Will The Hobbit do damage to the books?

[Morthoron]

Originally Posted by Lotrelf

I'm one of those who first saw movies (both LotR & The Hobbit) and then read the books(haven't finished the Hobbit yet). I felt disappointed from the movie's part. Movies actually dragged a lot in Hobbit. I felt disappointed about LotR too, but the movies are good and PJ proves himself to be true to Tolkien's world, if not his story, completely. The Hobbit book is simple and sweet. A Children's Tale. But I didn't see that simplicity in the first movie (haven't seen the second one).

The most damning critique of Peter Jackson came from Christopher Tolkien himself:

"Tolkien has become a monster, devoured by his own popularity and absorbed into the absurdity of our time," Christopher Tolkien observes sadly. "The chasm between the beauty and seriousness of the work, and what it has become, has overwhelmed me. The commercialization has reduced the aesthetic and philosophical impact of the creation to nothing. There is only one solution for me: to turn my head away."

"They eviscerated the book by making it an action movie for young people aged 15 to 25," Christopher says regretfully. "And it seems that The Hobbit will be the same kind of film."

The full interview from Le Monde can be read here:

http://www.worldcrunch.com/culture-s.../#.UyjGfKhdXTp

I don't agree with apologists who make the imbecilic claim that film is a different medium than books, and therefore license must be allowed for offering the story as a visual presentation. This half-hearted defense for making a mockery of a movie does not stand up to intelligent scrutiny.

Time compression is a necessary fact of movie adaptations; one can't expect to cram all the minutiae from a book into a series of films (even with films bloated to 3+ hours). However, Jackson does not remove elements of the original story merely to offer a tighter plot, he adds inane fan-fiction in place of what was edited out, he amps up gratuitous violence and CGI effects to ludicrous levels, and, worst of all, demeans characters and dumbs down significant elements of the story so that only the oblivious would appreciate the obvious.