Peter Jackson Announces Third Hobbit Movie 303
eldavojohn writes "Unless his Facebook account has been hacked, Peter Jackson has announced a third movie for The Hobbit series: 'So, without further ado and on behalf of New Line Cinema, Warner Bros. Pictures, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Wingnut Films, and the entire cast and crew of The Hobbit films, I'd like to announce that two films will become three.' Other sites are confirming this while Variety notes that filming has been wrapped on the first two so doing a third film will require a restart to all of that effort including re-negotiations with rights holders and acting schedules. **potential spoiler alert** From Peter Jackson's announcement: 'We know how much of the story of Bilbo Baggins, the Wizard Gandalf, the Dwarves of Erebor, the rise of the Necromancer, and the Battle of Dol Guldur will remain untold if we do not take this chance.' How much of Middle Earth would you like to see on film?"
Here we go! (Score:3)
This is pretty much going the same direction as Star Wars⦠Eventually we will see the âoeSuper Duper Directorâ(TM)s Cut Boxed Set With Special Commentary And New CGI Effects!â
Re:Here we go! (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd be much more worried if Peter Jackson goes batshit insane and gives us an uninspired story with shallow and boring characters. Then it would be going in the same direction as Star Wars.
Honestly there's a whole lot of the Tolkien universe left to go and I honestly don't mind them making movies out of it; however, I do wish that they wouldn't drag the Hobbit out so much, especially when there're stories such as the Silmarillion that would be incredibly amazing to see done.
Re:Here we go! (Score:5, Interesting)
I want to see the Silmarillion but in Series format (like Game of Thrones or similar). It is long enough for at lest 4 or 5 seasons of 8-10 episodes each. I would really look forward to watch that!
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Yep! I was thinking the same.
Make it a cult movie, give different seasons to different directors. Don't be afraid to go to 16+ or even 18+ rating. Some ideas:
Season 1 - the creation of Arda. Spielberg. 14+
Season ?? - the story of Turin. Man, that's one of the most desperate fates in fiction. Fincher. 18+
Season ?? - get the female audience on board with the most beautiful love story of Middle Earth - Beren and Lutien. Minghella. 14+ (could be 16+)
Season ?? - Feanor, the curse of the Silmarils. Jackson. 16+
Re:Here we go! (Score:5, Interesting)
i'm not sure i agree that there is that much more of the Tolkien universe to get through. in that, there is depth, but we are about out of breadth.
Re:Here we go! (Score:4, Interesting)
The Silmarillion was designed by Tolkien to mimic the Bible, as a collection of prose, verse, homilies, letters, etc.
However, as a jumping off point for a whack of mini-series/TV series/made-for-streaming/etc. it's great material -- after all, it's what JRR used to build up his universe on which to build LoTR (I believe the Hobbit was already done by that point).
Re:Here we go! (Score:4, Informative)
come on, the Silmarillion is hardly a story. its much more like an appendix or as wikipedia puts it a legendarium. you couldnt make that a coherent movie any more than you could make the entire bible a single movie.
What are you talking about? Have you ever read it?
The rise of the races and the fall of the trees; the stories of Finwe, Feanor, etc; Beren and Luthie; Gondolin; Numenor; the wars of the first and second ages; and so on...
The Silmarillion is probably my favorite book of them all simply because of the epic scale of the stories that it tells, and it's the only one I've reread multiple times. The first time through it a lot of people get turned off by the very beginning, but honestly you can't stop there.
It transitions into very conventional storytelling pretty quickly and has a LOT to tell. I think it got much better the second time through because I wasn't having so much trouble keeping the names straight, and everything was much clearer.
It would make for some seriously epic movies imo. There's war, betrayal, and even romance on a MUCH larger scale than either the Hobbit or LotR.
Re:Here we go! (Score:5, Interesting)
Honestly there's a whole lot of the Tolkien universe left to go and I honestly don't mind them making movies out of it; however, I do wish that they wouldn't drag the Hobbit out so much, especially when there're stories such as the Silmarillion that would be incredibly amazing to see done.
Agreed, there's a lot of the Tolkien universe than most people know about. But I don't think the idea is to drag the novel The Hobbit out to three movies. I've read elsewhere that the intent is to dip into the LOTR appendices and cover the larger history leading up to Fellowship of the Ring. The Hobbit was a child's story told from Bilbo's point of view. I think Jackson has something larger in mind. Tolkien reportedly had something larger in mind, and had started to re-write the story partially contained in The Hobbit, but never finished it.
Unfortunately Jackson doesn't have rights to the Quest of Erebor -- that's owned by Tolkien's son Christopher, and he appears to be completely opposed to any film based on his father's work. So all they have is the rights that Tolkien sold when he was alive -- The Hobbit and LOTR. Fortunately, a lot of the earlier story is contained in the part at the end of LOTR that almost nobody read.
I think the main difference between this and Star Wars is that Jackson is not pulling the story out of his ass. At least, not all of it.
As to The Silmarillion.... I'm sorry, it put me to sleep. And I'm saying this from the standpoint of having read every word of LOTR several times, including the appendices. From a storytelling standpoint, it was more interesting to have a story set in the last days of that age, where heroic and villainous acts are overshadowed by the monstrous acts of an earlier time, and characters struggle amid the tired ruins of a world that contained characters so much larger than they.
Re:Here we go! (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, perhaps. I see it as different parts of the same struggle.
In one of the appendices, (I don't have my copy in front of me, so this is from memory), Tolkien outlines what part the dwarves of The Lonely Mountain played in the War of the Ring, and how this occupied much of Sauron's forces, an added distraction away from the effort to destroy the ring. There was also something about the last existing Ring of the dwarves playing a part, I think indirectly leading to Gandalf's chance meeting with Thorin, which kicked off the events of The Hobbit. It was all tightly interconnected.
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Well, perhaps. I see it as different parts of the same struggle.
Or it's like poetry, you know, so they rhyme. [youtube.com] Every stanza kinda rhymes with the last one.
Re:Here we go! (Score:5, Funny)
Will we get a version where Frodo shoots first?
Re:Here we go! (Score:5, Insightful)
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This is pretty much going the same direction as Star Wars
Yeah! Except, no, it's not, is it? This is a pre-release change to production, not a money-grubbing revisionist scourging of a sci-fi classic.
Re:Here we go! (Score:4, Funny)
Hey that gives me an idea.
You could turn the Scouring of the Shire into an action movie. Nicolas Cage could play Frodo, Amber Heard could play his love interest.
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As long as the style doesn't change they can go on making as many movies as they want.
The problem with 99% of sequels/prequels is that they screw around with the original style and end up making a completely different type of movie than the original. That only works works if the original movie sucked.
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This is pretty much going the same direction as Star Wars⦠Eventually we will see the âoeSuper Duper Directorâ(TM)s Cut Boxed Set With Special Commentary And New CGI Effects!â
You mean the version where Bilbo stabs first?
Re:Here we go! (Score:4, Funny)
You get the version where Bilbo wins the ring, and the version where Bilbo steals it. True to the source material.
finally getting around to my favorite volume: (Score:5, Funny)
"Tim, Tim Benzedrine!
Hash! Boo! Valvoline!
Clean! Clean! Clean for Gene!
First, second, neutral, park,
Hie thee hence, you leafy narc!
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Arrowroot, son of Arrowshirt, I greet thee.
Re:finally getting around to my favorite volume: (Score:4)
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Woodja woodja woo!
Can't wait. . . (Score:3)
. . .for the 9 feature-length part film adaptation of the epic tale of Peter Jackson's Tolkien film projects.
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"The Extended DVDs came with two discs each worth of movie plus two discs each worth of extras."
Have you watched that stuff? I really enjoyed the extra material from "The Two Towers". It gives you a new appreciation for what went into the films.
Did you know that the set for The Golden Hall of Medusel was constructed in a remote and pristine natural area which was then completely restored to its natural condition? I thought that it was very cool how they did it.
Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)
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If you take in some of the material found in the Appendices of LotR and the Book of Lost Tales, you probably have enough for three movies.
Re:Money grab (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Money grab (Score:4, Insightful)
Yep, this is starting to reek of yes-men and greed, not necessarily a good foundation for great movies. Jackson has performed well this far so I'm hoping, but this is where I start tuning down my expectations.
Re:Money grab (Score:4, Insightful)
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I would say that if Peter Jackson had exhibited a history of trying to wring cash out of a franchise with new, but inferior material and unnecessary revisions (*cough*Lucas*cough*), and to my knowledge, that hasn't happened, has it?
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Re:Money grab (Score:5, Funny)
I was wary about stretching it into 2 movies. Its not that long of a book, not much actually happens. 3 movies is just a money grab by the studio.
I wasn't worried about that until I heard the titles for the three movies:
Re:Money grab (Score:5, Funny)
I wasn't worried about that until I heard the titles for the three movies:
The Hobbit
The Hobbit Reloaded
The Hobbit Revolutions
It could be worse. Imagine:
Hobbit: The Quickening
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Naah, more like:
The Hobbit: The Ca$hening
Re:Money grab (Score:4, Funny)
Alien vs. Fredy Krueger vs. the Hobbit
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I felt. . .as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror. . .
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The Hobbit: The Search For Smaug.
Re:Money grab (Score:5, Insightful)
I understood the rational behind two movies; the Hobbit is pretty condensed and there is no lack of fans that will appreciate the depths explored with sufficient screen time. Three movies seems excessive but Peter did right by LOTR so I'll give him the benefit of the doubt.
It could be good if the net result is three reasonably sized movies instead of a pair of 235 minute blood clotting epics. We humans are really not meant to stare at screens that long.
Re:Money grab (Score:4, Insightful)
I disagree. I read The Hobbit about 30 years ago and remembered it as a small book that did not take long to read.
Recently I picked the book up to read it again before the movie and was surprised at how much actually happens in the book. I have no problem believing that there are three movies worth of material in the book.
Re:Money grab (Score:4, Insightful)
If anything, the Lord of the Rings movies cut HUGE gaping swaths out of that story. Remember Tom Bombadil? He was one of the most identifiable characters in those books and was replaced in the movie with about a 20second sequence where strider just hands the hobbits a bunch of magic swords. It's a sad thing. Would people have tolerated it being broken up into 10 or more movies? No... but it's success is what's allowing Jackson to expand on the Hobbit. Which is a good thing, because, in my not so humble opinion, The Hobbit is one of the best printed works in human history. I'm glad they are doing this. The only thing that would make me more happy would be a big budget "Band of Brothers" style series. If we're lucky, maybe that's what they'll do with the Silmarillion.
Re:Money grab (Score:5, Insightful)
If anything, the Lord of the Rings movies cut HUGE gaping swaths out of that story. Remember Tom Bombadil?
Tom Bombadil never made much sense in the book and would have been a huge plot hole to movie audiences.
Much like how Dobby had to die before the final battle in the final Harry Potter book, Tom Bombadil needed to be gone in such a way that he couldn't help (and the "not wanting to" from the book doesn't really hold up). This way, we avoid having a being of essentially limitless power alive and doing nothing while our much less powerful heroes struggle with their quest. The easiest way to do this in the LotR movies was to just not introduce him in the first place.
Re:Money grab (Score:5, Interesting)
Obviously you're right that it would have been a plot hole for the movie audience, since you demonstrated exactly how Bombadil would have been understood by that audience.
Those of us who would have liked to see Bombadil have a different understanding of him. He's there for a three reasons.
One, and I think most importantly, he's there as a semi-disposable character to bail the hobbits out when they get into trouble. This is their rite of passage. The world is a dangerous place, the hobbits are fleeing from danger into danger, and they need help, and in the absence of Gandalf, Bombadil is the first helper after they've left the Shire. He's foreshadowing Aragorn's help, and later the Nine Walkers. Your complaint is that he's overpowered to do that job, and that may be, but that's not all he's good for, and I don't think he's quite the disturbing McGuffin you think he is. More on that later.
Second, he's there for a sense of age and history. If you've read the Silmarillion, you have that sense of history, but most people haven't and don't. Bombadil is the first of several things sprinkled through LoTR to give that sense, and he's the only one still present in the world. He's there to give a sense that even though the elves are ancient compared to men, there is something in the world yet more ancient. He's there to lend a glimpse of eternity, to hint that this too shall pass.
Third, he's there for a sense of the alien, the different. He's there to provide the perspective that, while the conflict over the Ring feels epic to everyone involved, there are those who are not involved, who are so different that they don't even understand the fuss. The discussion about Bombadil at the council especially made it clear that, while Bombadil is humanoid, he is in no way human. The Council worries out loud that if given custody of the Ring, he'd lose it through sheer carelessness.
This is where your concerns about the plot hole are a little out of place. Bombadil is alien in the same way that Caradras is alien, and can be considered the benevolent foil to the malevolence of Caradras. He and Caradras both possess tremendous power, but it is a non-mobile elemental sort of power, enormous in terms of sheer strength (Gandalf doesn't even consider challenging Caradras when it resists the Fellowship), but indifferent to the Ring itself, and it is a power that does not move around in the world or participate in it. Each helps or hinders the progress of the Ring when the Ring comes near for reasons of their own that are more about their fundamental natures than anything to do with the Ring.
This is also one of the additional points about the movie that irritate the crap out of aficionados. Not only did Peter Jackson think that movie audiences couldn't understand Bombadil (apparently correctly), he also decided they couldn't understand Caradras, so he introduced the lame sequence where the trouble in the mountains was brought on by Saruman. The cure is worse than the disease. Not only did Saruman not know for sure what the Fellowship was up to, he was vague about where they were and what their numbers were. That's how the whole mistaken identity bit with Pippin and Merry happens.
More to the point, Saruman isn't powerful enough to cause that sort of trouble for a party escorted by Gandalf. In the books, Gandalf and Saruman always carefully step around each other once Saruman fails to convert Gandalf to his cause, and Gandalf isn't involved in either Saruman's downfall or his death. Following directly on from that point, Saruman simply isn't that powerful period. Everything about the Tolkien mythos is about the the decline and fall of basically everything. Everything is downhill, and Saruman (and indeed, Gandalf), are both very much at the low end of that long decline. Bombadil and Caradras are both ancient and therefore at the high end of the power curve. Gandalf and Saruman are both much younger, therefore much less powerful.
So the loss of Bombadil is, I think, directly related to the loss of Caradras, and both losses are unfortunate for many reasons.
Re:Money grab (Score:4, Informative)
Edit: So after RTFA it looks like the third movie will be stuff gleaned from Tolkien's other works, not anything that actually occurs in the novel The Hobbit.
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Edit: So after RTFA it looks like the third movie will be stuff gleaned from Tolkien's other works, not anything that actually occurs in the novel The Hobbit.
The only interesting thing is whether it'll feature Derek.
I'm feeling gypped (Score:3)
Each one of the first three films should have been a trilogy if a book shorter than any of the three Lord of the Rings novels gets three films.
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Um... maybe it's just me... but my copy of the hobbit is just shy of 600 pages... my copies of the different lotr books are about 350 each... how exactly does that make Hobbit 'shorter'...?
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I went back and found a set of them that I remember seeing a while after initially reading them (I can't find one of the ones I read)
http://www.amazon.com/Lords-Rings-Hobbit-Box-Voumes/dp/B004QVP338/ref=pd_sim_sbs_b_7
Look at the pic that s
Large print version? (Score:3)
Because my old Ballantine Books paper back version is 287 pages...
Based on previous works... (Score:5, Insightful)
Based on previous works, "Lord of the Rings" in particular, I'd say "as much as you can give us!". And by that I mean that they could cut The Hobbit into 10 pieces and I'd still be thrilled. Even with 3 movies, "Lord of the Rings" was missing too much.
Re:Based on previous works... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Even so, if we were to use your standards that means that Jackson's project can be 3 movies just fine since it's really not The Hobbit anymore but The Hobbit with other Tolkien lore.
Re:Based on previous works... (Score:4, Informative)
My first thought was that if the Hobbit is worth 3 movies, why didn't he make 6 or more movies out of LotR?
I agree that his movies butchered LotR. Visually, they are fantastic. But the dialog and edits to the story make me cringe. It's LotR, not Bored of the Rings! I knew Bombadil would be cut, and wasn't too bothered by that. But to cut the Scouring of the Shire?! Big, big mistake! I heard there's a director's cut that has Scouring of the Shire, but I haven't seen it. Just as bad is that so much was cheapened and trivialized. Gimli is turned into the butt of a bunch of lame short jokes. The hobbits might as well be just simple, naughty children greedily thieving for food, with no thought for anything beyond their bellies. I didn't like Merry and Pippin getting into Gandalf's fireworks, or the Bree scene where Aragorn swings Frodo about by the arm as if he was a naughty child. Gollum frames Sam for stealing food, and Frodo is dumb enough to believe this?! Then there's the way Arwen greets Aragorn by rubbing in her elvish superiority and kissing his throat with a sword. And, can't anyone make a LotR film without hoking up a silly wizard's battle between Gandalf and Saruman? And the Ents being dumbed down and refusing to help, until Treebeard walks into a wasteland of fresh stumps, as if there were no strong hints beforehand of Saruman's treachery. And some elves showing up at Helm's Deep and announcing that they came to die. And the bit about Denethor being a lame, retarded, stubborn idiot in refusing to call for help but so easily bypassed when Gandalf has Pippin sneak up to the beacon and light it. And when the attack on Minas Tirith starts, a random orc officer drops the painfully cheesy line that now is the age of orcs as he stabs to death a soldier of Gondor.
Re:Based on previous works... (Score:5, Informative)
Don't forget the complete libelous defamation done to Faramir's character, who was possibly the most amazing example of a human in the books.
“If you took this thing on yourself, unwilling, at others' asking, then you have pity and honour from me. And I marvel at you: to keep it hid and not to use it. You are a new people and a new world to me. Are all your kin of like sort? Your land must be a realm of peace and content, and there must gardners be in high hounour.”
“But fear no more! I would not take this thing, if it lay by the highway. Not were Minas Tirith falling in ruin and I alone could save her, so, using the weapon of the Dark Lord for her good and my glory. No, I do not wish for such triumphs, Frodo son of Drogo.”
Re:Based on previous works... (Score:5, Insightful)
I think Jackson and the other writers completely misunderstood Faramir and the ring's effect on people.
I heard/read an interview with Jackson and he actually stated (paraphrased) "Here's this guy who can resist the ring. We couldn't have that while everyone else was being subdued by it."
The ring fed upon insecurities and self-doubt. It was forged by Sauron out of his weakness and greed to control others, so as it found new masters it fed upon their weaknesses as well.
Faramir wasn't a superhero or deity because he could resist the ring; he was sure of himself, knew his place in the world and had no desires for power. The ring found nothing in him to feed upon. Here was Tolkien's example of how someone could be perfectly happy without riches or power, and Jackson completely undermined it.
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judging from his past works 2/3rds of the movies will be grand music and panning shots while cutting out smaug and adding a scene to the end where bilbo goes to shire to rescue townsfolk from pirates.
friggin 3 movies? what's that, 9 hours and 2 years to release?
Had no idea.. (Score:3)
a bit silly (Score:5, Insightful)
I like The Hobbit, but it's not an epic like The Lord of the Rings is. It's not supposed to be an epic. It's a self-contained, medium-sized story, with a fairly classic narrative arc. It makes no sense to tell the story in installments. The first 1/3 of the Hobbit isn't a film! There is one fairly straightforward journey, a climax, a denouement. The book is circa 300 pages, not circa 1000 like LoTR is.
Re:a bit silly (Score:5, Insightful)
I like The Hobbit, but it's not an epic like The Lord of the Rings is. It's not supposed to be an epic. It's a self-contained, medium-sized story, with a fairly classic narrative arc. It makes no sense to tell the story in installments. The first 1/3 of the Hobbit isn't a film! There is one fairly straightforward journey, a climax, a denouement. The book is circa 300 pages, not circa 1000 like LoTR is.
I think the key is that they are going outside the pages of the Hobbit to get a third film. Which is not to say they're going outside Tolkien's writings, it's just that they're mining the appendices of The Lord of the Rings and the last chapter of the Silmarillion on the War of the Rings which covers Sauron's early rise as the Necromancer of Dol Guldur and the battles fought by Gandlaf, Saruman, Elrond and Galadriel against him at that time. This is very tangentially touched upon in the Hobbit -- but it is a narrow story told from Bilbo's point of view -- but there's plenty of story there if they wish to fill it in as a separate part that helps fill the gap between The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.
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Good point; that could be interesting. Tolkien has this whole world with backstories, but really only LoTR succeeds in being a compelling narrative that fully uses that world. The Hobbit as written is more of an early story that vaguely hints at a larger world, more in that sense like a lot of other fantasy novels (which typically have less of a deeply fleshed out cosmology than Tolkien's world). There is definitely enough material to produce something of a prequel to LoTR, which The Silmarillion and the Lo
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If Peter Jackson wanted to challenge himself he could of attempted to create a movie that would appeal to both children and adults as the original story did.
Instead it's multiple episodes, 40 frames per second, etc etc.....
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They're going outside of The Hobbit in order to get even 2 films! Some images and hints released so far are clearly stuff from Lord of the Rings appendices and not a part of The Hobbit. Dol Guldur is barely hinted at in the book in just a couple of lines I think. Given the shortness of the book in terms of actual time that passes, the council to deal with Dol Guldur would have taken place after Bilbo was safely back home, the most Gandalf could have done in the short time he was away from the party would
Re:a bit silly (Score:4, Interesting)
Dol Guldur is barely hinted at in the book in just a couple of lines I think. Given the shortness of the book in terms of actual time that passes, the council to deal with Dol Guldur would have taken place after Bilbo was safely back home, the most Gandalf could have done in the short time he was away from the party would be to investigate the necromancer and discover who he might be.
Yes, but if you were to expand the point of view of the Hobbit a little bit, and include a little more material such as Gandalf going to Dol Guldur etc. then you leave yourself well setup for a third film with Bilbo at home and the council waging war on the necromancer. Of course that's not to say that's what they've done, but for now I'm willing to give them the benfit of the doubt and wait and see what they've actually done. As it stands The Hobbit is a very narrow story that leads into LoTR but doesn't really sit well with it; by having a LoTR prequel that expands upon the Hobbit with further material from the Appendices of LoTR I could imagine a much better lead in to the LoTR trilogy being made. Let's hope that's what they're aiming for.
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It makes no sense to tell the story in installments.
It makes business sense. Just like rebooting Spiderman was all about the business - in Spiderman's case the studio had to (re)make the movie if they wanted to keep the options on two more spiderman movies, else it would have reverted back to the studio that made the avengers. A similar thing is almost certainly going on here - the studio has the options to make at least three movies out of the hobbit, so that's what they are going to do.
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... The book is circa 300 pages, not circa 1000 like LoTR is.
A 300 page novel requires substantial cutting to fit into a movie. A short story makes a good two hour movie. Most novels can't fit in under 10 hours of screen time without leaving out large parts...
Its not even two films. (Score:2)
Money money money.
I certainly don't want to wait three years to see the whole movie. With Peter Jackson's LOTR I could understand it, it was three distinct books.
Now we have Peter Jackson's The Hobbit... with how many DVD/BluRay releases to follow?
He is desperately trying to give George Lucas a good name
Just wait... (Score:5, Funny)
Just wait 'till he gets his hands on the Silmarillion. It would open the door to a decade+ soap opera television for geeks!
Re:Just wait... (Score:5, Interesting)
Except HoME is largely made up of the various versions of The Silmarillion that Tolkien worked on from 1917 until the 1960s, except for a few volumes that are works associated with the writing of LotR and associated materials.
Years ago when I was posting on Tolkien newsgroups, when the LotR movies first came out, there was sizable debate about this. I think it would be all but impossible to film the entire Silmarillion, it's too big for a movie. Some parts of it, like the Ainulindale, would be rather hard to bring to the screen.
Some of the stories would work very well, in particular the Turin saga, Beren and Luthien, the Fall of Gondolin (the first story of Middle Earth Tolkien ever wrote) and some of the other works. The expanded Narn I Hin Hurin, which is about Hurin and Turin, would make a pretty awesome epic in its own right.
If you go past the Silmarillion proper, I think the Atalante (Fall of Numenor) would make a very impressive prequel to LotR.
Downfall Trilogy: Arnor, Numenor, and Beleriand (Score:3)
I think you mean Akallabeth (yeah I know, same meaning, different language, but that's what the book is called).
And I agree, it would make for an awesome prequel. The climax certainly has the greatest special effects potential of any moment in the history of Ea. I would love to see the Bending of the World on screen, watch the seas torn asunder and Numenor fa
Well, it could be worse. (Score:2)
The only positive I can see is that since the Hobbit was intended as a children's book it doesn't have the intellectual depth and character definition of the trilogy, so I hopefully won't be as upset about all
Two movies was already stretching it but... (Score:2)
How much of Middle Earth would I like to see? (Score:4, Funny)
Just The Silmarillion [wikipedia.org]. Is that really too much to ask?
In an unrelated note, if anyone has a mop, I accidentally dripped sarcasm all over the floor and need to clean it up.
Harry Potter director? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Harry Potter director? (Score:5, Insightful)
Jackson did a great job with bringing Middle-Earth to life in sets and costumes, but that hurdle has largely been crossed. The Hobbit needs someone who can take the sets and costumes and tell a story.
Peter Jackson managed to take the LOTR trilogy and make it a critical and popular success, winning both box office awards AND the OSCAR for BEST PICTURE. Let me repeat that--he took a trilogy of orcs, elves, dwarves, and hobbits and managed to win an academy award for best picture. That isn't just great film making--that is a freaking miracle
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No, it was Chris Columbus who made the first (and second) Harry Potter movie.
He did a good job and was able to tell the same story that was in the book.
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Fool... (Score:2)
He should turn it into 9 movies and make three times the amount of money.
Should I wait for the condensed fan-edit? (Score:2)
Should I skip seeing the three movies, and wait for the condensed fan-edit of the three movies after the BluRays have been released?
Seeing how strong the community of fan-editors already is, and what good edits it produces, I think that we can count on there being someone out there who will cut them down into one movie that is telling the tale from Bilbo's perspective, as in the book.
There have already been numerous edits of the Star Wars movies, Superman, Dune, etc. and some have been really good.
I am also
Jackson can get three movies out of The Hobbit... (Score:2)
....but can't come up with 35 - 45 minutes to do a decent version of the scouring of the Shire. Grumble.
Hoping against hope the bulk of the additions don't involve a previously-unknown love interest for Thorin.
Breaking news from the farm (Score:2)
Tolkien would be dancing in his grave (Score:5, Interesting)
At this point, it's pretty obvious that they aren't sticking to things that were in the books. They're making up new material, new stories. It was a stretch to make The Hobbit into two movies (they were already going to add at least half a movie of new material, probably closer to a full movie). But three? They're making shit up. Totally new material.
Tolkien would probably be happy about that. I'd ask him myself, but... you know...
Tolkien was a student of myths and legends, and of languages. He was obsessed with the interplay between languages and stories, and held a theory that the original primary purpose of language was to tell stories and legends. He thought any language without legends was a dead language. He didn't invent Elvish to help tell the LotR stories - he invented the Lord of the Rings to complete his languages. It was a bit of a linguistic experiment to him, actually.
Tolkien believed in the old way of stories, of men telling tales around a campfire, like the poets and bards of old. He tried to replicate that in his classroom (reading Beowulf et al. in the original languages). And possibly the most important difference between modern stories and ancient tales is that, in the old way, you can change it. You can change words, change stories, add verses, remove characters. You aren't supposed to do that with modern stories. Even in the fanfic culture, you generally don't take the original story and throw in a new subplot, new people, new places.
Tolkien would be happy to know that his story has become legend in that aspect, that his story lives not just as words on paper, but as a living, changing story.
Doesn't mean I myself agree with this - I'm "cautiously reserving judgement until the actual work is shown", neither immediately loving it nor already hating it. But I think Tolkien would be happy.
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If they're going to make 3 Tolkien films, New Line/Jackson's hands are pretty much tied to events in and those surrounding The Hobbit.
they can also just make shit up.
Re:Plenty of authentic material left.. (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Plenty of authentic material left.. (Score:5, Funny)
The movies didn't make much money. Something about sets burning in Uganda.
Also they weren't popular. Hardly anybody saw them more than five or six times. And nobody bought all of the DVD sets.
Fair disclosure, I think I saw them once in the theaters, I own the DVDs which I bought off clearance.
Really, they probably lost money.
Re:Plenty of authentic material left.. (Score:5, Interesting)
Bullshit. The story of Turin would make a damned good movie, though some might not like the ending quite so much. The Fall of Gondolin is pretty good too.
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Beren and Luthien would do well if adapted properly -- it would take a deft touch to really do it right. Also Akallabeth would work out quite nicely althought you'd have to compress the time frame a little bit and essentially have it run from Sauron's arrival on Numenor.
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And get Blind Guardian to do the soundtrack, this time!
Re:Plenty of authentic material left.. (Score:5, Insightful)
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At some point Peter Jackson will have enough money to dig up Tolkien, reanimate his corpse, and get the rest of the right signed over.
Seriously, most of what Tolkien wrote WAS his own personal fanfic. The story was written more like a DnD backstory for the language professors' hobby group. There wasn't a lot of intention to make it all canonical and publish it.
That is why in the DVD extras for Game of Thrones, Martin was half-joking about chucking the giant pile of notes in the burn barrel when he's finishe
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Well, at least Jackson will know where to find a good Necromancer to do the re-animating....
Given the volume of drafts/notes/whatnot left behind, and the timeline on them (some of the stuff going back into the 1920's), I seriously doubt this was just a "hobby" shared amongst the language faculty.
Re:Last I checked, the LOTR movies were amazing... (Score:4, Insightful)
Completely agree, give as many intellectual arguments and mention how it did not include some specific scene important for the plot as much as you like but the movies were good and did not really change anything. The Orcs were not turned into mutants from Mars or aliens, so personally I thought a good job was done. Until given direct evidence that these movies are bad I am very much looking forward to them.
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I fell asleep during these movies.
Re:Last I checked, the LOTR movies were amazing... (Score:4, Insightful)
1. The LOTR movies were overall great. Especially the first one.
2. The movies also had some flaws.
3. Those flaws were when the original story was messed with, for example the disasters of messing with Faramir's character, and the timeline of the reforging of the sword and the casting of Gimli as Jar Jar Binks.
4. Jackson is going to take far more liberties with the story this time. After all he now has 3 films to fill with material and THIRTEEN dwarves to call on for comic relief. Just imagine - Jar Jar Binks times 13.
5. This could be as bad as Star Wars I-III.
6. Profit!!!
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On the other hand, in The Hobbit the dwarves really are comical and meant to be laughed at. It's a children's book after all. Bilbo was the sensible one in many ways. Thorin was the most level headed but even he was made to look silly in many places.
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I went back and watched the LOTR movies again recently. This time at home on a smaller screen, so the pyrotechnics and CGI doesn't dazzle you as much and you are more focused on the story or characters. And I realized that when I watched the movies in a cinema, I was inserting the real story in between the great CGI rather than focusing too much on the story as Jackson presented it. When you focus on the story as it is in the movies, you realize how badly Jackson has bastardized the story and every single i
The Hunt for Gollum (Score:3)
Indeed, and that's why one was already made [thehuntforgollum.com].
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As a matter of fact, I don't believe it will be a travesty. But I hold the (apparently) unpopular opinion that the LOTR movies were an excellent adaptation of the books - not a perfect mirror of them, but the best that could possibly be done when going from printed page to movie screen. Because of that opinion, I'm willing to hope that The Hobbit, as a movie, is the same kind of excellent adaptation.
That said, I don't know where they're going to get three movies worth of material and retain the pacing tha