Hobbit!

[alias_sqbr]

Today Cam and I escaped the heatwave by seeing the Hobbit. We were both very glad to have been warned that it was long and slow because it REALLY was, but that's pretty much my only serious complaint with the film.


Things I would change:
-Tighten up a lot of the scenes, cut some to be extra features (None of them were inherently bad, and I'm not sure what you'd cut, but it was just too long for such a simple story)
-Stockier dwarves. Aedan Turner is a very pretty man but he is not a (fantasy) dwarf. Some of them were downright waif-like.
-less fat jokes, less physical grossness with the goblins, it all felt a bit physically injured/ill = evil (which is RIFE in the original but that doesn't mean it had to stay)
-slightly lighter tone. Not as light as the original book, that wouldn't work with the type of story they were telling, but more like the Harry Potter or Narnia films. A lot of the plot felt too children's book-ish to carry off the DRAMATIC MUSIC and desatured blue grainy darkness etc. Also I didn't think it needed to be quite so violent and horror-y.

Changes and choices I liked:
-Beefing up the lore, foreboding tension and connections to the LOTR. Yes even the bits they made up, I thought it worked.
-Making the dwarves feel like a real people. It reminded me a lot of Dragon Age, actually (which obviously stole a lot from Tolkein, but I did like that you really got into the dwarves heads)
-Radagast! I always wished Tolkein had talked about him more.
-The singing and varying tone in general. I've heard some people complain it jarred with the darker parts but I thought it was fine. During LOTR I kept imagining Tolkein going "But where are all my songs?"

There was other stuff but I forget. Some changes I'd have liked that would never happen under Peter Jackson would be making some of the dwarves female and having anyone be non-white. As Cam pointed out, there's a lot of heavy set Maori actors in New Zealand who'd have made great dwarves.

Comments

[kerravonsen]

During LOTR I kept imagining Tolkein going "But where are all my songs?"

Indeed.
My favourite song in the Hobbit movie would have to be the "that's what Bilbo Baggins hates" one. It was such fun. Though the "to find our long forgotten gold" song after that was nicely gloomy.

making some of the dwarves female

Well, I was kind of glad that in the destruction-of-Erebor scenes, there were female dwarf refugees. That was more than we got in the books, which never even mention a single female dwarf.

Radagast! I always wished Tolkein had talked about him more.

I'm of two minds about Radagast. I thought book!Radagast was more solemn and less silly, but I did enjoy Silly!Radagast too. Though I sometimes found it hard to think of him as Radagast and not as Sylvester McCoy with lichen in his hair.

I found it equally difficult with Bilbo; sometimes he was Bilbo and sometimes he was Martin Freeman with hairy feet.

[alias_sqbr]

Well, I was kind of glad that in the destruction-of-Erebor scenes, there were female dwarf refugees. That was more than we got in the books, which never even mention a single female dwarf.

Definitely! But "Slightly more female character representation than Tolkein" is not a very high bar to reach :)

[djkittycat]

That was not lichen. That was bird shit. :-D