Suggestions for the Hobbit script?

[Lalwendë]

Originally Posted by zxcvbn

1.Remove Beorn. The Beorn chapter with the serving animals is a bit Bombaldil-ish and may spoil the seroius tone of the film. Make it so that the Eagles take Bilbo and Co directly to the Mirkwood entrance. Instead of Beorn, the arrival of the Eagles will be the turning point in the Battle of Five Armies.

I'm afraid that the whole tone of The Hobbit is Bombadil-ish, so if they want to avoid that then they'd better not make the films at all!

[Sauron the White]

Lalwende - I think you have a point in that the tone of HOBBIT is different than LOTR being that it was written as a childs book. I am not so sure I would compare that to Bombadil or describe the books as Bombadilish in tone. For myself, and I imagine others, Bombadil is one of the least favorite creations of JRRT and we were happy to see him excised from the films. For myself, I always loved HOBBIT and never felt the uneasieness or just plain being weirded out the way that Bombadil hits me.

[William Cloud Hicklin]

It's perhaps relevant that, when Tolkien rewrote the first chapters of The Hobbit to match the LR, a person to whom he showed it commented, 'it's not bad, but it's not The Hobbit!' Precisely. An effort to 'darken' it or whatever would be a betrayal of the spirit of the book.

[Lalwendë]

Originally Posted by William Cloud Hickli

It's perhaps relevant that, when Tolkien rewrote the first chapters of The Hobbit to match the LR, a person to whom he showed it commented, 'it's not bad, but it's not The Hobbit!' Precisely. An effort to 'darken' it or whatever would be a betrayal of the spirit of the book.

Very, very good point!

Now davem read me some of this stuff from History of the Hobbit and it really was dreadful - and it's not often something Tolkien wrote was that bad, is it

[William Cloud Hicklin]

And if Tolkien himself couldn't pull it off, how could anyone else?

[Aganzir]

Good points, William Cloud Hickli & Lalwendë.

I like the Hobbit the way it is, but I've always felt some kind of distance to it- how it portrays the elves, for example. As I don't wait much from the movie anyway, I'm curious to see what they could do to the elves. I find this actually a bit strange, as in the Lotr films I practically hated everything they had changed / tried to make better.

Though it will surely be interesting to see how all those movie elf fans, many of whom haven't read the books, react if the elves suddenly change from something like Bloom-Legolas & Tyler-Arwen to those funny, cheerful creatures as in the Hobbit.

[Sauron the White]

I would agree that JRRT knew his work better than anyone else. His work was writing about Middle-earth. But then I read this from Mr. Hicklin

And if Tolkien himself couldn't pull it off, how could anyone else?

Are we saying that JRRT was beyond the powers of every other individual who lived in that regard? In the past I have criticized some here who seem to take an almost reverential attitutde or religious fervor regarding JRRT - and now this seems to partially support that suspicion.

Is it possible that someone could improve upon JRRT works? Yes. He was a man - a human being. He was not one of his gods.