The Hobbit: An Extraneous Journey

[Nogrod]

Originally Posted by Morthoron

And Thorin does not age. Balin ages, but not Thorin. Thorin, the oldest of the dwarves, looks absolutely the same from the Battle of Azanulbizar up to the Quest for Erebor. Don’t let the few wisps of grey in his beard fool you, Thorin has a picture up in his attic just like Dorian Gray.

You must remember one additional fact while looking for an explanation to that. A Hollywood blockbuster movie needs to sell - and you do it by posing hot characters teenagers can fall in love to. Thirteen old and wary dwarves doesn't sound like a recipe to that - so let's sex up their leader / the plot hero (and some others while doing it).

Just ask yourselves what a millenia-old Legolas would have looked in the LotR (even if the elves don't age as people do, but I think you would have seen the time in some way).

[William Cloud Hicklin]

Originally Posted by Nogrod

You must remember one additional fact while looking for an explanation to that. A Hollywood blockbuster movie needs to sell - and you do it by posing hot characters teenagers can fall in love to. Thirteen old and wary dwarves doesn't sound like a recipe to that - so let's sex up their leader / the plot hero (and some others while doing it).

Uh-huh. And that's rather the problem. Pandering is pandering, no martter how "necessary."

[Morsul the Dark]

Just out of curiousity, why would you see the film? You all have very strong opinions on Jackson and seem to detest any change and dismiss anything as minor as a chracter looking different as sacrilage and pandering.

Why bother? Quite honestly I'm happy you enjoy the books as we all do, but I think that's your joy lies let the movies be you'll be happier for it.

[Morthoron]

Originally Posted by Morsul the Dark

Just out of curiousity, why would you see the film?

Why bother? Quite honestly I'm happy you enjoy the books as we all do, but I think that's your joy lies let the movies be you'll be happier for it.

I am dragged by my wife and daughter to see all sorts of dreadful films. In this instance, I merely returned the favor.

I've gone to see hundreds of substandard movies - ones I've quickly forgotten, ones I've despised, and a few I've actually fallen asleep watching. It won't stop me from going to the movies. So why wouldn't I go to see The Hobbit?

Originally Posted by Morsul the Dark

You all have very strong opinions on Jackson and seem to detest any change and dismiss anything as minor as a chracter looking different as sacrilage and pandering.

I don't detest just any change, thank you, I detest stupid and unnecessary changes - in any film. I don't consider a change "minor" when it proves jarring and inconsistent, reducing the immersive nature of the film. You may blithely overlook such glaring inconsistencies, but some folks are just more tolerant of inanity.

I am very critical of any movie I go to, particularly of films based on books I have read and loved. Sadly, the only films I shall be able to see in my lifetime based on my favorite literary work are the ones now controlled by Peter Jackson. I went to see Ralph Bakshi's animated version of The Lord of the Rings even though it received scathing reviews, and I watched the abysmal Rankin Bass cartoon series as well. I try to take from each what I can. I liken it to certain albums with only a few good songs - I still own the albums.

The saddest thing about Jackson's productions is that the technology, the cinematography, the sets, the physical features and the feel of Middle-earth are all there, including a ridiculous budget to ensure that the essence of Arda is captured on screen. But what does Jackson do but squander this enormous wealth of technology and expertise on dwarf belches and troll snot.

As I said in my review, had this remained as Guillermo del Toro envisioned a two film set, the production, even with PJ at the helm, would've been amazing (parts of it were indeed amazing). It's just PJ and Phillipa Boyen have a manic penchant for writing when they have no business being writers, particularly when forcing doltish fan-fic plots into Tolkien's work, and stretching a 19 chapter book to torturous lengths just to self-aggrandize their superfluous efforts. There was a good 45 minutes to an hour worth of film that was completely unnecessary in TH:AUJ, but I enjoyed the other 2 hours interspersed in with the wretched.

[Morsul the Dark]

Rereading my post I think it sounded snarkier then I meant.

What I meant simply is Peter Jackson has proven this is what he does time and time again. Was just wondering why anyone would go to something they more than likely won't like.

Ah yes my wife often drags me to awful movies on outtings so I know the feeling.

Likely said I didn't mean it as an attack just a question.

I think I'm the opposite end of the spectrum as a moviegoer I'm probably at most 2 notches above lowest common denominator

[William Cloud Hicklin]

In my case, how the heck can I pan a movie I haven't seen? It's not much of an argument to say "I haven't seen it, but I know it stinks."

[Annatar]

Er...

Erebor is now so grandiose a dwarvish kingdom, so ornately gilt and overlaid, that Moria looks like a shabby tin shack in comparison.

Of course - we only see Moria after it's long been deserted and abandoned, and we only see Erebor (in this film) at the zenith of its wealth and grandeur shortly before Smaug shows up. Of course one is going to look prettier than the other.

And Goblin Town? There is a half-hour long movie version of “Chutes and Ladders” underground, with more bridgework than that completed by every dentist in recorded history.

I have a video game of the Hobbit (made in 2003) that looks very much like the Goblin Town of the film. It's not like they made it out of nowhere.

The GoblinKing is larger than a troll (why have Uruk-hai when Sauron could breed an army of pachydermic GoblinKings?)

Because he's immensely old and fat and being so doesn't really make a good soldier for your war?

and the elephantine goiter swinging about its neck is probably due to Jackson’s inherent need for over-the-top accoutrements (like the WitchKing’s ridiculously oversized mace).

Really? I thought it was to show how old and fat he was and to better distinguish him.

The stone giants (primeval Transformers) make an appearance with so much destructive mayhem that one wonders how the Misty Mountains were not renamed the Misty Rubble Quarry.

They appeared in the book, people! What do you think a 'stone giant' is if not a giant made out of stone?

Never accused of subtlety, Jackson hammers the audience with an onslaught of combat scenes and then hits them upside the head with slapstick comedy: belching dwarves, snotty trolls, and psychedelicized wizards addled by mushroom ingestion. The clever nature of the humor imbued in the story with philological care by Tolkien can only be seen in brief snatches in Jackson’s film, before it is buried in tumbling dwarves, collapsing bridges and skewered orcs.

That's what Bilbo Baggins Hates appeared in the book! The trolls appeared in the book! The Great Goblin appeared in the book! How can you say that the (pretty good) comedy was all made up?

Ergo, Jackson, a fan-fiction writer at heart and prone to sanguine bouts of dizzying violence, has decided to completely rewrite The Hobbit in his own image and likeness, relying on scripting culled from back when he was a struggling director spitting out B-grade horror flicks with plenty of camp, buckets of blood and enough gore to fill an abbatoir.

Really? That's all in the film?

Where did my buckets of blood and gore go to? That's what the trailers were all about!

Oh, and how dare Jackson not make his own interpretation of The Hobbit. He should have copied it word by word and not, y'know, lovingly turned single lines into detailed scenes.

[Morsul the Dark]

Originally Posted by William Cloud Hicklin

In my case, how the heck can I pan a movie I haven't seen? It's not much of an argument to say "I haven't seen it, but I know it stinks."

So you went into The Hobbit intending to hate it.