The Hobbit

Benedict Cumberbatch might get the role of Bard, if he has a major one. The thought delights me.

Yes, it makes sense for Legolas to be there, but at the same time you know they're just using it as an excuse to shoehorn in Orlando Bloom.

I wonder how it will fit in with the prologue in FOTR.

See, I think that's exactly the wrong attitude to take, and I'm kinda disappointed that they appear to be treating The Hobbit like a Lord Of The Rings prequel. I think they'd be better off trying to distance the Hobbit movie from LOTR.

Tolkien himself made changes to the original hobbit in order to make it fit better with LOTR, why should the filmmakers do any different?

But the books were written with the idea that people would read The Hobbit first and then read The Lord Of The Rings. The movies are reversing that order, and that changes audience expectation.

In the books, the epic length and scope introduced in The Lord Of The Rings was a well-done case of Sequel Escalation. In the film series, however, we're gonna be going from a grand quest to save the world from domination by the forces of evil to a heist plot with the fate of a single kingdom at stake. Seems a little underwhelming.

There's also the fact that The Hobbit fails to do many of the things that prequels are supposed to. It doesn't expand much on The Lord Of The Rings's backstory (the only events of significance are the brief episode with Gollum and the even briefer reference to the fall of the Necromancer), and it doesn't give us much background on the Main Characters from The Lord Of The Rings (Gandalf's the only one who's a major character in both, and his whole air-of-mystery thing keeps much characterization from coming forth in The Hobbit; other than him, The Hobbit focuses on characters who had, at most, very minor appearances in The Lord Of The Rings).

If The Hobbit is treated like a Lord Of The Rings prequel, I worry it will fail at living up to expectations. In my opinion, they'd be much better off trying to establish The Hobbit as its own, unique movie. And it's not like there's not a legitimate basis for that; no matter how much Tolkien tried to Retcon or Hand Wave discrepencies, The Hobbit and The Lord Of The Rings are very different stories.

I also think that making The Hobbit as more of a prequel to the original films won't work as well. Consider the 3 chapters of The Hobbit that Tolkien completely re-wrote in order to make it fit better into the world created by Lord Of The Rings. They told a good story, but they didn't capture the essence of the old story (someone who read it told Tolkien "It's good, but it's not The Hobbit"). I'm not saying the films won't be good, I just think they will have a very different feel.

edited 29th May '11 9:08:40 AM by Fiwen9430

I'm sure Peter Jackson knows what he's doing. My only problem with the film, with what little we know right now, is the fact that the film will lost the Lemony Narrator which Tolkien hated but I feel helps to set The Hobbit as a stand-alone story as well as part of the Middle-Earth mythos.

This.

I think it's possible to have The Hobbit stand alone without distancing it from The Lord Of The Rings. Something like a Legolas cameo won't damage it, I'm sure. It makes sense and contributes a sense of consistency between the films without allowing the trilogy to overburden this new film, or films.

Well they'll be showing the white councils assault on dol Guldor which definitely wasn't shown in the book

I don't recall any confirmation on that. A whole lot of this kind of thing is still speculation.

Besides, the trilogy elaborated on some things that were mentioned in passing and those were integrated naturally with wide audience acceptance, including fans of the book. Gandalf's encounter with Saruman in Fellowship and everything to do with Osgiliath spring to mind.

Books do not translate to movies very efficiently most of the time. Tolkien very overtly wrote for words on a page rather than images on a screen that would be experienced instantly. The Hobbit will require some alterations to make it work as a piece of film. This is unavoidable, but by no means disappointing. It'll be a slightly altered version of the tale, but that's the nature of mythology. In fact, I think it'd please Tolkien himself to see his books — written as mythologies rather than fairy tales — change according to medium and reach wider audiences.

There is no one version of Beowulf or Nibelunglied. If Tolkien's work is to transcend ordinary literature and become contemporary mythology — which it arguably might have begun already — then some degree of alteration is inevitable and perhaps even desirable. Taking The Lord Of The Rings as an example, there were instances where the movies were better than the books. The departure of Boromir is much more personal and emotionally intense on screen with altered dialogue, and many action sequences in the book are after-action reports whereas the films place us in the moment. The films also have a smaller cast of characters to facilitate greater focus and emotional attachment to the main cast.

Not that the films are overly superior, but there were some ways in which the story did improve in the hands of the right people.

The longer and harder people cling to the texts as unalterable canon, the more they'll be disappointed by the final product. All the same, The Hobbit in film won't replace the book you have sitting on the shelf or next to your bed. It'll just be one additional telling of it, and if it keeps the objectives and themes of the text in focus, I'm sure it'll be a good one.

Peter Jackson Confirmed it yesterday via Facebook(curious but still), also it makes sense considering they've cast Sylvester Mccoy to play Radaghast The Brown

I've not been or will I be overly bothered by changes in The Lord Of The Rings or the Hobbit, it's clear they are faithfull in spirit if not absolute text to Tolkiens Middle Earth.

the two parts are apparently entitled "An Unexpected Journey" and "There And Back Again" respectively.

edited 31st May '11 5:18:14 AM by faradayangel

There's no reason to think there ever was a canon version of any of the epics, so it's hardly comparable. "Modern-day mythology" will never be the same sort of thing as preliterate works.

We don't have complete enough records to come to a definitive conclusion on this kind of thing, but the trend of legends being altered according to geographic region more than anything else would suggest that there ultimately were singular starting points for each one. You don't exactly find The Lay Of The Volsungs in one Viking hut and Nibelunglied next door. In cases like this, it becomes clear that The Lay Of The Volsungs is the root mythology and the Nibelunglied is a more southerly adaption. Our root source of Nibelunglied is in fact an Austrian medieval text written at least hundreds of years after the original legend and with Christian values poorly hammered on top of obvious pagan roots.

As for the ancient mythologies compared to contemporary literature, that's very heavily debatable depending on what factors you're looking at. Some more modern works can be very similar in just as many regards. The Lord Of The Rings even has Eddaic poetry in it and consistently uses present-tense verb forms in the general writing. To use an example from the previous paragraph, shall we disqualify Nibelunglied from mythology because it's radically different in form from its Norse roots? Too Christian for what is supposed to be pagan? No doubt that people of the middle ages considered their Nibelunglied in much the same way we consider The Lord Of The Rings — modern mythology. It was written in a way consistent with what they did at the time rather than its Norse Eddaic roots. To disqualify The Hobbit from mythology by your argument would necessitate disqualifying Nibelunglied, and any legend that has changed its text form as a result of crossing cultures. If we did this, we may not have much mythology left. We certainly wouldn't have the Bible. That's more or less a Hebrew poem in its purest form. Your definition of what does and does not make mythology — "too different" — takes our position on mythology as far too unique. All mythology is consistent with its society at the time of writing rather than harking back hundreds or thousands of years. The idea that mythology has to be something in particular in form is doesn't hold up to scrutiny. Personally, I think the clearest mark of a mythology is its social and influential value. Arguing via True Art Is Ancient just ends up making no sense.

I would argue against the term "preliterate" used to describe a group of people who wrote their legends down, too. How much literacy, exactly, is required?

Your argument seems to be implying that The Hobbit is not/cannot be mythology and therefore shouldn't be subject to alteration. I've argued the former, but the latter is pretty self-evidently wrong. You can't translate a book to a film without making alterations. Films have different requirements.

Of course LOTR has similarities to works like Beowulf, since Tolkien was a scholar of early English literature. That's scarcely relevant.

Nor is Nibelunglied, since it was based on existing mythology rather than being an original story (is an adaptation of Nibelunglied based on the poem or on the underlying mythology?). Different sort of thing. In fact the differences between ancient written epics (Virgil) and ancient oral epics (Homer), though subtle, can be highly pertinent. Grouping everything together haphazardly accomplishes nothing but confusion.

And I didn't say a word about should or shouldn't be altered in my two-sentence post. I merely said that they aren't readily comparable.

True Art Is Ancient?

The argument that Nibelunglied can be classed as mythology because it was based on an existing work is pretty much exactly that.Your perspective on this would imply that modern mythology is impossible. If similarities to older mythology aren't enough, but being based directly on older mythology is, there aren't a whole lot of conclusions I can draw beyond this.

edited 31st May '11 6:34:35 PM by MadassAlex

I didn't make any argument about what is or isn't mythology. My point was, and continues to be, that different works are different and can't all be lumped into the same category and treated accordingly.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the Nibelunglied is an adaptation of mythology, while The Lord of the Rings is inspired by mythology; would that be an accurate way of putting it?

Casting news: Luke Evans has been cast as Bard, Stephen Fry as Master of Laketown, Lee Pace as Thranduil, and Benedict Cumberbatch will be voicing and mo-capping (?) Smaug.

Commencing squeeing in 3...2...1...

EEEE BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH AND STEPHEN FRY!!!

...

How do you mo-cap a dragon.

Facial expressions? I guess that a dragon's a lot less human looking than a giant ape, but Ian Mckellen said that he saw Benedict's screen test and said it was "intense, vocally and facially". I could be completely wrong, though.

He's also voicing(playing?) the Necromancer

Cool, the Necromancer is actually going to make an appearance?