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Hobbit Film Trailer Posted Online
bonch writes "The trailer for the film adaptation of The Hobbit by Peter Jackson has been posted online by ComingSoon. The film, due December 14, 2012, is subtitled "An Unexpected Journey" and will be followed by a second film in 2013 that will tie the story with the Lord of the Rings trilogy." I'm glad to hear that they've kept the Misty Mountains song and I'll be greatly disappointed if an updated version of "Funny Little Things" or "Down, Down to Goblin Town" doesn't make the cut also.
The books were written by an eyewitness many years after the events. The movie script is based on records from other eyewitnesses, so it's not surprising that they would remember events differently (or even correct mistakes from the books). Of course, the books are one source for the movie script, but by no means the only one.
I don't see how it could be regarded as "anti-climactic" when it's a nice plot twist (surprise: everything isn't fine when they get back home to the Shire), and I've always thought The Scouring of the Shire is pretty much the entire point of the LOTR. Yes, it may seem like the destruction of the One Ring was the main point of the books, but if that were the case then it would be an ordinary quest. What made the ending of the LOTR books different was not only the completion of a great quest, but the hobbits returned to the Shire completely transformed by it. Thus, because they had grown so much (figuratively :-)), they handled the "trouble" in their little part of the world on their own. Even Gandalf stayed out of it, presumably because he knew they could handle it. Tolkien's books are some kind of allegory on how a comfortable life can be threatened by events far away from your home, and that if you are complacent about it, that trouble will eventually arrive on your happy little village doorstep. Heck, given recent history you'd think they would go out of their way to include that message. Weirdly, some of that ominous plot thread was shown in the movie (the foreshadowing in Galadriel's mirror), but then the logical conclusion to it never happened at the end.
I can accept all the other changes, but I just don't buy the claim that the Scouring of the Shire couldn't have been done effectively or that it wouldn't be worth doing it. Yeah, the movie was really long, but they spent loads of time with all sorts of melodramatic stuff that wasn't necessary or that could have been shortened.