? Quite a many people went to see "The Independence Day" as well... Remember, most people go to see a movie once so they have not known what crap it was but the marketing hype was loud enough to lure them into the theaters. I'd believe more any "after-movie polls" than just pure attendance numbers. And anyhow quality and quantity are different things after all?

Collective praise by the critics? I'm not sure about the U.S. if every critic is fed by the big movie-corporations but at least in Europe I think most of the critics had a long list of reservations and some even scorned the whole project. So at least here it was not a "collective praise"...

The industry awards? Well what else could they have done after the popular phenomena the movies made? What would have been the Oscar-committee's credibility rate after the third box-office hit? If they'd given the Oscars for a good film they'd at least picked the first one but for some reason they didn't... But to be serious... that was an after-award as ever there was one! They couldn't just not notice them at that point.

But coming back to my basic idea. As film and literature are two different medias both should try to excel in those areas their media makes them excel.

PJ probably tried his hardest (at least in some part) but just couldn't make it.

So a brave interpretation would have been in place, original view with an excellence in telling the story via a film-media, and hopefully lots of money behind to make it look good as well... PJ's was a compromise with some highly potential visual & musical artistic aspirations blended with box-office requirements (the storyline, the cast...) - and possibly PJ's shortcomings as a director...

Sorry to say this. I loved the films for what they looked like and I love the music as well... but as movies... no I can't love them as movies.

EDIT: Looking backwards into the thread this clearly is steering far away from the actual topic... I'll promise to try and stay better in the topic the next time.

[Bêthberry]

Well, I will get back to the original question and say that the problem lies with Tolkien and his constant niggling.

Once a book is published, it cannot be unpublished (although it can be censored, banned or burned). Even if it were withdrawn from book sales, it would still exist in libraries (unless they pulled it off the shelves, and what a cry that would raise!), in private collections, and in the dearly loved memories of the children who had it read to them or of the children who read it and also of those adults who love it too, tra la la lally and all.

Tolkien was of course free to see, as a sort of academic exercise, if TH could be retoned to suit LotR. But that would/will always remain a post-publication exercise. Once a book is given to the world, it cannot be taken back. It no longer 'belongs' to the author, but to the world. Any revision would be simply a second (or third, as the case may be) version, and left to the tastes of the reading public.

[davem]

Originally Posted by Bêthberry

Tolkien was of course free to see, as a sort of academic exercise, if TH could be retoned to suit LotR. But that would/will always remain a post-publication exercise. Once a book is given to the world, it cannot be taken back. It no longer 'belongs' to the author, but to the world. Any revision would be simply a second (or third, as the case may be) version, and left to the tastes of the reading public.

And yet the 'official' version we all know & love contains the re-written Riddles in the Dark, which (to my mind after reading the original) doesn't 'fit' as well as the version it replaced. That revision was done purely to bring TH into line with the Gollum of LotR. Clearly Tolkien wasn't attempting this revision as an academic excercise but as a potential replacement text. If it had replaced the edition we now have then its possible that TH as we know it would have been as difficult to get hold of as the 1st ed. Hobbit text is now.

Originally Posted by William Cloud Hicklin)

Oh, sure, he talked a good game in interviews- most of the time. Well, guess what? Smeagol lied. PJ has also said this: "Tolkien's tale was long and boring....I think I did better."

I hadn't come across that quote before; however, that attitude came through for me in the movies

[Sir Kohran]

Originally Posted by davem

I hadn't come across that quote before; however, that attitude came through for me in the movies

There's a reason you hadn't come across that quote before; it probably doesn't exist - the only result I find was an Epinions review, where some purist ranted on for ages about camera angles and didn't bother to review the rest of the film. He also complains about the Hobbits having 'Irish accents', which is a bit stupid when Ian Holm, Andy Serkis, Billy Boyd and Dominic Monaghan all came from the UK (Sean and Elijah were American, yeah, but they used English accents) with no Irish actors in the entire trilogy.

I did find this PJ quote, though:

“We made a promise to ourselves at the beginning of the process that we weren't going to put any of our own politics, our own messages or our own themes into these movies. What we were trying to do was to analyze what was important to Tolkien and to try to honor that. In a way, we were trying to make these films for him, not for ourselves.”

[davem]

Originally Posted by Sir Kohran

There's a reason you hadn't come across that quote before; it probably doesn't exist - the only result I find was an Epinions review, where some purist ranted on for ages about camera angles and didn't bother to review the rest of the film. He also complains about the Hobbits having 'Irish accents', which is a bit stupid when Ian Holm, Andy Serkis, Billy Boyd and Dominic Monaghan all came from the UK (Sean and Elijah were American, yeah, but they used English accents) with no Irish actors in the entire trilogy.

I found this:

http://www.glinka.ru/eurogym/korotkih/peterjackson.htm - at the bottom of the page, just above 'Salary'.

[Sauron the White]

Jackson is proud of his films. So what? This is the only "quote" (if indeed it is one since the source is not cited) that I have seen where Jackson has adopted this tone. I can show you many others where he is rather respectful of JRRT and his work.

[Sir Kohran]

Originally Posted by davem

I found this:

http://www.glinka.ru/eurogym/korotkih/peterjackson.htm - at the bottom of the page, just above 'Salary'.

I'm a bit doubtful of that; it's right at the bottom of the page which looks a little suspicious.

Also note that my earlier quote was there too.

[William Cloud Hicklin]

Whether you believe PJ said what is attributed to him, Davem is quite right- that attitude is apparent throughout the films. He's constantly "improving" the books, with an eye toward more fights, more action, more noise and shrieking, more eye candy: So what if there's no fight on Weathertop- we need one! The cave troll fight we invented and the Balrog aren't enough excitement- lets have a physics-defying teetering staircase! Boy, a warg attack would juice things up! Let's turn the Dead of the marshes into water zombies! Gee, an avalanche of skulls would be neato-keen! Let's have a Nazgul nearly nab Frodo at Osgiliath! And on and on and on......

It not much of an argument to list a handful of plot-points and boast that PJ put them in the movies. Plot is *all* he ever perceived. Nothing more- and even then he couldn't get it right.

This is where the 'snobbish' Tolkien scholars are coming from. They know from long study that the Lord of the Rings is far more than just an adventure yarn, and it's painful to see it reduced to such a simplistic level-even beyond the plot and character vandalism, it's plain the PJ never understood what it was all about.

[Bêthberry]

Originally Posted by davem

And yet the 'official' version we all know & love contains the re-written Riddles in the Dark, which (to my mind after reading the original) doesn't 'fit' as well as the version it replaced. That revision was done purely to bring TH into line with the Gollum of LotR. Clearly Tolkien wasn't attempting this revision as an academic excercise but as a potential replacement text. If it had replaced the edition we now have then its possible that TH as we know it would have been as difficult to get hold of as the 1st ed. Hobbit text is now.

Yes, I know that about 'Riddles in the Dark'. To my mind, it was wrong to revise TH and market the revision as the 'canonical' (oooh, that word again) text. We complain about books that are 'revised' for "political correctness", to make them compatible with the values of subsequent ages, so why cannot one complain that such changes on Tolkien's part represent a faulty niggling? At the very best, I would argue that both texts should exist. Perhaps readers should be given the choice--as some modern children's books do now--about which version to go to?

I wonder, are there other writers who have done this kind of revision/editting in 'second' editions?

The fact that Tolkien never completed the 'darker' version says something about the process, I think. Or maybe just about his writing habits, lol!

EDIT: Sorry, cross-posting with Noggie and others and absolutely must dash now.

[Nogrod]

Originally Posted by Bêthberry

I wonder, are there other writers who have done this kind of revision/editting in 'second' editions?

I don't know so much about writers themselves but after they're dead things have been re-printed alongside with the "originals"... as the markets have many times been saturated already. So surely to make the cash-machine sing in the first place...

In Finland there was a case just a few years ago when a piece central to Finninsh 20th century literature, Väinö Linna's "The Unknown Soldier", was reprinted by the name of "A War Novel". It had in it all the things that the editor for the publishing company had took out from the original version printed in italics (like some versions of Bulgakov's "Master and Margarita" under Sovjet cencorship).

In the end it turned out that most of the deletions were mainly literary shortcuts and indeed "betterments", not political choices as so many people had foreseen...

So these markets as well seem to work more on profit than artistic integrity... so sad as it is.

Would there be this discussion without today's competition of quartal performance by all the publishers as well which seem even to include a possibility of taking in the cash-flow from all the Tolkien fans with a third version of the Hobbit?

[Sauron the White]

William ... you are simply in error when you state this

Regardless of the Masses (whose collective judgment makes McDonald's a great restaurant) and the judgment of the AMPAS and film critics (all movie people), look at the consensus of those who know Tolkien best- Tolkien scholars. Their verdict is *unanimous*- YECCCHH!

The point of my listing of the three areas of success was that normally they are mutually exclusive of each other. But in the case of LOTR, the three different areas all apply to the LOTR films. McDonalds may be a financial success but please show me where professional food critics rate it as a great restaurant.
Please show me where McDonalds has won industry awards for its quality of food or ambience of its eating establishments? In simple point - they do not. They have achieved financial success and it ends with that. Your analogy is faulty and flawed at its basic premise when compared to what I used to define success with the Jackson films.

Jacksons films of LOTR achieved three very different kinds of success which usually are not found in the same package. No single filmmaker in the 100+ year history of the medium ever achieved that type of success with three films - let alone three consecutive films - yet alone three films on the same subject.

Tolkien scholars know one thing very well - the writings of JRRT. When it comes to film they have shown little practical knowledge of how films work or how the film industry works. They have pretty much shown themselves (with some exceptions) to fall into the TRUE BELIEVER category. They covet their special knowledge and hold it above the world - the great unwashed ignorant masses, or Masses as your post refers to them. Snob appeal anyone?

[Nogrod]

Originally Posted by Sauron the White

The point of my listing of the three areas of success was that normally they are mutually exclusive of each other. But in the case of LOTR, the three different areas all apply to the LOTR films.

I quess I just put that in question in my post #58 - in all three fronts... (well, I'm the first to blame not reading thoroughly what others have said in an extended thread...) But you can't just fend of any questioning of your argument that easily...

Originally Posted by PJ

“We made a promise to ourselves at the beginning of the process that we weren't going to put any of our own politics, our own messages or our own themes into these movies."

Show me someone who can do that - how much s/he tries - and I'll show you that the moon is made out of cheese...

[Nogrod]

Originally Posted by Bêthberry

Once a book is given to the world, it cannot be taken back. It no longer 'belongs' to the author, but to the world. Any revision would be simply a second (or third, as the case may be) version, and left to the tastes of the reading public.

And just think the rows over all these now appearing "director's cut" -versions of different films! I think Blade runner started it but now they seem most like marketing programmes than questions of any artistic integrity...

But even with the question of the artist's actual will to bring forwards a more thought of or not "censored" (because of the sales-demands or whatever) version of the work I do agree with Bêthberry here. Once let loose is also out of one's authority for the eternity... No one can claim back the experiences people have already had with those works and any newer version will always be the underdog or the curiosity among people with experience with an earlier version.