Hobbit Trailer looks crap

[Zigûr]

Originally Posted by jallanite

Rilstone does not mention that many fans do not jump to the Retrenchment stage, but remain revolted. That may be because the film is so bad that most cannot now support it, even though they would like to.

I wonder if that's something which becomes truer as we get older. I was barely a teenager when the films of The Lord of the Rings were coming out, and the revival of Doctor Who only followed that by a few years. At the time, I enjoyed both. Now, I despise both - I'm not sure whether I detest modern Doctor Who more than the films of The Lord of the Rings; they're both, in my opinion, cynical and fatuous exploitations of classic pieces of genre culture (the original series of Star Trek is a more recent victim of the same disease). I am, however, willing to admit that once upon a time I did have positive feelings about these things.

To be fair, I do actually like Matt Smith's first series of Doctor Who, although the rest was a let down, Eccleston was forgettable and Tennant awful. Like the films of The Lord of the Rings, I don't understand why modern Doctor Who is popular, or at least I can't enjoy the things that their supporters do enjoy about them. Simultaneously I can at least attest that the films of The Lord of the Rings are not purely contemptible - the plot certainly could have been much less faithful (although that is surely the definition of damning with faint praise) and a few of the performances are quite admirable, doing the best they can with the butchered dialogue and simplistic direction they are given.

The "judge the film on its own terms" thing just doesn't make sense to me, incidentally. It's an adaptation - surely its 'terms' include a conversation with the source material, and whether or not the changes were necessary or successful. It is my personal conviction that a reasonably faithful adaptation of the book, omitting where necessary but not changing much, similarly to the 1981 radio series, would be a far, far better work as a film than anything produced thus far. Suggestions that the changes are necessary 'for modern audiences' and so on are only predicated, in my opinion, on the commonplace delusion that 'cinema' and 'Hollywood' are identical concepts.

[Inziladun]

Originally Posted by Zigûr

The "judge the film on its own terms" thing just doesn't make sense to me, incidentally. It's an adaptation - surely its 'terms' include a conversation with the source material, and whether or not the changes were necessary or successful.

Quite so. How can a film based on a well-known book avoid comparison with it, and why should it be expected to do so? That is, where the fans of the book have a personal connection with it, and that is certainly the case with The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. The more a book is loved, the more criticism any adaptation should be prepared to receive.

Originally Posted by Zigûr

It is my personal conviction that a reasonably faithful adaptation of the book, omitting where necessary but not changing much, similarly to the 1981 radio series, would be a far, far better work as a film than anything produced thus far. Suggestions that the changes are necessary 'for modern audiences' and so on are only predicated, in my opinion, on the commonplace delusion that 'cinema' and 'Hollywood' are identical concepts.

My main problem with the PJ films has not been the omissions of original material, such as Bombadil. That is to be expected when transitioning from book to movie. The additions and "expansions" that are contrary to the books are much more frustrating, and still, to my mind, unnecessary. A film adaptation could have been more faithful, though I admit it might not have been as lucrative from a profit standpoint. And there lies the motive behind the films.

[radagastly]

Originally posted by Inziladun:

The additions and "expansions" that are contrary to the books are much more frustrating, and still, to my mind, unnecessary.

I recently watched The Hobbit movie (quite by accident, on my brother's HBO) and was struck by how much time I spent thinking, "I don't remember any of this!" It took me out of the story and reminded me that I was watching a movie. It interrupted my "suspension of disbelief," I had the same experience watching The Lord of the Rings movies, but thought it was due to my love of the original books. I don't have that degree of affection for The Hobbit, but the feeling was there just the same, like watching a Saturday morning cartoon with a commercial interruption every eight minutes. it felt shallow and unimportant despite the epic nature of the source material or the visual imagery Jackson was creating. What a pity.

[jallanite]

Changes when an older work is adapted into dramatic form are old hat.

We see this first in adaptations of older works in Greek drama. That we don’t find more complaints about it may be because the poetic sources themselves disagreed very much, and by the time we have commentaries the new dramatic adaptations have themselves become ancient classics.

Shakespeare’s King Lear and Hamlet were likewise adaptations of older tales which took great liberties with them. King Lear in the earlier versions ended with Lear happily restored to the throne and his daughter Cordelia named as his heir. Hamlet in the earlier stories was the tale of a man who took revenge on his uncle by pretending to be a fool, and then had many other adventures before his death in a dual with Wiglek, ancestor of the early kings of Mercia.

Perhaps some contemporaries of Shakespeare likewise blamed Shakespeare for ruining the stories. And I suppose Shakespeare might have responded that the changes were necessary to bring in the modern audiences. The same could be presumed for Wagner who likewise could be said to have ruined Norse/Germanic mythology in his opera cycle Nibelungenlied and Arthurian material in his Parsifal and his Tristan und Isolde.

The difficulty is that films, like the older dramas, are made by creative people who can’t help being creative, being more interested in what they can make of a story than in the story they were given. Give all films to uncreative people to direct? That doesn’t sound like a viable solution?

And there are honest differences of taste among audiences. Rilstone also reviewed the original Jackson Lord of the Rings films and found the first one to be mostly excellent and the second bad and the third worse. But Rilstone also very much likes new Doctor Who for the most part, which is why he is writing a book on it.

Zigûr doesn’t like new Doctor Who much at all.

So who is right? Neither, I suppose, because there is no provable right in matters of taste. I once searched for a bad film to use as an example, but not one that was so bad it was considered good for that reason by some people, and one that was also well known enough to be likely to be recognized by the people I was addressing. I looked up loads of film titles on the web, but could not find a single one that was so bad that some people could not be found who really liked it for some reason. So I rewrote the reference to mention only an unnamed “notoriously bad film”.

The Harry Potter films were rather a shock to reviewers when they first started to appear, because author J. K. Rowling had full power over the directors to insist that no changes be made in the films over what was in the books, without her permission. The films accordingly followed the books very closely, leaving many reviewers to point out that this should not work, although it did.

[Zigûr]

Originally Posted by jallanite

So who is right? Neither, I suppose, because there is no provable right in matters of taste. I once searched for a bad film to use as an example, but not one that was so bad it was considered good for that reason by some people, and one that was also well known enough to be likely to be recognized by the people I was addressing. I looked up loads of film titles on the web, but could not find a single one that was so bad that some people could not be found who really liked it for some reason.

I find it a relief that even in the days of internet-enabled mass consumer orthodoxy and opinion groupthink there are, however, still diversities of perspective to be found. To touch upon Doctor Who for a moment, there are places not unlike this forum where those who do not adhere to the majority consensus can discuss without fear of getting the flaming pitchforks treatment that, say, critics of the films get on certain major sites for enthusiasts of Professor Tolkien's work.

Concerning the matter of adaptation and changes, I believe there is an element of delusion in this belief that we, as Tolkien enthusiasts, ought to be 'grateful' that the films were made, regardless of alterations. Yet considering the enormous gulf of time alone between the culture of the period in which the books were published and that in which the films were produced surely it's far from unreasonable to find the films to not necessarily be to one's taste. If I like a heroic romance from the 1950s, why should I be expected to inevitably enjoy a Hollywood film from the 2000s, even if the latter is adapted from the former? The sensibilities and cultures in which they exist are still entirely different.

[Inziladun]

Originally Posted by jallanite

The Harry Potter films were rather a shock to reviewers when they first started to appear, because author J. K. Rowling had full power over the directors to insist that no changes be made in the films over what was in the books, without her permission. The films accordingly followed the books very closely, leaving many reviewers to point out that this should not work, although it did.

On that point, in my opinion the first two HP movies are the best, and those are the most faithful to the books. Funny how that works.

[jallanite]

Originally Posted by Zigûr

To touch upon Doctor Who for a moment, there are places not unlike this forum where those who do not adhere to the majority consensus can discuss without fear of getting the flaming pitchforks treatment that, say, critics of the films get on certain major sites for enthusiasts of Professor Tolkien's work.

I left the Doctor Who forums some time ago when the one I visited mostly was overrun with Doctor Who haters and a search elsewhere revealed that other forums had undergone the same fate. There was too much mindless hatred from both sides and it had ceased to be fun.

Concerning the matter of adaptation and changes, I believe there is an element of delusion in this belief that we, as Tolkien enthusiasts, ought to be 'grateful' that the films were made, regardless of alterations.

Indeed. I recall reading an old commentary on Tennyson’s The Idylls of the King which greatly blamed Tennyson for his poems which differed from Malory and praised those which followed Malory or the Mabinogion closely. The writer seemed to be entirely ignorant that there were also versions of some tales which were earlier than Malory and disagreed with them. Yet the influence of Tennyson can be seen in the most unexpected places, for example in Mists of Avalon and in the recently-released The Fall of Arthur by J. R. R. Tolkien.

Yet considering the enormous gulf of time alone between the culture of the period in which the books were published and that in which the films were produced surely it's far from unreasonable to find the films to not necessarily be to one's taste. If I like a heroic romance from the 1950s, why should I be expected to inevitably enjoy a Hollywood film from the 2000s, even if the latter is adapted from the former? The sensibilities and cultures in which they exist are still entirely different.

Well, lots of people still enjoy Casablanca, The Maltese Falcon, Snow-White and the Seven Dwarfs, Fantasia, Gone with the Wind, The Wizard of Oz, Citizen Kane, the original Frankenstein and The Bride of Frankenstein, The Seven Samurai, All Quiet on the Western Front, Sergeant York, High Noon, Shane, Django, the original King Kong, The Westerner, Gunfight at the O.K. Coral, Fort Apache, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, Duck Soup, Some Like It Hot, Psycho, Dracula (1931), The Birds, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Carnival of Souls, Peeping Tom, Dead of Night, What Ever Happened to Baby Jane, The Day the Earth Stood Still, Dr. Strangelove, and many others. Most large cities have art-houses where older films are often shown.

You should not inevitably be expected to like any film, whether it is an older film or a modern one, or to like any book regardless. Taste is really quite inexplicable, at least to the outsider.

[LordPhillock]

I think you all would appreciate my tampering with newly-discovered sound-mix stems from the latest "Hobbit" trailer as I added appropriate music that better works with the film.

http://youtu.be/4ndXKnZuvbI