The Desolation of Smaug pre-release thread [2] [SPOILERS]

[Norc]

Continued from: http://www.hobbitmovieforum.com/t608p990-the-desolation-of-smaug-pre-release-thread-spoilers

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There is no mature version I dont think? Tolkien abandoned it, interestingly because it was no longer TH, it ruined the tone and style and pacing trying to make it like LotR's- a lesson sadly not learned by PJ.
In my opinion if the creative genius who came up with ME and its tales gave the idea up as a bad decision that was ruining, not improving the original then PJ and co should not have been so arrogant as to assume they could do it- the results so far favour Tolkien being right all along and PJ and co being full of shit.

yes. good point.

[malickfan]

One thing I found funny about the 1960 Hobbit was the decidedly non middle earthian Talking Purse making an unchanged appearance in the story...when I pointed out over at TORn that the purse unlike Tauriel, Radagast and Zombie Azog featured in ALL the versions of The Hobbit (from initial draft to to 1966 3rd revision) and was therefore more in Tolkiens spirit than the White Council ramblings, undead Azog and farting dwarves...it didn't go down too well...Tolkien fans my arsecrack...

The 1960 Hobbit (roughly 2 1/2 chapters) is certainly worth reading, although the changes are relatively minor on the surface...it dosen't really feel like the hobbit-Thorin comes across as even more an arrogant douche, alot of the dialogue is subtly altered, the narrators voice is very muted, and there are several more refereces to the tone and locations featured in LOTR (Thorin and co stop at Bree, The Trolls destroy the bridge to Rivendell).

Along with The Quest For Erebor its an interesting what if, but I'm glad Tolkien enver finished the rewrite on the hobbit...I'll take tra la la ing elves and talking spiders over the tedious journey through Mordor any day...

[malickfan]

Another thing I will say The History of the Hobbit is Far easier reading than the HOME, non only are the early drafts drastically different to the published story (and IMO in some cases better), John Rateliffe's commentary is a MUST read-13 pages on Radagast!, and a through look at virtually every aspect of the story...read it and you will certainly think of the hobbit in a different light-I came away treating is more as a BOLT spin off rather than LOTR prequel...

[Elthir]

(...) and there are several more refereces to the tone and locations featured in LOTR (Thorin and co stop at Bree, The Trolls destroy the bridge to Rivendell)

Speaking of bridges there was also a seeming further 'goof up' by Tolkien due to the 1960 Hobbit -- if I recall correctly, Rateliff argues [the possibility] that only a partial memory of something JRRT had written for the 1960 Hobbit made it into the Third Edition Hobbit [which Tolkien revised again due to Ace Books]...

... and the revision just made the matter arguably worse -- as far as being inconsistent with The Lord of the Rings. Something to do with a bridge if I remember rightly. I would have to look it up again.

[halfwise]

Please do look it up. Somewhere on here I posted a comparison of the original Riddles in the Dark to the revised version, and the revised version is so much better in ways beyond just syncing to LoTR. The original has no psychological complexity at all.

Now I have to dig up History of the Hobbit. I never tackled HoME because it was too daunting given all the other tasks in life right now, but HoTH seems like a nice bite sized book in comparison.

[Sinister71]

There is no mature version I dont think? Tolkien abandoned it, interestingly because it was no longer TH, it ruined the tone and style and pacing trying to make it like LotR's- a lesson sadly not learned by PJ.
In my opinion if the creative genius who came up with ME and its tales gave the idea up as a bad decision that was ruining, not improving the original then PJ and co should not have been so arrogant as to assume they could do it- the results so far favour Tolkien being right all along and PJ and co being full of shit.

Quite agree petty. I believe it was a female colleague of his, that he had read the changes. She came back telling him it was good but it had lost the tone, charm, or feel of the original story. Tolkien obviously shared her view because there never was ( other than minor changes) a complete rewrite of the whole book or a larger portion of it. The rewrite was something that was abandoned as quickly as it began I'm afraid. Something Jackson must not have been able to get over

The problem is ego. Jackson, ever since LOTR, has obviously IMO developed a big one and feels he can do no wrong with Tolkien. Sadly in the eyes of many people on other forums, he's right. At least in his own mind and those of the sheep who follow this false Shepard. There were hundreds of thousands of ways to make the Hobbit fit in tone and look of Jackson's LOTR while keeping close to the Hobbit's source material. BUT Jackson's ego allowed the travesty of AUJ to come to fruition. Nothing other than that. He proved with LOTR he could make something great (I know you don't share THAT opinion petty  ) LOTR at least told the story from the books without adding so much off the wall OTT crazy antics, that the world was believable, even for a fantasy film. The creatures seemed real, the sets, miniatures, the whole overall treatment of middle earth in the films didn't seem so far fetched as you watch them. WHY? because they took care and modeled the film world (for the most part, I don't care about the type or color of the grass  that much) on the real world. Which is why the LOTR films for me were a success. The Hobbit everything is hyper stylized and unrealistic for me. The only part that felt like middle earth to me was when they were in Bilbo's hobbit hole. Once they got into the world of middle earth it looked like a video game version of middle earth not the real thing.

I think Jackson figures this will be his last trip into middle earth so why not go for broke and throw in everything including the kitchen sink. and HIS story suffers for it all the more. Maybe I'm so critical of Jackson's Hobbit because I care about the source material he never adapted into a film. He simply skipped that part of film making and went straight into a rewrite of the source material all the while pushing the lame excuse, Tolkien was gonna rewrite the book anyways so we are just doing that for him... well paraphrasing him anyways That is what Tolkien would have wanted  

[Ringdrotten]

He proved with LOTR he could make something great (I know you don't share THAT opinion petty  ) LOTR at least told the story from the books without adding so much off the wall OTT crazy antics, that the world was believable, even for a fantasy film. The creatures seemed real, the sets, miniatures, the whole overall treatment of middle earth in the films didn't seem so far fetched as you watch them. WHY? because they took care and modeled the film world (for the most part, I don't care about the type or color of the grass  that much) on the real world. Which is why the LOTR films for me were a success. The Hobbit everything is hyper stylized and unrealistic for me. The only part that felt like middle earth to me was when they were in Bilbo's hobbit hole. Once they got into the world of middle earth it looked like a video game version of middle earth not the real thing.

How odd, I feel exactly the same way I loved the LotR trilogy as well, it was believable like you say. I think that's part of the reason why the hobbit was such a huge disappointment for me. I wanted it to be as great as LotR, and it wasn't, mildly put And I think it's somewhat ironic that the orcs in the lotr trilogy looked like real, living creatures whereas the orcs in the hobbit look like video game characters - so much for ten years worth of "progress".

[bungobaggins]

Oh, good gravy. Take a look at this.

http://www.theonering.net/torwp/2013/09/19/79332-did-peter-jackson-give-us-a-clue-about-smaug/

Probably the dumbest thing I've ever seen posted on torn.

[Ringdrotten]

Which emoticon to choose.. either or  ...

[bungobaggins]

Next they'll be talking about the possibility of a second bowman taking down Smaug. They don't buy into the "Lone Bowman Theory." You'd have to believe in magic arrows to buy that explanation! No, look! Over there! Behind the grassy knoll hobbit hole!

[Eldorion]

Wow. Their "standard WB opening" is at least eight years old. The "AOL TimeWarner" name hasn't been used since 2005. I'd think maybe the WB logo clip has been updated in some way since that time, especially with the advent of HD in the intervening years?

[Ringdrotten]

Sharp eyes, Eldo

[Elthir]

Okay I looked it up.

Christopher Tolkien notes [The Return of the Shadow] that in 1960 his father wrote an elaborate rewriting of The Hobbit where Tolkien introduced the Last Bridge 'at the same point in the narrative' -- meaning the point where the Company comes to a river. The tale originally went:

'I don't know what river it was, a rushing red one, swollen with the rains of the last few days...'

Here the river ran alongside the road, to be crossed by a ford eventually. In the Third Edition [1966]...

'... Fortunately the road went over an ancient stone bridge, for the river, swollen with the rains...'

So the river now becomes the Hoarwell, over which the road passed by the Last Bridge, and the river which they forded before climbing up towards Rivendell becomes the Loudwater. Christopher Tolkien explains [with my emphasis].

'But my father did nothing to change what follows in the original story. There, the Company stopped for the night where they did because that is where they were when it got dark, and it was beside a river. From that spot the light of the Trolls' fire became visible. By the introduction of the Last Bridge at this point into the old narrative, while everything else is left untouched, the company stops for the night as soon as they have crossed it -- near enough to the river for one of the ponies to break loose and dash into the water, so that most of the food was lost -- and the Trolls' fire is therefore visible from the Bridge, or very near it.'

Christopher Tolkien then quotes Karen Fonstad:

'... the Trolls' fire was so close to the river that it could be seen 'some way off', and it probably took the Dwarves no more than an hour to reach; whereas Strider led the Hobbits north of the Road [turning off a mile beyond the Bridge], where they lost their way and spent six days reaching the clearing where they found the Stone-trolls. Lost or not, it seems almost impossible that the time-pressed Ranger would have spent six days reaching a point the Dwarves found in an hour.'

But in the 1960 Hobbit Tolkien did not simply introduce the Bridge at the same point, but he changed some details too: the passage of the river took place in the morning, and the camp from which the Trolls' fire was seen was made at the end of the day and many miles further east.

So Tolkien introduced an element from The Lord of the Rings, but failed to alter the rest to help mitigate the 'two geographies'.

'This highly uncharacteristic lapse is no doubt to be attributed simply to the haste with which my father worked under the extreme pressure imposed on him in 1966.'

Rateliff refers to Carpenter, who had stated that JRRT probably did not have the 1960 material in front of him when revising the third edition. Then J. Rateliff writes ('The End of the Fifth Phase, The History of The Hobbit part II):

'Instead, he was almost certainly working from his memory of this material: the third edition introduces the stone bridge found in The Lord of the Rings, but since it is in tact in this final authorized edition of The Hobbit its presence only exacerbates the problem of the discrepancy in the time their respective journeys took.'

I remember thinking about this now, with respect to whether or not this would have mitigated the problem in enough measure. In any case the new material can't be added to any versions now, by the author himself anyway -- obviously.

[halfwise]

My vote:  

[halfwise]

But are we sure this guy isn't just having a little bit of fun? It's just too much of a stretch.

[Pettytyrant101]

The problem is ego. Jackson, ever since LOTR- Sinister

I actually dont agree, I dont think it is ego, he strikes me genuinely as a man who enjoys a lot of lifes simpler pleasures, and who began with little and appreciates having a lot.
Nor do I think its about the money either, although it certainly is for WB.

PJ doesnt need the money, he has set himself up enough now if he wanted to just go back to making his own pet movies he could do it with a lot more expense than in his Bad Taste days.

For me PJ's problem is much simpler, a complete lack of self restraint when it comes to doing the things he likes.

With LotR's he started out in FotR doing things if not like the book at least obviously in parallel with it, for all the stuff I don't like in FotR- and there is plenty- it is nevertheless recognisable as an adaptation of the book of the same name.
The bits where it deviates tend to be moments where PJ can get in some of the stuff he likes,which is either spectacle, gore or toilet humour- so Weathertop its not enough for Aragorn to defend Frodo and the Nazgul to withdraw knowing their job is as good as done- he has to set them all on fire. And lembas makes Merry and Pippin burp and have stomach grumbles and fart and the troll one foot appearance has to become a lengthy fight involving the main character and they have to surf a collapsing staircase and make dwarf tossing gags.

This tendency to do more an more of what he likes, and less and less of what an adaptation demands grows exponentially throughout the trilogy- so we have shield riding Legolas, and even where the book has Sam and Frodo see an Oliphaunt PJ has to top it and have three in TT.
By the time we get to RotK we have Legolas surfing Mumakil to kill them single handed, a comedy scene in the Paths of the Dead, a ghost army mopping up the Pellanor  and a man running a mile on fire upstairs to throw himself of a pinnacle because, and I quote, PJ thought it would be "cool".

The reason we have three hobbit movies is because this time PJ feels he has no restraints or anything owed to the source.
This is not an adaptation in real sense of the word, but what it is, top to bottom, is all the things which PJ loves and which were all the worst things about his LotR's.

[Sinister71]

I agree to an extent petty. I think Jackson is a humble man in  his personal life. But many people have a professional personality and a private (or off the clock) one. I think Jackson has a very big professional ego, including whatever he wants to his film that is supposed to be an adaptation. IMO the only thing the Hobbit should ever say is Based on and loosely based on at that. Because what he has done is made up his own version of the hobbit LOOSELY based on the book Tolkien wrote. A complete rewrite as apposed to an adaptation.

I still feel WB is the originator of the 3 film thing. I really don't think Jackson had a choice, OR WB came in and stroked Jackson's ego by saying something along the lines of, isn't there more story to tell? Just tell the story you want and don't worry about the book. The book is too small to be as epic as LOTR so go crazy and we'll pay for the 3rd film to be made... I would bet money that one or all of those scenarios was played to have Jackson make it 3 films. Ultimately though the studio is still to blame for the 3 film split (Like I said I believe this enough that I would willingly bet money on it)

Your completely right though petty, Jackson does have no restraint and the Hobbit is all the worst things about his LOTR all rolled into one 9 hour monstrosity That could have been the best 5 hours of film ever made IMO even topping LOTR IF they had done it correctly by keeping the real tone and stuck to the source material

[Eldorion]

Your completely right though petty Jackson does have no restraint and the Hobbit is all the worst things about his LOTR all rolled into one 9 hour monstrosity That could have been the best 5 hours of film ever made IMO even topping LOTR IF they had done it correctly by keeping the real tone and stuck to the source material

Your completely right though petty Jackson

Your completely right though petty Jackson

petty Jackson

petty Jackson

We've been had!

[David H]

 

[Pettytyrant101]

Does this mean I have to go beat myself up for the utter mess I made of it all?  

[Lancebloke]

You still have some time for DOS. Go sort it out.

[RA]

 How could you?!  

[Pettytyrant101]

Um, I must have been drunk at the time   and having watched TH I can only conclude I must have been really, really, really f**king drunk!

[bungobaggins]

petty Jackson

We've been had!

[Sinister71]

damn all that from a missed period