I watched CoS the other night and was sort of surprised and maybe a little bit disappointed at the Dobby character - the animation was really very good (perhaps better, or at least more believable than that in LotR), but the character itself is just a little too similar to that of Gollum for my liking (I kept wanting to say coughripoff!cough) - the fact that Dobby doesn’t refer to homself in the first person was the final nail in the coffin, I think.
Now if someone can just tell me about an interview with Rowling where she says “the film changed the Dobby character a little too much for my liking”, or dammit, even one where she says “when I read LotR, I thought to myself, ‘I must put a Gollum character in one of my books’”, then I’ll be happy.
Two dogs named fang? Where the heck is Fang in JRRT’s writing? I recall Huan, Hound of Valinor, and I recall Carcharoth, and I recall Maggot’s dogs, Grip, and Wolf, and… :smack:
Gollum. All the way. It’d be worse than George Foreman vs Pippi Longstocking, and there would be nothing but shattered, marrow-drained Dobby bones littering the canvas. NBC would rake in billion$
With respect jfortun, some of those similarities are reaching a bit, aren’t they? A cloak of invisibility is a common theme and a convenient device in many magickal writings, whereas The Ring is kind of the main theme in LotR and the invisibility aspect of it seems somewhat incidental.
I’ve not read any of the Harry Potter books (or managed to get any considerable way through Tolkien’s writings either, for that matter) - would those of you who have read them like to comment? Is the Dobby/Gollum similarity as striking in writing as it is on screen.
Their way of speaking is very similar, and they both have large eyes, but beyond that the similarity ends. I don’t think there’s any mention in the books of Dobby’s skin being gollum-grey.
Also, their personalities are very different. Dobby is noble enough to suffer extreme punishments to help someone he’s never met. Dobby is also a lot less cunning than Gollum – all of his plans go horribly awry.
I think you’re forgetting one small detail – house-eleves command powerful reserves of magic. They happily teleport in places where teleportation is impossible, and lay curses on objects (like bludgers) that are supposed to be uncursable. Dobby sends Lucius Malfoy running in terror.
What’s Gollum fighting with, here? Bare hands? A fish he’s caught?
Alone it wouldn’t be much, but taken as a whole there are a lot of similarities- albeit superficial ones. To be fair, it is hard to name any post LOTR fantasy fiction that is not influenced in some way by Tolkien.
The Dobby and Gollum characters do not strike me as similar at all.
I could see Gollum doing this with a wriggling 8 inch brook trout in his teeth–points for style and all. And naturally he’d attack by stealth/deception. Gollum would never square off with an opponent, especially one with powerful magic.
I see Dobby standing in the center of the canvas whipping up some mojo and then Gollum surprising him with a 50 foot drop from the stage lights. He would then proceed to wring his “filthy little neck” and entertain the crowd in round two by eating his adversary…after smacking him a few times with the trout and singing a jolly little Dobby-killing song.
I don’t mean to hijack, but rather to contrast rather obliquely the two persons in question. If you read The Black Cauldron I believe you’ll find a non-human weakling-hero named Gurgi who also refers to himself in the third person; a nebulous master source of evil; numerous magic baubles; traitors, minions and all the other goodies that go into a good fantasy stew.
I have to agree here. I haven’t read much fantasy but I have read all the HP and LOTR books.
Tolkien kind of covered all the bases. I imagine that it’d be hard to write a fantasy without seeming to steal at least one of his ideas.
And, Gollum would so kick Doby’s ass. He’d sneak up on Doby all stealthily and clobber him with a fish before Doby even knew he was there.
I thought the movie Dobby was a disappointment. I had the image in my head of the goofy character as drawn in the GrandPre chapter headings. Eyes the size of tennis balls and all that.
Sorry for the hijack but,
Every time I get an e-mail at work, I hear Gollum say, “My Precioussssss”. My coworkers all think I’m nuts but it’s so cool!
End hijack.
