"As I sit on the floor and pick my nose,
I think of dirty things.
Of dragons who dress in rubber clothes,
and elves who drub their dings."
Posted on 09/07/2014 11:19:15 AM PDT by Perdogg
Oddly enough, the Legolas bit didn’t bother me. He was most certainly there, and it is not unreasonable for them to show stuff in the movies that Bilbo wasn’t aware of. I can’t remember if they ever had Bilbo interacting directly in the movies with Legolas, which would have been completely inappropriate. I kept going to sleep during them.
The elf/dwarf romance was more than a little over the top. In Tolkien’s world, I envisioned men/hobbits and elves as more or less subspecies of the Children of Illuvatar. Thus relationships between them would be rare but not impossible or unnatural. It’s important, I think, to note that the very few such relationships described in the books between men and elves are not between the groups as such, but only between the High Elves and men. There are hints that relationships between other groups of elves and men or even hobbits weren’t unknown
Dwarves, OTOH, were a whole other species. Making any such relationship unnatural and unwholesome by definition.
"As I sit on the floor and pick my nose,
I think of dirty things.
Of dragons who dress in rubber clothes,
and elves who drub their dings."
No, I thought it was a great improvement from the first Hobbit movie. I enjoyed it a lot. However, I am always a little depressed after coming on one of these threads because of the unrelenting negativity.
I think that Jackson could have trimmed that first movie quite a bit; but, I'm not a movie maker, I just watch them.
A lot of people get very upset if anything that they feel is important from the book is left out, or not portrayed the way they might have liked it to be. Since I had never read any of the Tolkien books, I just enjoyed the movies for what they were.
Also, I think some put more importance on some characters than other people do. I know a lot of people are upset that some character was not in the Hobbit movies (although, I believe this character shows up in the third Hobbit movie); but, when I told my husband about that, he just made a face and told me that this was a very minor character from his pov, and couldn't understand the fuss.
So, watch the movie, make your own mind up as to whether it was worth watching or not. I happened to like 'Smaug' quite a lot.
I remember that! Funny stuff!
Sorry, I LOVE these movies. They always touch me.
I agree. Numbers 2 and 3 on your list irk me the most.
“1) It will be too long.
2) It will deviate from the book too much.
3) Important characters will be mischaracterized in egregious fashion.
4) There will be stupid amounts of videogame-like action. “
Your list is so true.
I will boycott the theater release of this movie. Maybe I’ll check it out later from my local library. - For “free” - already paid by my taxes.
I enjoyed LOTR movies even though they took many liberties in storylines and especially the ending (in the book the Hobbit Shire was destroyed in Sauran’s last act before destruction).
I just couldn’t get interested in 9 hours of The Hobbit. Seems I didn’t miss anything.
I’m waiting for the one disc version, when all three movies are combined into one running 110 minutes...
The big problem here is he just plain did not want to make these movies, period, at all. The highest level of involvement he was looking for was being one of those executive producers who spends a couple of days in the same time zone as filming. But they could get the funding, everybody wanted him more involved. He finally looked like he had it going with him still producing (though more hands on) and Guiremo Del Toro directing. Then things got delayed and Del Toro had to pull out, so PJ is directing. But he so obviously just doesn’t care. Then the studio said “make it a trilogy” so he gets to not care 3 times over.
Not exactly. The Shire was targeted by Saruman in revenge for his eviction from Isengard. Sauron had already been dead (or dispersed or whatever) for some time.
But Sarumans's plans for its destruction hadn't been all that thoroughly implemented yet when our heroes showed up and saved the day. After which the Shire was quickly rebuilt better than ever.
I always thought the similiarity names Saruman and Sauron showed a lack of thought, kind of unusual for JRRT.
I haven’t tracked the story of the making of the films. But I was moderately disappointed by the first one, and severely by the second.
I’m sure you’re right about the reasons behind things. For whatever reason, I think PJ needs some external controls to do his best work.
I thought Fellowship was the best of the movies. He was probably under the greatest pressure from “above” and oversight. Once it became clear how wildly successful the movies would be, those controls diminished.
Then he made King Kong, which I thought was just awful. Bloated and stupid. Though to be fair the original story wasn’t much to work with in that regard. But nobody rode herd on PJ because he was the big moneymaker now, and he could just indulge himself.
The Hobbit movies got even worse. Combine lack of interest, as you say, with self-indulgence, and you get crap.
Thanks. It was a long time ago I read the books.
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