Slashdot Mirror
Filming For The Hobbit Begins In July
krou writes "Sir Ian McKellen has revealed that filming for The Hobbit and its sequel is scheduled to begin in July, and will take approximately a year to complete. Casting is now 'taking place in LA, London and New York,' and [director Guillermo] Del Toro is already 'living in Wellington, close to the Jacksons and the studio in Miramar.' Apparently the script is still being worked on, and 'the first draft is crammed with old and new friends, again on a quest in Middle-earth.' The planned sequel to The Hobbit is to be an original story not written by Tolkien, covering the 60 years between The Hobbit, and The Lord of the Rings."
"The planned sequel to The Hobbit is to be an *original story not written by Tolkien*, covering the 60 years between The Hobbit, and the Lord of the Rings."
Thanks but no thanks.
There is a war going on for your mind.
Oh joy, another visually stunning film with a disjointed script, mixing Tolkien's brilliant timeless dialog with flat modern drivel penned by Fran Walsh. And the sequel... that's just going to be visually stunning with drivel for plot and dialog.
It wouldn't be so bad if they didn't screw up the plot and dialog so badly. Ugh.
... like Jar Jar Binksarrim of the water people. And Elrond will have an affair with Galadriel. That's right, as soon as we fully Americanize this story, we will have a real winner here, folks.
Imagine buying the White Album and finding Green Day tracks spliced in to 'fill in' what The Beatles meant to do.
I don't think I'll see either of them out of principle.
I'm in favor of the sequel. In all due reverence to Tolkien, there are other authors on this planet who have done well with fantasy works. In fact every single work of modern fantasy is derivative from Tolkien's works, and if you've ever enjoyed any of them, there's a distinct risk you'll enjoy this, too.
What's more, since you haven't read this particular book, you're probably less likely to be underwhelmed by it. You can't compare the dialog to a book which doesn't exist.
Finally, I think it absolutely vital for fantasy, and all fiction everywhere, to move beyond reverence for certain works. Somehow humanity managed to move beyond Shakespeare, creating new-ish works which we prefer to his, and I believe we can move beyond Tolkien. I also feel that making a new work in that same setting can be a catalyst for that evolution.
I'm also a strong proponent of 'Lucas' Law' wherein we can democratically remove an author's control over a project if they cease to contribute to society. Introduce one too many Jar-Jar-Binks-types and the people put a referendum on the ballot to put your work into the public domain...
Tolkien's work should be eligible for this transition as well, because nothing new is coming out of it. Or nothing was, until this sequel.
Well, I read *The Hobbit* to my son when he was in 2nd grade. After I read the last word on the last page, the instant I set the book down he said, "Can we read *The Hobbit 2* next?"
Poor kid. That's just how I feel.
*The Hobbit* is greatly underestimated by even Tolkien fans, who pooh-pooh it because it's not LotR. The tone of the story is a bit condescending at first, something that Tolkien himself expressed dissatisfaction with in later years, but as in LotR there's a lot going on under the surface of *The Hobbit*. It's a story well worth serious study. Achieving that in story so readable and enjoyable on a superficial level is a tremendous achievement.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Tolkien wrote dialogue? I thought his books were fantasy travelogues: descriptions of places, leaving places, walking through places, and arriving at other places. I don't remember much in the way of dialogue. I just remember lots of walking. Oh, and maybe a few spiders and a dragon or something.
You see, in order to have 'brilliant timeless dialogue' your characters have to have interesting motivations. The Hobbit was a classic adventure story, which quite simply does not lend itself to interesting motivations or dialogue. The only relevant motivation in an adventure story is "We've got to achieve The Thing!" and the dialogue boils down to"Have we achieved The Thing? No? How do we achieve The Thing? Ah, we need to (go somewhere/get something/kill someone/help someone/destroy something). Let's do that now!" repeated until the answer to the first question is "Yes! We have achieved The Thing!"
The Hobbit, and Tolkien's other works are nice stories, and amazing for their time, but don't try to make them into something they aren't. "Visually stunning" was exactly what Tolkien was going for, otherwise the books wouldn't read like a travelogue.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
In theory, you're 100% correct. There's tons of material in The Silmarillion and the other early writings that are ideal for translation into screenplays... but there's two problems: 1) Licensing; the producers would have to pay even more money to Tolkein's estate; and 2) you can't fail by overestimating the American appetite for banality, but plenty of people have failed by overestimating their appetite for intelligence and depth.
You and I, as JRRT fans, would love to see a big screen representation of The Fall of Numenor or The Tale of Beren and Luthien. These tales are the right length and the right level of complexity to permit a screenwriter plenty of artistic license and still remain faithful to Tolkein's originals. But to a studio exec, those names aren't familiar. They're only familiar to a nerds and geeks, and a minority of them at that, and they're notoriously hard to please and, even worse, known pirates and downloaders.
Nope. The Hobbit has name recognition. Kids in the 70's and 80's were given that book to read in 9th grade Lit classes. Now those kids have money and their own kids. They're going to milk that name for all it's worth.
I'll give del Toro the benefit of the doubt. He earned that with Pan's Labyrinth. But as soon as he shows signs of kowtowing to the studio execs and marketing pressures, I'm out. It will happen, the question is how many movies will it take?
I can see the fnords!
Beorn will probably get cut like Tom Bombadil did.
I love the book, but I don't think it's a good idea for someone else to try making a sequel.
"16MB (fuck off, MiB fascists)" - The Mighty Buzzard
I would like to second the idea of movies being created based on tales from The Silmarillion. There was a lot of cool stuff in there.
I have a bad feeling about this...
I'll third that, it'll save me the agony of reading The Silmarillion