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.
Bah, humbug. (Score:2, Interesting)
I'm sorry. I tried. I really did. I *wanted* to like the LoTR movies -- and I certainly didn't expect them to keep everything that was in the books -- I mean, we're talking 1500+ pages! But *changing* storyline, that, I had issues with. Complete timelines, and storylines, were altered, for no effect that I could see. As someone who reads LoTR every 18 months or so, it was Just Wrong to see a series crafted as carefully as Tolkien did, twisted to meet whatever it was that Jackson was attempting to do. So. Don't. Care.
And, well, I'll be (pleasantly!) surprised if I don't wind up feeling much the same about The Hobbit.
*sigh*
Re:Bah, humbug. (Score:5, Interesting)
The books were written by an eyewitness many years after the events. The movie script is based on records from other eyewitnesses, so it's not surprising that they would remember events differently (or even correct mistakes from the books). Of course, the books are one source for the movie script, but by no means the only one.
Re:Bah, humbug. (Score:5, Interesting)
Have you ever seen a single movie that followed the book more than rudimentarily? I don't think one exists. Look at True Grit -- two movies from the same book, mostly following the book's dialogue, both lacking elements and inserting elements that weren't in the book (for example, in the book Rooster only had one eye, but he didn't wear an eye patch).
Or worse, look at I, Robot. A hot Susan Calvin? WTF? It kinda sorta a little bit copied (kinda) one of the stories in the book ("Little Lost Robot"), but GEES.
It had probably been five or more years since I'd read the books, but I was happy. No, I didn't like "Nobody tosses a dwarf!" and missed Tom Bombadil, and thought it was insane that Gimli and the elf went with Aragorn into the cave, and that the book left what happened there to the imagination, but mostly the movies looked like the images I had in my head while reading the book.
It was closer to its book than any other I've read and seen. I was happy with it.
Re:Bah, humbug. (Score:4, Interesting)
Hell, Tolkien spent decades changing things in his creation of Middle Earth. I wonder how many arbitrary choices were made without any real thought just to satisfy a publishing deadline. I wonder how many purists consider those to be cannon inviolable. And on the other side of that coin, I wonder how many people completely gloss over changes to parts that Tolkien spent decades getting "just right".
I just don't get why people get so hung up in the detail that they can't see the whole picture. But they do and they're happy to tell anyone who will listen.
In the end, the books were amazing. The movies were good too. They flowed reasonably well given the medium in which they were presented. Getting hung up on the details just seems petty to me. But beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Either you're going to like it or you're not.
Re:bad info (Score:4, Interesting)
Then they should have had someone else kill the Lord of the Nazgul, then.
Er. In the movie Merry's poke distracts him for a moment. In the novels Merry's poke with the barrow blade breaks the spell that made him nearly invincible.
But in both cases it was Eowyn that actually killed him, and fulfilled the prophecy that "no man" could kill him by being a woman. (with or without the aid of a hobbit) The Witch king was taken aback that he was facing a woman in both the novel and movie as well.
It was enough for the internal consistency of the movie that a woman had to slay the Witch King.
Re:bad info (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't see how it could be regarded as "anti-climactic" when it's a nice plot twist (surprise: everything isn't fine when they get back home to the Shire), and I've always thought The Scouring of the Shire is pretty much the entire point of the LOTR. Yes, it may seem like the destruction of the One Ring was the main point of the books, but if that were the case then it would be an ordinary quest. What made the ending of the LOTR books different was not only the completion of a great quest, but the hobbits returned to the Shire completely transformed by it. Thus, because they had grown so much (figuratively :-)), they handled the "trouble" in their little part of the world on their own. Even Gandalf stayed out of it, presumably because he knew they could handle it. Tolkien's books are some kind of allegory on how a comfortable life can be threatened by events far away from your home, and that if you are complacent about it, that trouble will eventually arrive on your happy little village doorstep. Heck, given recent history you'd think they would go out of their way to include that message. Weirdly, some of that ominous plot thread was shown in the movie (the foreshadowing in Galadriel's mirror), but then the logical conclusion to it never happened at the end.
I can accept all the other changes, but I just don't buy the claim that the Scouring of the Shire couldn't have been done effectively or that it wouldn't be worth doing it. Yeah, the movie was really long, but they spent loads of time with all sorts of melodramatic stuff that wasn't necessary or that could have been shortened.