The Hobbit has a director and a sequel

[mousepod]

Originally Posted by LSPoorEeyorick

I couldn't be happier with the choice. Del Toro keeps growing in my esteem, both as a director and as a producer.

(cough, cough... The Orphanage is on DVD now. We should all watch it together, possibly at Casa de Mousepod...)

To continue the derail for a moment - the Blu-Ray is on its way to me right now - but the PS3 is being repaired by Sony (blah) - so it'll be a couple of weeks.

Maybe we'll have a small and impromptu movie afternoon on Sunday... see the usual thread for details.

...now back to the original topic...

[Chernabog]

Originally Posted by mousepod

To continue the derail for a moment - the Blu-Ray is on its way to me right now - but the PS3 is being repaired by Sony (blah) - so it'll be a couple of weeks.

WhaaaA? What happened to the Ps3?

And WOW I can't believe how harsh you guys are on PJ and Company. Or those that thought that the first LotR was great and the last two sucked (sorry, but there were two moments in TTT that brought me to tears -- when the ents attacked Isengard, and when Gandalf showed up on his horse in Helms Deep.... and I thought the battle sequences and Shelob were spectacular in Return of the King). I loved the movies. The only movies I've seen more than once in the theatre are: Rocky Horror, Amelie, Triplets of Belleville, and the LotR trilogy (in extended edition, no less). I'm of the opinion that PJ is fvcking brilliant.

FYI -- I'm re-reading the novel and PJ changed WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY more than I remembered (I read LotR once, a few years before the movies came out). Besides the very general storyline, many of the characterizations, locations, etc. were completely changed to make the story more cinematic. For some reason I thought it was just "little changes" here and there (with the exception of the Scouring of the Shire ending) but that is not the case.

So if you're such a "purist" that if it didn't come from Tolkien's pen, it's crap, then I'm sorry. A filmed version of exactly what I'm reading in LotR would be boring as sh*t. It is interesting to me because of the backstory that I'm WAY more familiar with than the first time I read it, where I skimmed over all the "history" stuff and had no appreciation for what had happened prior to the story upon my first reading.

I've been involved over the last year in Lord of the Rings Online, which has lots of the locations from "Fellowship of the Ring" but also entire locations that are just mentioned in the "history" books -- Angmar, Evendim, Forochel, Helegrod, Carn Dum -- and compelling locations and stories have been made for these areas -- many of them just made from scratch by the game company.

I have no doubt that if video game programmers could come up with this stuff, someone like Guillermo Del Toro, who I also think is a fvcking brilliant director, would come up with ways to a) make The Hobbit more cinematic and b) make a sequel set in the same world which isn't crap. What I mean is I don't think the idea is a crap idea from the outset.

What I had thought originally was that they were SPLITTING The Hobbit into 2 parts (which would be way too long for a simple story). But I don't think that creating The Hobbit 2 is a creatively bankrupt proposition, or that good things cannot be done with it because it isn't expressly a "Tolkien" story, or whatnot, as long as it doesn't conflict with what happens in LotR.

The title though, has to go. Hobbit 2: Electric Boogaloo! That's not hot.

[Gemini Cricket]

I loved all three LOTR movies.
I watch them over and over.
I saw all three multiple times in the theater.
The only thing I despise of all three is the Mouth of Sauron in the extended Return of the King film. What the heck was that?! lol.

I didn't like PJ's King Kong.

[SzczerbiakManiac]

Originally Posted by Chernabog

So if you're such a "purist" that if it didn't come from Tolkien's pen, it's crap, then I'm sorry.

I'm well aware of the alterations made by Jackson, Walsh, & Boyens. Other than a few trifling quibbles, I'm totally fine with their changes. My "from the pen" comment was meant to convey issue with a whole new story being created. If Tolkien had written a book that detailed the goings on in Middle Earth during the period between Hobbit and Fellowship and a well written script adapted that for the screen, I wouldn't be kvetching. Admittedly, I am not a Tolkien scholar, but other than perhaps a passing mention in The Silmarillion, I'm not aware of any story he wrote about that period.

[Chernabog]

Originally Posted by SzczerbiakManiac

My "from the pen" comment was meant to convey issue with a whole new story being created.

I understand your point, I just wanted to point out that good stories about things not mentioned in the books have been written by people other than Tolkien, so I'm curious what Del Toro will do. That doesn't mean that The Hobbit 2 has to be/will become "canon". I just think an entertaining and/or compelling story has the potential to be told.

I mean sure, it may be crap in the end, but I don't think the idea is DOA.

I'm not sure why The Simarillion is being brought up though, since I'm pretty sure the only events brought up in that were pre-Hobbit to begin with.

And iSm, doing the books by "cross-cutting" through the stories was not "lazy". (if anything is lazy, doing it exactly the book's way would have been lazy) I don't think that doing it the book's way in a movie would be inherently better or worse than the way PJ did it. This is Peter Jackson's vision of Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, after all. There was plenty that was changed or altered to make a better cinematic experience in PJ's estimation anyway... the only thing that was "mucked up" by doing that was the Mouth of Sauron sequence, which was a reason it was cut from the original film.