XPost: rec.arts.books.tolkien   
   From: Troels@ThisIsFake.invalid   
      
   On 2012-08-02 03:10, Steuard Jensen wrote:   
    >   
   > [I've posted this on my blog, but it clearly belongs here, too.]   
      
   Thank you, Steuard, this is certainly much easier ;)   
      
   > Peter Jackson confirmed recently that he will make The Hobbit into   
   > three movies, rather than two as formerly planned. To my eye, this   
   > is a spectacularly bad idea. Why, you ask?   
   >   
   >   * The Hobbit is shorter than any of the three volumes of The Lord   
   >     of the Rings. Stretching it into two films already seemed like   
   >     it would require a lot of filler; three just seems like madness.   
      
   With a bit of generous stretching of both /The Hobbit/ and the /LotR/   
   appendices, I could see how two films might actually work out OK, but   
   even if you combine these, I cannot see how the material in the books   
   can be stretched to three films (basically I can /read/ /TH/ in less   
   time than the run-time of three Jackson films . . .).   
      
   Now, that may of course just be me being unimaginative, but I think it   
   is more likely that this means that a greater percentage of the run-time   
   will be free invention by Jackson. Now this is not necessarily a bad   
   thing -- I would much rather have a much looser interpretation of the   
   surface plot combined with a much better adherence to the spirit of the   
   book: with Jackson's /LotR/ films we got it the other way around: they   
   adhere quite closely to the surface elements of the plot, but they   
   capture next to none of the spirit of the book.   
      
   /The Hobbit/ is, however, in many ways a simpler book, and in this   
   context it is important that it is also thematically much simpler than   
   /The Lord of the Rings/, and so we may yet hope that Jackson will be   
   able to at least come closer to the spirit of /TH/ than he did with   
   /LotR/, and of that is the case, I will readily forgive him for   
   presenting us with a set of films where 75% of the run-time is invented   
   by the film-makers rather than by Tolkien.   
      
   >   * Given that the book was aimed largely at children, one might have   
   >     hoped that the movie would be good for kids, too. But a three-part   
   >     series already makes that implausible, and almost every bit of new   
   >     material I can imagine adding to the main story would make it more   
   >     mature in tone.   
      
   Based on what we have seen and heard so far, I think it is now certain   
   that the /Hobbit/ films will be aimed for the same early adolescent   
   audience as was Jackson's /LotR/ films.   
      
   While this audience represented a very significant dumbing down of the   
   story relative to Tolkien's story in /LotR/, it may represent a more   
   mature audience for /TH/, which might, in an epic irony, actually bring   
   the intended audience closer to what Tolkien afterwards wanted it to be   
   (I still believe that the 1960 Hobbit shows what Tolkien actually wanted   
   to do, even if he did abandon the project based on the advice he   
   received).  One can argue, of course, that Jackson's way of addressing a   
   slightly more mature audience will be fundamentally different from the   
   way that Tolkien wanted his story to address a more mature audience, and   
   I think that such an argument will be correct, but I can still   
   appreciate the irony of the situation ;-)   
      
   In the end I don't think the simple fact of addressing a more mature   
   audience is something that worries me, and I may even find that it will   
   address some of the points where I find the narrative voice to be   
   patronizing in an annoying way.   
      
   >   * Harry Potter worked as a series of films because it was seven   
   >     self-contained stories.   
   [...]   
   >     But The Hobbit is (for the most part) a simple adventure story,   
   [...]   
   >     Yes, it has an epic backdrop, but that's not central enough to   
    >     the main story to sustain an epic-scale film trilogy.   
      
   Agreed!   
      
   >   * One of the stories that Jackson fears "would remain untold" without   
   >     a third film is "the Battle of Dol Guldur". Mr. Jackson, if I don't   
   >     know how the White Council "attacked" Sauron to drive him out of   
   >     Mirkwood, I'm pretty sure that you don't, either.   
      
   I think it is a fairly safe bet that he has not been granted access to   
   unpublished writings, and much more has not been granted the rights to   
   make a film of anything outside /The Hobbit/ and /The Lord of the Rings/   
      ;-)   
      
    >     Apparently you think it was a battle. Why am I not surprised?   
      
   LOL!   
      
   Yes, why indeed?   
      
   >   * Copyright law puts Jackson in a bit of a Catch 22 here. He has   
   >     the rights to make a movie based on The Hobbit and LotR ([...]).   
   >     He emphatically does not have the rights to use material from   
    >     Tolkien's other books such as The Silmarillion or (most notably)   
    >     Unfinished Tales.   
      
    >     Jackson can't use any of that material without opening himself >   
        to a lawsuit that would have a good chance of blocking release   
    >     of the films entirely.   
      
   I (obviously?) agree that this is a major problem, but I worry that our   
   perspective may not be shared by the majority of the audience, who care   
   not about Tolkien's vision at all -- they'd rather see some   
   well-choreographed (and hence grossly unrealistic) action-scenes than be   
   forced to relate to the beauty and philosophical depth of Tolkien's work.   
      
    >     But if he invents his own clearly-different replacements, he's   
    >     deliberately changing Tolkien's story. Of course, he's done that   
    >     before with less justification, but for the previous films he   
    >     still claimed repeatedly that he was doing all he could to bring   
    >     Tolkien's vision to life. This time, making that claim could get   
    >     him into deep trouble.   
      
   Oh, he'll make that claim again for sure, because that is what his fans   
   want to hear. The rest of us will, of course, not believe him this time,   
   and the claim has no legal status whatsoever, so he is not in any risk   
   of legal trouble.   
      
   Unfortunately I don't think that he will be in any additional trouble   
   for making this specious claim.   
      
   Jackson and his team will surely invent a lot of additional plot for the   
   /Hobbit/ films -- this imagined battle at Dol Guldur (which is, in my   
   opinion, not really consistent with Tolkien's descriptions, which   
   suggest, to me at least, a token resistance at best, and Sauron being   
   well out of the way long before the arrival of the White Council).   
      
    >     And Christopher Tolkien abhors the way that Jackson warped the   
    >     essential themes of LotR.)   
      
    From the on-line translation of the recent /Le Monde/ interview with   
   Christopher Tolkien, 'The Ring of Discord':   
      
        This policy, however, has not protected the family from the   
        reality that the work now belongs to a gigantic audience,   
        culturally far removed from the writer who conceived it.   
        Invited to meet Peter Jackson, the Tolkien family preferred   
        not to. Why? "They eviscerated the book by making it an   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
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