Slashdot Mirror
New Hope for Jackson Hobbit Film?
DrJimbo writes "Just in time for the 70th Anniversary of the Hobbit (published September 21, 1937) Entertainment Weekly has a 5-page article on a possible reconciliation between Peter Jackson and New Line Cinema that may pave the way for the director of the Lord of the Rings trilogy to return and helm the filming of The Hobbit. It was previously reported here that Jackson would not be making the Hobbit film. The EW article says that Jackson wants to make two films: first the Hobbit in its entirety and then another film that bridges the roughly 60 years between the end of the Hobbit and the start of the Lord of the Rings. Unfortunately Jackson already has a lot on his plate with filming of The Lovely Bones scheduled to start this month and a live action Tintin film in the works."
I'm interested to know if Peter Jackson will elect to star in the lead role of Bilbo.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Please, don't film Tintin. Thanks.
What exactly happens, of any interest, in that period? Bilbo uses the Ring a few times to avoid the Sackville-Bagginses. Writes memoirs. Lends mithril armour to the Michel Delving Mathom-house. Wow, riveting stuff.
In the wider world, Sauron has returned to Mordor and is rebuilding Barad-dur. Three hours on an Orcish construction site, then?
The only excitement you might get is following Aragorn incognito in the guard of Minas Tirith. But to what end?
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
Am I the only one who felt the LOTR movies were not especially good and that Jackson's eccentric style may not have been the best fit for the book?
Do we honestly care if he directs them? I mean, we care that a bad director doesn't get to, but as long as it's a decent director, does it really matter who it is?
On the other hand, if he manages to get a script written for the 60 year time difference, and it's not 60 years of Gandolf riding around in grey and the hobbits having teaparties (since that's basically what happened), then I'm all for the new film and Jackson. I'm not real hopeful, though, since all the really interesting stuff happened in the books and the other years weren't covered because they simply weren't that interesting.
Or maybe someone can name some of the interesting things that supposedly happened in those 60 years? Gandolf was obviously out doing some sort of research, but I don't think anything specific was ever mentioned. And the hobbits were pretty clearly doing hobbit-like things in their little boring houses. They don't really even have politics, just a few that don't particulary care for each other from feuds that happened generations ago over silly things.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
Let's see, Jackson only made them what, $3 billion dollars? I think each movie was directly good for around a billion, plus or minus $100 million, and this is talking straight box office, not even considering DVD's, TV rights, moichandizin', etc. I would be no way surprised in hearing the total take is up to $5 billion at this point, and a project like this is going to be like Star Wars or the goddamn Beatles catalog, a fat stream of recurring revenue for decades to come. And this is off an initial investment of $300 million for the whole trilogy? Do they think they could have pulled it together without someone like Peter Jackson at the helm? By all rights, the trilogy should have flopped -- Hollywood can't do quality. LOTR being brilliant is about as long of odds as Babylon 5 finishing its entire five year run and only sucking in the last season.
So New Line realizes they could stop buggering the goose that laid the golden egg and make another fat pile of shiny if they treat it nice? DUUUH, but still a bit of cluefulness not expected from Hollywood. Now go make the movie!
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
Where in the constitution does it talk about British books?
May contain traces of nut.
Made from the freshest electrons.
only if he writes the script using a fountain pen....
While not entirely successful, changes were necessary to make it possible to make a poetic work function dramatically.
Dramatic storytelling is fundamentally unrealistic, because it overemphasizes the power of an individual's ability to control situations through their decisions. LotR doesn't believe the fundamental model. In LotR, no individual is capable of achieving success. While individuals may fail through their own actions, they cannot succeed. This is a profoundly un-dramatic viewpoint; the rules of drama say that the protagonist must overcome adversity through his own virtues. In LotR, characters may attain their ends, but they do not achieve them. It is not accidental that Frodo fails in his quest, it is a deliberate philosophical statement about the action of grace in the lives of people who at least try to be virtuous.
In Tolkien's world view, the agency of individuals even in their own decisions is limited. People roll along in the grooves that their habitual actions have worn in their character. We are carefully presented with pairs of characters in which the practice or non practice of the Christian virtues of faith, hope and love play out in their destinies: Frodo/Gollum, Theoden/Denethor, Faramir/Boromir. The idea that a character's destiny is part of a larger process than the events of the story is also anti-dramatic.
It is inevitable that changes are made to make the movie work dramatically -- at the very least the elaborate parallelism of Tolkien would have doubled the length of the movies. This is not heresy, Tolkien himself was the kind of author who never stopped changing a manuscript until it was torn from his hands. Some of the movie changes work, some of them don't.
The changes that don't work fail because the story is simply too complex already for them to be developed adequately. As it is, considerable familiarity with the story is needed to follow the movies. The story changes work to the degree their ends are consistent with time available. The changes in Faramir, for example, simply don't ring true, because there isn't enough time to show him making a believable "change of heart" decision. Rewriting Theoden's death scene to be played with Eowyn was not only time efficient, it heightened the emotional impact of the scene. It also brings the somewhat brash screen Theoden back to Tolkien's Theoden, whose saving grace was humility.
Many changes were done to preserve pieces of poetry in the original; Eomer's words are put in Theoden's mouth; the words of the unnamed narrator are put in Gandalf's mouth. By in large these are to the benefit of the movies in that they preserve some of the beauty of the original.
I was watching the DVD of Return of the King recently, and I was particularly struck by the Rohirrim in the Battle of Pelennor Fields. This was of course altered to fit the needs of dramatization, but I believe Tolkien would have been thrilled. It shows how Jackson understands the heroic values of Lord of the Rings, even if he is not 100% successful in translating those values to the screen: heroism is not conferred by victory, but by acting courageously when reason tells you victory is impossible.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
I was considering the impact of other directors...
Paul Verhoeven: He would probably choose some aspect of the story and hyper emphasize it. The movie would also have blatant political satire.
Michael Bay: The fight scenes would be dramatic, but we would not have any idea who was fighting or who was winning until the end when we finally got a somethings besides blurred elbows and bodies and the wide angle shot showed us the winners standing.
David Lynch: A very strange film with gollem losing an ear and sauron going on and on about mommy while taking nitro.
Joel and Ethan Coen: An offbeat humorous version with every goofy character in LOTR played up and heightened magical reality.
David Cronenberg: Would use LOTR as a metaphor to examine the nature of reality. At the end, there would be a tie-in between Sauron and current modern reality.
Stephen Chow: A rollicking humorous version of LOTR with lots of special effects. He would probably focus on the one on one fight scenes more than the big battle scenes. No doubt, Gandalf's robes would be reduced to tatters by the Balrog's first attack and we would see his long underwear for a comedy effect before they both tumbled into the abyss.
Quentin Tarantino: This hyper-kenetic, super dark version of LTR would have lots of squick scenes. The lust between Aragorn and his love interest would be played up. Harvey Keitel would appear as Aragorn. Juliette Lewis would star as Arwen.
Michael Moore: Sauron as a metaphor for corporations or the Bush presidency... The hobbits as the socialist paradise (with a scene showing how hobbits were so happy because they had socialized medicine and ate only natural food).
Woody Allen: Woody would of course be Bilbo. Back in the day Mia Farrow would have been Arwen. Someone would have an affair.
Night Shyamalan: Whatever happened during the movie-- the ending would involve some sort of massive twist. Perhaps it will turnout Sauron was so desperate to build power because he was trying to stop something even worse from happening (ala "colossus and crab").
Spike Lee: Black hobbits for sure! Probably black elves. And the orcs would be white. Sure the evilness of the "white hand" would be played up.
George Lucas: 9 hours of wonderful actors giving horrible performances... true to the plot and great special effect scenes tho.
Clint Eastwood: Man.. I like his work but can't imagine what his version would be like. He might be aragorn tho.
---
I think if people consider what we could have had.... They will realize how grateful we should be that Jackson took this on.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
As with so many people in these near-xenophobic times, you appear to be making the incorrect assumption that the Constitution only applies to US Citizens. When the constitution means "United States" things, it explicitly says so. Section 8's enumerated power of copyright applies to all writings of authors everywhere in the world.