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The Hype of the Rings
With the Fellowship of the Rings just around the corner, the Slashdot Submissions bin is overflowing with stories about the
film since it premiered in the UK already for you lucky brits. If you don't mind a little spoilage, here is
the guardian's review, the BBC review, the telegraph review, some pictures from the premiere, and one last review. Also, Scifi.com is reporting that
the film has already been pirated. The reviews have their nitpicks, but on the whole its looking good. M : LOTR tattoos!
It was brilliant chosing for Boromir someone who wanted to play Aragorn. That's the perfect way to get into the character...
Oh, wait. This movie looks cool. Never mind! Give them your money!
Because The Hobbit is a fundamentaly differnet story. It is not the prequel, it is a chidlrens book. It was designed and written as one, and thats what it is.
LOTR is a much more complex, muhc darker and much more involved story. There are LOTR fanatics, but few Hobbit fanatics, although there are the real men, Tolkein Fanatics who study both.
All the same, the Hobbit is not so well loved, adored, fantasized over, obssesed over etc. It is an inferior bok and an inferior story, if onyl relative to the true masterpeice.
In Soviet Russia you dant have to put up with these crappy jokes
Oh, I'm going to. I should be getting my region 0 DVD grey import this week, but I won't be watching it until the 19th. But I'm doing this out of respect for Peter Jackson and the cast and crew of this film, not because I'm deluding myself that J.R.R. Tolkien, the author of the similiarly themed book would have cared, or that his estate has any interest, rights or say in this film.
Michael White, biographer of the Oxford professor and Lord of the Rings creator, said the author would have hated the film.
"I think he would have just closed his eyes to it," White said of Tolkien, who died in 1973 aged 81.
"He had a hatred of all things Hollywood and did not believe in the idea of imitation being the best form of flattery."
However, Tolkien's son, Christopher, who owns the rights to his father's literary legacy, denied reports that he was unhappy with the way The Lord of the Rings films are being made.
He had remained silent about the films, but reports claimed he was unhappy with the way the film-makers interpreted his father's books.
Tolkien sold the film rights to his cult fantasy books in 1969 for just £10,000 - meaning his family, and those in charge of his estate, were left with no control over how the movies were made.
It looks like a good adaptation, and I'm completely OK with the removal of elements and the filling in of backstory (like Gandalf's imprisonment by Saruman). However it's had too much added and changed (without the input of the creator) to be an actual canon version.
A petulant rock chick defending a passive Frodo is most definitely not the same as an elf lord unveiled in his fury and a desparate but defiant Frodo. It denies Frodo an important piece of character development just to get some tits and ass on screen.
A troll that appears in the book as a foot and an arm didn't get turned into a frenzied CGI showcase by accident. This is the most minor of my quibbles, but it's an easy way to add drama, and I'm a little disappointed that Jackson chose it rather than playing within the limits of the original source.
Replacing the elemental hatred of Caradhras with machinations of Saruman is a major shifting of the characters, not a minor plot tweak. This is implied as being on the limit of Sauron's abilities, let alone Saruman's. It actually demotes Saruman to a simple "bad assed mofo" role, rather than taking the harder but more rewarding route of focussing on his delightfully sinister powers of persuasion.
A skeleton knocked down a well accidentally is not a stone thrown down it on purpose. Again, minor point, but why change it, other than ego? The original situation is functionally identical and leads to exactly the same result.
And those are just the changes and additions that I know about. Don't get me wrong, I'm completely stoked about this adaptation, but on its own merits, because of the cast (petulant rock chicks aside), the crew and the director, and not because I think I'll be seeing the book "Fellowship of the Ring". The destination appears to be the same, but the journey looks to be different enough to jar.
Roll on the 19th when I can find out for sure.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.