Comments on: HOBBITSES: or HOW EVERY GOOD STORY DESERVES EMBELLISHMENT (as Gandalf teaches us) https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2012/12/hobbitses-or-how-every-good-story-deserves-embellishment-as-gandalf-teaches-us Lollards in the high church of low culture Tue, 31 Dec 2013 16:00:21 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.4.3 By: lonepilgrim https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2012/12/hobbitses-or-how-every-good-story-deserves-embellishment-as-gandalf-teaches-us/comment-page-2#comment-1275388 Tue, 31 Dec 2013 16:00:21 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=23782#comment-1275388 Uncle rools

(except for B.Hateman etc.)

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By: mark sinker https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2012/12/hobbitses-or-how-every-good-story-deserves-embellishment-as-gandalf-teaches-us/comment-page-2#comment-1275368 Tue, 31 Dec 2013 15:05:01 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=23782#comment-1275368 uncle kicks it UP

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By: Tom https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2012/12/hobbitses-or-how-every-good-story-deserves-embellishment-as-gandalf-teaches-us/comment-page-1#comment-1275299 Tue, 31 Dec 2013 11:55:42 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=23782#comment-1275299 I have plenty to say about TDOS (& said a bit on my Tumblr) but I am waiting in case Mark S blogs about it (esp. as his post has a very good title).

re. #15/16 above – PJ has now made the enterprise LESS Quixotic and doomed by rewriting the Arkenstone plot: without it the dwarves can’t unite, so Thorin’s plan now completely pivots on the burglary element – this also resolves & maybe even explains the suicidal lose-king-then-muster-army behaviour pattern Sabina identifies upthread. I like this retcon a lot – it keeps Thorin as obsessive, arrogant, tactically not terribly shrewd, willing to throw Bilbo under a bus when it comes to the Arkencrunch, etc. (all the traits we know and love!) but it significantly reduces the level of deluded idiocy his canonical plan A requires.

(In the book you get the feeling he’s secretly hoping to turn up and find Smaug – who has not been seen for years – dead. Can’t remember whether this figures in the films)

Am I the only person who always pronounced it Sm-OW-g not Sm-OR-g?

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By: Ed https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2012/12/hobbitses-or-how-every-good-story-deserves-embellishment-as-gandalf-teaches-us/comment-page-1#comment-1275294 Tue, 31 Dec 2013 11:25:53 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=23782#comment-1275294 Coming back here post-‘Desolation’ viewing to acknowledge my foolishness @27: Smaug is *fantastic* when you see him.

Overall, it’s much better than the first film, I think: less of the added material feels like Jackson is clock-watching, and the action sequences are more ingenious and more thrilling.

Tom called it right about the structure @4, too. My question now is whether there’s enough material left for the last one.

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By: swanstep https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2012/12/hobbitses-or-how-every-good-story-deserves-embellishment-as-gandalf-teaches-us/comment-page-1#comment-1152630 Thu, 13 Jun 2013 05:19:36 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=23782#comment-1152630 @Tom, 26. Well, I guess the test for your little guy will be whether for him the LOTR ends up feeling like a re-run of The Hobbit or not. My worry, if you recall, was that introducing constant scary orc jeopardy to The Hobbit film not only bloated out the story and lost the more child-like tone of the Hobbit book, but also made it too similar to LOTR, a price that’ll be paid later.

At any rate, An Unexpected Journey works better at home than in a movie theater. It’s quite fun to dip into I’ve found, whereas seeing it in one go brought out the harsh critical knives from me. Treating it as a mini-series seems to me likely to be very productive.

As for Star Wars… I tend to think the following is the right order for young ‘uns to watch ’em: 4, 5, 3, 6 (and just omit the dreadful 1 & 2 altogether – or perhaps use a few things like the pod-racing scene or the battle with Darth Maul as bonus scenes for more background on Annikin and Obi-wan). That is, treat Revenge of The Sith as one big explanatory flash-back immediately after the big revelation about Luke’s parentage.

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By: Ed https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2012/12/hobbitses-or-how-every-good-story-deserves-embellishment-as-gandalf-teaches-us/comment-page-1#comment-1152621 Thu, 13 Jun 2013 04:29:21 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=23782#comment-1152621 Trailer for Part 2: The Desolation of Smaug, here: http://www.hollywood.com/videos/trailer/55017618/the-hobbit-the-desolation-of-smaug-trailer

Looks like fun, but two immediate thoughts strike me:

1) Smaug is like Jaws: better when you can’t see him

2) Is it just me, or does Legolas look disturbingly like King Joffrey?

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By: Tom https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2012/12/hobbitses-or-how-every-good-story-deserves-embellishment-as-gandalf-teaches-us/comment-page-1#comment-1151074 Sat, 08 Jun 2013 22:25:32 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=23782#comment-1151074 Just finished watching – over several nights – w/my 6yo who I read the book aloud to (the film works pretty well as a mini-series) (also I am a Bad Parent as it’s certificate 12 in the UK for its Xtreme Scary Orcs)

Nothing to add to this fascinating discussion except to pick up on something Swanstep said above about youngsters going from this to the LOTR trilogy – I expect this is how mine will do it, and it struck me how the additional material gives this a decent chance of working well (better I suspect than Star Wars, which is the obvious – only? – similar example). The big future-trilogy call-backs are:

– The Shire set-up: this is actually MORE pointless if you’ve seen LOTR – to our first-timer it’s just framing the story as an old hobbit telling his young relative of his adventures.

– Ominous Saruman intro – I said to L, “That’s Gandalf’s Boss” and the rest of the scene made sense.

– Gollum/Ring/Gandalf realising something’s up with the ring – Gollum gets a great introduction, the Ring is suitably spooky, and as long as Gandalf doesn’t say too much in H2 and H3 this will tie up fine.

The main tip-off that PJ is assuming a familiarity with the LOTR films is the way major characters from them – Frodo, Saruman, and ESPECIALLY Galadriel – and a couple of concepts (Mordor!) get completely inadequate introductions. But I think despite that the film works as a first-of-six.

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By: mark sinker https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2012/12/hobbitses-or-how-every-good-story-deserves-embellishment-as-gandalf-teaches-us/comment-page-1#comment-1108387 Wed, 09 Jan 2013 15:58:59 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=23782#comment-1108387 Also well worth reading Sabina‘s post on reasons for the expansion (we came to similar conclusions independently, but she says things I didn’t think of).

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By: sükråt tanned rested unlogged and awesome https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2012/12/hobbitses-or-how-every-good-story-deserves-embellishment-as-gandalf-teaches-us/comment-page-1#comment-1108385 Wed, 09 Jan 2013 15:55:24 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=23782#comment-1108385 Hi Barry! Very quickly re Radagast and the bird-poo: this struck me as a lift from/”hommage to” Merlin’s look in The Sword in the Stone (book not movie)? Merlin’s skullcap and wizard’s cape are (if I am remembering correctly) marked by Archimedes’ er contributions (the owl spends a lot of time on Merlin’s head). Not really a justification, but this is what I assumed was going on. Also worth recalling that the Wizards have been in middle-earth for some 2000 years — since c.1000 TA — so Rad has maybe spent QUITE a long time not mixing with people and caring only for animals and birds (with consequences for his attitudes to personal grooming).

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By: Barry Freed https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2012/12/hobbitses-or-how-every-good-story-deserves-embellishment-as-gandalf-teaches-us/comment-page-1#comment-1108381 Wed, 09 Jan 2013 15:28:57 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=23782#comment-1108381 Ugh, that old ugly Gravatar has followed me once again :(

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By: Barry Freed https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2012/12/hobbitses-or-how-every-good-story-deserves-embellishment-as-gandalf-teaches-us/comment-page-1#comment-1108380 Wed, 09 Jan 2013 15:27:05 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=23782#comment-1108380 Late to the party (again – and the dwarves have eaten all the food). You’ve really made me reevaluate the movie which I saw over the holiday with my nephews and mostly appreciated through their eyes. Last year one of them asked me for a story and I told them the Hobbit from memory, after that they asked me to read them the book and we were only able to get up to Beorn’s cabin by the end of the summer. I’m definitely going to give it at least a second viewing if not a third and that’s down to your write up here.
Your explanation of why PJ expanded the movie because of the larger framework he’s working within makes a great deal of sense to me where I was very skeptical before.

I also like that Radagast was expanded (he was definitely underutilized by JRRT and he is such an intriguing character) but I didn’t like the way he was characterized as more than a little bit loony. I get that he’s a hermit type guy out in the woods doing his Dr. Doolittle thing but that bird turd encrusted face was just too silly for words and really put me off the character. I’d like to read your thoughts on that point especially.

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By: mark sinker https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2012/12/hobbitses-or-how-every-good-story-deserves-embellishment-as-gandalf-teaches-us/comment-page-1#comment-1107883 Mon, 07 Jan 2013 17:27:37 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=23782#comment-1107883 bcz ♥

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By: mark sinker https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2012/12/hobbitses-or-how-every-good-story-deserves-embellishment-as-gandalf-teaches-us/comment-page-1#comment-1107882 Mon, 07 Jan 2013 17:26:25 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=23782#comment-1107882 teleconferencing: if this then it’s a VERY good connection: she brushes a strand of gandalf’s hair back behind his ear :)

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By: Sabina https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2012/12/hobbitses-or-how-every-good-story-deserves-embellishment-as-gandalf-teaches-us/comment-page-1#comment-1107877 Mon, 07 Jan 2013 17:11:18 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=23782#comment-1107877 There’s an intriguing suggestion that Galadriel is teleconferencing (vis the way she disappears at the end of the scene). Though IRL it was Christopher Lee who was spliced into the scene!

Gimli’s genealogy is precise about the Thorin’s Company dwarves: Balin, Dwalin, Oin, and Gloin are great nobles of the realm (in fact the line of inheritance goes from Fili and Kili the heir-and-spare, to Dain Ironfoot and descendants, to Balin/Dwalin, then Oin/Gloin; by FotR Gimli is probably the noblest Erebor dwarf not the direct heir who’s young enough for the enterprise). Ori, Nori, and Dori are “more remote kinsmen,” and Bifur, Bofur, and Bombur are Moria dwarves not of Durin’s descent. PJ brings out the subtle class thing here: half of these dudes are in because they have direct stakes, the *oris are somewhat fatuous upper class types who’ve gotten an ideal into their heads, the b*urs are working class fellas (Bofur is clearly a miner) in either for the 1/14th share, or because Bifur insisted and evidently cannot be allowed to go by himself, being quite mad. (This would explain why Bofur, who’s one of the more aware ones, takes to Bilbo.)

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By: Andrew Farrell https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2012/12/hobbitses-or-how-every-good-story-deserves-embellishment-as-gandalf-teaches-us/comment-page-1#comment-1107855 Mon, 07 Jan 2013 14:54:05 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=23782#comment-1107855 Mindless pedantry: In the book, when they’re looking across the river in Mistwood (and I’m not sure what it is about that problem precisely that reminds me of Fighting Fantasy books…) Thorin calls out Fili, as the youngest, to have a look. But as p^nk sez, inconstancy thy name is John Ronald Reuel.

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By: mark sinker https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2012/12/hobbitses-or-how-every-good-story-deserves-embellishment-as-gandalf-teaches-us/comment-page-1#comment-1107822 Mon, 07 Jan 2013 12:22:00 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=23782#comment-1107822 Gandalf: “Who have you told about this?”
Thorin: “No one! Only what’s in the press-pack!”

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By: Andrew Farrell https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2012/12/hobbitses-or-how-every-good-story-deserves-embellishment-as-gandalf-teaches-us/comment-page-1#comment-1107810 Mon, 07 Jan 2013 12:02:09 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=23782#comment-1107810 According to the press pack or similar, Bifur is quiet because he has a rusting Orc axe embedded in his head(!) and so mostly communicates in Khuzdul, the Dwarves’ secret language.

I think we’ve probably escaped the seven rings, as their effects on sturdy dwarves are that they live longer and become obsessed with gold – it would have made some sense for Thror to have one, but then the psychic weight of the hereditary gold (and the Arkenstone) seems to be solely responsible for Thorin’s own slide later on.

Gandalf’s plan can be read as less mad (though a little chilly) in the books: distract Smaug (and if possible Sauron) for a window of opportunity to try an assault on Dol Guldur. Actually retaking Erebor not required.

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By: mark sinker https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2012/12/hobbitses-or-how-every-good-story-deserves-embellishment-as-gandalf-teaches-us/comment-page-1#comment-1107802 Mon, 07 Jan 2013 11:40:42 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=23782#comment-1107802 And I think Andrew is right: this is a VERY MIXED BUNCH of old Erebor lags, young nitwits, cranks, oddballs and outliers. This entire enterprise surely shows that Thorin is actually more than a little bit mad (and ditto Gandalf): Bilbo’s version of the story doesn’t get across how loopy it all was, how poor were its chances of success, perhaps because to do so would be to blow his own trumpet in ways he disliked (there remaining plenty of ways he liked to blow his own trumpet).

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By: mark sinker https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2012/12/hobbitses-or-how-every-good-story-deserves-embellishment-as-gandalf-teaches-us/comment-page-1#comment-1107800 Mon, 07 Jan 2013 11:36:04 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=23782#comment-1107800 And here’s the dwarf-cheat:

Clearly identified bcz properly introduced at party:
Thorin: any fule kno
Balin: ditto, white hair, oldest by look
Dwalin: bald with tattooed pate, dour Scottish warrior
Fili and Kili: much younger, cheerfully not that bright but very brave, go round as a pair, Fili the blond one (thanks Sabina)

Not well identified at the party:
Oin and Gloin: Oin has unkempt white-grey hair and an ear-trumpet, Gloin is recognisable from LotR and has red hair

Dori, Nori and Ori are the Three Stooges, almost: Dori is a bit fey, has very braided white hair and beard and a blobby face, offers Gandalf first beer then a (teenytiny) glass of spiced red wine at Bag End party; Nori has the silliest haircut, with its three distinctive spikes; Ori has a kind of yokel flat-top, a catapult and likes chips — he is offended at the Bag End party when Balin suggests some of the party may be a little dim (he seems a little dim).

Bifur, Bofur and Bombur: Bombur is easy, he’s the fat one. Bofur is JAMES NESBIT, Irish, hat with wayward earpieces, actually chats to (and teases) Bilbo most often. Bifur is I think the hardest to spot — he has black and white hair, braided into a pattern, looks fierce the whole time and iirc hasn’t spoken (except possibly in backdrop chatter).

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By: mark sinker https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2012/12/hobbitses-or-how-every-good-story-deserves-embellishment-as-gandalf-teaches-us/comment-page-1#comment-1107795 Mon, 07 Jan 2013 11:13:14 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=23782#comment-1107795 Further quick Thrain-thorts (plus some others)

We don’t yet know HOW Gandalf acquired the key and the map in the film, and will surely at some point learn this — either at Beorn’s in H2 or in the Director’s Cut of the Party at Bag End.

I’m wondering if
(a) Thrain escaped by the little thrush-door (we know Thror and Thorin didn’t)
(b) failed to hook up with his dad or his son and wandered in the wilderness (he is not identified for us at Kheled-Zaram, though this may also be Director’s Cut material-to-come)
(c) meaning Gandalf encountered him at his last lonely end SOMEWHERE OTHER THAN DOL GULDUR??
(d) … or else at Dol Guldur pre-ruin many many years ago. (Whose fortress HAD IT BEEN it in the film, and who ruined it? — I think more was probably said about this at the White Council than we saw post-edit.)
(e) You’re probably right about the seven dwarvish rings going unmentioned, at least in respect of Thrain. Dwarves don’t wraith up because they believe in reincarnation!

Getting Radagast across the Misty Mountains: in fact it’s a big shlep for Galadriel also (unless she risked going across the Moria pass). Radagast at least does have TurboRabbits to take him down round the end and up past Isengard. Plus we don’t actually know how many weeks/months in the past his encounter with spiders and the Witch King was — the cut to Rhosghobhel (?) may actually be a flashback.

First time we see Azog in now-time is at Weathertop, so he is west of the mountains. He is a Gundabad Orc, so pesumably can come down through Angmar etc. Unless he still shacks up in Moria with the Balrog.

wtf did Saruman actually call the White Council FOR?? I mean what was on the actual Agenda he sent to Galadriel when requesting her attendance? All we actually watched was the telepathic AOB.

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By: Sabina https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2012/12/hobbitses-or-how-every-good-story-deserves-embellishment-as-gandalf-teaches-us/comment-page-1#comment-1107745 Mon, 07 Jan 2013 07:23:22 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=23782#comment-1107745 JRRT’s dry narrational irony is very early-20th-century upper-middle-class English donnish, and doesn’t easily travel. Indeed plenty of people are massively allergic to it. PJ favours a much more circus-like humour — amazing acrobatic stunts and broad-clownish pratfalls. These of course are paradigmatically visual, but allow of little observational content. Tolkien isn’t Jane Austen, to be sure, but his wit (when it emerges) is amusedly social. PJ hands this entire element over to Martin Freeman and his face. Which is by no means a terrible decision, since Freeman turns out to be a great comic actor and deflationary straightman…

Really like this; gets to the heart of why I think Freeman is essential to the enterprise (per Jackson’s story of watching Sherlock on his iPad and angsting and finally changing *his* schedule…). He embodies an element the LotR adaptation didn’t need.

Galadriel and Gandalf: makes you wonder what had gone on way back when in the Blessed West, doesn’t it?

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By: Sabina https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2012/12/hobbitses-or-how-every-good-story-deserves-embellishment-as-gandalf-teaches-us/comment-page-1#comment-1107741 Mon, 07 Jan 2013 07:00:58 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=23782#comment-1107741 Ori is the catapult, Fili is the blond one. I trundled over to get out Appendix A and Kili is five years younger. Mysteriously, the movie is very insistent that Ori is the youngest of the lot… I feel like the Unexpected Party sequence succeeded at most of its goals except one, which is to lock in ALL the dwarves’ intros, such that the names link up with faces/beards. It gets about halfway in, then throws up its hands and *food pr0n*.

Aza-azu-DIMRILL DALE (I’d written up comments for someone else): “In moviegoer terms it would have been difficult to explain why the dwarves were so incompetent as to muster an army *after* letting their king wander off by himself and get killed. (If you look at it through the lens of 21st century Earth logic, Thorin’s company is the third time the dwarves do this in a row. It’s depressing.) I also get why Jackson conflated Dain and Thorin, and Azog and Bolg(?) — same reason he conflated Glorfindel and Arwen in FotR, which riled me at the time but there you go. What I don’t get is why he would write out the sub-plot whereby the Necromancer is responsible for Thrain’s death, if the former is to be an onstage antagonist: it’s the one demonstrable direct wrong the Necromancer commits against The Actual Heroes Of Our Tale. But maybe, given that Gandalf isn’t supposed to know about Dol Guldur until “now,” the timeline was too difficult to work out. Or Jackson didn’t want to introduce the idea of the Dwarven Rings of Power at this late stage in the game (it doesn’t come back into the story; and you have no idea what happened to the other six. Dwarves don’t even wraith properly!).”

Radagast: the bit that drives me nuts is, how did he get from Dol Guldur to west of Rivendell on a rabbit sled in… well, the movie made it seem like one non-stop action?? Does Radagast have the power to warp between forest groves????? It also wasn’t fully clear to me *where* Azog was — both times he seemed to be informed more quickly than distances should allow. But as you note PJ is good with scale and space in a completely different way from how Tolkien is good with scale and space; he’s a level designer. In fact I think he’s most effective when the story beat aligns with a single-level “gameplay goal,” eg. escaping Moria in FotR, Gimli and Legolas’ competition at Helm’s Deep… “Out of the frying pan,” here, is a beautifully economical example of “player nudging”: without being obviously manipulative, the entire sequence is designed to put Bilbo, for a few crucial seconds, in the position of being the only person physically able to come to Thorin’s aid (he’s closest to the ground because retrieving his sword from the dead warg delayed him getting up the tree; Gandalf is tied up in making sure the others don’t fall).

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By: mark sinker https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2012/12/hobbitses-or-how-every-good-story-deserves-embellishment-as-gandalf-teaches-us/comment-page-1#comment-1107673 Sun, 06 Jan 2013 23:12:55 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=23782#comment-1107673 and adding 3: I put names to faces of all the dwarves this time, except I forgot to remember to note which is Fili and which is Kili (who I always think of as identical twins) (possibly bcz they have same-colour caps in the book), and I’m still not 100% certain which of Nori and Ori is which. My *guess* is that Nori is the with one the silliest (three-pointed) haircut, and Ori has a kind of flat haircut and uses the catapult in battles and wants chips in Rivendell. Obviously I could look this up but I didn’t!

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By: mark sinker https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2012/12/hobbitses-or-how-every-good-story-deserves-embellishment-as-gandalf-teaches-us/comment-page-1#comment-1107644 Sun, 06 Jan 2013 21:12:49 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=23782#comment-1107644 Just rewatched 2D/24fps with a whole gang (or “troop”) of FT elf-fanciers. Will write up in the next couple of days, but a couple of tiny points first

1: very weird blooper when G is first good morning-ed by the pre-adventure bilbo (unless i’m being super-dim): bag end’s front door faces east, towards the misty mountains — according to maps, tolk’s pictures and the sense of direction the film gives you — yet the morning sun is here apparently shining from the west (if light on the trees on the nearby horizon are a guide)… why would bilbo not sit IN THE SUN when smoking his pipe of a morning? the next day this seems to have right itself
2: KING THRANDUIL ON A MOOSE: ISN’T IT DELICIOUS?

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By: Andrew Farrell https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2012/12/hobbitses-or-how-every-good-story-deserves-embellishment-as-gandalf-teaches-us/comment-page-1#comment-1107587 Sun, 06 Jan 2013 15:03:22 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=23782#comment-1107587 Radagast the Brown is also, from a tactical point of view, a farking liability – Lead them away from us! No, the other away!

The necessity of doing the films this way around does mean that it loses the less-remembered emotional link, that three of the dwarves that survive are among those that take back Moria, and whose deaths are recorded in the book. I am amused by the idea that PJ will go full Lucas and rerelease The Fellowship of the Ring with added blue glowing dwarf ghosts for that scene.

Also while rewatching it to see if they get named there (Balin yes, the others no), they do get some sport out of the pomposity of Gandalf by having him present theatrically his first two attempts to open the Gate of Moria, then get v. catty about his failure.

I’m also curious about what the decision to give Bilbo all his heroic journey in the first third (and to make it “finds his warrior spirit”) does to the rest of the films.

“But of course the script and the screen demand that at least some of the dwarves be capable warriors.” – see this is I think one thing that worked – when reading the books I’d assumed that all the dwarves were well hard because dwarves, while the film does a great job of making clear that this isn’t a battle-toughened warband picked by Thorin so much as all the dwarves he can get to come along, like a dwarvish version of a stag do.

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By: tom f'zel https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2012/12/hobbitses-or-how-every-good-story-deserves-embellishment-as-gandalf-teaches-us/comment-page-1#comment-1106547 Thu, 03 Jan 2013 00:15:15 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=23782#comment-1106547 very pleased you mentioned the Tolkein rewrite of the riddle competition and ring section, which I didn’t know, or if I did know, had forgotten. Went to see the film last night – this was easily the best bit in it, but when Bilbo picked up the ring I thought ‘Wait that’s not how he finds it’.

The Hobbit is the first book I remember reading – in fact what I remember most clearly is my dad coming home from work holding it in his hand and giving it to me. That’s a very early memory, I must have been about five. The only other book I have a similar memory of my dad giving me is The Warlock of Firetop Mountain, I remember reading The Hobbit in the book corner at school, and the teaching reprimanding me for ‘pretending’ to read it because it was too hard.

Which is by way of saying that it’s very bound up with me at some inarticulate level, which is why I was so unnerved when I got back home and downloaded it to my kindle, only to find that indeed that *was* how he found the ring.

I like the way the ancient but capricious ritual of the riddle competition is the place of the birth of the ring, and the way a deceit wins it for Bilbo seems appropriate. I can’t remember the original answer – is it nothing? or hands? Nothing would be appropriate!

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By: Ed https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2012/12/hobbitses-or-how-every-good-story-deserves-embellishment-as-gandalf-teaches-us/comment-page-1#comment-1106475 Wed, 02 Jan 2013 20:21:00 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=23782#comment-1106475 Peter Jackson’s next project:

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/culture/christopherhowse/100001547/jrr-tolkien-and-cs-lewis-joint-work-discovered/

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By: mark sinker https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2012/12/hobbitses-or-how-every-good-story-deserves-embellishment-as-gandalf-teaches-us/comment-page-1#comment-1106365 Wed, 02 Jan 2013 10:23:09 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=23782#comment-1106365 Finetuned prediction: White Council action will include much detailed flashbackery, of the various issues rising = Smaug desolation and the shadow of Sauron and the threat of reoccupied Angmar and what’s brewing in Moria and Mirkwood (and perhaps elsewhere). Gandalf’s commitment to the assailing of Dol Guldur at this chosen moment was to offer at minimum a counter-distraction, so that the Necromancer did not intervene on Smaug’s behalf.

I’m sure Smaug-Bilbo will be a key set-piece but it comes before the Battle of the Five Armies, and the latter is not going to be tiny. (Unless PJ goes totally rewrite crazy…)

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By: Tom https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2012/12/hobbitses-or-how-every-good-story-deserves-embellishment-as-gandalf-teaches-us/comment-page-1#comment-1106268 Wed, 02 Jan 2013 00:28:10 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=23782#comment-1106268 #2 Film #2 looks a little underweight there – since it’s called “The Desolation Of Smaug” I expect a bit more Smaugian action, the cup-theft and subsequent reprisal at least, maybe even make the second film’s setpiece/climax the Smaug-Bilbo conversation to mirror the Gollum-Bilbo one in the first (not that I’ve seen it yet)

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By: swanstep https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2012/12/hobbitses-or-how-every-good-story-deserves-embellishment-as-gandalf-teaches-us/comment-page-1#comment-1106152 Tue, 01 Jan 2013 14:26:58 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=23782#comment-1106152 There’s an issue of scale — you can move from Hobbit to LotR to LotR-embedded-in-Appendices and etc to Silmarillion, but it’s much harder (I think actually impossible) to move coherently in the other direction. Having made the films in this order, PJ had three choices
But why can’t, for example, a more artful PJ make The Hobbit films so that ultimately – by younger viewers and subsequent generations – they get viewed before his LOTR films? Your idea that the order of viewing that *we* have now is the one that has to be primary, is optional to say the least, and that this is so vitiates much of what you go on to say. Faithfulness to the revised Riddles in the Dark section of the Book does *not* require or recommend any let alone all of the LOTR-connecting and embellishing in which PJ indulges. And let’s not forget that the boring deja vu-ness of TH:AUJ extends to utterly gratuitous details. It’s characteristic of The Hobbit book that things just happen fortuitously, e.g., mountain Eagles that hate Goblins aren’t called rather they just *happen* to notice things are up. It’s enough for a kid that the world depicted turns out to be essentially richer at every point than he or she thought it was. PJ isn’t satisfied with courting that sort of expanding wonderment, however, and so we instead get a re-run of the characteristically more tightly plotted LOTR idea that Gandalf summons the Eagles (and people who see the films Hobbit trilogy first will experience the LOTR as a boring re-run – nothing good can come of such micro-duplications I’d suggest).

I agree that Radagast the Brown as depicted is a good, even genius move by PJ, but it could have been shortened by half (i.e., his whole involvement with the orcs is unnecessary and ill-judged as is the whole orc-jeopardy sub-plot in my view. [And, for example, doesn’t making Azog a super-duper mega-orc undermine the novel additional threat that the Uruk-hai are supposed to represent in the LOTR book and films?])

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By: mark sinker https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2012/12/hobbitses-or-how-every-good-story-deserves-embellishment-as-gandalf-teaches-us/comment-page-1#comment-1106140 Tue, 01 Jan 2013 12:27:27 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=23782#comment-1106140 OK I naughtily just made some minor edits and clarificatory rewrites after Pete’s comment at 1, plus added the end-paper map which has the “Edge of the Wild” marked on it.

Prediction:
Film 2: Dwarves and Hobbit meet Beorn (partytime), Spiders in Mirkwood and Wood-Elvish Bondage. Much White Council action in Lorien: Gandalf persuades Saruman et al of necessity Sauron out of Dol Guldur. Dwarves and Hobbit reach Laketown and see Mountain up close (ends).

Film 3: Party in Laketown. Hobbits and Dwarves first beard Smaug. Death of Smaug (and Laketown). Hostilities between Wood-Elves/Men of Laketown over treasure. White Council and Lorien Elves assail Sauron in Dol Guldur. Goblins arrive at Erebor from Mt Gundabad; Dain’s Dwarves from Iron Hills. Battle of Four Armies. Eagles arrive (Battle of Four Armies + 1); meanwhile down south Sauron is defeated. Death of Thorin. Extremely long extended multiple happy ending.

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By: Pete https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2012/12/hobbitses-or-how-every-good-story-deserves-embellishment-as-gandalf-teaches-us/comment-page-1#comment-1106065 Tue, 01 Jan 2013 05:00:28 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=23782#comment-1106065 My biggest response, next day, was how it seemed like an amazing double snub to Christopher Lee (in a delicious way). Lee, being catty about being cut from, the widely agreed to be somewhat overlong, LOTR: Return of The King gets a nice bit of dialogue that is completely overspake by Gandalf and Galadriel. Best in joke snub ever.

Guardrails and first twenty minutes, and yet again the spectre of “if you can summon Roc’s at will, why doncha” is raised as per LOTR. I liked it a lot more than I thought I would (historically being very underwhelmed by Freeman on screen), but the pacing is wildly wrong in the first half and not sure where they are plucking two more films from. Bonus for the kite though.

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