This makes me a little nervous but I guess it’s the sort of padding required to turn the Hobbit into a film trilogy. Pictures at the io9 link below…
Well, that pretty much guarantees my husband won’t want to see it. He’s still so upset about how much LOTR was tweaked to make it into movies that he refuses to watch Two Towers or Return of the King.
This does not bode well. They are creating characters from whole cloth, and justifying it by claiming they “had enough to go on” in the original material? Enough to go on apparently being “You might know my cousin Radagast who live near here” and a single throwaway line about him being able to change shape or something.
Not a good sign for the rest of the movie. Of course even if it is a good movie, it won’t be a movie of “The Hobbit”, it will be a movie featuring characters from the Hobbit, with huge amounts of additional material made up from whole cloth.
That’s not necessarily a bad thing. The Hobbit was kinda lame even as a kid’s book, but it seems a little rude to claim that you are filming the author’s work when it’s seeming more and more like most of it will be new material.
could be good - could be fantastic, actually.
I always wanted more of Radagast since Saruman was so snotty about him.
The Hobbit is going to be even worse than the LOTR movies were. Mark my words.
In other words, the second best movie series ever?
It’s a great idea, but I do wish that they had just made the Hobbit as a single movie and put the new material in the sequels.
I have no doubt Radagast and Tom Bombadil could carry sequels with movie-original adventures, but The Hobbit itself seems singularly ill-suited to being broken in three. An epic like LOTR can stand being broken up because that just adds to how epic it seems. The Hobbit is a totally different animal. It’s not supposed to feel like a huge epic, it’s supposed to be a short, funny adventure with no real deeper themes.
Or the Blue Wizards, the remainder of the five Istari. Not much is known about them. I like to think that they were BFFs (maybe even BFFs with benefits if Jackson wants to get really daring) who walked the (Middle) Earth, going from place to place, meeting people and getting into adventures. It could even be a TV series with a new adventure each week! 
I will mark your words! With a big red X. 
I don’t get it. Splitting a long book into multiple movies makes sense. Padding a short book with extra material to fill a movie makes sense. But splitting and padding? Was the book too long, or not?
Not. But splitting generates vastly more profits and splitting unnecessarily requires padding.
It’s all perfectly logical ;).
Yeah, if they wanted to be canon they’d just set up a few 10 minute shots panning over, zooming in on, and otherwise examining all the food they’re about to eat while the Narrator does a voice over explaining it in great detail.
Oh, for Eru’s sake.
I’m sure there will be trolls in the movies, too.
The thing with middle-earth is that it is crammed with back story that is never fleshed out. You could theoretically make a relevant full film just out of Moria, Mirkwood, ents, trolls or any number of other characters or situations.
Tolkien intended for this to be a world to explore so I can’t blame a fan like Peter Jackson when he does so.
Is this tale likely to stick perfectly to the book? no. Is the reason for splitting the film partly due to money? yes. But if that money means that Peter Jackson takes the care and love he did with TLOTR then I’m not going to complain. I’m perfectly happy to go on the journey with him, especially when we know that Smaug lies, smouldering at the end of it. Voiced by Benedict Cumberbatch people! remember that. That is going to be worth the price of admission alone.
Peter Jackson is not just in it for the money. He’s in it for the money he can earn working in Middle Earth. After you’ve worked there, any other job just doesn’t measure up.
I’ll gladly tag along once again.
They got a name for that, Jules: it’s called “a bum”. And without a job, a residence or legal tender, that’s exactly what you’re going to be: a fucking bum.
/vincent vega
I think it has do with IP rights of all things.:rolleyes: Christopher “Partypooper Sefishpants” Tolkien hated the Jackson movies, and would likely not sign off on any further work by him after “The Hobbit” is filmed. Therefore if Jackson wants to complete his vision of middle earth, he’d better cram it all in NOW.
…I’d watch that.
The thing to remember about the brown wizard,
is that he was just clever enough.