tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13522238.post3031770792167139905..comments2024-03-28T17:53:43.541-04:00Comments on DarwinCatholic: This is Your Hobbit on SteroidsDarwinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08572976822786862149noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13522238.post-36792216198393852582013-01-04T07:36:42.933-05:002013-01-04T07:36:42.933-05:00I still love Rankin-Bass' version, of which I ...I still love Rankin-Bass' version, of which I had an excerpt record album as a child. The voice acting is good, and the animators had a good grasp of Tolkien's storytelling rhythm (ie, that the quiet bits were also important). A lot of the flaws are either a result of the length or the times when it was made; the good parts are timeless.<br /><br />Kids like exciting movies to a certain extent, but Miyazaki has proven again and again that the Tolkienish pattern of excitement interspersed with restful beauty is much more enthralling. (As I can testify, having been forced to show kids Miyazaki movies 500 zillion times in a row, beginning the DVDs again as soon as they end.)<br /><br />Jackson is a good showman, but he denies himself depth every time. The really great producers don't do that. You didn't see David Belasco telling Puccini to lighten up Madame Butterfly to the point that it lost the tragedy, or that Cho-Cho really wouldn't be respected by the audience unless she kicked somebody's butt as a ninja. And yet somehow Belasco made piles of money, all the same.Bansheehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12594214770417497135noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13522238.post-83281666370990718352013-01-03T09:46:21.675-05:002013-01-03T09:46:21.675-05:00I spent half the movie trying to remember if the &...<i> I spent half the movie trying to remember if the "pale orc" was from some bit of the _Silmarillion_ I had forgotten. "Surely they wouldn't have just invented an extra storyline out of whole cloth when the movie is already THREE HOURS LONG," I kept telling myself. </i><br /><br />Azog is mentioned in the historical appendices to LotR, and looking it up I see that there is actually a one line reference in The Hobbit itself (I'd forgotten that one.) However, in the appendices, Azog is dead well before the action of The Hobbit, and there is no orc captain tracking the company as they travel to the Lonely Mountain. Azog's son Bolg leads an army of goblins to the Battle of Five Armies.<br /><br />Azog does kill Thorin's grandfather Tror (though not in a battle, Tror had gone back with one companion to Moria, and was captured by Azog who cut off Tror's head and branded his name on it before sending it back to the dwarves, thus touching off a war between the dwarves and goblins which eventually led to Azog's death at the hands of Dain -- the same Dain who leads an army of Dwarves to the Battle of Five Armies.)<br /><br />And if that doesn't earn me my Tolkien geek points for the day I don't know what will...Darwinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08572976822786862149noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13522238.post-7079213381581022862013-01-03T08:31:39.196-05:002013-01-03T08:31:39.196-05:00I took my oldest two boys to see it a couple of ni...I took my oldest two boys to see it a couple of nights ago, and I can't argue with your assessment. <br /><br /> - Radagast was so silly that I thought for a moment he was being portrayed by Michael Palin. (He's not.) There were things I liked about the scenes with him, but not because they melded well with the rest of the movie.<br /><br /> - I spent half the movie trying to remember if the "pale orc" was from some bit of the _Silmarillion_ I had forgotten. "Surely they wouldn't have just invented an extra storyline out of whole cloth when the movie is already THREE HOURS LONG," I kept telling myself. <br /><br />- Very, very disappointed in the elimination of Bilbo's indignant pride as a motivation. Without it, you're left wondering why he went along.<br /><br />- Agree with Liz that the set design was amazing. I particularly loved the city of the dwarves, too. Gorgeous. <br /><br />- Also agree with Liz that the children won't mind some of the battle scenes. My boys liked the stone giants A LOT. <br /><br />- In general, another flaw of the movie -- I think -- is that it doesn't stand alone very well as a "whole piece." I realize it's part of a trilogy, made from a book that doesn't lend itself to easy chopping-up into thirds, plus bits and pieces from other books and book-parts. But if you're going to add things (cf. pale orc, bunny sled) you might have added things that sculpted the story-chunk into something that resembled a coherent whole, with character arcs and an identifiable climax and resolution of a sort. There seemed to be a lot of threads that went nowhere.<br /><br />This being said, while it's flawed, it won't keep me from coming back for the second and third movies. I enjoyed the movie from start to finish, even though it left me scratching my head a bit.bearinghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07953735060133330755noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13522238.post-26458853350943456562013-01-03T07:59:16.240-05:002013-01-03T07:59:16.240-05:00I would agree for the most part with your assessme...I would agree for the most part with your assessment, I found the repeated battle scenes to actually become tedious (it got to the point where if you'd seen one you'd seen them all), enough already. I also thought that Jackson rushed the timing on some of the scenes taken straight from the book (Bilbo and Gandalf in the "good morning" scene for example) while hanging seemingly endlessly on the orc scenes. I didn't mind the addition of Radagast, but the scene with the sled with the rabbits added nothing, and went on far too long as well.<br /><br />However, I have to say that Jackson seems to know his audience. The more youthful viewers of my acquaintance all loved the movie and particularly loved all those CGI fight/action scenes. While I thought that Jackson missed much of the subtle humor of the book, they revealed in the action. The fact is that Jackson was not making the movie for sixty something Tolkien geeks (I'm the sort of person who has attended Tolkien seminars for academics and owns a far amount of Tolkien criticism, including Shippey's tomes). He was making the movie in large part for people who may never have read a Tolkien volume at all, but who love fantasy/action movies, and who loved his LOTR.<br /><br />It was interesting to see the working out of some of the material in the appendix. I absolutely loved the scenes showing the city of the dwarves. I thought that the sets were amazingly well done. There was a lot to like, but I suspect that the things I liked best were not the things that enchanted younger viewers, except perhaps for the geekiest of Tolkien geeks among them.Lizhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05127202199834183627noreply@blogger.com