Hobbit Film Trailer Posted Online 257
bonch writes "The trailer for the film adaptation of The Hobbit by Peter Jackson has been posted online by ComingSoon. The film, due December 14, 2012, is subtitled "An Unexpected Journey" and will be followed by a second film in 2013 that will tie the story with the Lord of the Rings trilogy." I'm glad to hear that they've kept the Misty Mountains song and I'll be greatly disappointed if an updated version of "Funny Little Things" or "Down, Down to Goblin Town" doesn't make the cut also.
Re:Bah, humbug. (Score:5, Insightful)
I like LOTR a lot too, but reading it every 18 months? Branch out some. There's lots of good stuff out there my friend.
Re:Bah, humbug. (Score:3, Insightful)
Self proclaimed "purists" always fascinate me. I find it amazing that truly passionate followers of a particular story can discuss so much of someone else's work in such detail. And so many times, they can have legendary arguments over how some stretches of the work should be interpreted. It's almost always guaranteed that when a story is converted from book to film, all of the self proclaimed purists universally dismiss it as tripe. They all have their own individual reasons, but it's rare to see any of them approve of the work, no matter how good it may be.
Here's my suggestion. If you really want to see a movie that stays within the bounds you have arbitrarily set on a story written by someone else, why don't you make it yourself.
Re:Bah, humbug. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Let the (Score:5, Insightful)
To me, The Hobbit left more of an impression on me than Lord of the Rings. Maybe because I was younger when I read it, but it always came off more mystical to me. The story isn't all over the place either. As epic as Lord of the Rings was, The Hobbit was more tidy and wasn't too fixated on trying to explain the whole of Middle Earth and it's languages, but more a story that happened in Middle Earth.
I hope Peter Jackson translates this well, and tells the story for it's own sake. Yes, there are tie ins to the Lord of the Rings, but I hope he doesn't go overboard trying to explain them all, and gives us a film that focuses more on the journey of Bilbo Baggins. The ring was just a magic ring that made anyone who wore it invisible. Gollum was just a cave dweller of a creature, and wasn't revealed to be twisted by power. I know it's hard to keep these things at that when the trilogy was filmed first, but I think to really tell the story properly, these things need to be kept in their places in context of the story... I'm crossing my fingers this happens, because if they get it right, this could be one of my all time favourites.
Re:Bah, humbug. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:bad info (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course, if they pull another Scouring of the Shire / Tom Bombadil fiasco messing the book up, I'm going to be upset.
Then I would prepare to be upset.
Many things work very well in books and very poorly in movies, and subplots unrelated to the main plot are one of them. The encounter with Tom Bombadil, the scouring of the Shire, and the encounter with the barrow-wights were all correctly left out of the movie adaptation. While you and I may wish to see these tales portrayed on screen, doing so would detract from the pacing of a movie. Pacing and tempo are much more delicate in a movie compared to a novel. I would much rather see a great movie whose story was imperfectly adapted than a perfect translation which would doubtless be all but unwatchable. I argue that the Hobbit will similarly either significantly diverge from the novel or be a supremely awful movie.
Re:bad info (Score:3, Insightful)
Cutting scenes and merging characters is one thing, making arbitrary changes in the material you've kept is another. And even worse is wasting the removal of canon by adding stupid new material.
Re:bad info (Score:5, Insightful)
Many things work very well in books and very poorly in movies, and subplots unrelated to the main plot are one of them. The encounter with Tom Bombadil, the scouring of the Shire, and the encounter with the barrow-wights were all correctly left out of the movie adaptation.
I'll even go one further: The film should have ended after Frodo and Sam were saved. It was already a long movie (200 minutes), and it would have been a nice point to end it. I remember sitting in the theater feeling somewhat exhausted and exasperated as the movie dragged on after the climax.
What's funny is that the Wikipedia article says, "The ending is streamlined so as not to include the Scouring of the Shire, which was always seen by the screenwriters as anti-climactic.[9]" I agree, but they didn't go far enough!
Re:bad info (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:bad info (Score:5, Insightful)
You are right about TB, barrow-wight.probably. The Scouring? Removing it destroys the whole fucking point of the books.
No no, lets keep telling people 'wars happen over THERE, never at home.'
Re:Bah, humbug. (Score:4, Insightful)
There is purists and there is purists. I feel that there were a large number of changes that were made -- some of them were quite justified (skipping Tom Bombadil, leaving out Scouring of Shire, replacing Glorfindel with Arwen/Liv Tylor to simplify the plot). However, there was a shocking number of things that were added for no reason whatsoever (the stupid elephant battle, Faramir capturing and dragging along Frodo for a while and then releasing him for no new reasons, Aragorn dragged off by a Warg, Aragorn swaying to Eowyn instead of Arwen, etc).
I, personally, am upset by the latter changes. I understand cutting out pieces of a long book to make a good movie. I understand simplifying the story by getting rid of some characters (since the list of characters in Tolkien books goes on and on). However, if the movie is well over 3 hours, why do they feel the need to add plotlines that were completely made up, involved out-of-character behavior and were generally pointless?
Re:Songs (Score:4, Insightful)
OMG, I want to rip my eyes out and my ears off! I really could have gone the rest of my life without having been exposed to THAT!