The Hobbit: An Extraneous Journey

[William Cloud Hicklin]

"1. Making alterations is not proof of Jackson et all thinking they were improving the story. Either one accepts that with the film rights sold and Jackson chosen as the director has his own artistic license rights when it comes to making the films. Therefor, alterations are a part of Jackson trying to put his director stamp on the story. Alterations, in and of themselves, are not proof Jackson thought he improved the story."

Sorry, but my microscope can't quite focus in on the hair you're splitting there.

[Nogrod]

I think one specific requirement of the Big (Money) Film Industry remains to be remembered... Unlike we who know the stories like our own pockets - or more or less so - and despite the fact that there are millions of Tolkien fans out there, most of the viewers of these films don't know the stories before, or that is at least the way the studios see things (and they're probably correct in their polls as there is a lot of money involved).

So many of these things in the films we friends of Tolkien's writing have a great dislike on - like Aragorn falling the cliff, or Denethor's one-dimensionality, or "freshing up" the dwarves - are due to the fact that they have to sell the films to people who don't know the story already.

The interesting question in this regard (aka. concerning Jackson & Boyens as personalities - if and when that clearly interests someone - and the role of the marketing departments of the studios) should actually be not that much "do they think they made the story better than the prof", but whether they were doing all that stuff the way they did because the studios forced them to do a few cliffhangers () or to cut down some intricacies to make it more simple and interesting to a non-Tolkien fan so that s/he could follow the multiple characters and plotlines, and to have the moments of suspense as to how things will end up?

One who is not familiar with the books doesn't know whether Aragorn is going to play a role in the future... so him dropping off the cliff is a suspense-thing for a viewer who doesn't know the plot - and emotianally quite charging as well! (I hated it as much as anyone!!!)

I mean really, we fans or afficionados are a minority after all and it is a bit too much to ask that a multimillion-dollar bussiness would serve only our interests - as nice as it would be. Our money wouldn't pay for the film-budgets...

That said, I do agree with Boro - among many others - in adoring the visual imagery of the films (and Howard Shore's musical interpretation of it), the "PJ universe" if you wish, and just plain subjectively hating most of the various changes they've made to the initial storyline and to the spirit of Tolkien.

The spirit of Tolkien gets especially beaten in the Hobbit, but even here a disclaimer is to the point. No, "The Hobbit" isn't without problems even as a literary work as it walks the thin line between a funny children's story and a more "serious" prequel to what happened afterwards... I know it was written first and the whole saga and the universe came afterwards - but despite that, I see it still as a story struggling to balance itself between a children's story and and an adult-tale. Like the movie which has those kind of dark and gory battle-scenes that are clearly meant to look "realistic" and thus bad - and the slapstick-combos fex. in the Goblin King's Hall with all the "funny stuff" involved in the fight and flight...

[William Cloud Hicklin]

"So many of these things in the films we friends of Tolkien's writing have a great dislike on - like Aragorn falling the cliff, or Denethor's one-dimensionality, or "freshing up" the dwarves - are due to the fact that they have to sell the films to people who don't know the story already."

Yes, but....

It's not as if substituting bad story-telling for good helps to "sell" the tale to non-geeks, is it? Aragorn-off-the-cliff and Brego the Wonder Horse are just cheesy, regardless of 'canonicity'; and film-Denethor is simply a bad, cardboard character, and there was certainly no need (I don't think) to replace Tolkien's finely-drawn and subtle portrait with a cartoon villain on the grounds that non-geeks somehow couldn't deal with the original... unless one is taking the position that non-geeks were raised on a steady diet of lead paint chips.

I seem to recall that the original story did OK with a mass audience.

[Nogrod]

Originally Posted by William Cloud Hicklin

It's not as if substituting bad story-telling for good helps to "sell" the tale to non-geeks, is it?

Look at almost any Hollywood blockbuster and think again...

[Lalwendë]

Originally Posted by Boro

I should note now, when it comes to subjective loving/liking/hating the movies, I don't give my opinion to demand everyone must see and feel about them the way I do. But I do think both sides of the argument overlook a various points. One side thinks anything Jackson creates is the greatest piece of movie making ever, and he always makes the sage movie-decision. The other side thinks Jackson's a hack who doesn't know anything and can't do anything because his life goal was to turn the Lord of the Rings into his own creation.

I don't think it divides down like that. There are people who hate the films, some who won't even go and see them and yet still think they have anything to say about it. And there are people who enjoyed them, ranging from frothing joy all the way to picking holes in everything yet still saying it was fun. I'm in the latter - and I certainly don't think Jackson's other films are great (that thing with the lawnmower was stupid, King Kong was dull and Heavenly Creatures is over rated).

Originally Posted by Nogrod

The spirit of Tolkien gets especially beaten in the Hobbit, but even here a disclaimer is to the point. No, "The Hobbit" isn't without problems even as a literary work as it walks the thin line between a funny children's story and a more "serious" prequel to what happened afterwards... I know it was written first and the whole saga and the universe came afterwards - but despite that, I see it still as a story struggling to balance itself between a children's story and and an adult-tale. Like the movie which has those kind of dark and gory battle-scenes that are clearly meant to look "realistic" and thus bad - and the slapstick-combos fex. in the Goblin King's Hall with all the "funny stuff" involved in the fight and flight...

What exactly is this 'spirit' though? The Hobbit is a children's book that had no place in the legendarium and Tolkien later tried to force it to fit, and even admitted that he couldn't do it. Recalling something Davem said years back, if you sit and examine the text, it really does not fit in easily with the other works. There's a constant conflict of tone between outright silliness and menace (and really, the film does echo this discordancy). And there's the authorial interjections which let's face it sound like a children's nanny having her two-pennorth. And the way it is so episodic with little to no character development.

All of these things could be awful criticisms but it's a kids' book, and it is no different to Narnia, or The Gruffalo, or Stig Of The Dump in that respect. And as a now seasoned viewer of adaptations of kids' books one thing I can say is that all of them need to be beefed up for the screen, even if intended to be viewed by pre-schoolers. Really, it was a lose-lose situation as far as attracting the very critical viewer was concerned! Jackson could either build on a sketchy story and risk criticism, or he could be highly faithful but produce a thin, sketchy sort of thing.

I took it as a given that the story would be souped-up and my critical eye focuses on whether the additions are coherent or not. Azog is the main weak point as it doesn't seem to fit, and I have some concerns about the Elves' motivations (but I suspect they will be covered eventually), but the rest of it is perfectly coherent as a story and in regard to the characters. Certainly with character development the film is an improvement on the text for an adult reader/viewer (the horror!) It might not all be to my taste, but it does mostly work as a story and the story of The Hobbit is most definitely there, but with knobs on.

[Boromir88]

Originally Posted by Lalwendë

I don't think it divides down like that. There are people who hate the films, some who won't even go and see them and yet still think they have anything to say about it. And there are people who enjoyed them, ranging from frothing joy all the way to picking holes in everything yet still saying it was fun. I'm in the latter - and I certainly don't think Jackson's other films are great (that thing with the lawnmower was stupid, King Kong was dull and Heavenly Creatures is over rated).

I probably didn't explain that clearly, because I was trying to avoid the Purist and Revisionist labels, since I agree with you that there is a wide spectrum. So, let me put it this way...

The more pro-movie crowd, I think, tend to view criticisms of the movies as "Oh this person is a purist and wants an exact, literal translation of the book." And this I will agree with WCH on, no so-labelled Purist, said this...ever. It often goes as follows:

"I don't like the invention of Azog chasing the dwarves. Azog should be dead."
"You can't have a movie that is 100% accurate to the books."
"Uhh...I said no such thing."

This is really harmful in discussion, because no one wants to spend their time debating the strawman "you can't make the movie a literal translation of the books."

Now on the flip side, I think the more critical movie crowd sees any positive comment towards Jackson as coming from some immature fanboy, who thinks everything Jackson touches is gold. "Did you even read the books?" "Do you not see the senseless butchering and alterations Jackson did?" This is also a rather poor argument though.

The fact there are changes can not be disputed. Azog is dead at Azanulbizar in the books, he's not in the movie. This can't be disputed. Tolkien had his reasons for killing Azog's character when he did, but Jackson has his reasons for having Azog not dead. And my point here is those reasons don't have to be beat into some antagonistic evil plot that Jackson is trying to defecate on Tolkien's legacy and force anyone who are book fans to eat his crap for 6-meals a day. Or that somehow Jackson skims the books before making movie decisions and makes a checklist of "I can do this better than Tolkien. Azog shouldn't be dead, I know more than Tolkien, I can improve it here if Azog is not dead in the movies." That stance is really no different than the "Purists want 100% accurate translation" argument.

In the context of the movie, I think we're still kind of guessing since the entire story is not told yet, but for the time being, it seems Azog wants revenge for Thorin chopping off his hand. Eh...ok, not the best, but I suppose better than random raiding orcs after treasure, and Bolg chases Thorin and co. after the dwarves are out of the Misty Mountains anyway...Bolg and the wargs being driven by revenge. So, perhaps Jackson should have just made Bolg be the one after Thorin from the start, but the name of the orc leader is a niggling point (in my opinion...it might be more important to others).

The meta-reasons are a little clearer, to create a sense of urgency in the Dwarves journey, similar to Frodo's urgency in leaving the Shire and the Ringwraiths "hunt for the Ring." And to possibly put it in the larger context of the dwarves main antagonist are orcs, which then culminates in the Battle of 5 Armies. The Necromancer is the White Council's main antagonist, he's rather unimportant to the dwarves journey in reclaiming Erebor. You can't really make Smaug the main antagonist, because he's sleeping under a mountain, and in the end Smaug's death is not the climax of The Hobbit.

Azog is just one example, because it's the clearest and easiest one to give. What anyone thinks about this change is just down to subjective preferences. But we seriously have to get away from the circular "you just want a movie exactly like the books!" and the "Jackson just wants to urinate all over the books because he thinks he knows better."

It may get me cast out of here as a leper here...but Tolkien is not infallible. Brilliant man. An unrivalled imagination. But a writer? Parts of extreme wonder and beauty that pull you into his imagination. Other parts of very slow pace and a little too much of the "Let's send a hobbit blindly into Mordor and count on a Fool's Hope, trust in the greatest luck anyone can ever have and hope for the best?" for me. (It's why I've always sympathized with Boromir. "Really you want to send this hobbit into THAT place, when the only entrance you know is...the large flippin front gate? What do you expect him to do when walking to the front door?")

Don't get me wrong, still the best fiction/fantasy story I've read, but a pace that always doesn't work for film. Films are driven by action to action, something interesting always has to happen. Extensive dialogue about history, family lineage, and background just doesn't work. There's a reason Tolkien wrote an epic novel and not direct a movie. He made the decisions as a story-teller, for me those decisions worked on the page. Jackson, also as a story-teller made the decisions he did, and for me, they worked on screen. If I didn't want to see my favorite book adapted into a blockbuster action flick, I wouldn't have watched the movies.

[William Cloud Hicklin]

"And I still say that anyone who goes to see a Peter Jackson film with expectations it won't be a Peter Jackson film is a few sandwiches short of a picnic."

Davem, it seems to me you're shadow-boxing with non-existent opponents; and on the whole it's folks who get into arguments with people who aren't there whose hamper isn't quite full. Do you seriously think there's anyone on the planet old enough to have seen PJ's LotR who expected TH to be significantly different? Really? I for one went into TH fully expecting it, just like the previous three, to suck. I wasn't disappointed.

[Nerwen]

Originally Posted by William Cloud Hicklin
It's not as if substituting bad story-telling for good helps to "sell" the tale to non-geeks, is it?

No... the fact that bad story-telling often occurs in blockbusters (which I wouldn't dispute) doesn't prove it *helps* them sell. At most it proves Hollywood writers (and executives) *think* it does.

[davem]

OK. Anyone go see AUJ who hadn't already seen the LotR films and therefore had no idea what Peter Jackson would do with the story, and what form the adaptation would take? Sorry, but if you saw the first trilogy, were annoyed/angry/contemptuous and then went along to this one expecting anything other than what you got then, sorry, but you're a bit of an idiot, and I hope you went with a responsible adult who could watch you crossing the busy roads and take you to the toilet. This was Peter Jackson's Hobbit.

Of course, I blame myself - I have all these exemption certificates which people could have used to get out of having to go and watch a film they knew they weren't going to like and I never offered to hand them out.

[Nerwen]

Originally Posted by davem

OK. Anyone go see AUJ who hadn't already seen the LotR films and therefore had no idea what Peter Jackson would do with the story, and what form the adaptation would take? Sorry, but if you saw the first trilogy, were annoyed/angry/contemptuous and then went along to this one expecting anything other than what you got then, sorry, but you're a bit of an idiot, and I hope you went with a responsible adult who could watch you crossing the busy roads and take you to the toilet. This was Peter Jackson's Hobbit.

Of course, I blame myself - I have all these exemption certificates which people could have used to get out of having to go and watch a film they knew they weren't going to like and I never offered to hand them out.

So not disliking (or just seeing significant flaws in, from the sound of it) the LotR films automatically disqualifies a person from having an opinion on AUJ? Really?

And once again, davem, *why* are you getting *so* worked up about the fact that various other people don't like a film that you like? It's the sort of response you always get from hardcore fanboys, but rather, well, unexpected from you.