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Originally Posted by Boro
I should note now, when it comes to subjective loving/liking/hating the movies, I don't give my opinion to demand everyone must see and feel about them the way I do. But I do think both sides of the argument overlook a various points. One side thinks anything Jackson creates is the greatest piece of movie making ever, and he always makes the sage movie-decision. The other side thinks Jackson's a hack who doesn't know anything and can't do anything because his life goal was to turn the Lord of the Rings into his own creation.
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I don't think it divides down like that. There are people who hate the films, some who won't even go and see them and yet still think they have anything to say about it. And there are people who enjoyed them, ranging from frothing joy all the way to picking holes in everything yet still saying it was fun. I'm in the latter - and I certainly don't think Jackson's other films are great (that thing with the lawnmower was stupid, King Kong was dull and Heavenly Creatures is over rated).
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Originally Posted by Nogrod
The spirit of Tolkien gets especially beaten in the Hobbit, but even here a disclaimer is to the point. No, "The Hobbit" isn't without problems even as a literary work as it walks the thin line between a funny children's story and a more "serious" prequel to what happened afterwards... I know it was written first and the whole saga and the universe came afterwards - but despite that, I see it still as a story struggling to balance itself between a children's story and and an adult-tale. Like the movie which has those kind of dark and gory battle-scenes that are clearly meant to look "realistic" and thus bad - and the slapstick-combos fex. in the Goblin King's Hall with all the "funny stuff" involved in the fight and flight...
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What exactly is this 'spirit' though? The Hobbit is a children's book that had no place in the legendarium and Tolkien later tried to force it to fit, and even admitted that he couldn't do it. Recalling something Davem said years back, if you sit and examine the text, it really does not fit in easily with the other works. There's a constant conflict of tone between outright silliness and menace (and really, the film does echo this discordancy). And there's the authorial interjections which let's face it sound like a children's nanny having her two-pennorth. And the way it is so episodic with little to no character development.
All of these things could be awful criticisms but it's a kids' book, and it is no different to Narnia, or The Gruffalo, or Stig Of The Dump in that respect. And as a now seasoned viewer of adaptations of kids' books one thing I can say is that
all of them need to be beefed up for the screen, even if intended to be viewed by pre-schoolers. Really, it was a lose-lose situation as far as attracting the very critical viewer was concerned! Jackson could either build on a sketchy story and risk criticism, or he could be highly faithful but produce a thin, sketchy sort of thing.
I took it as a given that the story would be souped-up and my critical eye focuses on whether the additions are coherent or not. Azog is the main weak point as it doesn't seem to fit, and I have some concerns about the Elves' motivations (but I suspect they will be covered eventually), but the rest of it is perfectly coherent as a story and in regard to the characters. Certainly with character development the film is an improvement on the text for an adult reader/viewer (the horror!) It might not all be to my taste, but it does mostly work as a story and the story of The Hobbit is
most definitely there, but with knobs on.