COMPASS & LOTR comparison

[Sauron the White]

from davem

Either US audiences decided they weren't interested in yet another fantasy series - which puts a huge question mark over the forthcoming Hobbit films, or there was something about the movies - maybe what audiences heard about Pullman's philosophical position.

You are either attempting to make this more complicated than what it really is or you are working the wheel rather hard to grind a particular axe ... its really simple... the upcoming HOBBIT movie has not even the shadow of a question mark about it. No matter how much you or others may like to see a Jackson Middle-earth movie fail, its as much as a sure bet as any single property to come across the movie screen other than the Star Wars prequels. And I would be willing to bet a decent amount on that if anyone wants to put their money where their prejudices lie.

There was no positive buzz here at all about the GC film. Nobody really knew anything about it in advance... the reviews were mediocre .... the word of mouth was very blah .... and the advertising certainly did not reach out and grab anybody. I really do not think anybody gives a rats behind about Pullman, his philosophical position, the right wing reaction to it, or anything else that rings of an excuse or rationalization.

I also think it came upon the heels of that STARDUST movie which did very mediocre box office as well and people looked at it as just more of the same. Please understand something: nobody here confuses LOTR with the rest of this stuff. The LOTR films were in a special category all of their own. They are not to be packaged, confused, affiliated, or even contaminated by anything else that others may call fantasy. If ten different fantasy movies came and died between now and the debut of the Jackson HOBBIT, it would not impact the box office of that film one single US dollar. Again, I would bet on that.

[davem]

Originally Posted by Sauron the White

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There was no positive buzz here at all about the GC film. Nobody really knew anything about it in advance... the reviews were mediocre .... the word of mouth was very blah .... and the advertising certainly did not reach out and grab anybody. I really do not think anybody gives a rats behind about Pullman, his philosophical position, the right wing reaction to it, or anything else that rings of an excuse or rationalization.

I also think it came upon the heels of that STARDUST movie which did very mediocre box office as well and people looked at it as just more of the same..

Which about sums up the position in the rest of the world too - where it did fantastic business.

Don't you think its interesting that a film can be so successful everywhere but one country, where it flops miserably - & isn't it valid to ask why? Plus, why did Stardust flop too - that did well outside the US?

[Lalwendë]

I've just read a piece about Elizabeth: The Golden Age on the BBC site. It also did very badly indeed in the US. Apparently there has been a shift in the American film market towards 'light entertainment' and 'family' films away from drama, fantasy and historical fare - the main audience of young men wanting noise and violence however, still remains prime.

I think that's very telling about why films such as LotR and Star Wars do very well in America as opposed to fantasy like Stardust and The Golden Compass - the former are stories about boys/men and are stuffed to the gills with Noise and SFX and belching dwarves and whatnot. The typical audience of youths can just about stomach a few minutes of Frodo being 'gay' or Arwen drifting around wistfully in a frock so long as we quickly get back to Aragorn whacking heads off Orcs. You can at least get on with txting ur m8s when Sam and Frodo are having a snog-up

But seriously...I do think it is the subject matter and how it is presented. The Golden Compass remember, features a girl as its main character, which would turn boys right off from watching the film; hey, she doesn't even make the concession of being dressed in a mini-skirt and bra top! Stardust is too far into the realms of Faerie to be a boys' film, and things like Elizabeth are just far too wordy anyway.

That does not bode well for The Hobbit. They will be forced to go down the belching dwarves and hack 'n' slash action if they want to hook in the youths who make these things profitable and The Hobbit is far too gentle a story to take that. One of the things Jackson realised he had to achieve with Rings was to make it so that the enormous community of book fans would not rip it to shreds - he knew that if that happened, it would fail and become a curiosity like the Bakshi film. So, the quest for the Hobbit being both good and profitable, in the words of Cate Blanchett, stands on a knife edge...

Of course, that horrible thing Branding comes into it. Studios are now into Brand Names and making cruddy sequels and threequels and the mess that was made of Pirates springs to mind, coupled with how the X-Men and Spider-Man series have been flogged to death now, and how the originally funny American Pie series was flogged so hard there weren't even its dusty bones left. So in the search for easy money the studios go for 'more of the same'...but they don't bank on the potential audience getting bored and wanting something new, not having more Brand Names thrown at them. And that boredom could cover the whole genre not just more films in an ongoing series.

For me, I don't understand why there is so much glee that fantasy films have been doing badly! Shooting oneself in foot springs to mind...

[davem]

What I can't see is how you can have the charm (or tweeness) of the beginning of TH, the 'humourous' encounter with the Trolls & the chasing around after the spiders & combine that with the hack & slash action of LotR. Somebody is going to be disappointed. Tolkien couldn't bring LotR into line with the mood & style of LotR so I doubt Jackson et al can.

Another problem will be in expectations - fans of the LotR movies want Aragorn & Legolas doing their 'tricks', wheras, if the movies are at all faithful to the book, what they'll get is a sweet little Bilbo & a troop of comical Dwarves.

I simply can't see a typical movie goer (17 year old male apparently) sitting through two plus hours of that before they get to see a Dragon & a big battle. So, what we'll probably see is a battle in the mountain cave a la the Mines of Moria sequence, a Mirkwood encounter with multiple 'Shelobs' & some vicious combat with the Trolls - all of which will take the Hobbit movie far from its origins. And let's face it, when Jackson & co take off on their own & leave Tolkien behind they tend to mess up big time - which, let's face it, doesn't bode well for the sequel.

[Sauron the White]

I realize that people are expressing thier honest opinion about a future HOBBIT film and certainly have a right to it. After reading many of these posts over the last couple of weeks I do get a feeling that many here want a Jackson HOBBIT film and its follow-up to fail and fail badly. Several seem to be setting the table with a variety of expectations praying that the films bomb. Perhaps some see it as revenge for the super successful LOTR films that they themselves cannot come to appreciate. Some here seem to see Jackson as some type of public sinner or heretic and want him to pay for his transgressions.

Several posts even mention how business will not be very good due to various changes in the market but then seem to want it both ways saying that the film will only be a success if it dumbs down everything, panders to an audience of 16 year old American yahoos with 80 IQ's, and turns the HOBBIT into another chapter of the FRIDAY 13TH series.

People criticize Jacksons use of Gimli in LOTR - too much slapstick and too many crude bodily jokes. Fair enough. But now in davems post we get this

Another problem will be in expectations - fans of the LotR movies want Aragorn & Legolas doing their 'tricks', wheras, if the movies are at all faithful to the book, what they'll get is a sweet little Bilbo & a troop of comical Dwarves.

First of all, what "tricks" did Aragorn do? I realize that some objected to Legolas surfshield routine and the Mumak kill (I personally loved the latter and was indifferent to the former) but I do not know what either has to do with HOBBIT since neither character is in the book. But at the heart of this comment is the idea that in LOTR Gimli was unfairly used for humorous purposes while in HOBBIT mean old Jackson will make the movie so serious that all those funny Dwarves will not be able to do their usual vaudeville routines.

Please make up your mind.

I suspect - not expect, not predict, and certainy do not know for a fact - that Jackson will attempt to make parts of the HOBBIT a bit more serious in tone to make it consistent with LOTR as a franchise series. I also suspect we will see some Dwarven humor along the way. Humor is by far the hardest thing to do in films since everyone has such a different taste for it. Heavy dramatic moments pretty much work or they do not. Emotional love scenes either pull at the heart strings and make you cry or they do not. But humor is so varied and so different depending on the person, that it poses far different problems for a filmmaker. My grown children tell me that TALADEGA NIGHTS is a very funny movie. I find it terrible and there is barely a chuckle in the entire film. I found BORAT to be completely hysterical while others look at each other with mystified looks upon their frowning faces not getting it at all. Who is to say what humor works and what does not? But rest assured, there will probably be Dwarven humor in HOBBIT.

I too hope for some of the HOBBITS sweetness and lighter moments to be a part of the film. I dearly hope so. And I do not think I will be let down in that hope. Just as their were many sweet moments in the LOTR films, that element will be there.

[Mister Underhill]

I gotta pipe in here just to keep things honest. Let's not exaggerate the international success of Compass. They'll probably end up with about $300M if it performs very well in Japan once it finally opens there. The league they're playing in, a bonafide international smash is like $500M plus. On the other hand, ~$70M domestic is disappointing, but hardly a complete flop.

Stardust didn't break the bank overseas either -- just under $100M. Elizabeth: The Golden Age is Oscar bait, not the kind of movie meant to do big business here or overseas. Within the past decade, LotR, Harry Potter, and Narnia have all done, as Variety would say, boffo box office domestically, and mid-range fantasy fare like Eragon and Bridge to Terabithia and the like have performed respectably.

I'd even lump in the bank-breaking Pirates franchise as another fantasy franchise that's done well. It has all the elements -- swords and sorcery, weird monsters, and so on.

I just don't see any real evidence for a sea-change in American appetite for fantasy, nor a contrasting ravenous appetite for "sophisticated" fantasy overseas.

[davem]

Originally Posted by Sauron the White

I realize that people are expressing thier honest opinion about a future HOBBIT film and certainly have a right to it. After reading many of these posts over the last couple of weeks I do get a feeling that many here want a Jackson HOBBIT film and its follow-up to fail and fail badly.

Nope. As I said, & I think King Kong confirms this, whenever Jackson & co leave Tolkien's story line & characterisations behind & do their own thing they mess up. So, if they attempt to re-write TH in the style of LotR - something Tolkien himself tried & failed to do - they will inevitably get it wrong. And the thought of them taking a few scattered references from Appendix B & knocking up a movie doesn't bear thinking about. This would be the worst kind of fan-fic - can you really imagine Jackson, his missus & her best mate writing something that is supposed to equal Tolkien's carefully crafted masterpieces? You only have to listen to their mostly inane comments on the commentary tracks, where they offer their 'insights' into Tolkien's work to realise that they don't know what they're talking about - & their reasons for changing the storyline, & how they think their own changes 'improve' on the book: "We needed to split up Frodo & Sam to increase the dramatic tension" etc are enough to confirm that when they do get absolute control over a M-e storyline its going to be truly dreadful.RAynor Unwin once referred to Tolkien as a 'ferocious intellect', & he rightly deserves the title genius. The idea that this trio could create something equivalent to his work is the worst kind of bad joke, & nothing but an insult. The Hobbit movie may be saved - if there's enough of Tolkien's original work on screen. Nothing could possibly save the sequel.

[Sauron the White]

from davem

So, if they attempt to re-write TH in the style of LotR - something Tolkien himself tried & failed to do - they will inevitably get it wrong.

JRRT attempted this rewrite in 1960 when he was 68 years old. From what I have read about these years for JRRT as a writer, they were not very productive compared to his earlier decades of the Nineteen Twenties, Thirties and Forties. Tolkien seemed to lose the ability to finish anything of substance and instead busied himself with constant tending to notes, rewriting of the same, and laboring over minor issues with previous writings.

You are assuming that since JRRT himself could not reform the HOBBIT into something more consistent with LOTR then nobody could. Given his age and deterioration of work habits, I think the case could well be made that those two factors were as much of a problem as the basic inability of anyone to complete that task.

In the past, I have riduculed some here for worshipping at the altar of JRRT treating him and his works as if they were Holy Writ. And, predictably, I am ridiculed in turn with stiff and strong denials of such a characterization. But at the heart of this is the inablity of some here to acknowledge that JRRT was a human being whose work - as great as it is - is not perfect. Someday, someone, somehow could come along and improve upon it.

The fact is this, there were things in the film that did improve upon the story of Middle-earth and presented it better. I realize that a statement like that causes heads to shake in firm denial and the bonfires are at ready to administer justice to the heretic. But others besides this humble writer have posted on many sites over the past six years explaining points in the film that they believed were improved upon over the book.

Everyone has their own opinion and those who think the book, or a part or two of it, were made better have just as much right as anyone else to that viewpoint.

It is possible that somebody could come along and do to THE HOBBIT what JRRT himself could not finish at age 68. And the people to do it could well be screenwriters for THE HOBBIT despite this

The idea that this trio could create something equivalent to his work is the worst kind of bad joke, & nothing but an insult.

No insult. Just facing the fact that Tolkien was a human whose work, like all humans, was not perfect and could be improved upon, if only for a little.

I find it interesting that some here grasp at straws to boost the take of a film like COMPASS - which still has not earned a profit - while attempting to tar KING KONG. KONG actually took in $550 million dollars US on a budget of $207 million. It earned a profit long before and DVD sales or considering other ancillary marketing deals which were considerable.

I stand ready for the fires of justice.