The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug

[eluc55]

You wouldn't know it was based on a book for children, seeing that, would you?

[Replies From View]

Nope, you're not alone. It seems to be used as a defence, that Peter Jackson is pouring every appendice and footnote he can find in the story, but that just makes it worse for me. Bad enough that it's been padded out to three full movies, but it's sad that the really fun, brilliant story about a hobbit content to stay in his home getting dragged on a huge adventure keeps getting broken up with all of this tedious Lord-of-the-Rings-lite stuff with the elves and everyone being incredibly serious and ominous. There's still some good stuff with Freeman and the dwarves, but forcing it into another epic trilogy just ruins the feel of the story to me.

Smaug looks quite exciting though. And Martin Freeman's still in it. I'm in, I guess.

Do you reckon a single two hour film of The Hobbit could be created from the trilogy once it's all finished, or are all the essential parts of the story contaminated with interwoven superfluous bits?

I mean... I'm asking people who've seen the first film, which I haven't.  Not asking you to predict the future based on films nobody has seen yet.

[tookish]

New production diary:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Llxv8omjfU

Bit gutted on behalf of the people going to Comic-Con that there won't be a Hobbit reel for them to enjoy - it seems like the production team are seriously down to the wire now. I'm a bit worried that this will be reflected in the editing, as they really don't have that long to finish the film unless they push the release date back.

[Cerys]

Regarding the speaking of Smaug, I suspect they'll do it as partial telepathy.  A slight curl to the lip to reflect emotion, but otherwise much in the style of Galadriel doing the spooky in LOTR.

[thomasina]

Nope, you're not alone. It seems to be used as a defence, that Peter Jackson is pouring every appendice and footnote he can find in the story, but that just makes it worse for me. Bad enough that it's been padded out to three full movies, but it's sad that the really fun, brilliant story about a hobbit content to stay in his home getting dragged on a huge adventure keeps getting broken up with all of this tedious Lord-of-the-Rings-lite stuff with the elves and everyone being incredibly serious and ominous. There's still some good stuff with Freeman and the dwarves, but forcing it into another epic trilogy just ruins the feel of the story to me.

Smaug looks quite exciting though. And Martin Freeman's still in it. I'm in, I guess.

It had to be done like that though, because a massive proportion of the audience for the Hobbit film is the LOTR film audience, many of whom never read the books.  Maybe they did after they saw LOTR, but the baggage they brought to the reading and the baggage they will bring to the Hobbit films can't be ignored.  When you read the Hobbit for the first time, you have this great adventure story with a few vague allusions to Mirkwood turnung evil again and some bad shit going on somewhere.  The film audience is coming to it already knowing that these momentous potentially world ending events are going on at the same time.  To ignore that and make the Hobbit film in the same spirit as the book would be to ask the audience to leave all that behind and it's too big an ask.  Really, they should have made the Hobbit first, but that didn't happen.

[Endicott]

Do you reckon a single two hour film of The Hobbit could be created from the trilogy once it's all finished, or are all the essential parts of the story contaminated with interwoven superfluous bits?

Yes, probably. But I'm going to reserve judgement on whether I'd really want that, as I quite like the extraordinary length of the first film. Maybe the whole lot will be too much for me, maybe not.

[mothman]

Within a year or two of all three films being out on DVD, you can be certain someone somewhere will do an edit of them together that strips out a lot of the extraneous clutter and makes it as close to The Hobbit as written.

[Kane Jones]

Within a year or two of all three films being out on DVD, you can be certain someone somewhere will do an edit of them together that strips out a lot of the extraneous clutter and makes it as close to The Hobbit as written.

Are you volunteering?[nb]Go on. You know you want to.[/nb]

[Thomas]

Kane already did that in his radio show. You don't even need the visuals, really.

[onthebeach]

Is there some kind of pages to minutes ratio so we can work out how long a film of a book should be?

[envelope]

Regarding the speaking of Smaug, I suspect they'll do it as partial telepathy.  A slight curl to the lip to reflect emotion, but otherwise much in the style of Galadriel doing the spooky in LOTR.

It'd be quite good if Smaug bashes his lines out on a little vocoder. That'd work and solve the problem surely?

[Ignatius_S]

It had to be done like that though, because a massive proportion of the audience for the Hobbit film is the LOTR film audience, many of whom never read the books...

I don't really see that myself - this isn't to say that there won't be a lot of fans of the LOTR in the audience, just that it's not that straight forward.
 
(As an aside, my gut feeling about the core LOTR film fanbase is that it's actually smaller than many would think it is. That's not to say it's not large or a passionate one, but I know a heck of lot of people who loved the films but had little to no interest about The Hobbit films – and have seen a heck of a lot of online comments from people who feel that way. But in any case...)
 
Big studios are not interested in making a film just for the existing audience, they want to expand the audience. They are in the business to make money – the more people they can get to see the film, the better. If they believe that they're make more money by paying great service to the fans, they will; if they believe that they will make more money by not doing that, they won't. Studios always want more.
 
Look at various reboots and continuations of franchises. Couple of examples... Out of all the people that I know who have seen the latest Star Trek film, the ones that have been the most disappointed and critical are existing fans – most of these people aren't exactly what one would call Trekkies, but they do like the series. Just about all made very good points (i.e. well-reasoned ones) why they didn't like but the points were irrelevant – Abrams wasn't brought in to cater to the existing audience and it's been a commercial smash.
 
With the last three Star Wars films, I lost count of how many people went on (or rather, go on) about how Lucas had betrayed the fans, it wasn't what the films that they wanted, ad bloody nauseum. Yet, I can't think of one that didn't go to watch the films at the cinema... often more than once. Comic Book Guy in The Simpsons immediately going to watch it again, wasn't wide off the mark.
 
Something that a lot of people (conveniently) overlook about those Star Wars films is that younger audiences loved them – it got them into the franchise. Similarly, there is a new audience for The Hobbit that was too young (or not born) for the LOTR films – and one only needs to look at the merchandising that's accompanying that. If The Hobbit is given the blockbuster treatment, even if it was done in a way different to Jackson/LOTR, there would still be a massive audience for it. There are many ways that the story could be adapted.

...To ignore that and make the Hobbit film in the same spirit as the book would be to ask the audience to leave all that behind and it's too big an ask....

Well, studios don't like crediting the audience with too much intelligence, so a lot of executives would no doubt agree with that.

[alcoholic messiah]

Were there more Middle-earth material out there that readily lent itself to a big screen adaptation[nb]i.e. Not The Silmarillion.[/nb], then I think the chances of getting a single Hobbit film that adhered closely to the narrative and tone of the book would have been significantly higher.

Since this is likely to be Jackson and co.'s last cinematic foray into that world[nb]One towards which they have more than just a financial affinity.[/nb], it's understandable that they'd want to incorporate as much contemporary material (of which there is plenty) into their adaptation as possible. Given that, it would have been extremely difficult, if not impossible, to do so without abandoning the juvenile spirit of the original book in favour of a more mature outlook[nb]An inherent discrepancy that Tolkien himself acknowledged when he made an (aborted) attempt at rewriting the events of The Hobbit in a style that better conformed to the rest of his Middle-earth canon.[/nb]. It also made it inevitable that they'd spread the story over multiple films.

Jackson and co. have perfectly valid artistic justifications for the approach they've taken. Since that approach chimes perfectly with the studio's financial aspirations, a different outcome was always unlikely.

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

In this one Legolas fights a bad Legolas and nearly gets mangled in a car crusher trying to defeat him.

[thomasina]

In this one Legolas fights a bad Legolas and nearly gets mangled in a car crusher trying to defeat him.

No, it's the one where the three Legolas's who were sealed in inescapable perspex triangles get the Kryptonite and make Legolas wimp out of fighting like a man to wear a blue dress and hide with the women and the old men until he learns the bow and arrow like a big girl and kills Captain Jack by bow and arrowing him in the ankle.

[Glebe]

Extended Edition clip.

Looking forward to the extended Hobbit, although it's only 13 minutes longer. Lots of extra features, though:

TheOneRing.net - An in-depth first look at the AUJ EE contents.

[Nuclear Optimism]

Oh for fuck's sake. The bastarding thing was long enough in the cinema, 13 minutes would have hardly made a difference, everyone had lost the feeling in their bums long before that. If you can't fit half a children's book into that length of time you're either an incompetent or a cash-grabber. Why didn't they just make the theatrical film the full length and release one fucking DVD? Or admit that the extra 13 minutes were cut for a reason and just stick them on the deleted scenes?

There is no uncynical, artistic, genuine reason for this bloated hog to have an extended version. Fuck Peter Jackson. At least when George Lucas alters his films he has the common decency to burn the old versions in a skip out the back so he can resist the temptation to charge you more than once per format.

[olliebean]

The LOTR extended editions had more than that each just in extra credits, didn't they?

[Glebe]

The LOTR extended editions had more than that each just in extra credits, didn't they?

The fan credits where about 10mins long on each film, would your believe.

[vrailaine]

If you can't fit half a children's book into that length of time you're either an incompetent or a cash-grabber.

Just checking to make sure you know the Hobbit films are a trilogy.

[Nuclear Optimism]

I know. But the film covers about half the book, doesn't it? The rest is/will be padded with extraneous stuff from the appendices of LOTR. When Del Toro was on board, and there were only going to be two films, he talked about there being a natural break halfway through the story when the dwarves finally accept Bilbo, which is around the end of the film as it stands, so they seem to have covered the same ground thus far.

If you can't fit a third of a children's book into that length of time you're either an incompetent or a cash-grabber.

[alcoholic messiah]

I know. But the film covers about half the book, doesn't it? The rest is/will be padded with extraneous stuff from the appendices of LOTR. When Del Toro was on board, and there were only going to be two films, he talked about there being a natural break halfway through the story when the dwarves finally accept Bilbo, which is around the end of the film as it stands, so they seem to have covered the same ground thus far.

If you can't fit a third of a children's book into that length of time you're either an incompetent or a cash-grabber.

The first film covers chapters 1-6 of the book (out of 19 in total).

At this point in the book, Bilbo hasn't been fully accepted by the dwarves; he has merely (thanks to his solo escape from the mountains) ceased to be the subject of ridicule. Film Bilbo's heroic moment at the end, which earns him the dwarves' acceptance, doesn't exist in the book.

In the original two-film plan, the "natural break halfway through the story when the dwarves finally accept Bilbo" probably would have been shortly after chapter nine of the book concludes, at which point Bilbo has staved off a spider attack, and almost single-handedly engineered the company's escape from the elven dungeons.

[Noodle Lizard]

This'll be shit, I reckon.

[BlodwynPig]

Spoilers ^^

[CaledonianGonzo]

Have they added some extra material into the movie to pad the book out or something?  By rights it only really needs to be one 90 minute long movie!

[El Unicornio, mang]

Someone on my facebook posted a pic from this edition of The Hobbit she has

[alcoholic messiah]

Someone on my facebook posted a pic from this edition of The Hobbit she has

The Krankies have still got it.

[Sam]

If you can't fit a third of a children's book into that length of time you're either an incompetent or a cash-grabber.

I don't think Jackson is a cash-grabber, quite the opposite. I think it's the studio behind him who patently are. If anything Jackson's fault here is earnestness about the source material which borders on delusion. The studio would make 10 films of the Hobbit if they could; it's a cash cow no brainer. Of course they'll have flattered Jackson into thinking they're being generous enough to allow his glorious vision but in reality they don't care about the artistry any more than he needs the money. It's a deadly combination which had resulted in a bloatedness which is grotesque and tasteless in comparison to the deftness of the book. This whole franchise is a grubby mess which leaves everyone looking bad.

[Bad Ambassador]

Someone on my facebook posted a pic from this edition of The Hobbit she has

Eddie Large about to goosed by Kroenen off Hellboy.

[Glebe]

Gervais and Crook reteam for poor fantasy parody.