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Posted on 07/21/2008 8:17:12 PM PDT by Oyarsa
Del Toro refuses to copy Jackson July 19th, 2008 by xoanon | Discuss
From Maxim and World Entertainment News: Guillermo Del Toro has promised Lord Of The Rings fans his franchise prequel The Hobbit will be very different from his directing predecessor Peter Jackson. Jackson directed the three original films, but has given up his director’s chair for Del Toro. But Del Toro has refused to follow in Jackson’s footsteps, vowing to give movie fans something new. He tells Maxim magazine, “If I thought it was about following (Jackson), I wouldn’t be doing it this way. “It’s a matter of raising on it. I think The Hobbit has a peculiar sprit in relation to not only the trilogy, but also to Tolkein’s work. “It’ll have respect for what’s been done, but also its own individuality.”
Uh-oh. Two words: “Ralph Bakshi.” Different isn’t always better.
pingage
That is true, but considering how Jackson butchered the book, in the areas of
1) Changing major plot points
2) Changing characters’ motivations and personalities and
3) Changing the story’s theme
there’s not much Del Toro could do that would be worse...
The Hobbit IS different in spirit in relation to the trilogy. More focus on the individual (Bilbo), not as "dark" and militaristic--at least that's my recollection (although it's been a few years since I've read them). But of course there's a lot that they have in common.
It's probably a good idea not to stray TOO far from Jackson's vision and style, which worked very well.
I'm still hoping for James McAvoy as Bilbo.
I myself loved the books, and I also enjoyed the movies.
The Hobbit, though, was a charming little adventure story with only faint echoes of the true depths of Middle Earth. It's like splashing in the shallows and thinking you have it all in hand and then, all of a sudden, about three chapters into the Fellowship the bottom drops out and you realize that the waters are very deep indeed. And pure. And that it's a long, long way to shore.
I’m definitely cool with this. Prior to ‘King Kong’ I may have been disappointed, but not now.
That movie changed everything. Unwatchable.
And then you read the Silmarillion...
Excellent Contrast!
Indeed!
“It’s probably a good idea not to stray TOO far from Jackson’s vision and style, which worked very well.”
In terms of characters, plot and theme, Jackson showed great disregard for Tolkien’s masterpiece.
In one of his letters, Tolkien ripped apart a guy who wanted to make MINOR changes for a film; Tolkien probably would have challenged Jackson to a duel when he first saw the script.
“...and didn’t really understand the point of the whole thing in cutting the Scouring Of The Shire.”
That’s easy; the Scouring of the Shire is Tolkien’s assault on socialism. We can’t have THAT in a movie, now can we?
” didn’t really understand the point of the whole thing in cutting the Scouring Of The Shire”
Easy. We can’t have the audience realizing that Tolkien showed the hobbits removing socialists from power, can we?
I have heard that, in the two movies, they will do more to set up LOTR (ie Sauron’s return to Mordor). Most of this plot is only hinted at in LOTR Appendices and the Silmarillion. Looking forward to that part especially.
The purists will never be satisfied, and they don't seem to understand that you can't make a trilogy of films just for them--the books had to be streamlined, and some hidden socialist agenda wasn't behind that decision.
...BTW, are the pfiffltriggi and sorns and hrossa all getting along?
Cheers!
He also made delibrate changes; he didn't have to emasculate most of the male characters, for instance; he didn't have to make Theoden have similar motivations to Denethor, or Faramir and Boromir (and Merry and Pippin) duplicates of eachother.
He didn't have to have Frodo send Sam away crying. He didn't have to have the Ents refuse to march against Isengard initially.
The point being: Jackson made MANY unnecessary ideological changes in the movie; it would not surprise me in the least of the absence of the Scouring was also ideologically based.
They are indeed, but I see that there are plenty of men like Devine and Weston still in Thulcandra. May the Bent One soon be unmade! :-)
The changes you note are rather minor and, frankly, I don’t see how they “emasculate” the characters you mention. And this kind of obsessiveness to very minor details is something only the real fanatics care about. When reworking characters for the screen, short cuts are always taken; I didn’t see them as ideology-based.
That’s easy; the Scouring of the Shire is Tolkien’s assault on socialism. We can’t have THAT in a movie, now can we?
Interesting... I never really saw it like that. I always saw the "Scouring of the Shire" as an important lesson that one can't hide from evil. Remember, Hobbits always avoided "adventures" and liked peace and quiet. They believed that if they ignored the outside world, then it would ignore them. The Scouring of the Shire showed just how wrong that belief was. That there's no place to hide from evil, and that it MUST be confronted.
At least that was always the message I got from it.
Mark
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Jackson shortchanged Eowyn? Dude, that was Tolkien who did that.
Eowyn and Arwen have always struck me as characters that exist solely because someone said, “Y’know, JR, women ain’t gonna read that unless you put some chicks in it.”
What? You got sumthin’ against Rotoscope?
: )
Actually, the Scouring was Tolkien's assault on INDUSTRIALIZATION.
bflr = bump for later reading
Oh, I don't think so at all. Eowyn was a truly proto-feminist character way before her time. There's a great deal of Tolkien's wife in her (weird aside - did you know their gravestone reads "Beren and Luthien"?) and supposedly she represents women he knew who wanted to go to WWI with their men. She wasn't a throwaway - the point was that Faramir was second to Aragorn only in those aspects her growth led her to no longer consider most important. Whether one likes how she developed is quite another issue, but her character did as much real development in LOTR as any minor character, so I wouldn't consider her shortchanged at least in that aspect.
But as a minor character most of that necessarily got chopped in the film and she ended up looking (IMHO) quite a bit less profound than she was in the novels. She wasn't the only one like that, of course - Saruman, Denethor, Theoden, and both Merry and Pippin all suffered from dramatic truncation and Bombadil famously didn't make the screen at all.
I agree with you with regard to Arwen, however. She was, in essence, Luthien rewrit, and it seems to me that Tolkien was attempting to lever a bit of the earlier story into LOTR - the same issues, certainly, of the choice of death and love. In order to close that deal Jackson would have had to film the Appendices as well. Not likely.
Oh, well, I guess that I must be the only person in the world who likes Baskshi's version of Lord of the Rings (as well as "Wizards"). The music score for the Bakshi LOTR was great and the animation wasn't that bad either. Personally, I liked the Aragorn in the Baskshi version between than Viggo Mortensen.
I tried to read the Silmarillion. I gave up about one third of the way in.
You’d definitely be alone in that. Even Bakshi doesn’t like his version of LOTR, largely because the studio kept changing the rules and slashing the budget and shrinking the scope. It’s not even close to the movie he wanted to make.
...but, better is always different.
I’ll have to get trashed right along witcha, because I thought Mortenson was an immature disaster of an actor who didn’t understand his character at all. It is a decidedly minority opinion... ;-)
I agree with you regarding the lessons, and you’re right that it would have made a really long movie even longer.
Still, I think that it was an important lesson that was sort of lost. Besides, in the movie, Wormtongue was killed at Eisengard.
For a quick (and funny, but extremely rude, crude, and socially irresponsible) synopsis of LOTR, check out this YouTube clip.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oRNUIxpTHvA
Warning: Not safe for work.
Mark
He was a lot better than Stuart Townsend who was cast originally and had started filming when they replaced him.
Was that the score which included the song 'Where There's a Whip There's a Way'?
I could never understand why Tolkien barely mentioned Arwen in LOTR, much less developed her. Galadriel and Eowyn at least get time in the sun.
Considering Arwen was the Luthien of the Third Age, even taking into account the story in the appendices her treatment is pretty thin. Considering how much time women got in the Silmarillion it’s strange. I think Jackson should be credited for developing her as much as he did in the movie.
(Shudders) Yeah. You got a point there.
I'm thinking Samuel L. Jackson would have made a great Aragorn. OK, maybe it's a stretch, but think of the speech he'd have made at the Fields of Pelennor...of course, there goes the PG-13 rating...
No, that was another one. That one was done by Bass and Rankin, the same people who did the animated "The Hobbit" which had Orson Bean as the voice of Bilbo, John Huston as the voice of Gandalf, and Richard Boone as the voice of Smaug.
The music score from the Bakshi LOTR was almost entirely orchestral and really quite good.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0uvPXTDKwWM
I did wonder why Aragorn seemed so self-doubting--"choosing" exile as the movie Elrond said. Very twentieth-century angst-ridden--
One change Jackson made was actually an improvement over the books--making Arwen a real character by switching her out with Gildor and drawing from the Appendices for her background. She was rather a cardboard doll in the books, and most readers couldn't comprehend why Aragorn would prefer Arwen to Eowyn.
I hope Del Toro keeps the look of LOTR but vastly improves on Peter Jackson’s ham-handed plot and character development.
PJ absolutely destroyed, wrecked, butchered Aragorn and Faramir.
Just a minor tweak to some minor characters?
On the other hand Del Toro is very right in the sense that The Hobbit is a very different book than LOTR.
Exactly. A lot of the blame for the butchering of Aragorn can be laid on the casting choice. No blood for oil, lolol, I mean, I'm a lover not a fighter, I mean, I'm the greatest hero of my age who's been leading armies and journeying in the wilderness for 100+ years, no wait I'm a B movie actor.
No he didn't. Aragorn was handled well and with great loyalty to the character. Faramir was not as decisive and strong as he was in the novel (though I really liked the scene in the extended version where he grabbed Smeagol by the throat) but I would not call his character "destroyed, wrecked and butchered".
My biggest problem with the movies was Arwen. It was popcorn and restroom time every time she showed up. Besides, poor Glorfindel got erased to give Arwen more screen time.
There is more screen time of Aragorn shifting his weight from hip to hip and posing for the camera than of him fighting, leading, showing nobility of character.
That's merely your opinion. Others didn't see Jackson's necessary compacting of details as leaving the characters "absolutely destroyed, wrecked, butchered". Your earlier gripe was also about Merry and Pippin who were, indeed minor characters.
Most of the complaining about this movie is from folks who clearly have no idea what goes into adapting a novel. There are simply too many characters in these books to make them all perfect. Most people accept this reality.
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