Three Times The Hobbit?

[Zigûr]

Originally Posted by Boromir88

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.

This perplexes me as well; sometimes their assurances of the need to "modernise" Professor Tolkien's work for Hollywood seems to contrast rather drastically with their protestations of faithfulness. On the other hand, however, I consider things like the Zimmerman treatment and others with Galadriel's fairy castle and Gimli being beaten with a blanket and what not and I am reminded of how truly bad things could have been.
What disturbs me in regards to The Hobbit Part 3 quite a bit is all this talk of the use of the Appendices to The Lord of the Rings flying around. I'd got the impression that something of Durin's Folk had already been incorporated into the existing material (the alleged casting of Azog, for instance, although did he end up actually being Bolg?). Unless they're planning on taking a cinematic diversion to detail the history of the Dúnedain and the House of Eorl or wax lyrical on the subject of Hobbit family trees I'm not sure how meaningful Peter Jackson's statement about the Appendices is beyond a potentially misplaced effort to placate fans. There is, I suppose, a little material in The Tale of Years which might be useful but hardly enough to stretch things out to a third film without enormous amounts of invention. I don't really approve of this misrepresentation of the Appendices as the "notes to The Hobbit" or however Peter Jackson has described them, although plenty of people online seem to be trying very hard to convince themselves that the Appendices are indeed some unimaginable treasure trove of supplementary material which specifically relates to The Hobbit. A lot of people online also don't seem to realise that they do not have the rights to Unfinished Tales or The Silmarillion.
I suppose what I'm trying to say is that I'm worried that by the time December 14 rolls around we'll get a film that is barely recognisable as The Hobbit, which is distracted from Bilbo's story and which does not give the original text the huge amount of credit it is due on its own. I fear that it will make any changes or additions to The Lord of the Rings seem uniformly minute and reasonable by comparison.

[Mithalwen]

Here is an interesting article

http://www.businessinsider.com/heres...-movies-2012-8

[Inziladun]

That does not surprise me at all, Mith.

I wonder whether PJ put up any resistance. Judging from LOTR and his obvious propensity to insert "extra" material there, I rather doubt the idea of padding out TH got him much flustered.

[Boromir88]

Originally Posted by Inziladun

That does not surprise me at all, Mith.

I wonder whether PJ put up any resistance. Judging from LOTR and his obvious propensity to insert "extra" material there, I rather doubt the idea of padding out TH got him much flustered.

It doesn't sound like he did reading the the end of the article:

The first two Hobbit films are estimated to have cost $500 million. A third Hobbit film thus provides a safety net, especially since it would cost next to nothing to produce: "Hobbit" director Peter Jackson admitted he already had enough source material and left over footage from the first two films to expand into a third, cutting production costs.

[Mithalwen]

He may have suggested it but no doubt it was grasped with both hands. After all if the stuff is largely shot and most of the actors no doubt on percentages then they aren't going to have to cough up so much upfront. I suspect it isn't a question of telling more of the story but indulging his fondness for special effects and battle sequences even when they don't progress the story. Think of how in the Lord of the rings the Faramir, Eowyn love story was reduced pretty much to a single glance while the paragraph long cave troll battle was expanded to fill about ten minutes.

[TheMisfortuneTeller]

Someone at The One Ring site chipped in an opinion on all this:

http://www.theonering.net/torwp/2012...bbit-too-much/

I hope the link works. If not, those interested can surely find the article with little effort.

[Nerwen]

MT, the link works– and thank you, as that is a very interesting article. And, perhaps, a rather courageous thing to publish on TORN.

[Morthoron]

Originally Posted by Nerwen

MT, the link works– and thank you, as that is a very interesting article. And, perhaps, a rather courageous thing to publish on TORN.

Courageous indeed, considering the abundance of vacant fanbois cluttering up that site. I decided to congratulate Ostadan on a well-written and researched article, and add a few curmudgeonly paragraphs of my own, found in discussion of the article here:

The revisionism and muddle-headed thinking of Jackson, Boyens, et al, was evident in the LotR movies to anyone who a) had no interest in pandering to get their name in the screen credits, b) knew the story and didn't require Wiki to get their facts, and c) were more interested in dialogue and plot than special effects and explodey things.

Tolkien quickly realized that a rewrite of The Hobbit would remove the essential nature of a classic children's story. This is what made The Hobbit great. That adults of all ages cherished the story as well as they read it to their children (or read it for themselves for their own delight), is indicative of the generational reach of the tale -- as is, without embellishment, superfluous storylines, character denigration and dumbing down the story with perceived but spurious Hollywood demographics.

It is quite obvious that things have gotten out of hand with Jackson's production of the story. Del Toro leaving early on was disquieting enough, now Jackson is stretching the proceedings into three films, and I think if any of the well-read posters on TORn were honest about The Hobbit movie(s), they would come to the conclusion that three movies is not necessary to tell the story. Not at all. Not in the least.

If Jackson could fit The Lord of the Rings into three movies, what the hell is he putting into filming The Hobbit, a book less than a third of the size? A 'convoluted mess' comes to mind as a definor, an amalgam of poached appendical permutations rendered with fan-fictional flourishes, as the screenwriters sit around Jackson's office with half-eaten bags of Doritos, stale donuts and lukewarm cups of coffee making up ludicrous subplots quicker than you can say "milking the franchise dry".

I may be wrong, but I don't think so. There is a history of depridations already available for anyone's perusal. Squeezing every last penny out of the fanbase requires flights of fancy, revisionism and half-baked plots that could possibly render The Hobbit unrecognizable. One may watch the movies, get a fleeting glimpse of Bilbo Baggins (ostensibly the hero of the story, remember?) and yearn for a few brief seconds more before they are whisked away to some absurd fan-fic about Nazgul in suspended animation, scimitar-waving elfesses and photogenic model dwarves (hawt dorfs!) riding about on bristling piggies (perhaps the pigs will have violet eyes and ribbons on their snouts as a sop for the more sophomoric fan-fictioners in the audience).

[Nerwen]

I mean, I'll stand by what I've said already, that some posters here are excessively negative towards Peter Jackson– but the TORN readership seems to be the mirror-image of that. So many of the comments are basically variants on, "how dare you suggest PJ could be wrong about anything..."