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Originally Posted by Sir Kohran
However I don't think the 'talking'/serving animals should be included, for the same reason that the Elves should not sing 'Tra la la lally' - it's not only silly but inconsistent with what LOTR has established. Lets' face it, most if not all of the audience will be seeing the movie because they enjoyed the LOTR films, and therefore they will expect TH to 'fit' with that, and so that's what the director will do. And I don't think it'll be a bad thing either. I love TH as a standalone work but it just doesn't quite fit with LOTR.
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This is the point (& its also the reason that Tolkien failed to re-write TH 'in the style of LotR') - TH is a children's tale &, as such, contains much that an 'adult' tale cannot get away with. None of those things would be out of place (if handled correctly) in a children's movie, but they wouldn't work in an 'adult' movie aimed at fans of the LotR films.
But, as Tolkien realised, if you try to re-write TH in the style of LotR the whole tale collapses under a weight it was not designed to bear. Lose the whimsy, the fantastic element, the 'tra-la-la-lallying' Elves & 'cockerney' Trolls & you have a different story, because the mood, the spirit, basically the
heart of the tale, will be gone.
Lose the serving animals, the talking eagles & wolves, the camp Elves & comedy trolls & you haven't got The Hobbit we know & love. TH is a fable, a fairy story for the young. This has nothing to do with 'movies & books are different media', its to do with whether greedy adults should be allowed to snatch away childrens' candy, just 'cos they're bigger than them & fancy stuffing their faces.
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Originally Posted by StW
So if we had Tom Bombadil singing his cheery doggerel dressed like a bad hippie dream, then the film would have
- made more money than the $4 billion US dollars that it did ????
- won more than the 17 Academy Awards that it did ?????
- been more critically praised than the high level that it did ????
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That would depend on the skill of the director. Tom has always (to my mind) been one of Tolkien's greatest, not to mention most fascinating & mysterious, characters. The whole Old Forest/Barrow Downs sequence could have been an amazing dream/nightmare sequence which imparted a real sense of strangeness & mystery to movies which lacked anything of the kind.