The Hobbit
 

I don't know how many people are aware, or even care, but recently the trailer for the first of the new Hobbit movies was finally release :D

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0k3kHtyoqc

We have to wait until December 2012, which is a little disappointing, but the trailer is everything I wanted it to be. Apart from the dwarves looking a bit silly...

So, what are you thoughts and expectations of the up coming movie?

I saw it when it first got released, forgot about this thread.

I'm glad to see that they got the dwarves' song right, that could have gone much worse. Their appearance... I'm not even going to comment on. It is what it is. I will just say that they don't look like they come from a single culture at all, some of them look like different species. >_>

I'm not really sure what's going on with the tender touch between Galadriel and Gandalf, but I can't believe that even Jackson and his writers would be so brazen as to do something that offensive to the lore. If they need romance for this film that badly... that is *not* where it should be forced in. That said, I'm thinking that's just in there to make us wonder if they're going to go there. I don't think they're going to be any sort of relationship between them, beyond empathy with each other as ring-bearers.

I'm really leery of the whole secondary storyline they're including. For one thing, they legally *can't* use the material on the White Council from the Book of Lost Tales as they don't have the film rights to it, and... I'll just leave it that I don't have much faith in their ability to invent the story details that are missing, based off of the additions they made to the LotR trilogy films.

the Dwarves look for to comedic, and just make me think of snow white.

As far as the sound track and visual aesthetics of the trailer, they seem to have stuck exactly to the formula of the other LotR movies, which is what I wanted.

It has been along time since I read the book, so i don't remember it all to well. I can't really make any comments on the storyline. though i was very confused by the scene with Galdriel.

That's kind of interesting, I was talking about the dwarves' appearance with my dad, and he speculated that they made them look that they, rather than the way they appear in the book, so that they didn't look like the Seven Dwarves. :p

And, Galadriel is not the book. She is, however, part of the White Council, which is where Gandalf goes when he leaves the Dwarves' party during the Hobbit. They're fleshing out that storyline in the film and focusing quite a bit on it, so... they're going to have to make up a lot of material. All they really have to go on is a few throwaway lines in the Tales of Years in Appendix B of tLotR.

I think it's the fact that they look stupid and all have very unique appearances. Like of the 7 dwarves with there defining characteristics and appearance.

I don't think i like the idea of them making up a whole new storyline to beef out the films. I'd rather they made the one movie, than two parts with unoriginal content to fill them out.

Yeah, I really don't think there's any way they could film the Siege of Dol Guldur that would satisfy fans of the book. I mean, a battle between Sauron (who is now physical, despite having no physical body in Jackson's version of the story...) and Gandalf, Saruman, Galadriel, Elrond, Cirdan, Glorfindel, and others... how are they going to display that? We're talking a metaphysical contest here, a battle of divine (and quasi-divine) wills.

I have a feeling the filmed version is going to involve fireballs and explosions. >_<

It will certainly be interesting to see how they pull it off. i think there will be a lot of upset fans, but there are also huge numbers of people who are only fans of the movies, and wont know anything is wrong.

right now all I want is a longer version of the misty mountains song. It's just awesome. I prefer it over the version in the 70's cartoon.

Oh, I'm sure the Siege will impress a lot of people who aren't book fan(atic)s. It's just... sullying the image of Tolkien, when people only watch the films, see stuff like that, and correlate it with Tolkien's image of the story when it's anything but. Blah, nothing to be done about it. :p

And I'm pretty nostalgic about that cartoon. Was my first foray into fantasy, and just had a sense of wonder and magic to it when my 6-year-old mind first saw it. :p My favorite rendition is still Summoning's "In Hollow Halls Beneath the Fells".

with that being said, the movies are still some of the most faithful to their original books I have ever seen. A lot of movies of books totally mess up.

I haven't watched much of the Cartoon, as I'm to young. All i've seen of it are a few random episodes and clips on youtube. youtube is where I found the song.
So it's worth watching, would you say? I need something new to watch right now.

I'm not really going to get into it (mostly for the fact I could write a lengthy essay on the subject, and that many other people have already done so) but I hold the film trilogy to be very firmly in the territory of "totally messed up" as you put it. But, that's just my opinion, and it's a minority one in my experience. I suspect there's a relationship between people who have read the Silmarillion and the History of Middle-Earth books and people who don't like the films, but I have no evidence for that.

Anyway, I'm not saying the cartoon is great by any means, just that it was something really special to me at the time. It's hard to say objectively whether it's worth watching with a fresh set of eyes, but... I do feel that those animated films capture the essence of Tolkien's stories better than Jackson's action/war movies. Oh, and they use actual dialogue from the books!

(In case it isn't obvious, the whole book/film debate is an interest of mine. ;))

i don't really have much to say on the topic myself. I've read the trilogy and the Hobbit. I haven't read anything like the Silmarillion or any other Lore for the universe. While the movies aren't to great representations of the books, i still feel like they're more faithful than a lot, if not most, other movies made from books. There's always going to be a loss through converting text to visual format and shortening and entire story like that into a few hours.

It's not the loss, it's the *additions* they made to the story, their own inventions that annoy me, hence my worry over this new movie. :p

But then, Tolkien himself thought the series was unfilmable.

I'm looking forward to it like Mad!!! It was my favorite book out of the 'series' and the rest of the movies have basically been fantastic so I'm hopeful that this one turns out just as good...

my memory of the books it to vague to really pick up on the additions very well. All in all i feel like they were good movies. Admittedly i actually watched the first movie before i read the book. that probably had a lot to do with my opinion.

I'm glad there ar eother as exited as i am xD

Well, to be completely honest, I first saw the films when they came out in theatres when I was 11 or 12. I *loved* them back then. My father had read the books to me when I was younger, but I didn't really remember much from them..

But, when I reread the books when I was 18 (then again and again over the last couple years) then went back to watch the movies, I just found innumerable things that they changed or added that made the story or it's presentation *worse* than if they had just left the original version alone. (Just for a very quick example: Gimli no longer being a character, but rather a parody of the modern, Dungeons-and-Dragons-inspired stereotype of what a dwarf is, serving only in a role of comic relief and buffoonery)

Granted, it comes down to Jackson having a different vision for the story than Tolkien, not to mention a very different audience.

Basically a lot of the changes were needed to appeal to a wider modern audience. I doubt the movies would have been anywhere near as popular overall if they had stuck to the books exactly.

That's pretty much it -- you can't by any standard call Jackson's films "literary" which, for someone who appreciates Tolkien's works for their literary value, is obviously less than appealing. But, they're certainly "successful". Whether or not they're "good" remains individually subjective.

Even then, though, it's the ridiculous plot holes and hilarious geographical impossibilities his changes introduced that annoyed me more than any deviations from the book. They show the maps in the films -- we know the geography is the same as in the book, and yet... there are multiple instances where the sets are in blatant contradiction of what's shown on the maps, the paramount being the location of the Barad-dur and Orodruin within Mordor. And apparently Jackson's Morannon is a brisk walk across the Anduin, rather than a thousand-mile-trek northward along the spine of Ephel Duath.

...nevermind! Hyper-literate obsessive nerds are not Jackson's audience. Besides, he gets my money anyway just so I can analyze the films to complain about them. :p

At least the movies didn't have the same location issues as the Harry Potter ones.. I think Hagrids hut changed location at least 3 times, not to mention the womping willow and Hogwarts itself xD

I can watch the lord of the rings movies without thinking to much on the books, and enjoy them.

oh my goodness yes that bit in the HP films annoyed me tremendously. As for Lotr, i did watch the films first XP and after reading the books it almost seemed like a different story entirely at parts. It's been a long time since i read them though, so i dont remember exactly which parts. I definitely think the films were "good" though. I really didnt want to see Aragorn and co taking weeks and weeks walking to that rock of Erech place, which is how long it seemed when i read that part in the book.

Funny thing is a lot of Harry Potter was filmed around where I live. Seeing places you know in movies kind of destroys the immersion for me.

yeah, I rally don't need the travelling for mile and miles across bland scenery just to stick to a book. I can respect alterations to the geography like that.

I'm honestly not sure if I'd prefer a more introspective, slower-paced film more in line with the books, I'd have to see something like that to judge it. I think I might fall in with Tolkien in thinking that truly capturing the books on film is a futile effort.

That said, you know that travel sequence right after they leave Rivendell? All of like 5 minutes, maybe 10? I checked my map once, it's in excess of 800 miles traveled. I'm not saying they should have dragged that out with long travelogue scenes, but I do think they could have conveyed, somehow, the immense distances being covered by the fellowship.

I guess it boils down the films lacking the scale of the books, in my opinion, for all their sweeping epic visuals. Everything feels more condensed and less real to me.

Oh, and don't get me started on Haldir at Helm's Deep. I think I talked about it earlier in this thread, actually. That moment just annihilates the geographical plausibility of the films. :p

(I'm not trying to convince you guys not to like the films or anything, by the way. I just really like talking about this subject. :))

I don't feel like you're trying to force your opinions onto us, so it's fine :) I can entirely understand your reasoning there, and if i loved the books, as much as you obviously do, then i would probably feel the same to some degree. It simply boils down to me not remember the book well enough to have such strong opinions.

now i really think i should reread the books then (this thread is really interesting btw, i love reading about opinions on lotr, even if negative towards the films) because I know I completely hated several of the Harry Potter films, after reading and loving each book several times each. And regarding the distances, i actually play the lotr online game XD and while they usually stick to the original maps, they condensed it as well, which im fine with. especially since it still takes at least five minutes of straight riding a horse from Bree to Weathertop, instead of a days journey.

I hadn't intended on such an in depth discussion of this sort, but it's proving rather interesting xD

I'm not sure how much more I actually have to say on the matter. :p I did have a thread in which I was dissecting the movies scene by scene, somewhere in this forum, but I didn't get very far with it unfortunately.

And, kind of ironically, Tolkien isn't even in my top 5 or so authors (he's probably #6 :p), it's just that none of those guys have had their work "adapted" to cinema yet. :p

A fair few of my childhood/teen favourite authors have had their books butchered, that's why the LoTR movies seem faithful, in comparison.

I am excited exciiited for this movie, I cannot wait x3 I loved the Hobbit when I read it in sixth grade, always a favorite. And I actually like the films, goes 1, 3, 2 in order of like for me...although the 3rd one didn't need fifteen endings, really but for something that took that long to film I can give them wanting to make the ending feel epic lol.
I admit, I enjoy the films better than the books -- I've been almost violently attacked for stating that xDD
But the books are a reaaal slog for me. I mean I like them, but they're just written in a way that for me is hard to get through. I'm on Return of the King now, as a matter of fact...and I started reading the series seriously (not just flipping through) uh...
3 years ago xDD yerp

Rem, I take it you've never read any of Tolkien's other Middle-Earth work? They make LotR look positively thrifty in comparison. :p

Farmer Giles of Ham is obviously his greatest work. Ever.

I actually haven't read that. I've read the trilogy, the Hobbit, the Silmarillion, the Book of Unfinished Tales, both Books of Lost Tales, and The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrun. Truth be told, even I can make it through his son's History of Middle-Earth series, not to mention getting the whole thing is expensive, even if there is some good stuff hidden away in the ~9 or so books to it.

I think the Dwarves were very well done. I was shocked at Armstrong playing one of the leads. oO It's pretty hard to make them not look comical due to past experiences and culture (circuses, stereotypes, cartoons and so on) but they came out looking pretty badass,but they still retained some of the silliness they had in the book.

But they were more hapless/bumbling in the book, a very English sort of silliness, which seems to be utterly absent now. If anything, the thing missing most from Jackson's works is the English-ness of the world, story, and characters. I suspect that alone would upset Tolkien greatly if he had lived to see it.

I may be wrong, though. We'll see.

ive only read the trilogy, Hobbit, Children of Hurin (such a depressing book :( ), and a tiny bit of Silmarillion.

at first i thought they looked ridiculous, but now they look ok...Thorin is a little odd though, he looks like a villain -_-

Oh, I forgot about the Children of Hurin. Read that one, too.

Thorin looks like a human lord, to me. And Kili? looks like an elf. And also looks nothing like his brother. >_>

and bombur is too fat...and on and on XD at least they have the dishes tossing clean up scene, from what i saw in the trailer ^_^

But do they sing "Chip the glasses, crack the plates, that's what Bilbo Baggins hates"?????

That is the question!

bahahaha theyd better!!! i do love the hobbit and while im excited....im also really worried they might completely ruin it :o

Well, just in meshing it thematically with the LotR films, they're basically de facto changing the spirit of the story from the whimsical adventure it originally was (and always will be! No one can take it away! *cries*)

:( i never really thought itd be anything like the book though....it just cant work, like you said earlier (i think...?)

I think I said something to that effect. Can't quite remember now. :p

I do hope they include Beorn. I hated that he wasn't in the animated version. Of course, how could PJ resist including a badass bear warrior? Think of the visual effects! :D