Re: More Hobbit pictures [4] SPOILER THREAD

[Mrs Figg]

oh no, cute kids taking up valuable screen time. Its irritating escaping Rohan kids all over again

[bungobaggins]

[Eldorion]

Yeah, I'm not really feeling Luke Evans as Bard on the visual side of things.

[Mrs Figg]

yeah and that one that ruined Star Wars for me

[bungobaggins]

How old is the older daughter? Who is the eldest child?

[Eldorion]

Bard's daughters are played by James Nesbitt's daughters, and if I recall correctly the older one is about 16.  The guy playing his son, who appeared in one of the vlogs, is more like 13 or 14 I think.

[bungobaggins]

I'm getting a weird Pevensie vibe from the children...

[Pettytyrant101]

Why are they dressed as if they are 1890's? Is Oliver Twist in this version too? Is Fry really playing Fagen?

[Bluebottle]

I fear they have made the same mistake with Bard as they did with Thorin.

Who is Bard in the book?

Well he is old, grizzled, short tempered and dragged down by a life of dissapointment. He's certainly not the young dashing heroic figure which he looks here. Just like Thorin the Bard of the book overcomes his faults through killing Smaug and ends rebuilding and bringing the city of his fathers back to it's former glory.

They did the same thing with Bilbo as well. They preempted his development by having him, and not Gandalf, save the dwarves from the trolls and then kill the orc to save Thorin at the end of the movie.

It's a shame because one of the more interesting things about the Hobbit is how Tolkien makes heroes of these seemingly unheroic characters.

[Pettytyrant101]

Couldnt agree more Bluebottle, yet again Pj demonstrates not a care in the world about trampling all over what Tolkien was saying or the manner in which he structures his stories.

[Bluebottle]

I know. At times it's hard to think of ways they could misunderstand the story more.

[Mrs Figg]

why oh why couldnt Bard be just Bard? why does he have to be a hottie with cute kids, what was wrong with a mysterious silent and weatherbeaten older guy?

[Eldorion]

I was gonna say maybe they were afraid he'd be too much like Aragorn, but then I remembered that they've been trying to create parallels with LOTR so far.  So my guess is that PJ just wanted another hunky character. Of course, Aragorn is plenty hunky too, but Bard in the book spends a much greater portion of his time in the "Strider" phase of his character.

[bungobaggins]

I thought they were turning Thorin into Aragorn. Now 2 Aragorn's???  

[malickfan]

Three, they will probably have Bilbo going one on one with Bolg at the BOFA.

Oh well, it's quite nice to get a Welsh accent in these films, for some reason I always pictured Bard as Welsh anyway (though Michael Fassbender as originally rumored would have been a better choice as per book IMO)

[malickfan]

I think that is another thing I like about the Hobbit book-the heroes of the book aren't the flawless knights of LOTR-Thorin and Bard are frankly bastards at times, but to me they are actually easier to empathize with-they somehow seem more human by acting less so, as scions of royalty they act every bit as strongly as I would expect in a children s fairytale.

[Sinister71]

well damn Jackson can't show any people middle aged in his films. They all have to be physically attractive instead of having a grasp on reality like LOTR did. LOTR we had Bernard Hill playing a middle aged Theodin, John Noble playing a middle aged Denothor, both leading characters whom used their middle aged stature to their advantage. In the Hobbit we have none of those characters. The closest we get is Stephen Fry as the Master of Laketown. Which is a shady character, someone with less than honest intentions. None of the good characters from the film are played in any other way than for sex appeal. Thorin young and hunky, Bard younger and hunky. I would have rather seen Bard being a bit older without young children (which I still find to be a shit story line). A younger Bard just doesn't seem like he is old enough to be worldly enough or been thru enough to be as grim as the character is supposed to be.

So while LOTR we had characters of all ages on Both sides of good and evil the Hobbit has shown us that characters for good have to be attractive and younger looking (other than Gandalf and the other Istari of course) and the representatives of evil are all old or ugly. Hmmmmm seems rather stereotypical and cliche to me.

[Mrs Figg]

Bard was supposed to be a grim misfit, a lone wolf, with hidden nobility, we are supposed to see him become the natural leader he became out of necessity. All this hot guy with attendant 'heartwarming' family stuff, just lessens the impact.It reduces bard to a banality. The old cowboy films used the lonely hero storyline to good effect, but they were based on characters like Bard.

[malickfan]

Well, you could ague that Bard is Middle Aged still as non Numenorean bloodline men in middle earth normally lived to 70 or so years If I am remembering correctly. I STILL think of Ian Mcshane as the perfect Thorin.

I'm not massively fussed about Bard's storyline-it's almost totally invented so I have nothing much to base my judgement on thus far, though I would have been pleased with no family ties for him, it is quite interesting to see how Jackson will get a child's eye on the storyline.

Oh well there is B.Connolly as Dain-that should be fun and interesting to see...all three minutes of it most likely  

[Eldorion]

Well, you could ague that Bard is Middle Aged still as non Numenorean bloodline men in middle earth normally lived to 70 or so years If I am remembering correctly. I STILL think of Ian Mcshane as the perfect Thorin.

I never really thought about it, but damn, you're right.  McShane would have fit the role like a glove.

[malickfan]

He is and was and always should have Been Thorin, can't believe he's almost 72. If I posted this on TORn I'd get a kicking...but I never warmed to Armitage-he is a very talented actor, but his Thorin just felt like him acting, the whole cliched sub par Aragorn bollocks they forced on us annoyed me as well-if you want me to empathise with someone don't make it so bleeding obvious!.

Apparently Mcshane was on Del Torro's shortlist and he met him once or twice for discussions.

[Mrs Figg]

Armitage is just blah.

[malickfan]

I simply don't think the cast have the gravitas of LOTR, whether it's the material or simply there TV background.

Although depending on you point of view he may have been more canon-although Thorin is described as being white haired in the book, in The Peoples of Middle Earth it suggests different Dwarf "breeds" vary in longevity, giving an average life expectancy of 250 years in the Third Age, though some made it to 300. Dwarves are said to "harden" and gain the appearance of age (by human standards) quickly. Between the ages of 40 and 240 was their prime, and they looked much alike in age. During this time their capacity for toil and fighting was equally great amongst most Dwarves. After 240 they began to age, wrinkle, and go white quickly (though they don't go bald). While immune to the diseases that affected Men and Halflings, they could suffer from corpulence (a danger when they had stable lodgings), and if they grew very fat at 200 or before, they couldn't do much except eat afterwards."

Then again this is posthumously published notes excised from the drafts of LOTR deliberately, and the hobbit was written as a kids story with no real ties to the mythology so I don't know what is canon in this case.

[Pettytyrant101]

Apart from the miscasting a lot of the problem comes down to the character- they have turned him into a hero out to reclaim his homeland for his people and at the same time they try to keep some of the gruff, haughty arrogance of the book version, but he swings about in the film from moody, not liking Bilbo,, liking Bilbo not liking Bilbo.

It was something I highlighted in the last bit of my parody as I was so struck by how it parodies itself in the stone giants scene when I was rewatching that section- after the giants nonsense Bilbo falls and Thorin jumps down to save him, risking his own life and then in turn needing rescued by Dwalin.
Why did Thorin save BIlbo at this point when the very next moment he is telling Bilbo he should never have come on the journey?
And we know that they had Bilbo save Thorin just to complete an arc in film one, and they re going to have to reverse it again in film 2- its ridiculous.
Without any sense of why Thorin swings about like this his character doesnt make much sense.

[Sinister71]

Malick McShane would have been the PERFECT Thorin