The Hobbit (2012 and 2013)
Anyone else EXTREMELY excited for this???
Here's the first trailer:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_22DP9mTGF8
Here's the first trailer:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_22DP9mTGF8
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This.
Del Toro's Hobbit might have been something to watch out for, but Jackson's is more of a 2001 class reunion, complete with 100% obsolete frame story and grotesquely inflated narrative elements completely irrelevant to the "Hobbit" tale, which Tolkien has meant exclusively as marginal mood setting "background" stories necessarily mentioned only in passing.
The excellent actor choice for the main character, the possibly last return of McKellen the Great and the probably wonderful visuals notwithstanding, these movies will turn out to be... shit.
Sorry for the negativity - don't want to ruin anyone's pleasant anticipation. It's just that in my opinion, Jackson approaches this for his own glory instead of keeping the integrity and meaning of the story intact, that is: a children's story that happened to develop into the roots of fantasy literature while it was written, from chapter to chapter. I almost wrote my masters' thesis in literature on what this story means to the genre, but alas, then I discovered Conrad Ferdinand Meyer.
Trailer looks good, though.
If the powers-that-be can keep to that level of detail in the visuals and set pieces as well as the quality of the acting, then The Hobbit should be amazing as well whether or not Vain wants to think it's only riding on the coattails of LOTR.
Well, Peter Jackson has made some things very clear, the treatment of the background story and the inclusion of a whole effing host of characters which have no place in the Hobbit story are only two. Not taking these absolutely pre-announced, conscious choices into account would be like buying the Back to the Future game and then being disappointed because the gaming philosophy was "unexpected".
Don't feel offended. As I said, I don't want to make anyone's anticipation less worthwhile. If the trailer's LotR bullshit to actual Hobbit material ratio of 2:5 actually holds true in the entire movies, they'll be at least watchable for me.
LotR did well earn most of its Academy Awards. In fact, some of the book-plot deviations were incredibly good, like the final Aragorn-Frodo scene at the end of the Fellowship which I still hold in high "better than Tolkien" regard. Also, come Return of the King, Jackson's writers had finally understood Arwen as a character and treated her accordingly, which resulted in concise but beautiful added scenes underlining her inner turmoil and love for Aragorn.
But other added scenes decidedly meant to stretch the experience or to shoehorn yet another reference in had me filled with disbelief. The "Aragorn disappears and everyone thinks he's dead" stuff in The Two Towers was writing at its worst, let alone the fact that it essentially repeated the Gandalf storyline step by step, complete with the falling over a cliff stuff. And I will never forgive the movie Frodo for telling Sam to "go home" in the midst of Mordor, and I still have to kill whoever wrote Star Wars references into Theoden's death scene. I still think Phillipa must have had too much alcohol when she wrote those lines.
But taking everything into account, those were movies where I shed a lot of tears of joy and sadness, I can tell you. Seven theatre viewings of The Fellowship, three of the Two Towers and four of Return of the King can't be wrong.
I find that it's really very well done. It plays out a lot more like the books, and doesn't have such out-of-character moments as happened with the aforementioned scenes with Faramir and Frodo, with Gandalf having his staff broken by the Witch King, [EDIT]Gandalf saying that to to go the Helm's Deep is a bad idea, or Theoden being hesitant about answering Gondor's call for aid, etc.[/EDIT] (I don't recall about Aragorn going over the cliff, but I don't think that was included either.)
The only issue I have with the fan edit is that the scenes with Treebeard seem disjointed, given abrupt changes in scenery and time of day, but with all the rest being so well done, I find that part forgivable.
As you could read above, I am decidedly not. In fact, I sincerely strive to embrace cinematography and the changes that come with understanding, rearranging and re-telling a certain story. Forrest Gump? Great movie. Shitty book.
Was that a book first or a movie first?
As my sister's husband says, whether it be games, movies or books, the original medium in which a story is told is usually the best.
Which is to say that the LOTR books are better than the movies, but the movie Willow is better than the book.
Some of Tolkien's descriptions in LotR were quite too long to be enjoyable for me. The movies, with the power of the picture, made a lot of beautiful things concise and immediately understandable, things that Tolkien had labored to describe and make accessible for pages and pages. The original medium always has its beauty, because it holds the original narrative concept. But to use the absolute terms "better" or "worse" is a huge step from that thought.
Little trivia, I never knew this but the same guys that did those Christmas specials like Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer (the stop motion one) and such also made The Hobbit and Return of the King cartoons.
For some of us, it's more than 'one' book.
Haven't even got my whole collection over here, but here's a representative sample.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Or8G_jDcLNo
So pumped
big version
big version