Serving animals in HOBBIT film

[William Cloud Hicklin]

The common folk that you so harshly describe are the same people who keep society functioning by going to work each day, paying their taxes, raising their families and providing goods for our pantries.

And Michelangelo's work at St Peter's and the Sistine Chapel was made possible, ultimately, by the tithes of millions of illiterate peasants. Does that mean he was working to please them? Of course not.

I am in my late 50's and have been following film closely for some 45 years now and have never seen anything like that before. I wonder if you appreciate the rarity of that convergence?

Perhaps you've forgotten Lawrence of Arabia? Ben-Hur? The Sound of Music? Dr Zhivago? All much better films- and all of them, incidentally, very heavily altered from their sources. Again, I don't argue with the need for adaptation- but adaptation must be sensitive to the spirit of the original. Reading Lawrence's Seven Pillars of Wisdom, it's clear that Lean, while altering or fabricating virtually every incident, "got" Lawrence and understood what he was all about. Not so PJ.

Anyway, you're trying to argue a point by claiming that 1 + 0 + 0 is three. It's just one. The opinions of film critics are worth paying attention to, even as a basis for disagreement; but box-office figures as a measure of quality are worthless. Meaningless. Zero. The same, I'm afraid, goes for the Oscars. Do you have any idea how Oscar voting works? How most voters have never seen the films they're voting on? How often ballots are delegated to personal assistants or other lackeys? How so many members of the Academy are not "professionals" in any sense beyond the obvious one that they get paid to work on movies; which does not in itself qualify them as experts in cinematic art (or, in many cases, to tie their own shoes). This is an election in which Anna Nicole Smith was qualified to vote.

As evidence in support of which I offer Exhibit A, just another such convergence within the last decade: Titanic. An eleven-Oscar, boffo box-office turd.

[Sauron the White]

I beg to differ. There are three ways that the film industry looks to see if their films were a success. None of them include the adulation of the book community to see if they kept close enough to the source material.

The three areas the film community respects are
1- box office receipts above and beyond anything else
2- the acclaim of professional critics partly because it can impact #1 and partly because it can and does add to the prestige of a film or even a studio
3- industry and professional awards like the BAFTA's or Academy Awards, again same reason as #1 and 2.

In all three cases, the LOTR films were a rousing success by all three measurements.

Yes, there have been films that hit all three -- and you did mention some. But again, compare that to the number of films issued each year and multiply that by year after year. BEN HUR, LAWRENCE, LOTR - these are rare films and to have such success on all three levels is rare.

your point

And Michelangelo's work at St Peter's and the Sistine Chapel was made possible, ultimately, by the tithes of millions of illiterate peasants. Does that mean he was working to please them? Of course not.

isthe exact opposite of the situation that any filmmaker and any studio finds themselves in. Michaelangelo did NOT need to have the actual love and adulation of those masses of people or even their approval. He needed the approval of a single autocrat - the Pope. He was working for an audience of one. A filmmaker and film studio does not have that luxury.

[William Cloud Hicklin]

The three areas the film community respects are

Why is that relevant to anyone but shareholders? An industry is interested in profit: duh. So is the oil industry, although at least Halliburton isn't disposed to pretend to be making art.

Again: if this tripartite convergence was knockdown, irrefutable evidence of Great Film....explain Titanic.

[Sauron the White]

Why is that important? Because we are talking about film and the making of films is a business more than anything else. That is a simple fact of the real world we all live in. To pretend anything else is folly. Yes, some of it is art. There is a combination of the two. That is why things like critical praise becomes important as well as industry awards for artistic excellence.

Again, you can make fun of the voters or the awards or mock the critics or ridicule the common man but those are the things the industry feels are important. Nobody in the film industry with any power or influence gives a tinkers damn about how faithful source material is to the final product. Nobody.

You can resent that fact. You can rail against it. But you will be akin to the man who stands upon the shore and tries to stop the tide by planting his feet firly into the soggy sand and raising his arms against the powers of the incoming waters.

[William Cloud Hicklin]

And, in addition, I can declare the movies to be commercial pap, bad adaptations, and unworthy of the original.

It doesn't bother me in the least that "nobody in the film industry with any power or influence" cares about making art. It does bother me that in their tinsel hypocrisy they pretend to; and that bounders like Peter Jackson feel compelled to spin a line of BS about how 'faithful' they are being yadda yadda yadda. A little honesty would be appreciated here: they did it to make a fast buck.

[Sauron the White]

from WCH

It doesn't bother me in the least that "nobody in the film industry with any power or influence" cares about making art.

Where did you get that from? I hope you are not going to say it came from me. I said its a business first and art second. To say that nobody in the film industry with any power or influence does not care abotu making art is NOT what I said.
I notice that you use quotes around parts of the phrase and then make the rest up to suit your purposes. Is that fair?

It does bother me that in their tinsel hypocrisy they pretend to; and that bounders like Peter Jackson feel compelled to spin a line of BS about how 'faithful' they are being yadda yadda yadda. A little honesty would be appreciated here: they did it to make a fast buck.

If they made it to make a fast buck they certainly took quite a convoluted, complex and highly risky road to get there. And with a film property that up until that time was box office poison and thought my many to be unfilmable by its own author. Fast buck indeed!!!!

And besides..... making a buck ... is that not the decision JRRT himself made when he sold the film rights?

[radagastly]

Originally Posted by WCH:

The ninnies who vote for Oscars, and still less the unwashed hordes of mouthbreathing troglodytes who pack multiplexes, are utterly, completely irrelevant as evidence or ratification of artistic success.

I was casually watching this thread with some amusement, as it's an argument that has railed since the movies were first released, but I couldn't pass this up without saying something. I believe art (any art) without an audience is no longer art. It is at best, therapy and more often, self-gratification. No one person, whether he is a member of the literati or a mouth-breathing troglodyte or an Oxford professor of philology is more qualified than any other one person to determine what is "good" art or not, except on their own behalf. A work of art with an audience of one person may well be a great work of art for that person, but he can hardly discuss it with himself. Someone else must be familiar with it, even if they don't like it for some reason, in order to begin a discussion. Else it would be a monologue. Almost inevitably, such discussions lead to comparisons of said work of art with other works of art, at which point some kind of objective standard must be applied to keep the discussion from spiraling downward. Box-office (for lack of a better word) is a legitimate objective measure of quality. Shakespeare is still played in theatres, hundreds of years after his death, at least partly because his name sells tickets. While that may or may not make him a "better" playwrite than, say, Aristophanes, it does make him more effective. More people have had access to his work, therefore his work has more potential influence on peoples thinking and feeling.

If the earliest movie discussions are still available (I believe much of that was lost in the transition to V-Bulletin), you will see that I have a relatively low opinion of these movies. Many of PJ's decisions seem to fall in direct opposition to Tolkien's themes and sensibilities. There were some things that he got right, like the overall look of Middle-Earth, and some of the casting, especially Bilbo, Gandalf, Theoden and Denethor. There was much that he got wrong, but I've detailed my opinions of that elsewhere. At any rate, enough ranting. I'm afraid that literati conceits are a hot-button for me.

As for the animal servants in the "Queer Lodgings" chapter of The Hobbit, I would certainly hope that they would be included in the film, especially if Beorn is going to change to a bear. Shapeshifters have so often been portrayed as evil, or having ulterior motives or untrustworthy that the loyalty of nature and of these animals, depending on how it is handled, would enhance the strangeness of the scene as well as landing Beorn on the side of good without having to change his gruff personality. Keeping the audience guessing as to his relative goodness or evil would enhance the eucatastrophic triumph of his arrival at the Battle of Five Armies.

[William Cloud Hicklin]

And besides..... making a buck ... is that not the decision JRRT himself made when he sold the film rights?

Perforce. Tolkien found himself in a potentially catastrophic situation in 1968-9: nominally wealthy enough to fall into the top tax bracket (96%), he didn't actually have the cash to pay his monstrous bill from the Inland Revenue. He had to raise some dosh immediately, and UA was interested in providing it.

Having sold out, however, Tolkien was entirely satisfied that (at least during his lifetime) the movies would never be made, which was thoroughly to his liking.

Please don't make the error of confusing Tolkien's "cash or kudos" attitude during the negotiations with Ackerman in the Fifties with what transpired with UA a decade later (an episode on which the published Letters are entirely silent). While in 1958 he was certainly not averse to income, having a meagre retirement looming, he was nonetheless able to walk away when neither Art nor Cash were on offer. In 1968, although indubitably richer, he was also desperate, and in no position to hold out.

[Sauron the White]

Outside of the independent rich the vast vast majority of us needs cash for all kinds of various purposes. Tolkien was no better or no worse in that regard. We all have to pay our taxes and our bills. I still wonder about the ethics of selling somebody something which you feel is actually worthless and which cannot be actualized or realized.