Tolkien: A Discussion (This has SPOILERS for the book and movies

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LogicfromLogic

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Seriously, if you do not want to hear/read spoilers, click back or something, I don't know just get out of this thread. If you ruin it for yourself, this is not my fault. Yee be warned.


Anyways, onto the subject(s). Now, I have to say, I am just about one of the more harder people to please when it comes to people making movies from books. so yes, I like the images of Fili and Kili because I find them attractive.

And that's a big problem for me.

Dwarves aren't supposed to be attractive, they are meant to be rugged people. Fili and Kili were blonde, and I'm not even going to mention to you guys about that entire rant of mine. Or the rest of it, because I'll be writing constantly, just bitching about something that nobody cares about or would just find to be drone and well, even I admit, annoying.

I really enjoyed the books, The Hobbit the most though. I really got into the character Bilbo from the get go, he seemed like a character that had more depth to him than, well, any of them had. And I loved how the book itself went; I can still remember how I first visioned the woods of Mirkwood to be, and the movie didn't even touch the waters (the irony) with it. The way I saw it, it felt more magical than confusing to me, scary yet it wrapped your interest in such a wonderfully worded place. Made you really feel like you were there. And the elf king, I can't even start to explain how I felt with that character. The entire trek had me at the edge of my seat, and it was the book, not the movie, that made me mourn Fili and Kili, and some for Thorin as well. The movies didn't even give me that tug on my heartstrings and it kind of made me disinterested in the characters, I guess this is because I am a die hard for books more than I ever will be for a movie.

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien himself was a very interesting person. Many probably already know this, but C.S Lewis and him were very good friends outside of their books. He was born in Bloemfontein, South Africa in 1892. He served in the British Army and fought in what was known back then as 'The Great War'. He was a writer (obviously) and a professor at the University of Leeds, and was the youngest professor there.

I got a lot of that off of Wiki, his story is really quite amazing to me.


What was your favourite book from Tolkien?
What did you think of the movies?
 
I loved the LOTR movies; they had to change things from the books which I loved equally, but still kept the integrity of the story.

I was very disappointed in the Hobbit movies; they stuffed half the silmarilion into a simple children's book in order to blow it into three movies and get gritty stuff for the adult audience. Also, like Logic pointed out, they tampered with designs and even added a character and brought back a heartthrob to play up the attractive characters/romance because sex sells.

I think I could appreciate the hobbit movies more if the book was also a gritty adventure with battles and armies and evil forces and curses and intrigue, but it was the opposite; a simple children's book about a hobbit who went on an adventure involving a dragon, a lost kind, and treasure. They should have just made it an original addition, or made The Silmarillion or Unfinished Tales as a movie instead of trying to turn Hobbit into something it isn't.

I wanted so badly to love it, but I just... Can't.
 
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you know

i am in the minority in liking the hobbits

this clip is why:






that. that right there?

thats LOTR all the way.

hobbit still has it. :)

band of brothers, camaraderie, and being decent folks.

had a man tear when i saw that in theaters.
 
For the Hobbit movies I end up having to make a distinction I do for a lot of adaptations. It's really not that fair to judge it wholly based on how faithful it was to the original, because different mediums call for different storytelling tools and allow for differing things. When it comes to adaptations I work to divorce my inner nerd from the movie watching experience, and I end up with two things I rate it on: how good the movie (or show or whatever) was on its own merits, and how good of an adaptation it was. I do this because I know that most adaptations are not very faithful to the source, so being in full fan nerd mode would just ruin the experience for me. I leave that sort of comparing and contrasting until after I'm done watching the thing.

So, for the Hobbit movies I have to say that as movies they're pretty good, they're entertaining and worth watching at least once. Totally ignoring the source material, they stand alone as at least decent movies. Then, on the other hand, they aren't particularly good as an adaptation. Lots of extraneous bits added in to pad it out, and there's a fine argument to be made about how that detracts from the main story. Some people will care a lot more about the adaptation fidelity than others; those who care a lot will probably be dissatisfied with the movies, but people who don't care much or never even read the book will probably like them. Personally, I don't have a huge amount of caring for the adaptive fidelity of the Hobbit, so I enjoyed the movies.
Minibit said:
I think I could appreciate the hobbit movies more if the book was also a gritty adventure with battles and armies and evil forces and curses and intrigue, but it was the opposite; a simple children's book about a hobbit who went on an adventure involving a dragon, a lost kind, and treasure. They should have just made it an original addition, or made The Silmarillion or Unfinished Tales as a movie instead of trying to turn Hobbit into something it isn't.
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Peter Jackson talked about this in some interview thing. He said that if he'd made the Hobbit before Lord of the Rings then he probably would have made a movie for children, because as you say the source material was meant for children. Since he made Lord of the Rings first though, he felt that he had to stick close to the same tone of those movies because doing otherwise would have caused major tonal dissonance for viewers. I agree that there were other ways it could have been done, but I don't think the Hobbit was ruined because of the tone shift. I think he made the right call on keeping the tone in line with LOTR, because it definitely would have been awkward and weird to take the gritty adventure world of LOTR and then make it a happy kid-friendly place in a prequel. Honestly it was also kind of awkward going the other way in the books too, going from a children's story land to harrowing journey and a major war between good and evil.
 
As a huge fan of Tolkien I can say I enjoyed both movies but both for different reasons. The Hobbit movies as an adaption were better then I thought the would be. The Hobbit compared to other LOTR stuff is like a fairy tale, albeit a very well written one, and I expected nothing less than a Hollywood action blockbuster type movie. Thankfully it was what I got and I was able to enjoy it as such. On the other hand the LOTR trilogy was meant to be more of a faithful adaption to the book, and again I feel like thats what we got. I could be nit-picky and complain about the massive amount of lore they had to leave out, or the few things they added her and there, but that would be pointless. I grew up on those movies, thoroughly enjoying them, and feel like they are a better movie adaption than anything else I have ever seen.
 
I liked The Silmarillion
 
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Razilin said:
you know

i am in the minority in liking the hobbits

this clip is why:






that. that right there?

thats LOTR all the way.

hobbit still has it. :)

band of brothers, camaraderie, and being decent folks.

had a man tear when i saw that in theaters.
Click to expand...
I totally get where you're coming from; lots of people loved the reminiscence of LOTR in those movies; that moment, the sweeping vistas, some similar character roles filled, Legolas and Gandalf were back, etcetera. I'm not denying they kept the tone of LOTR; I'm kind of complaining about it. @Jorick explained why, and I pretty much knew most of those reasons already; they had to keep the audience and tone from LOTR, etcetera, and the salesperson in me totally gets it and supports the decision. But the fan in me who read Hobbit as a child and LOTR as a teen while the movies were coming out, I felt disappointed. Hobbit has a great story to tell, it's charming and funny and has its moments of suspense and danger. The characters are memorable and relatable, and Jackson & co. definitely had the skills to pull all that off on the silver screen. I also know that "Silmarillion: the Movie" and "Unfinished Tales: the Movie", as titles wouldn't garner nearly the recognition "The Hobbit" did.

Again, I'd like to stress I understand why they made the changes, and I agree that the movie looked at without the book is entertaining and interesting and awe-inspiring; thing is I learned to read on books like Hobbit and Narnia, the Hobbit is very dear to my heart and I can't walk past a big "Hobbit" play times board, ""Hobbit" posters, "Hobbit" opening credits, and then put the book out of my mind.
 
Loved the books in middle school. Loved the movies when my wife got all the extended editions.

Even have a signed copy of the script by the entire cast for the Fellowship of the Ring. It's in a sealed box.

The Hobbit movies aren't bad, just not something I can read the book and go "I like these too." A little too much addition and CGI for my liking. Still good acting I guess.
 
The Hobbit is one of my favourite books of all time. I love it just a tad bit more than I love The Lord of the Rings Trilogy and The Silmarillion.

The first 40 minutes of the first movie was amazing. It captured the book perfectly: awkward, singing dwarves; Filthy wizard out of nowhere; Awkward, prim-and-proper Bilbo getting his world shaken; Singing, eating; Adventure on the horizon!

Up to the point of meeting the elves, then it... Got weird. The feel got lost. Epicness started getting injected left and right, and while the sub-plot of the Necromancer was neat to see, the tone changed mid-film. Thorin became more of a brooding asshole, the elves came off way too uptight (which, I suppose, was their characterization in the other films, so having them be elsewise would've been strange), so on and so forth. So I guess this is where adaptation decay became a thing.

I suppose the above can be summed up simply by saying that the light-hearted adventure was replaced by the grand scale of The Lord of the Rings, which is what I think a lot of fans went in expecting. Except there was still a little too much adventure movie, which is why they left theatres feeling weird also! The tone of the movie was too off, leaving the entire audience feeling off-kilter.

Though, that's not to say the movies aren't good. They all great film spectacles, if anything! (Though, I do have a thing about the over-reliance on CGI versus more practical effects using back in the original trilogy. Also, woah-- I've said this for another film trilogy...) The acting is also spot on, with amazing scores and sound and brilliant action set pieces.

Also, dat Riddles in the Dark scene. Omgah...


I suppose, as a Tolkien fan, I was slightly disappointed. As a fan of movies, I was pleased. :)
 
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I feel indifferent towards the Hobbit movies. My dad read me the book when I was "knee high to a gopher."

Movie being split into a triplet was a business decision. The thing that annoys me more is throughout the extended editions of Lord of the Rings they found time for almost an hour of straight New Zealand tourism commercials running, but they couldn't fit Tom Bombadil? Seriously? This character was the borderline equivalent of God in Tolkien's works. He easily had the capacity to K.O. Sauron, he was simply too apathetic to do so. He appeared in multiple stories Tolkien wrote. There are tons of theories about him, including ones involving Aslan from fucking Narnia! This character is the type you don't often get to see in fiction: A character so powerful that the only thing stopping them from total world conquest is that they've lived too long and so have become completely apathetic to the whimsy of mortals.

The Hobbit had a chance to rectify that.

Instead we get a detailed love interest from nowhere.

Tom Bombadil? Nah. Lets just stuff a character that didn't exist in there in order to accommodate stereotypical Hollywood demands of storytelling. That won't peeve the fans at all.

You want character insertion done right? Shadows of Mordor did it right. The Hobbit is stumbling about drunkenly trying to find a voice as it's being ripped between Tolkien and modern Hollywood storytelling norms. "What? No! A lady has to be in there! Otherwise the dwarves might be seen as gay, that would be terrible!"

Graghghwaefoajefiaowfjfoaweijfoaiwefawf~

Sorry I hate talking about Hollywood storytelling. It's a sad decrepit joke that pisses on integrity like a prolific alcoholic after winning the jackpot, so predictable that it may as well be a hamster on a treadmill writing out the scripts.

The Hobbit though is like any other humongously budgeted film with a decent cast and writers: It's doing the best with the materials it has whilst balancing the demands of Hollywood and it's doing it in at least a tolerable fashion. It's watchable, the action is great, it has its moments as @Razilin pointed out. It's just not the Tolkien I grew up with, it's being homogenized for the popcorn eating fucktards that still cringe at the idea of change and modernity. Ugh. Blah. Bah humbug!
 
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Brovo said:
I feel indifferent towards the Hobbit movies. My dad read me the book when I was "knee high to a gopher."

Movie being split into a triplet was a business decision. The thing that annoys me more is throughout the extended editions of Lord of the Rings they found time for almost an hour of straight New Zealand tourism commercials running, but they couldn't fit Tom Bombadil? Seriously? This character was the borderline equivalent of God in Tolkien's works. He easily had the capacity to K.O. Sauron, he was simply too apathetic to do so. He appeared in multiple stories Tolkien wrote. There are tons of theories about him, including ones involving Aslan from fucking Narnia! This character is the type you don't often get to see in fiction: A character so powerful that the only thing stopping them from total world conquest is that they've lived too long and so have become completely apathetic to the whimsy of mortals.

The Hobbit had a chance to rectify that.

Instead we get a detailed love interest from nowhere.

Tom Bombadil? Nah. Lets just stuff a character that didn't exist in there in order to accommodate stereotypical Hollywood demands of storytelling. That won't peeve the fans at all.

You want character insertion done right? Shadows of Mordor did it right. The Hobbit is stumbling about drunkenly trying to find a voice as it's being ripped between Tolkien and modern Hollywood storytelling norms. "What? No! A lady has to be in there! Otherwise the dwarves might be seen as gay, that would be terrible!"

Graghghwaefoajefiaowfjfoaweijfoaiwefawf~

Sorry I hate talking about Hollywood storytelling. It's a sad decrepit joke that pisses on integrity like a prolific alcoholic after winning the jackpot, so predictable that it may as well be a hamster on a treadmill writing out the scripts.

The Hobbit though is like any other humongously budgeted film with a decent cast and writers: It's doing the best with the materials it has whilst balancing the demands of Hollywood and it's doing it in at least a tolerable fashion. It's watchable, the action is great, it has its moments as @Razilin pointed out. It's just not the Tolkien I grew up with, it's being homogenized for the popcorn eating fucktards that still cringe at the idea of change and modernity. Ugh. Blah. Bah humbug!
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I wanna address Bombadil; they discuss it in the commentary/extra features, and the Bombadil arc was cut for decent reasons; when you're making a movie, you have to think about run time and budget and flow and tone and things that work in a book don't necessarily come together as easily on screen. I'd encourage you to find that bit of the features and listen with an open mind. I love the Bombadil arc, but the movies are still great without it. :)
 
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Minibit said:
I don't wanna address Bombadil; they discuss it in the commentary/extra features, and the Bombadil arc was cut for decent reasons; when you're making a movie, you have to think about run time and budget and flow and tone and things that work in a book don't necessarily come together as easily on screen. I'd encourage you to find that bit of the features and listen with an open mind. I love the Bombadil arc, but the movies are still great without it. :)
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On the subject of not having enough time, I have to disagree with you. With how long the movies are in the first place a 15 min scene is almost nothing. They could of fit in Bombadil if they tried.
 
TheGDeer said:
On the subject of not having enough time, I have to disagree with you. With how long the movies are in the first place a 15 min scene is almost nothing. They could of fit in Bombadil if they tried.
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It was more than time constraints, I agree with you there; again, I encourage you to find he interview, paraphrasing won't do it well enough.
 
Cut down the fucking fight scenes by 5-10 minutes per film, bamm BOMBADIL.
 
I rather get rid of the fight scenes tokkiebs book were about the journey and the setting around them to me. The fights were briefly eritten not awfully detailed
 
Hellis said:
The fights were briefly eritten not awfully detailed
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Part of this is also just plain old fashioned pacing control. No fight scene should last for ages and ages and ages, it loses tension.
 
Hellis said:
Cut down the fucking fight scenes by 5-10 minutes per film, bamm BOMBADIL.
Click to expand...
I gotta say I lol'd at this


But even though bombadil had a RACKS wife, I think I would want to see more battles


Shocking I know

But my wife asked me once

"What would you rather see? A fight or a threesome"

And I was like

"Woman why must you make me choose?!?!?!"
 
Thsts becouse you are a doctor. You f.dont see a fight you see Money. :D
 
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