|
I'm confident of one thing, and reasonably sure of a second.
1) If I base my enjoyment of the film 'adaptation' of The Hobbit on its faithfulness to the book, then I will hate it and begin making my list of complaints to beat P.J. over the head with should I ever have the misfortune to meet him.
2) If I enjoy 'The Hobbit' as a film on its own rights, I will probably think the films are highly entertaining and better than a great deal of what graces the cinema screen in the coming years.
I think there is absolutely no room to hope for P.J. to be faithful to either the specifics of character/plot or more broadly to the spirit of Tolkien's middle earth. For all his self-proclaimed fandom, he subverts anything written at the hand of the maestro to his least 'artistic' whim.
The man who couldn't understand how vital it was that Elessar, Imrahil and Eomer win the battle of the Pelennor fields by force of will and arms and not via 'magic green dead people,' certainly won't understand the magic of the Hobbit as written work.
However I'm sure he'll make something quite fun out of Hobbits, Dwarves, some PMS elves and a dragon. It just won't be the Hobbit, it will be Peter Jackson's Hobbit.
|