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Not a Tolkien book so much as a book about Tolkien, but I've been reading Tolkien's biography, and I really have to recommend it, it's an interesting read and you get an impression about why he has the elements he does in his literature.
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Feb 18, 2013 16:49
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UoI posted:Just read that Frodo is fifty-years-old. Trying to imagine a fifty-year-old Elija Woods. That whole sequence in the film where Gandalf leaves to go study the ring lore takes like 15 years in the book, too.
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Dec 18, 2014 06:27
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Oracle posted:It was a social signifier. Back in the day, if you were tanned it meant you worked outdoors and thus were some kind of field hand or manual laborer ergo less-than. If you had milky white skin and soft hands you could afford to sit around inside all day and do nothing therefore must be rich/upper class. And this is still a thing in most developing nations (China being a prime example), to the point where they use umbrellas to keep the sun out as much as they keep the rain out (think similar to Gone with the Wind).
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Dec 20, 2014 16:15
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Nessus posted:I imagine someone else WILL write that once JRRT's work gets into the public domain... is that going to ever happen, actually, or did he publish late enough that the various laws meant to protect Mickey Mouse are also protecting Frodo and Gandalf? I think technically the copyright only applies to published works. Things like "there is a place called Middle Earth that have Hobbits and Dwarves and evil rings" fall under something else (trademark?).
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Apr 5, 2015 00:51
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Ape Gone Insane posted:Same with Eoin Colfer with Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Don't know how well Sanderson pulled off Wheel of Time, there's not usually that many complaints. For the latter there were complaints, but the stuff they thought was written by Sanderson was actually written by Jordan and vice versa.
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Apr 5, 2015 15:08
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Narzack posted:And such a tragedy considering how good the first trilogy was, and how amazing the Hobbit could have been with Del Toro directing. It feels like the same thing that happened to Lucas happened to Jackson. He just got to the point where he was given unlimited freedom and no one was around to tell him 'no.' Actually the Hobbit films were very good.
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May 1, 2015 16:46
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:There was a good, if not great, movie in there. It was just surrounded by seven hours of padding. You just can't stretch 300 pages of text into nine hours of film. I could read the whole book in less time than it would take to watch one of the three movies. They didn't, they included a whole bunch of Appendices material in there too. It's also not a very strong complaint because the Hobbit is a very detail dense book, unlike most other books (Harry Potter et all) where you often have to cut details. If you had cut all 3 films to just the materials that were filmed and depicted in the book (so no Radagast or Necromancer but also no talking eagles) you would still get a 4 hour movie. computer parts fucked around with this message at 17:09 on May 1, 2015 |
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May 1, 2015 17:07
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Oh it's all authentic. It's just that it's all extraneous to Bilbo's story. We don't need to see the Necromancer fight. We don't need hours and hours of Elf Battle Action. We *really* didn't need Bilbo's discovery of the weak spot to be made pointless in favor of an extra hour or three of screentime for Manly Action Hero Bard With Real Bowfight Action. The fundamental disagreement you have seems to be that it's "Bilbo's Story". What the films are trying to do is replicate the feeling of Lord of the Rings, which (books & films) were not just Frodo's story. It's ok if you don't like it for being less personal than the book, but it's important to realize that they weren't trying to make a personal story like the book. e: I should probably specify that there are personal moments in both LOTR and the Hobbit films, but we're not just dealing from one person's perspective, like we are (save for one chapter) in the Hobbit book. computer parts fucked around with this message at 17:28 on May 1, 2015 |
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May 1, 2015 17:23
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Right. Ultimately they were trying to graft seven hours of Action Blockbuster onto a story that is the exact opposite of an action blockbuster. It just doesn't work. It's like trying to turn a housecat into a panther by tying steaks to its back with twine. That would be true if they primarily focused on Bilbo but Thorin was really the protagonist perspective for most of the films.
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May 1, 2015 17:37
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sunday at work posted:Which raises the question, why make it at all? The book is a personal story. He clearly wasn't interested in making an adaption of the Hobbit so much as wanking himself over film tech and wiping up with the appendices. Because people wanted more movies like Lord of the Rings. Hieronymous Alloy posted:THey also get to make video games and other derivative works based on the movie versions, which I suspect is an additional incentive to add even more CGI battle scenes. The forty minute barrel scene might be wholly gratuitous from any narrative perspective, but it's great raw meat for a video game tie in. Video game makers have done that sort of stuff for ages without needing justification from the films.
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May 2, 2015 02:23
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sunday at work posted:Yeah, that's what I was getting at. They aren't good action films, they aren't good character films, and they aren't good adaptions of The Hobbit. Actually, they are good.
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May 2, 2015 15:15
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a kitten posted:It's cool you liked them. I sure didn't. Because I love Jackson's lotr movies I was actually pretty saddened by the fact that I found the Hobbit: part 1 to be a boring, bloated, ungainly mess of a film that I couldn't even finish. You should probably try rewatching it.
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May 2, 2015 17:20
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hahaha.
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May 3, 2015 01:36
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Levitate posted:Also the dwarves look too much like handsome humans with beards (well, some of them anyways...I know they're supposed to be young but they didn't really look like what we think of as Middle Earth dwarves IMO) Having 13 mostly identical dwarves wouldn't have helped things, I can guarantee you. Honestly only having ~4 dwarves would have probably been ideal but the nerd rage would have been greater than all of the other changes combined.
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May 4, 2015 16:04
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The Belgian posted:
In the extended edition of TT they have a whole scene where they kill a dude who's just working for Sauron and isn't an orc. They don't actually show up in battle until Return of the King though.
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May 7, 2015 13:47
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SirPhoebos posted:Given that Gandalf said that there are even worse things lurking in the chasm he fell into, I wouldn't be surprised if that didn't last either. Those were far far below where the Dwarves were.
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May 19, 2015 23:00
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concerned mom posted:I thought they found it in the mountain, or is that just from the film? They did find it in the mountain.
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Jun 20, 2015 18:25
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Thunder Moose posted:Was the Arkenstone supposed to be a device to illustrate the base desire of Dwarves or was it itself an item with a corruptible influence (not unlike the ring?) In the film it's both, really. The Arkenstone represents the Divine Right of Kings. Thorin's entire quest is to reclaim it so he can lead the Dwarves to battle and overthrow the Usurper, etc. In a way, it's very similar to the Iron Throne in Game of Thrones. The throne itself isn't literally a corrupting influence but it is the reason why so many people die and so many others go off to war. In the Hobbit films the Arkenstone is a combination of the Iron Throne and the One Ring.
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Jun 27, 2015 06:34
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Mr. Neutron posted:More precisely: Huh, so basically how Mediterranean is "between lands".
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Aug 2, 2015 15:31
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Nessus posted:I dunno, I think "in the ultimate analysis, you can't defy God and all the bad poo poo you do will, in time, end up bearing good fruit" doesn't mean that your bad thing isn't in and of itself a bad thing. Since I think Iluvatar said that to Melkor you could see it as a backhanded way to go "Are you suuuure you wanna do that buddy? In the end you'll just be hurting yourself, not fundamentally defying me." No one's saying Melkor is good because his actions brought about good things (eventually), they're questioning whether Iluvatar is good because he allows bad things to happen, even though they eventually bring about good things. Oh also some people are wondering if being unable to do evil necessarily makes you good.
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Aug 3, 2015 03:12
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Ynglaur posted:Is there a well-done version of this with a modern English translation? Songs are usually lost in translation, it's like (well it literally is) poetry.
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Aug 26, 2015 00:22
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webmeister posted:This is amazing. I think that's sort of like how later on someone is described as Mongoloid(?) in appearance.
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Jan 11, 2016 02:10
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