MGM and Warner Near On Deal For Hobbit Films 222
Jamie found an NYT story that says "After months of negotiation and delay, Warner Brothers and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer are on the verge of an agreement that would allow the director Peter Jackson to begin shooting a two-part version of J. R. R. Tolkien's The Hobbit early next year." The production has struggled recently with issues with unions, and a fire.
let's wait (Score:2, Insightful)
Two parts? (Score:5, Insightful)
ie. They're going to milk this for all it's worth.
Re:Peter jackson... (Score:4, Insightful)
I'll agree with that...
Other than about 20 seconds worth of film, I think the LOTR films were a far better adaptation of the books than I thought possible.
When I heard that the story was coming out on film, I was expecting a treatment like "I, Robot" got - schlock only vaguely related to the book. Instead, we got a movie that captured the feel of the books almost perfectly, and told the same story. The movie was better for the visuals - it fleshed the world out much better than my puny imagination had been able to do.
I've never quite understood the haters, either.
Re:Peter jackson... (Score:2, Insightful)
Neither of those chapters contribute to the story as a whole. Remember that (in the movies) Saruman died at Isengard, so the episode of the Shire wouldn't make sense. Also Tom Bombadil IMHO doesn't make sense with the darkish setting of the story.
Re:Peter jackson... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Two parts? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Peter jackson... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Two parts? (Score:3, Insightful)
It took me about 4 tries but it was worth it.
Once you read it a few times you start remembering who is who and then the significance of the story emerges.
Even the names of swords are important and it's easy to forget 100 pages earlier that you already were introduced to character.
It also helps to understand the structure of the story: The first page is the entire story. The 1st chapter is the entire story and then it decompresses exponentially from there.
Re:Peter jackson... (Score:2, Insightful)
The Scourging of the Shire is a _major_ point of the LoTR story--it's not only that you must stand up against evil, but that once your innocence is lost in the fight, you can never go home again. The hobbits have been changed by their adventures and are no longer who they were when they left home, and their home has changed too... none of them (though most poignantly Frodo) can have the life they had in the way it was when they left.
Hollywood is forever getting this wrong. When I was a youngster, I walked out of a movie (Labyrinth, if anyone's seen it) at the end because after all the heroine goes through to move on beyond her childish world and take responsibility, she's allowed to go right back into the imaginary world. So what was the point of her learning maturity during her quest if she's just going to shrug it off?
I do wonder what they're teaching in the schools these days...
Re:As I recall... (Score:4, Insightful)
I had a similar experience, but I did eventually get through the Silmarillion. I think I read it twice, eventually.
The first half is basically the Middle Earth version of Genesis. Most of it could probably be compressed into a genealogy chart without losing too much. The second half is a lot more interesting. But you have to slog through the first half so you know who everyone is. Otherwise you'll just get lost of in a sea of near-identical names.
If you're a big LotR fan, it's probably worth the effort.
Re:Peter jackson... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Peter jackson... (Score:3, Insightful)
Honestly, If you think Tom doesn't belong, that's fine. But you're missing a whole depth to the story by thinking that.
Re:What I don't get (Score:3, Insightful)
Tolkien wrote LoTR as one large book. His editors made him break it into six sub-books, which were then combined and edited into the three books.
They couldn't have done this with LoTR because there wasn't enough movie-ready material in there. LoTR is a deeply complex story with a lot of subtle subplots going on. Jackson chose the destruction of the Ring as the primary thrust of his story. Bombadil was not a part of that storyline. Bombadil would have been (to a movie-going audience) a complete non-sequitur. He's too subtle and interwoven into the ending of the Third Age. He's an example of the powerful but uninterested, which is a great narrative on why Hobbits are perfect Ringbearers, but is more of a sociological point than an add-on to the Quest to destroy the One Ring. He's a plot device to expose the dangers of some of the remaining bits of the Second Age (barrow-wights) while not killing off any important characters, but again Jackson didn't really cover the differences between the Ages. Bombadil neither contributed toward nor hindered the mission to destroy the One Ring.
The scouring of the Shire would have been drama after the happy ending, which is hard to pull off in movies, and as a 4th (or 6th) movie it would have been largely ignored as a "tidying up loose ends" bit. In the books, it's an interesting afterthought of the lingering consequences of allowing Saruman to live, and the fact that the destruction of the Ring didn't destroy all evil, and even unleashed a little here and there. It was also sort of a final nail in the Third Age's coffin, and the ending of the implied innocence of the Shire, the descent of all other species (elves, dwarves, hobbits) and the powers they wielded, and the ascent of Men and mechanical power. Again, though, none of that has anything to do with the Ring story.
Expressing all of that in movies would put an audience to sleep, and still come off as inadequate. Movies are stories told with a broad and unsubtle brush, and you have to make your stories less subtle as a result. Jackson chose the interesting storyline and dropped the rest.
I mean, look at what Jackson had to do to make The Two Towers interesting to a movie audience. They should have changed the name to "Helm's Deep: A Love Story". Jackson took a largely insignificant battle and made a whole movie out of it, invented a love interest thread between Aragorn and Arwen, and completely recast the Ents in order to add some conflict between them and the other protagonists, and to give them more screen time because the effects were cool. And, let's be honest, it was probably just as well. You'd want to see more "Frodo and Sam trudging through vast empty boringness?" Coverage of Sam's rescue, floor by floor, of Frodo from the Tower of Cirith Ungol?
Jackson took all the important but boring bits as vignettes rather than bits of information woven into a complex story.
The whole dichotomy of Smeagol attempting and failing to assert his personality over the Ring-induced Gollum persona was done in one utterly brilliant self-argument rather than as bits of interwoven story throughout. It was oversimplified, but that's what you do in a movie, and it expressed the complexity of what Smeagol/Gollum was as a character without becoming boring.
Frodo's sympathy with Smeagol and Sam's distrust of Gollum was handled by a few quick events, culminating in the trick Gollum played on Sam, rather than by many small-but-subtle interplays as seen in the books. As a result, Sam was rewritten as a bit thick and foolish enough to leave Frodo's side, rather than the one smart enough to wield Galadriel's Phial after Frodo was already taken out by Shelob.
I certainly have my complaints with the movies. But, given the unsubtle form that is a movie, I think Jackson did a remarkable job of making a movie that non-LoTR geeks could still enjoy, while still telling a story that is true to at least one storyline in the books. The natural result of this, however, is that bits that don't fit the main storyline need to go, or you risk making the movie boring to anyone but a LoTR geek. And you gotta sell lots of asses in seats to pay for an epic production like Jackson's LoTR.
Re:As I recall... (Score:1, Insightful)
If sin is boring, you're doing it wrong.
Please don't.... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Peter jackson... (Score:3, Insightful)
And in The Shining [1980], Kubrick left out the explosion of the boiler. God that movie sucks.
The books are good, the movie adaptations are good. The movie doesn't suck because a character that isn't integral to the plot is missing.
Yeah, you liked Tom Bombadil like a favourite uncle but he didn't contribute to the story.
What was more annoying was the Aragorn/Arwen angle that took away from the momentum of the story. Still not worth the hate.