Posted on 07/30/2012 10:29:08 PM PDT by Altariel
Peter Jackson formally announced this afternoon that his take on “The Hobbit” — originally envisioned as a two-part adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien’s tale — will be a trilogy.
The Oscar-winning filmmaker — who, as Smeagol scholars are well aware, directed the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy to much critical acclaim and financial success — had hinted about a third “Hobbit” during a recent appearance at Comic-Con. But today’s statement officially confirms that a third, not-yet-titled movie will follow “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey” and ”The Hobbit: There and Back Again.” Part three of the Bilbo Baggins saga is slated for release in summer 2014. “Unexpected Journey” arrives this December.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Yee Haa
If it’s a trilogy, he probably will draw from more source material than the Hobbit. I can see him drawing from Tolkien’s other books of events that were happening at the same time as filler material.
The Appendices are full of material. A third movie could easily have Aragorn and Arwen share a romance and still have time for he and Gandalf to share an adventure in the years after The Hobbit but before LOTR.
The book is less than three hundred pages.
I am a true LOR fan and think he did a tremendous job with the trilogy, yet even in the extended versions he left out some major players particularly in the early stages of the films. Including Tom Bombadil who aided the adventurers in the Old Forrest prior to their stay at the Inn at Brie. He was a relatively important character and was mentioned at the Council of Elrond as a possible keeper of the Ring of Power. He was also in the ending chapters. The Rape of the Shire and the reclamation of Frodo's Home from the Sackville baggins's was left out of the LOR trilogy and it's extended version even with almost thirteen hours of film.
I only hope that he doesn't do to the Hobbit what he did to King Kong. The Movie was very good in some parts but was in desperate need of an editor. He could have lopped off a good 30 minutes or more of the film and made the picture much better by having LESS film.
Hopefully he will be far more faithful to the source material than he was for Lord of the Rings.
I’m not referring to omissions. I’m referring to deliberate alterations in the movies.
FR Hobbit Hole Pingie Thingie
Jackson also announced that after The Hobbit trilogy is done, he’s planning to film a thirty part Silmarillion series that will baffle and mystify even hardcore Tolkien fans and sort of just end suddenly.
I agree with you. I hope this time they can keep from inserting things that never happened in the book and attempt to be more true to the characters. (No Elves at Helm’s Deep and forget the excuses — you don’t have to show character growth in every single character in the story.) I enjoyed the Lord of the Rings movie, but the other two movies in the trilogy were nowhere near as enjoyable for me.
I just really hope these extra Hobbit movies don’t ruin the story with padding and bloat the way Peter Jackson’s King Kong was bloated.
Yes!!!!!!
I’ve read the LOTR books three times and seen the movies twice and don’t really know anything major is missing.
I know Jackson excluded Bombadil. I would have liked to see that scene, except for the nude hobbits running across the fields.
Jackson said that it was an act that wouldn’t have worked well in the film version. It would have left most movie goers puzzled as to why it was in the film and would have been a distraction to the overall movie itself.
I do know that sometimes what works well in a book doesn’t work well in a film and adjustments have to be made to account for that. That’s just the reality of film-making.
I think they should have had the cleansing of the Shire. I would have liked to have seen that.
I can appreciate why Bombadil wasn’t in the movie, because it didn’t fit the overall movie. To most movie goers, it would have been a strange scene to have the Hobbits running for their lives to go into this earthly paradise and strip naked and run across the field and talk to this elflike man, with a green hat, who could hold the ring with no harm done.
How could the ring really be that dangerous when this man is holding it like it was nothing? It would have undercut the danger of the ring, imo.
Peter Jackson's King Kong, to my mind, was exactly just right all around.
Glad you enjoyed it.
Apart from being able to really follow the book (a major criticism of the LOTR trilogy, as major plot points were completely eliminated or drastically altered; see: cleansing of the Shire, the Siege of Minas Tirith being reduced to a several-hour battle, the erasure of the Field of Cormallen scene and Aragorn’s coronation, the erasure of the Black Breath subplot, Denethor’s Palantir, etc), doing the movie as a trilogy allows him to explore the White Council and the expulsion of the Necromancer from Dol Guldur. It also permits a longer flashback for Gandalf when he found Thrain in the Necromancer’s dungeon and received the map of the Lonely Mountain. Finally, it allows a bit of fill-in for the space between The Hobbit and the LOTR series, with Gollum’s journey to Mordor, an introduction to the Rangers, and so on.
If you thought it was that bad, why did you finish watching it? Are you a masochist?
I think he could have been aided by a strong editor. That being said, a man that has a multi-billion dollar franchise under his belt does whatever he wants to do film wise. He could get a three hour documentary on watching grass grow green lighted. Sadly, I would probably pay to see it just because he would probably make it interesting. It would certainly be beautiful to look at.
The LOTR books aren’t much longer, and Jackson had to heavily rewrite them to get a comprehensible and filmable movie. Scenes that take a few paragraphs can require tens of minutes of footage to accomplish. The announcement did say (and the trailers apparently hint that) Gandalf would be seen going to Dol Guldur, at least.
This way, we’re more likely to get a good version of the battle in the caves, the arrival at Beorn’s, the battle with the spiders, and the party’s imprisonment in the wood-elves’ palace. Hopefully, we’ll also get a good build-up to the opening of the secret door, as well as the battle on the lake and the Battle of Five Armies.
LOL! Yeah, if anybody could make it interesting, it would be him. Odd ... the LOTR movies didn’t do much for me, but King Kong, which is NOT typical of the kind of movie I like, really grabbed me on a bunch of levels. The scenes of the ship nearly foundering on the rocks, as I am of a seafaring family and have been on boats around surging shores a fair amount, was just so frighteningly real ... dang, now I’m getting a hankering to watch it again!!! Oh well ... it’ll be a change from my recent Bullitt binge — for some reason I’ve watched it about three times over the past two months and could easily watch it again tomorrow except that I’d probably get tossed out of the house and have to sleep in the shed!
I think that it is in very capable hands. I simply believe that he will have to get several other sources beyond the novels narrative to flesh out what looks like another eight to ten hour trilogy.
He still needs to do the last book of ROTK.
I agree. I was not happy with the Jacksonized LOTR. I understand leaving out some material, unless one is going to do the Russian “War and Peace” marathon, with every scene and every line. However, leaving out the author’s material and substituting the director’s original composition is unacceptable.
I didn’t get ten seconds into the “Hobbit” trailer before I started spitting, “That’s not in the text! He didn’t say that! His beard is the wrong color!” Our homeschool group has a “Hobbit Reading Club” going this summer and fall, but we may not be able to attend the movie when it comes out, because we have several young boys who are even worse cranks about the text than I am ;-). Maybe we can take duct tape to keep us all quiet ...
I thought the most egregious change in the story was the rather silly misuse of the Dead. Really, green glowing invincible warriors? Why didn’t Aragorn just march on Mordor with them and get it over with?
Also the great misuse of Faramir’s character. In the book he was one of the most admirable characters. Not to mention the way the hobbits somehow crossed the Great River twice without noticing it.
I look forward to seeing his work again in this trilogy.
I disliked some of the structural changes to the LotR movies back when they first came out. Recently I’ve been learning how to design stories that people want to read or watch and I’ve realized that some of the changes were necessary to put the movies into something closer to the three-act structure that we subconsciously expect. Cutting out Bombadil, for instance, was vital to making sure the moment of fateful decision appeared at the proper time. Structuring the Two Towers to end after the Battle of Helm’s Deep allowed for a proper Act Three complete with low point and final victory.
That doesn’t mean he should be allowed to get the color of beards wrong, of course! But if you (that’s the general you, not you personally Tax-Chick) want to see a version that more closely follows the story yet is truly... awful as a story, the Ralph Bakshi animated version is instructional.
Hobbit is NOT enough of a story to support a trilogy.
Another example of Hollyweird greed.
Then they could have had a fourth movie about the return home and the cleansing of the Shire.
They finally figured out that with a franchise like this, another movie is ‘like printing money’.
Don't know as how three “the Hobbit” movies are going to work - but I was definitely for there being FOUR ‘Lord of the Rings’ movies.
I agree with leaving things out and moving events from one “book” to another in order to make an effect film. I even agree with depicting events on screen that were described in conversation in a book. In a book, words are words, whether they’re “live action” or a conversation, while on screen, fighting (for example) is not at all same as talking about fighting.
However, making up new material - action that didn’t happen in the book, stupid modern jokes, significant changes in characters - is inexcusable, in my opinion. It’s the imposition of the filmmaker’s ego over the author, just because he can, and I believe it is dishonorable.
I saw the old, animated “Hobbit” movie when I was a child. It may have inspired me to pick up the book, but it was so long ago that I don’t remember.
Some of those really bug me too. The little things like stupid jokes more than the big things like character changes, honestly. I adore LotR; it’s been a favorite since childhood. But there’s very little character development. It’s essentially a milieu story. That sort of works in a book but it really doesn’t work in a movie. Movies need to be character or event driven. So in order to make the movie work, they inserted character changes.
I don’t like a lot of those changes. Aragorn’s particularly bug me. But it did give Aragorn growth as a character. He had goals and fears. Original book-version Aragorn... didn’t.
Some of it’s hubris, the filmmaker thinking he can tell a story better than the author. Some of it is translation difficulties. And we as viewers have to decide how much altering of the source material we can take. There will always be some. I know exactly how Smaug looks and sounds and the movie version will be wrong, guaranteed, but I expect to enjoy the movie anyway.
Somebody who has spent 60 years working towards a goal just may have done all his "growing" already. Portraying this guy at his time of life as essentially an insecure twenty-something was insulting to the audience's intelligence.
If they had to have "character growth" it could have been handled via flashback. Five minutes of flashback showing Aragorns's life would have given plenty of room for character development.
Thanks ExGeeEye for the ping. With three movies, there should be a chance for a Moot at one of them. Or maybe not. Only time will tell.
I was with friends— the sort of friends I would stick with through times of great trouble or disaster.
Sticking with them through a movie I wasn’t enjoying was, by contrast, a piece of cake.
I agree with Sherman Logan: a character can be fully developed - in the sense that the audience (or reader) knows what he is like, his values, his probable responses to a situation - without needing “to develop” or change significantly in the course of a work of narrative art.
Look at some of your great movie characters: General Patton, John Wayne as (fill in character ;-), Major Whittlesey in “The Lost Battalion.” They are fully realized characters in their context, which is a combat-based context just as LOTR is. They don’t need growth because they have grown already.
A character doesn’t need to “grow up” to grow. A character needs to experience change during the story. He starts with a goal; takes steps toward that goal; suffers setbacks; deals with those setbacks. If he doesn’t, he’s not a character, just a prop. You can do all those things with a fully developed, mature character.
I think the way Jackson changed Aragorn’s character did disservice to Tolkien by making Aragorn come across like a whiny loser. But I think what he was trying to do - show the audience what Aragorn was trying to accomplish - was the right idea. I just wish he’d understood Tolkien a little better and trusted the audience more.
So I totally sympathize! {^)
In summer 2014 my wife and I will turn 50. I've been casting about for something special to do that would involve taking a week off and going somewhere with lodging and a pool or something. I've been leaning toward an indoor waterpark resort here in Michigan, but considering similar places the greater midwest. Coordinating that with movie showtimes-- in this case, Hobbit 3-- should be a piece of cake.
Just a thought...
F'rinstance...or Cedar Point or Six Flags Great Americe, in OH and IL respectively...
Oh, and if we do this, I'd want to make the Hobbit-Moot part of it a surprise for MrsEx.
It would certainly be a great time!! Some of us have been discussing this on FB already, even when there were only going to be TWO Hobbit movies! It would be fun seeing you folks I haven’t yet had the pleasure of ‘meeting’.
*snort*
I think I will require duct tape as well. I may even write “Remove at your own risk” on it. :-)
I can just imagine a whole row of us, all going, “MMMMPHHHH! SSSSSSSSSSRRRRRRRNNNNG! GRRRRRRUUUHHHHH!” Maybe straitjackets would help ...
The adults could pass a flask with an appropriate beverage, but the kids will probably have to be both bribed and threatened!
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