Three Times The Hobbit?

[davem]

Its interesting how both LotR & TH end with an anti-climactic battle - LotR doesn't end (as with the film) with the epic battle & the fall of Sauron, but with the Scouring, which is a nasty, brutal fight between ordinary Hobbits & a bunch of thugs - and as SF writer China Mieville put it, you end up with a broken Saruman only capable of doing a little mischief in a mean way (as Mieville put it, 'You can't even get a decent Dark Lord any more').

Of course, the Battle of Five Armies is a devastating conflict, but it happens off-stage so the heroics go mostly unnoticed, & the main impression we are left with is of carnage & loss as Bilbo is lead through the corpse-strewn field to the dying Thorin, whose final words are to tell Bilbo that he was right after all, & that its the Hobbit's values that really matter, not battles or treasure. And yet, its fairly clear that what Jackson cares about are those very things - battle (on-screen) & treasure (profit).

If you re-tell LotR without the ugly brutal wastefulness of the Scouring, or depict the Battle of Five Armies on screen, then you don't get Tolkien. The Scouring shows us the ugly reality of war - not glorious battles, where heroes fall in noble self sacrifice to save the world from evil personified, but where ordinary people die in the streets & fields they grew up in, in front of their spouses & children, in order to make their little corner of the world a bit better for those they love.

Bilbo's lying senseless through the BoFA & only awakening after its all over, to then pick his way through the blood, stench & hacked up corpses, to watch his friend die an agonising death while telling him that, after all, it was all a bit bloody pointless when all was said & done, & that Bilbo's way is better, is to give the reader the death without the having given him even a glimpse of the glory. As far as Bilbo is concerned the dead might have been killed in an eruption of the Mountain, or by mass suicide. Death without glory is the way both books end when it comes to war.

And that is clearly what Jackson misses. Still, I'll be going to see the spectacle, because as with the LotR movies, I reckon something of Tolkien will come through. What is sad is that many people will see the film & not read the book, or if they do go on to read it, they will do so in the light of PJs take on it.

[Morthoron]

Originally Posted by davem

Its interesting how both LotR & TH end with an anti-climactic battle - LotR doesn't end (as with the film) with the epic battle & the fall of Sauron, but with the Scouring, which is a nasty, brutal fight between ordinary Hobbits & a bunch of thugs...

...And that is clearly what Jackson misses. Still, I'll be going to see the spectacle, because as with the LotR movies, I reckon something of Tolkien will come through. What is sad is that many people will see the film & not read the book, or if they do go on to read it, they will do so in the light of PJs take on it.

Very well said, davem.

Additionally, I think that movie-goers didn't get to see the growth and maturation of the hobbits in Jackson's LotR, particularly because the Scouring of the Shire was omitted. The brilliance of Tolkien's original story is that the hobbits must fend for themselves once they return home. They must become the leaders, without the aid of wizards, dwarves, elves, glorified Anglo-Saxon horsemen or legendary kings.

Likewise, the enemy is no longer a Dark Lord with demonic orkish minions, wargs and balrogs; instead, as you said, they must face mercenary thugs, mannish brutes and vagrants, and Sharky, wounded, old and treacherous, bereft of divine power, but still able to commit appallingly petty acts of vengeance. And they must overcome the evil inherent in even unassuming but greedy hobbits. Thus, Tolkien offers a foreshadowing of the wars of the 4th age and onward, where the foe we fight is ourselves and not a supernatural enemy.

Jackson caught the cinematographic spectacle of the story, the huge sweep of vast armies and the marvelous edifices of lost empires, but he failed utterly in capturing the heart of the story and the nobility of the individuals involved. How else can one explain Frodo abandoning Sam, the savaging of the tragic hero Denethor, the befuddlement of Treebeard, and the trivialization of Aragorn's peer, Faramir?

Aragorn commits an ignoble act of treachery by beheading an ambassador under a flag of truce merely for a cheap one-line pun, and simply for the sake of added spectacle and CGI overkill a legion of undead scrubbing bubbles destroys Sauron's army, all but eliminating the need for the valorous and lethal charge of the Rohirrim. Frodo whines throughout the movie, Merry and Pippin never progress past boorish louts, Elrond is cynical and bitter, Gimli is a walking dwarf joke, and the character with the most depth isn't even human but a CGI replication.

I know Tolkien eschewed allegory, but woe to all of us if Jackson decides to make a movie about the Bible: Jonah would be swallowed by a CGI leviathan of Jurassic proportions, Noah's ark would be nuclear-powered, Moses would not inflict ten plagues on Egypt (he'd have at least twenty, including zombies, dragons, spiders and flying monkeys), and a wise-cracking Jesus, ably assisted by his 12 ninjas, would call down the heavenly host to smite the Romans. Because, after all, one must use creative license, and the original scripture needs tweaking to appeal to modern audiences.

[davem]

Just a quick acknowledgment and thanks for all the positive rep for what was a very rushed post. There are certainly numerous points in the films where you get the sense that Jackson just doesn't get Tolkien's point, where the story becomes for him so completely unintelligible, that all he can do is invent an alternative. I so wish the Hobbit movie would follow the book and build up to the BOFA, with the audience expecting another Pelenor Fields, only for the screen to go black when Bilbo is knocked unconscious and the viewer to see nothing of the battle at all. That would be being faithful to Tolkien. But it won't happen, obviously. We'll basically get rehash of PF, a 'glorious' epic battle, with eye popping effects (and probably some few pratfalls to lighten the mood), which will overwhelm and undermine Bilbo and Thorin's final farewell. Anyway, too rushed again - and typed on a phone ( I was tempted to leave in the 'eye pooping effects' that the predictive text threw up back there.....)

[Bêthberry]

On the other hand, there's this perspective.

Originally Posted by Calisuri

The ‘bad guys’ are not quite horrible monstrosities that cause death and destruction but instead are similar to villains in an episode of the A-Team. You know, where no matter how many times they shoot at our heroes, they never actually hit their mark. It ultimately makes for exciting confrontations, but no real concern the heroes will meet their doom. Some who are not familiar with the childish nature of The Hobbit might find this a bit odd when they compare the drama to the LOTR films.

Folks at TORN are getting busy: mumble mumble funny frames mumble

[Nerwen]

Originally Posted by davem

I so wish the Hobbit movie would follow the book and build up to the BOFA, with the audience expecting another Pelenor Fields, only for the screen to go black when Bilbo is knocked unconscious and the viewer to see nothing of the battle at all. That would be being faithful to Tolkien.

*coughs* Let's not get carried away here. At the risk of sounding like all the people bleating "But films and books are different mediums!" (which is for some reason supposed to demolish any criticism of the films whatsoever)– I really *don't* think that could work at all on screen.

Besides, the battle *is* described in the book– just not from Bilbo's point of view.

[Inziladun]

The reviews are starting for the first installment. That one seems in line with a lot of what has been said here. Discount the author's obvious unfamiliarity with the source material (such as when he refers to the "troll-infested forest of Mirkwood" ). Here's a snippet:

With few exceptions, these insights bog down a tale already overtaxed by a surfeit of characters. The film introduces Radagast (Sylvester McCoy), a comical brown wizard with an ordure-streaked beard, and an unsatisfying subplot involving a Necromancer that's clearly an early form of Sauron, out of place in this story. It also makes room for cumbersome reunions -- or "preunions," perhaps -- with Galadriel, Elrond (Hugo Weaving) and Saruman (Christopher Lee) in the elf city of Rivendell, hinting at the greater roles they will play in "The Lord of the Rings."

PJ was so intent on making the "bridge" between TH and his previous trilogy so obvious it looks like a troll in the living room, he just had to throw in a glut of characters that have no business making personal appearances in this story. Tolkien didn't think a ton of exposition about the side matters of the White Council was necessary in The Hobbit, but leave it to Big Hollywood to always consider they know best.

[TheGreatElvenWarrior]

After a quick skim of the most recent discussion on this thread, I must throw out my two cents (or one cent, perhaps, because it is a trifle?). Bilbo did not fight in the Battle of Five Armies, no. As was pointed out earlier, he was unconscious during most of the duration. We will get Bo5A in the movie, whether we want it or not; there is no question. That would not really be a blight to the film, in fact, I think that I might actually enjoy it. It is keeping with the narrative of the book. The trouble I would have with the battle being an epic fifteen minutes of running time (as it will inevitably be), is if they decided to make Bilbo some war hero in it. In LotR the hobbits had a fair amount of battling. They did that in the books, though. I didn't see a big problem with that. I would, however, have a problem with Bilbo fighting in the Bo5A. That would be contrary to the book and to the essence of the story.

Originally Posted by davem

And that is clearly what Jackson misses. Still, I'll be going to see the spectacle, because as with the LotR movies, I reckon something of Tolkien will come through. What is sad is that many people will see the film & not read the book, or if they do go on to read it, they will do so in the light of PJs take on it.

I will close this post by stating that this is exactly what my mother will do and so will my brother. I hear so many cries of "I don't have the time to read The Hobbit before I see it!" The fact of the matter is, TH isn't a very long book. I read it in a day, if given an hour or two here and there I think that it could be finished in a week or two. That is not taxing. Every time I hear someone -- who is usually close to me -- say that they cannot or will not read TH before they see it, I cringe. I am bitter or saddened because of it. When we spend three hours every day watching television, shouldn't we have time to read?

[cellurdur]

Originally Posted by davem

Just a quick acknowledgment and thanks for all the positive rep for what was a very rushed post. There are certainly numerous points in the films where you get the sense that Jackson just doesn't get Tolkien's point, where the story becomes for him so completely unintelligible, that all he can do is invent an alternative. I so wish the Hobbit movie would follow the book and build up to the BOFA, with the audience expecting another Pelenor Fields, only for the screen to go black when Bilbo is knocked unconscious and the viewer to see nothing of the battle at all. That would be being faithful to Tolkien. But it won't happen, obviously. We'll basically get rehash of PF, a 'glorious' epic battle, with eye popping effects (and probably some few pratfalls to lighten the mood), which will overwhelm and undermine Bilbo and Thorin's final farewell. Anyway, too rushed again - and typed on a phone ( I was tempted to leave in the 'eye pooping effects' that the predictive text threw up back there.....)

As has been pointed out we do get a description of the battle from: from Thorin's death, his nephews valiant stand around him to Beorn's appearance. This was a great battle.

Personally I don't care if the films are true to the events only described in the Hobbit, as long as they are true to the Legendarium. I would go as far as saying I don't even mind if things are added to the Legendarium, which likely happened, but were never explicitly stated. For me it is fine to have Legolas with his father at Mirkwood, why not show a young Aragorn playing in Rivendell or even have Gandalf mention how Elrond's great grandfather wielded Glamdring.