[Lalwendë]

Originally Posted by William Cloud Hicklin

It's not that I or most anyone would object to humor in the movies- adaptations of what is after all a very funny book in places.

The issue is the WRONG KIND of humor- as stated above, "stupid American movie humor." And that's the problem. Tolkien's humor was dry, puckish, donnish, clever- even when aimed at children it's aimed at *bright* children- PJ's humor belongs with the Farrelly Brothers and Adam Sandler.

This is not in the British humor tradition, nowhere on the Anglospectrum from refined to crude, from Austen to Python to Benny Hill.

(Note on the Pythons- the Trolls' Gandalf-aided argument over how to cook 13 dwarves and a Burrahobbit is actually fairly Pythonesque. But then the 5 British Pythons were all Oxbridge products, after all).

You're wrong about Tolkien's sense of humour, he was fond of being silly and playing pranks, one of them involving stealing a bus, which would have any modern day yobbo marked down as a Twoccer and slapped with an Asbo! People think of him as an old stiff when he wasn't anything of the sort. I've just heard on the TV now about how he and the Inklings would get drunk and read aloud the work of a writer known to produce 'purple prose' while trying not to laugh. Sounds rather like the pub game people play now where they read 50 Shades of Grey aloud and have to get a round in if they start laughing.

There's plenty of silliness in The Hobbit aimed at all children (no need to be snooty about bright and thick children, they all get it, he wrote it for his own kids after all who were nothing special, it wasn't a pre-designed product targeted at the hothoused offspring of Islington intellectuals, just some fun).

What I've seen in the trailers could be straight out of any number of British comedy programmes. That naked goblin is grotesque and the sort of thing you might expect on The League of Gentlemen or The Young Ones. I can also see Simon Pegg using something grim like that. The rabbit sled could be from Wallace and Gromit. Burps and food chucking can be from dozens of things. And those are the only things we've seen so far, so it can't be judged more than this. We have still to see Stephen Fry or how Martin Freeman will no doubt handle the intro scene wonderfully knowing how good he was in The Office (that scene being one of my favourite comedy passages ever written - straight out of Yes, Minister). Even casting my mind back to the LotR films I can only think of one 'joke' that was out of place and that was Gimli's burp.

The burrahobbit joke would actually be more akin to the wordplay of the Two Ronnies or Reeves & Mortimer. The Pythons didn't really 'do' that kind of thing.

But it's a straw man argument to say the humour is wrong because it's 'American' - that type of humour is not 'American', it is also British, and the point is whether it's going to work in the film or not. Whether it is 'American' isn't the point.

Originally Posted by Legate

I think I'd be fine with that. I am not British, so I cannot 100% say I know what British humour is like, but I think I have some basic ideas. Yes indeed, satire, black humour and absurdity is what I think of. They say Czech humour is very similar to British one, and when I think of e.g. the use of black humour, satire or (perhaps in lesser manner for mainstream Czech humour) absurdity, I tend to agree, at least from the Czech part and as far as I have seen or heard (what comes to my mind from the TV now are the Pythons, Red Dwarf, Rowan Atkinson, Black Books - there is the sort of central line to it which is similar).

But I fail to see the falling of the Goblin on top of the folks as having anything in common with the spirit of the kind of humour I could even remotely connect with The Hobbit. The rabbit sled is just weird. Of course, the rabbit sled is taken out of context in the trailer, but it gives the impression that it is just like in, I don't know, Ice Age where the folks are sliding down that icy tunnel. Nothing wrong about that, but does it belong into The Hobbit? With Radagast? If there was a similar thing with Bilbo falling down the crack to Gollum's cave, sure. But he's the hobbit. Radagast is not. Simple as that.

Yes, the Goblin thing is probably not what you'd expect after reading The Hobbit, though it's perfectly in tune with British humour. Which is what I'm arguing - that's not specifically American humour so to use that argument against it is a straw man (and I am sick and fed up with the rest of the world assuming all our comedy is twee Richard Curtis stuff when that comprises about 0.001% of it).

And it also fits in with geek humour being grim and unexpected, and the geek audience needs to be won, like it or not (what I'm hinting at here is please do expect even more OTT things).

The rabbit sled fits perfectly though. It's both very silly and very weird. And that's weird as in otherworldly, not as in out of place. I rather like it in conjunction with Sylvester McCoy who was the nuttiest Doctor Who. And I think that's something that the younger market who will understand goblin tossing will likely not go for. So quite brave, too, to think up something like that.

Originally Posted by Legate

I'm not presuming to judge whether accents are natural or not, they sound fake. To me. Like when all the Dwarves in all the fantasy games or who knows what have these fake Scottish accents or who knows what. As for "posh ones" - I have no idea what you mean by "posh", when you say "posh", I imagine the overdone "high-class" English (thinking the classic over the top versions of My Fair Lady professors). I prefer normal English. Something in the limits. The stuff we hear from most people in most normal movies. Average.

Well average is what you hear from Fili and Kili. From one line I've no inkling of which of the dozens of northern accents they're trying to do, but it sounds fairly normal to me. As does Ian McKellen, who still retains his accent. And Sean Bean, who failed to disguise his as Boromir. Richard Armitage also retains his normal voice which is generic East Midlands - gently northern sounding, not as rich as say Sean Bean's.