[Sauron the White]

Both replies have an amount of truth in them. It is very hard for me to find fault with the thoughts of davem in saying

They had the complete rights to LotR & still messed the whole thing up. Why? Because they thought they could tell Tolkien's story better than Tolkien could, that they could tell a better story by chopping huge chunks of Tolkien's original & replacing them by trivial, nonsensical drivel. That being the case, even if they did get access to the Sil/HoM-e/UT material what makes you think they wouldn't do the same thing?

It is very hard to argue with the historical record. Yes, Jackson certainly did indeed have the complete rights to LOTR and made some changes. Again, that brings us back to the argument heard thousands of times already about the value of changes, both omissions and additions. I join you in not likeing some of the changes. But I certainly liked others and felt they made for a better film.

Are you correct in that Jackson could do the exact same thing even if he had the rights to expand the story and use more detailed descriptions and dialogue from other sources? Probably. The past is the best predictor of the future.

But again we come back to the debate about the merits of changes. WCH argues that if they want to make two films out of THE HOBBIT, they certainly can do so simply by filming the book as is.

It seems to me that if PJ wants to milk The Hobbit for two movies and doubled revenues, he could merely shoot the book without being forced by time constraints to make cuts. Given the quality of the 'original' material he added to the Rings trilogy,

Again we have the discussion about filming a book - not just the HOBBIT but any book - as a script for a film. Is that wise? It obviously would please some people - the Tolkien purists for one group - but would it make for a good film, or even as good of a film as otherwise could be.

My two cents are that I would hope Jackson - or any filmmaker - would include as much of HOBBIT as possible without excluding much save anything which would detract from the film or story. In that I would include the serving animals of Beorn who are just too jarring for my tastes. I also think it would add another facet of the inhabitants of Middle-earth which is not consistent with what the first three films gave us in LOTR and that which hundreds of millions of people are already familiar with.

But it does seem to me that the suggestion to add some other material - say the White Councils meetings and subsequent business with Dol-Guldur and events which bridge H with LOTR - would be welcomed by many viewers of the previous films.

But without the ability to use more accuracte and fuller desctiptions of those events from other sources, are we doomed to failure? Is this not a variation of a self fulfilling prophecy?

"No, we don't want you to use more detailed descriptions because they are not in the material you own. And when you try to wing it on your own by filling in the blanks with your own desctiptions, scenes and dialogue, we will be ready to pounce upon you and throttle you and scream that you got it wrong yet again."



There has to be a better way which takes in both the real world busniess considerations of filmmaking and those who intende to make these films with the legitimate want of the Tolkien print community to have things portrayed as accurate as possible.