This does not make me feel well about things…
“Lord of the Rings” director Peter Jackson has confirmed on Facebook that “The Hobbit” will become a film trilogy.
Now the other two movies, starting Irish actors James Nesbitt and Aidan Turner, have wrapped the director has confirmed that a third movie is now in the mix.
To anybody who’s read The Hobbit, and the three books of Lord of the Rings will know the stories could be considered totally different animals if it wasn’t for the common characters, a “Blilbo’s Magic Ring”.
Now, like the people who only watched the films, I read the books the same way Hollywood has produced the movies. I read the LotR trilogy first, then went back to The Hobbit and read that. Knowing the saga of The One Ring, and Smeagol’s corruption by the Ring, I was appalled by how glib the “Riddles in the Dark” chapter was. It was pretty obvious to me that Tolkien was writing more of a classic children’s story with “The Hobbit” and a Magnum Opus with “Lord of the Rings”, and it seems almost more a convenient relationship that the two are even linked.
I can certainly agree with a creative process where “The Hobbit” is padded up a bit to make it fit better with the previous film blockbuster. Still I’m curious on HOW much padding can be added before the whole story capsizes. Certainly it would be wise to add a bit more gravity to the “Magic Ring” that is viewed as a quaint magic trinket in “The Hobbit”, and a malevolent force in “Lord of the Rings” (note that Gollum’s back story, he kills his cousin after just getting a brief glance of the One Ring, but Bilbo just sees it as a bit of treasure to be had), and with all the details Tolkien puts in his stories, as well as things that have been written about that time in Middle Earth in other works can easily fill two films.
Still when you read “The Hobbit”, its a quaint, and simple weekend read, and very suitable to young children…meanwhile “The Lord of the Rings” is dark, dense, and at times rambling with details. I wonder if a third Hobbit movie can be made without heavily watering down the story, as there really isn’t THAT much story to begin with…and maybe this is just a ploy to put more butts in seats and sell more DVDs.
Oh well, I’ll end on a light note:
But then, if they’re going more into Silmarillion (or however the hell you spell it) territory, they could fit quite a bit more than just three movies in. Unfortunately, that’s like reading a history textbook, and only the cold-stone-hardest of hardcore geeks (ie, Peter Jackson) would get anything from it…
Never read The Silmarillion, but most of it exists BEFORE the time of the Hobbits, it would be strange to attempt to shoehorn much those stories into the movie besides some minor asides, like Legolas’ mention of Morgoth in connection to the Balrog.
I expect he’ll pad it out a bit by expanding on Gandalf’s battle with Sauron in Dol Guldur, and drawing on sources from “Unfinished Tales” (like “The Quest of Erebor”) and maybe even from “The Silmarillion”. There are some events that are only mentioned or glossed over that could easily be expanded to fill time without detracting from the main story, and some (like Dol Guldur) have the added benefit of tying it in to the LOTR trilogy more completely than the original book.
I like how they say it’s “starring” Nesbitt — he’s playing Bofur. Now, everything I’ve seen him in, he’s quite good, but Bofur is not one of the major players…
Could just be dumb marketing. I remember recording Krull on some movie channel. My crude recording had a few mins before and after the feature started and it introduced the film like this: “Next up! “Krull”, starring Liam Neeson!”
LOL Neeson wasn’t even one of the main characters, hey but he had a few lines of dialog and went on to become a huge movie star while the others have just had minor roles since, so ROLL WITH IT! 😀
Yes, there are the Silmarillion, the appendices to The Lord of the Rings, and so forth. I’ll agree with you that The Hobbit is, by itself, just a good tale, but as a Tolkien fan, I’m looking forward to seeing what Jackson can do. Tolkien was primarily a professor (rah, rah, go team!), and his stories do, at times, sound like an academic text, but Jackson finds the power in each scene.
In agree. I don’t know if I could ever bring myself to read the trilogy again just because its SO DAMN DRY! Meanwhile the movies come off both vibrant and exciting, but also still very true to the source materiel.
Also LotR was just as much an academic exercise of combining many classical story elements into contemporary fiction. It shouldn’t surprise anybody that in his day he was one of the world’s greatest Authority of Beowulf and other middle-English tales.
my money is on the third movie is going to be used to give more scope to the final big battle, which if memory serves, is a pretty big deal. also, Bilbo gets back home and has all kinds of hassels with the other Hobbits, which is a nice way of winding down the tale in a light hearted fashion.
also, i read Tolkein’s essay on LOTR and The Hobbit and how he came to write them the way he did. he essentially just wrote along, without an outline or any real idea what was coming next, which accounts, he admits, for their somewhat rambling nature. when read like that i find the stories more fun, because you can see the Professor’s thought process at work as he’s discovering the characters right along with the reader.
The Battle of Five, er, Seven Armies?