Fifteen birds in five fir trees
Dec. 22nd, 2012 09:33 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
j_v_lynchGentle Readers,
As a special adventure last night, we took Lydia out to a later showing of The Hobbit. She has just finished her third read through of book and has been really looking forward to seeing it, even though She really didn't feel like many of the dwarves (Thorin especially) looked like dwarves in the trailers and promotional shots.
There were lots of things to like about the movie. It was filled with many elements of one of my favorite stories. However, my biggest problem with the movie was not the changes or additions or anything like that. Some of them even managed to reuse some of the iconic scenes in kind of fun ways. Bilbo losing his buttons while escaping from Gollum was twisted in an interesting way for example. The trolls were also wonderfully fun.
I do have some small problems with the changes. I'm not so fond of the change making the story about Thorin and his Quest. I thought the stone giants were kinda dumb from both a "why is this part of the story" and a "how does middle earth even have any mountains left" kind of way. The Antagonist Orc was an interesting addition but really unneeded, although I can already see how he's going to feed through the movie. I don't think I like how they've changed the time line for Mirkwood. I really didn't like the change to turn the Eagles from a proud an alien race with their own motivations to the high level wizard spell Summon Eagle, material component 1 moth. That was probably my least favorite change and really makes it harder to explain why the Eagles couldn't fly them right to the mountain.
Still my biggest problem was not the changes. My biggest problem was the ham fisted movie making and story telling that made the whole thing feel like a high school essay where the author has switched in bigger words and extra "very"s wherever he can to up the word count. The problem isn't that things were added, it's that they were added in and didn't fit or instead of changing the plot to fit the characters, the characters were changed to move the polt. The dwarves changed from ultra competent to useless depending on the necessity of the moment. Bilbo charging into battle and fought and killed an Orc. Bilbo! I'm also pretty sure that I saw Wane and Garth in the background going "doodleoddleoot" and making wavy hand signs when Gandalf started talking about Radagast.
And that was just big things. There was a lack of grace with the little things too. Thorin and Gandalf's swords never glowed blue. The dwarves buried a tiny chest of treasure and left the troll cave WHILE THERE WAS STILL A GIANT PILE OF TREASURE RIGHT NEXT TO THE HOLE THEY JUST FILLED IN! Also some indication of where the light was coming from in the caves would have been nice.
I really have no idea how Jackson is going to add stuff for the DVD release.
Still, it wasn't terrible and there are 3 things that will keep me going.
The first is the hope that someone will do a fan edit and take out all of the parts that are not in the book. Right now I'm thinking you could just cut every scene that doesn't have Bilbo in it.
The second is making this Peter Jackson's Time Bandits remake. Really. It's a bunch of dwarves who scream like small children when they're in trouble running around to treasure troves listed on a magic map. Bilbo is the kid, Elrond is Agamemnon. It all works!
The third is that I've decided that the complete lack of female dwarves both in the movie and in the original source material is because Tolkien dwarves are like Diskworld dwarves. They look the same. The real signifier of gender is the shape of the nose.
As a special adventure last night, we took Lydia out to a later showing of The Hobbit. She has just finished her third read through of book and has been really looking forward to seeing it, even though She really didn't feel like many of the dwarves (Thorin especially) looked like dwarves in the trailers and promotional shots.
There were lots of things to like about the movie. It was filled with many elements of one of my favorite stories. However, my biggest problem with the movie was not the changes or additions or anything like that. Some of them even managed to reuse some of the iconic scenes in kind of fun ways. Bilbo losing his buttons while escaping from Gollum was twisted in an interesting way for example. The trolls were also wonderfully fun.
I do have some small problems with the changes. I'm not so fond of the change making the story about Thorin and his Quest. I thought the stone giants were kinda dumb from both a "why is this part of the story" and a "how does middle earth even have any mountains left" kind of way. The Antagonist Orc was an interesting addition but really unneeded, although I can already see how he's going to feed through the movie. I don't think I like how they've changed the time line for Mirkwood. I really didn't like the change to turn the Eagles from a proud an alien race with their own motivations to the high level wizard spell Summon Eagle, material component 1 moth. That was probably my least favorite change and really makes it harder to explain why the Eagles couldn't fly them right to the mountain.
Still my biggest problem was not the changes. My biggest problem was the ham fisted movie making and story telling that made the whole thing feel like a high school essay where the author has switched in bigger words and extra "very"s wherever he can to up the word count. The problem isn't that things were added, it's that they were added in and didn't fit or instead of changing the plot to fit the characters, the characters were changed to move the polt. The dwarves changed from ultra competent to useless depending on the necessity of the moment. Bilbo charging into battle and fought and killed an Orc. Bilbo! I'm also pretty sure that I saw Wane and Garth in the background going "doodleoddleoot" and making wavy hand signs when Gandalf started talking about Radagast.
And that was just big things. There was a lack of grace with the little things too. Thorin and Gandalf's swords never glowed blue. The dwarves buried a tiny chest of treasure and left the troll cave WHILE THERE WAS STILL A GIANT PILE OF TREASURE RIGHT NEXT TO THE HOLE THEY JUST FILLED IN! Also some indication of where the light was coming from in the caves would have been nice.
I really have no idea how Jackson is going to add stuff for the DVD release.
Still, it wasn't terrible and there are 3 things that will keep me going.
The first is the hope that someone will do a fan edit and take out all of the parts that are not in the book. Right now I'm thinking you could just cut every scene that doesn't have Bilbo in it.
The second is making this Peter Jackson's Time Bandits remake. Really. It's a bunch of dwarves who scream like small children when they're in trouble running around to treasure troves listed on a magic map. Bilbo is the kid, Elrond is Agamemnon. It all works!
The third is that I've decided that the complete lack of female dwarves both in the movie and in the original source material is because Tolkien dwarves are like Diskworld dwarves. They look the same. The real signifier of gender is the shape of the nose.
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