Another quibble with PJ movies

[CSteefel]

Originally Posted by The Saucepan Man

But it seems to me that the real sense of suspense, for a book reader who has read The Hobbit, comes from the gradual realisation, during a fairly lengthy chapter, of the true nature of the seemingly innocent magic ring that Bilbo discovered on his travels.

A film viewer who has not read The Hobbit does not have the background knowledge to make such gradual realisation effective as a means of suspense. Even had the prologue merely told of Bilbo's discovery of the Ring, rather than revealing the true nature of the Ring, the film viewer would not have had the familiarity with the back story to make the revelation, when it came, particularly striking. Moreover, given the need to move the story on more quickly, the film would not, in any event, have had the book's luxury of being able to dwell on the revelation.

I still don't understand here, because The Hobbit doesn't reveal anything about the true nature of the Ring. And the prologue recapitulates what you learn in the Hobbit.

But I see the point about moving the story forward more quickly. The movie prologue was certainly good for this, since as I say, the full story is only learned at the Council of Elrond (this was a great section in the book, with its recounting of the full background, while in the movie it focuses only on the issue of who will take the Ring).

[The Saucepan Man]

Originally Posted by CSteefel

I still don't understand here, because The Hobbit doesn't reveal anything about the true nature of the Ring. And the prologue recapitulates what you learn in the Hobbit.

Forgive me. We may be talking at cross-purposes here. I had understood you to be suggesting that the suspense might have been increased to good effect by the contrast arising from the audience first being introduced to the Ring as Bilbo's seemingly innocent discovery and only learning of its true nature during Gandalf's explanation to Frodo at Bag End. To my mind, that would only have had any significant impact if the audience had had some "emotional attachment" to Bilbo's adventure, either because they had previously read The Hobbit or because they had seen a Hobbit film prequel. Otherwise the length of time between the audience's introduction to the Ring and the revelation of its nature is insufficient to have any major impact, in terms of suspense.

As I understand it now, however, you are suggesting that suspense could have been built up to good effect by gradually revealing the true nature of the Ring during the scene between Frodo and Gandalf at Bag End. True, I suppose, but, while The Shadow of the Past is a wonderful chapter and works exceptionally well in literary terms, I do not think that its equivalent as a lengthy scene in the film would have worked well on screen. It would have required long passages of dialogue and, even with flashbacks, this would have affected the pacing of the film (very different from the pacing of a book). And it would simply have taken up far too much time. I think that they spent just about as much time as they could on this scene. The story had to move on and could not do so without the true nature of the Ring being revealed, since this was the reason that the Hobbits set out from The Shire.

[CSteefel]

Originally Posted by The Saucepan Man

Forgive me. We may be talking at cross-purposes here. I had understood you to be suggesting that the suspense might have been increased to good effect by the contrast arising from the audience first being introduced to the Ring as Bilbo's seemingly innocent discovery and only learning of its true nature during Gandalf's explanation to Frodo at Bag End. To my mind, that would only have had any significant impact if the audience had had some "emotional attachment" to Bilbo's adventure, either because they had previously read The Hobbit or because they had seen a Hobbit film prequel. Otherwise the length of time between the audience's introduction to the Ring and the revelation of its nature is insufficient to have any major impact, in terms of suspense.

I had not considered the emotional attachment to Bilbo's adventures--I read the LOTR before The Hobbit and was really gripped by the gradual way in which the story was revealed. I thought you were just referring to the information in the LOTR prologue concerning Bilbo's quest.

You may be right, however, about the difficulty of filming the Shadow of the Past chapter--certainly it would be tricky. And the presentation at the beginning was certainly more compact...