Peter Jackson prevented from making The Hobbit

Cafe Society
21

I’m not going to get into whether Jackson should be deified or cast into the abyss for his LOTR trilogy, but I would like to point out that The Hobbit is a very different book from LOTR.

Stylistically, it’s a children’s book, meant to be read aloud. If the director follows the book, that means both heavy narration and a much lighter tone.

Further, there are major continuity differences between the books, largely explainable by the fact that The Hobbit is a children’s book. In LOTR, trolls aren’t Cockney dolts, but vicious killers. In LOTR, elves are dignified, not silly, and certainly not as avaricious as the Mirkwood elves are made out to be. Etc., etc.

So, given the differences between the stories, if you think Jackson did a fantastic job on LOTR, it may mean that he would suck doing The Hobbit, and vice versa.

Sua

22

Forget the debate over who will direct the Hobbit, I think others would be up to the job and possibly be truer to the source. New Line should be smart and do the Hobbit as a two-part movie; there is plenty of source material.

What is up with this from the article?

Whom are they going to hire to write the script and what are they going to use as source material? That is a much larger question and worry in my opinion.

Jim

23

[QUOTE=What Exit?]

Whom are they going to hire to write the script and what are they going to use as source material? That is a much larger question and worry in my opinion.

Jim
[/QUOTE]

Agreed. There’s some off-stage stuff in the Hobbit ie the White Council and the Necromancer, and some stuff in the timeline in the LotR appendices. Balin’s expedition to Moria? Anyway it’s thin stuff, and screams “Bad Idea” to me.

24

[QUOTE=Pushkin]
Is this all a bit of tom-whooshery?
[/quote]

What does that mean?

Yes, I know. The problem is, they are not just helpful, they are undefeatable. They just run into people, and they die. There is seemingly nothing you can do to harm them. In the book they are mainly there to spread fear. In the movie they could win the battle alone.

I’m not sure what you are talking about here. I’m talking about the Lieutenant of the Tower of Barad-dür. He is there to negotiate with Aragorn. In the book he says: “I am a herald and ambassador, and may not be assailed”, and Gandalf agrees with this.

I mean really, who kills undefended ambassadors? That’s just unecessarily evil.

They don’t live that slowly. In the Book, Treebeard has known about it for a long time. He can call in all the other ents to an Entmoot in 1 day, and yet none of the Ents, who are guarding the forest, know about the killing of their friends which have gone on for several years?

25

They are thinking about doing a non-book prequel? WTF? During all these shoots you’d think they’d find some time to finally film the Scouring. They could easily do it when they have to reconstruct the Shire for The Hobbit.

26

I tried to choose these points to show some undebatable stupidity. There are other changes that are equally bad. For instance, the change of Faramir to a Boromir clone, and the change of Denethor from tragic character to jerk. These changes obviously also suck, but as they are character changes, I suppose its possible to like them…

27

[QUOTE=Struan]
Agreed. There’s some off-stage stuff in the Hobbit ie the White Council and the Necromancer, and some stuff in the timeline in the LotR appendices. Balin’s expedition to Moria? Anyway it’s thin stuff, and screams “Bad Idea” to me.
[/QUOTE]

They could attempt to build a movie around Bilbo’s adventure after the party and before settling in at Rivendell. Add to it some of Aragorn’s pre-Fellowship activities. The problem here is that a Hollywood writer will end up having them adventure together with Gandalf and meet up with people they should not.

Personally, I would go with a sequel that took place after the Fellowship that centered on Aragorn, Arwen, Eomer, Gimli, Legolas, Faramir, Eowyn and Eldarion.
I would add a new character in Samwise’s grandson, Elanor Gamgee’s eldest or maybe a child of Goldilocks Gamgee and Faramir Took. Faramir was Pippin’s eldest son.
If the Hobbit goes well; include a Beorning character. This could then lead to another sequel with problems arising under Eldarion’s rule after Ellesar has passed away.

Jim

28

[QUOTE=mr. jp]
What does that mean?
[/QUOTE]

The quibbles don’t seem to take that much from the story, not even my mate was that bothered about them and he was happy to talk for an age on material from the appendices and other histories of Middle Earth.

[QUOTE=mr. jp]
Yes, I know. The problem is, they are not just helpful, they are undefeatable. They just run into people, and they die. There is seemingly nothing you can do to harm them. In the book they are mainly there to spread fear. In the movie they could win the battle alone.
[/QUOTE]

Presumably because cinema is a visual affair mostly and showing the army of the dead fighting was more beleivable than having everyone just run from them.

[QUOTE=mr. jp]
I’m not sure what you are talking about here. I’m talking about the Lieutenant of the Tower of Barad-dür. He is there to negotiate with Aragorn. In the book he says: “I am a herald and ambassador, and may not be assailed”, and Gandalf agrees with this.

I mean really, who kills undefended ambassadors? That’s just unecessarily evil.
[/QUOTE]

I get the point that he’s supposed to be an honourable man, especially now that he’s king, but, I’ll concede, it just looked cool for the film.

[QUOTE=mr. jp]
They don’t live that slowly. In the Book, Treebeard has known about it for a long time. He can call in all the other ents to an Entmoot in 1 day, and yet none of the Ents, who are guarding the forest, know about the killing of their friends which have gone on for several years?
[/QUOTE]

And this is the race that has rather inexplicably lost all its females right? :dubious:

29

[QUOTE=mr. jp]
For instance, the change of Faramir to a Boromir clone, and the change of Denethor from tragic character to jerk
[/QUOTE]

That one my mate and I agree with you on, especially the running while burning bit :confused:

30

[QUOTE=mr. jp]
Remember the scene where Denethor falls burning from the ledge? No way that could happen, he would have to run burning for a long time to reach it. And in the commentary Jackson says that he was well aware of that, but he just thought it would look cool.
[/QUOTE]

Well, he was right. It did look cool. (Whether it served the story or the character in a way consistent with someone else’s vision of the character in a different medium half a century before is a different story.)

[QUOTE=SuaSponte]

So, given the differences between the stories, if you think Jackson did a fantastic job on LOTR, it may mean that he would suck doing The Hobbit, and vice versa.
[/QUOTE]

Why? This only holds if you assume Jackson is a one-note director with no ability to work in different syles. I don’t buy that. I think he has a wonderful sense of whimsy (see: most of* Heavenly Creatures* and The Frighteners) that would serve The Hobbit well.

Of course, if the studio retains the rights to all the sets, costumes, art direction and designs, then there are quite a few directors who can step in and tell them where to point the camera and it will be, considering the assumed difference in tone and intent, close enough to “fit” without being jarring, I think. IF they want to do that, 95% of the work is done already.

31

[QUOTE=SuaSponte]
I’m not going to get into whether Jackson should be deified or cast into the abyss for his LOTR trilogy, but I would like to point out that The Hobbit is a very different book from LOTR.
[/QUOTE]

That’s what I thought too. But that’s not what we’re going to get. LOTR was so wildly popular that The Hobbit will be LOTR Ep I, Jackson or no. The public would be disappointed if the prequel was a lighthearted children’s tale instead of the heavy epic drama of LOTR, and the suits know that. Already they’re stressing the connection to LOTR.

One way to square that is to split the story into two parts. Bilbo’s story would be narrated by Ian Holm as Bilbo (a younger man may play Bilbo in the story itself) telling it to hobbit children (Elijah Wood makes a cameo here) shortly before his departure. Hell, perhaps even at the party. At times we see that his narration, which is in the tone of the novel, has been slightly sanitized from the reality presented on the screen.

The other half is Gandalf’s story, involving fighting the Necromancer and all that. It’d be appreciably darker in tone.

The other thing they’d half to change is how Smaug is killed. You can’t have the villain be killed by a tertiary character just introduced. At the very least, they’d have to give Bard more scenes to introduce him. But that’s not quite what we’re talking about.

32

[QUOTE=Pushkin]
It was on tv here in the UK last night, I thought it strange that the quality should drop noticeably (but not by a great deal IMHO) if all three films were shot in one long continous shoot.
[/QUOTE]

I’m sure there are tons of old threads about this, but IMNSHO FOTR blows the other
two movies out of the water in terms of sheer moviemaking excellence (pacing,
transitions, mood/ambiance, even acting). Could never grok how the IMDB crowd
rated ROTK higher (tho Fellowship is now higher than TTT)

33

Oh and WTA: it’s not mainly because of the changes, tho some of those certainly do bug me,
but just the overall aura of the first movie puts the other two to shame. Yeah everyone
(incl. me) bitches about things like Treebeard not knowing the goings-on in his own forest,
but nobody gives Jackson credit for the negative changes (things he left out). Can you
imagine Orlando Bloom shrieking like a schoolgirl, “Aiiee! A Balrog is come!” A lot of JRRT’s
dialogue (not to mention pacing) simply would not have worked on the screen, and Jackson
did a good job editing that all out.

34

[QUOTE=mr. jp]
“Before the cast gets too old”. Is this a woosh? We only need agent Smith and Magneto, right?
[/QUOTE]

The title is The Hobbit. Wouldn’t be much of a movie if there wasn’t a hobbit in it.

35

DMark writes:

> New Line knows they screwed Jackson with money (every studio does the
> same with very creative, and dubious accounting…did you know Titanic “lost”
> money on the books?!)

I don’t know if Jackson was screwed over by New Line, but I’d be surprised if he didn’t get screwed over by Saul Zaentz, who owns the cinematic rights to The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit. Zaentz is the slimiest person in Hollywood. This is the guy who, in his previous work as a record company owner, screwed John Fogerty out of his rights for the Creedence Clearwater Revival songs and then sued him for writing new songs that sounded too much like the old songs. Zaentz has made approximately a thousand times as much on the Jackson and Bakshi versions of Tolkien’s works as Tolkien was paid for the rights back in 1968. Tolkien sold the cinematic rights (permanently, not just options for them) to someone in 1968 for about $250,000. The rights got sold a couple times more for about the same amount in the 1970’s. Zaentz has owned them since before the Bakshi film in 1978. I think $250,000,000 is a reasonable estimate for how much Zaentz has made on the rights (including on the various movie-related junk that’s been sold in catalogs).

36

[QUOTE=mr. jp]
The worst thing is, not only is he a bad scriptwriter, he shows blatant disregard for the congruity of the world. Remember the scene where Denethor falls burning from the ledge? No way that could happen, he would have to run burning for a long time to reach it. And in the commentary Jackson says that he was well aware of that, but he just thought it would look cool.
[/QUOTE]

A director did something just because he thought it would look cool? :eek: NOOOOOOO!!!

I mean, I thought Denethor’s ‘flame-on’ looked really stupid, but ‘he added something just so it would look cool’ isn’t exactly a weighty charge against a film director.

37

[QUOTE=WhyNot]

Quote:
Originally Posted by SuaSponte

So, given the differences between the stories, if you think Jackson did a fantastic job on LOTR, it may mean that he would suck doing The Hobbit, and vice versa.
Why? This only holds if you assume Jackson is a one-note director with no ability to work in different syles. I don’t buy that. I think he has a wonderful sense of whimsy (see: most of* Heavenly Creatures* and The Frighteners) that would serve The Hobbit well.
[/QUOTE]
Earlier posters were either saying that Jackson would do a good job or a bad job on The Hobbit based upon their opinion of his work on LOTR. My point was that The Hobbit is a very different story than LOTR, and thus it may be that how Jackson performed (in your various and sundry opinions) on LOTR may not provide useful insights on how he would do on a Hobbit movie.

Sua

38

Slight hijack: Was the scene with Gandalf and the witch king (where Gandalf’s staff is broken) in the book? Although I have read all of the books many times I don’t remember this (and I didn’t like it). Overall I thought PJ did a decent job with the adaptation. I hated the scene were Frodo wakes up after destroying the ring and some other choices but I will no doubt go see the movie and buy the extended DVD regardless of who makes it.

39

[QUOTE=mr. jp]
I tried to choose these points to show some undebatable stupidity. There are other changes that are equally bad. For instance, the change of Faramir to a Boromir clone, and the change of Denethor from tragic character to jerk. These changes obviously also suck, but as they are character changes, I suppose its possible to like them..
[/QUOTE]

And even these are changes to peripheral characters. What about the change of Gimli from utter bad-ass to bumbling clown? Remember the warg battle, where Gimli get repeatedly trapped under a pile of dead wargs? Har-har, wink-wink, nudge-nudge. :mad:

40

[QUOTE=Antigen]
I can’t imagine having anyone else do it. There has to be some kind of continuity between LOTR and the Hobbit, or it’ll come off as “not quite right”.
[/QUOTE]

I know SuaSponte has said it, but I’ll say it as well. ‘Continuity’ between The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings in book form is less than stellar. The writing style is similar (obviously), but also very different. The whole tone and feel of The Hobbit is different than Lord of the Rings, and I for one would be pretty upset with a Hobbit movie that felt like the current LOTR films.

In fact (and I know this is a slight hijack), the one thing I felt was the most lacking in the Jackson movies was a sense of warmth, wonder and fantasy, which is even more integral to the telling of The Hobbit.