The Hobbit has a director and a sequel

[Eliza Hodgkins 1812]

Originally Posted by innerSpaceman

Not unless they could fly. Did they use their broomsticks to get there? Or else arrive a few hours after our heroes? Were they tailing them the whole time.

Point in fact, elves did show up at the Battle of Helm's Deep in The Two Towers, but they were from Rivendell. Among them were some of Elrond's sons, buddies of Aragorn.

Oh, I understand switching it to a character the audience knew from Lorien, but the logical gaffe of them having to have decided to set off for Helm's Deep from Lothlorien about four minutes behind Aragorn just bugs me no end. Sloppy.

Let me clarify, unless I'm mistaken, elves showed up to make a delivery in the books, yes? But I don't believe that fought in the battle. It was their inclusion in the battle that pissed off my friends. Whereas I think they belong in the fight.

[Alex]

I haven't read The Hobbit since I last successfully read The Lord of the Rings series (sometime around 1988) so I can't comment on value of the book. My general recollection is I preferred the series. But I don't know how much my memory of the book is being skewed by my memory of the animated movie we had to watch in some English class in high school.

But based on Pan's Labyrinth and the trailer for Hellboy 2 I'm going to go out on a limb and assume that there will be at least one creature with misplaced (creepily) eyeballs. Can't remember if there is already one in the book or if he'll have to add it himself.


If King Kong had been an hour shorter it would have been a fantastic movie (assuming it were edited well of course). There was much to love about it, but the very excesses destroyed the whole. And like Stephen King an no longer facing any real editing of his novels, I don't think that after the success of LotR there is anybody out there that can force Jackson to reign in his worst tendencies so that his very good aspects can shine.

So, he needs to experience a downfall so that he can rediscover those things for himself and come out the other side a better filmmaker for it.

[Disneyphile]

I'm quite happy with Del Toro, since this means we won't have a 40-minute ending featuring softcore Hobbit porn.

About the sequel though.... Ken's going to have a coronary. Wait until he reads about this. Oh dear...

[Chernabog]

Originally Posted by Disneyphile

I'm quite happy with Del Toro, since this means we won't have a 40-minute ending featuring softcore Hobbit porn.

HEYYYYY I'm still annoyed that Frodo and Sam didn't frack on the boat at the end of Fellowship.

About the sequel though.... Ken's going to have a coronary. Wait until he reads about this. Oh dear...

Really, having experienced good stories in Tolkien's world that were not written by Tolkien, I'm not about go to into anaphylactic shock.

[wendybeth]

Originally Posted by Disneyphile

I'm quite happy with Del Toro, since this means we won't have a 40-minute ending featuring softcore Hobbit porn.

About the sequel though.... Ken's going to have a coronary. Wait until he reads about this. Oh dear...

What, you don't like watching little men roll around in a big bed while being drooled over by a lecherous old wizard?


(I also wondered what Ken would think of this- I'm pretty sure Eric will be disgusted).

[wendybeth]

Heh heh....Just told Eric, and after looking puzzled at the switch in directors, he wondered just what the hell they think happened in the years between The Hobbit and the LOTR. Lots of eating and drinking, to be sure, but not a hell of a lot else.

[mousepod]

To address a couple of comments here: there are a couple of pretty cool King Kong & LOTR fanedits floating around...

[innerSpaceman]

They were there to deliver the L.A. Times, yes.



Huh? Deliver the books? WTF? Um, no, they were there to aid Aragorn in his kingship quest, knowing full well that might mean warlording it for a while.




What books??? I'm so confused?

What Tolkien stories not written by Tolkien??



Can Ken and I go out for a drink and sob for a while??

[Alex]

iSm: I believe it was a reference to these paragraphs in Chernabog's post above:

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.

[Kevy Baby]

No, I believe it was a reference to this:

To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause: there's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover'd country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.