Come on, Peter Jackson. You’re the guy who condensed a thousand-plus-page epic into three briskly-paced films, and now you’re stretching The freakin’ HOBBIT into three movies?
Blahblah Erebor blahblah Dol Guldur blahblah Necromancer.
Dude. The Hobbit is a simple story, a kids’ story, really. Three hundred pages. If you want complex, make a film of The Silmarilion.
There better be a fuckload of Smokin’ Hot Thorin Oakenshield in these films, is what I’m sayin’.
and its got the guy from the office in it. i think hes too tall to make a realistic hobbit
Yes.
At three films, I’m expecting a full sidetrack into some Gandalf/Radagast slash.
He can’t do that. Blind Guardian already turned The Silmarilion into 65 minutes of perfection with Nightfall In Middle Earth.
It’s a stretch to call the last hour of The Return of the King “briskly-paced”
Yeah Return of the King was Ridiculous *Fade to black*
*Come back*
It just never seemed to end *Fade to Black*
*Come back*
I just kept going and going and going. *Fade to Black*
*Come back*
I don’t know who edited that but they were awful *Fade to black*
*Credits roll*
GASP
I am wounded, truly wounded. Martin Freeman is adorable.
I was so confused when they said it would be 3 films. I mean, at least LotR was a trilogy. This should just be one movie, not The Hobbit: There, a Bit Farther Than That, and Back Again.
In addition to the Fade To Blacks, don’t forget the Slomo’s of Happiness and Joy.
Those were aweful. And I say that as someone who’s watched them 20+ times.
He’s making three movies out of it because he had so much material left over to work with that if they actually did want to make a third movie (which they now are) they would just need another three months of filming…. just saying. :)
According to one of the production diaries Aiden Turner (Kili, Being Human) is the sexy dwarf. As he left Being Human to do the Hobbit he’d better get plenty of screen time…
Much as I enjoyed LoTR, I also have a hard time seeing where they’re going to get 3 films worth of material from for this. There had better be more elvish poetry this time if they’re giving themselves that much extra time!
My English professors wouldn’t even read that shit. But they’d write a dissertation on Finnegan’s Wake.
I *think* they will fill the third movie with stuff that happened between The Hobbit and LotR.
Thorin Oakenshield will be wonderful. it’s richard armitage, he struggles to not be wonderful.
Dude. The Hobbit is a simple story, a kids’ story, really. Three hundred pages. If you want complex, make a film of The Silmarilion.
Given that the existing trailers showed Galadriel, who does not appear in the novel The Hobbit, I’m pretty sure he is using material from the Silmarilion.
Unless Benedict Cumberpatch/Smog is a were-dragon and not just a disturbingly sexy-voiced dragon I don’t understand why they’d need three movies.
Of course he’s stretching it out. Why make one movie when you can get people to pay to see three?
I’m not so certain. Lord of the Rings contains multiple cases of classic retconning of The Hobbit in order to make sense within the larger narrative of Lord of the Rings (including the implication that Bilbo may have been fibbing a bit about the riddle game, and a few other things as well.) Much of this comes in the form of a big info-dump by Gandalf to Frodo a few months after Bilbo’s birthday party where the battle of Dul Guldor is revealed. More of the larger history of that year is revealed in the appendices to Lord of the Rings, which I think Tolkien was ultimately justified in being reluctant to add.
Personally, I think retconning The Hobbit as a diversionary skirmish leading up to the War of the Ring undermines it as a novel, and the magic of The Hobbit is Tolkien writing Bilbo as Bilbo, who’s always something of a fish-out-of-water everybody.
@ CBrachyrhynchos
Oh, that’s right, there are appendices that serve a similar “let’s make everything line up” purpose. So I suppose they could be including that material, instead of the Silmarilion. (Although the riddle-game retcon was an actual change in the text of The Hobbit in later printings, not just an infodump by Gandalf. Originally Gollum gave the ring to Bilbo as a prize/present for winning the riddle-game — that’s what was retconed to be a fib on Bilbo’s part.)
Completely unrelated, does anyone else wish Peter Jackson had taken a Discworld interpretation of dwarves, and quietly cast some women among the supporting dwarven cast?
I am SO with you
I dunno–there was probably enough good material (y’know, minus the racism and stuff) in the LotR books to make 9 good movies. I don’t see how having enough material to make 3 good movies out of the hobbit is that out-of-bounds.
Money-making ploy? Narcissistic display? I don’t care. THREE HOBBIT MOVIES!!!!
Lemme just say, I will be PISSED if they add in some sort of Galadriel/Gandalf relationship, as the trailers have implied. (Also, what the heck is Galadriel doing in Rivendell, anyway?).
But hey, I’m a bit of a purist here.
And for those of you who are saying the Silmarillion is dull, it’s actually really beautiful. Beautiful in the same way that the best bits of the KJV Bible are beautiful. I read it this summer (finished it in Calculus class, natch) and it was just great.
@Odin, there are no female dwarves, all dwarves sprout from stone and are unisexed. Gimli was clearly lying when he told Legolas dwarf women existed. ;) So don’t worry there shall be no fuzzy bearded dwarf sex on film to upset our need for culturally acceptable hot bodied pron.
Actually, Galadriel *is* involved in action contemporaneous with The Hobbit events, you just don’t find out about it until LoTR.
When Gandalf leaves Thorin & Co, it’s to attend what winds up being the next to last meeting of the White Council – Galadriel, Elrond, Gandalf, Saruman and I think Glorfindel, Thranduil, Cirdan, the Chief of the Dunadan & the other wizards (Radagast & the two never named) are members – as they decide to drive The Necromancer (actually Sauron) from Dol Guldur. This is a fairly substantial amount of back action that we don’t get from the Hobbit narratives, as they weren’t there for any of it. The Wiki page on the White Council appears to have been amended to indicate that Jackson *is* using this backstory.
Just please, by the Grace of Elbereth, may we be spared those NASTY close-ups of torn, ragged, dirty finger- and toe-nails! Aaack-pftht!!!!!!!
Peter Jackson is a hack, and I don’t think he’s made an entertaining film since Braindead.
Yeah, while I can ship a huddle of Hobbits, Gandalf/Galadriel doesn’t work for me.
Its Peter Jackson, while he might not have the freedom to crank the gore up to Wagnerian proportions he’s unlikely to pass up an opportunity for a quick gross out shot.
LoTR movies: 6!!!
Wonder Woman movies: 0!!!
Hollywood excites me so much! [/sarcasm]
jeffliveshere has it right, LOTR should have been 9 movies, they left out so much of the story I was bereft the first time I watched them. I really think this was done because they had no idea how popular the movies would be. I mean, where was Tom?! and so much more missing!
There is certainly enough material in the Hobbit to make 3 normal length movies (not 3 hours each).
They’ll get around to Wonder Woman eventually a they’re using the Superman reboot and rebooting Batman to set up a Justice League movie. Given why Joss got the boot from the project a couple of years ago, though, I’m not terribly excited.
I thought it was to eliminate the parts (like Tom Bombadil) that the plot runs into and goes thud and takes way too long to pick itself back up again.
In the Harvard Lampoon’s 1969 classic, “Bored of the Rings,” “The Hobbit” is handled in less than three pages.
Which is as it should be.
I saw a local theater do a production of The Hobbit this spring, and while it was mostly execrable, the second best performance was a woman playing one of the dwarves. (The best performance was a woman playing Gollum, closely echoing Andy Serkis to great effect.)
I am not complaing, given how well Peter Jackson did on the last trilogy this one is almost sure to be excellent.
@athena
I’m actually pretty okay with that. A love LOTR and loath wonder woman.
Now, that Jenny Sparks hasn’t gotten any attention is annoying…
[...] Okay, seriously. Feministe’s take on the announcement that Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit is now going to be a trilogy. I’m sensing profit winning out over the good of the story here. I guess we’ll see. [...]
Peter Jackson is the worst kind of hack and he should not have been let anywhere near that Hobbit after what he did with LotR. If only Jackson had refrained from inserting his own asinine plotlines into the movies, maybe, just maybe, he would have had time to actually put something of what Tolkien wrote on the screen. Instead, we get Jackson’s childish violent fantasies and his poorly-written dialogue trying to ape Tolkien’s style. Instead of Lord of the Rings, like we were promised, we got nine hours of “Peter Jackson’s Violence and Bad Dialogue Extravaganza.”