Given that the Hobbit was much more a children's book than the LOTR, I think they will have a hard time not disappointing fans. They'll either have to adult it up to the trilogy's standards which will lose the innocence of the book or they'll make it in the same tone as the book which might turn a lot of the movies' fans off.
-------------------- There are 10 types of people in the world...those that understand Binary and those that don't.
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I'm sure Ian McKellen will be happy with this, he's been lobbying for this for years. I had rather hoped that the Hobbit would be a TV/DVD miniseries, in a similar vein of Band of Brothers, in terms of production values and duration. The book itself is episodic, so it would suit that format better if they intended to keep all the original material...give or take.
Mind you, Jackson knows what he's doing and I'm sure he can squeeze it into another 3 hours, with presumably an extended edition to come later.
I'm assuming the second film would cover the white council and the whole necromancer bit, perhaps even some of Aragon's backstory if it's spilling over into the period between the Hobbit & LotR.
The only points where they could skimp out on gore would be when Gandalf impales the goblin king on his Glamdring, and later in the battle of five armies. I think we will be ok. The talking wolves standing under the trees the hobbits and Gandalf are in, that will be nice if they go with it.
I just hope they make Gollum as creepy and sociopathic as in the book. Like "You're fun and I like company, but try to run and I will strangle and then eat you". He was good in Bakshi's version, very disturbed, but I don't like Andy Serkis' version at all, way too cute in his donald ducky hoarseness. He's a babyeater ffs.
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Serkis' version was cute now? He acted like I imagine a true psychotic would behave, not all sinister and moustache twirling but muttering and very mentally unbalanced.
Mind you, the way Serkis played him was intentionally as a junkie in withdrawal, which during LotR is precisely what he was. I should think he'd play him differently for the "riddles in the dark" as at that point he's master of his own dank little hole with the familiar panicked rage thing only creeping in when he goes back to the island and can't find the ring.
WizArtist II
"How can you have a yellow alert in Spacedock? "
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Fifteen birds in five firtrees, their feathers were fanned in a fiery breeze! But, funny little birds, they had no wings! O what shall we do with the funny little things? Roast 'em alive, or stew them in a pot; fry them, boil them and eat them hot?
Burn, burn tree and fern! Shrivel and scorch! A fizzling torch To light the night for our delight, Ya, hey!
Bake and toast 'em, fry and roast 'em! till beards blaze, and eyes glaze; till hair smells and skins crack, fat melts, and bones black in cinders lie beneath the sky! So dwarves shall die, and light the night for our delight, Ya hey! Ya-harri-hey! Ya hoy!
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-------------------- "You are a terrible human, Ritten." Magnus "Urgh, you are a sick sick person..." Austin Powers A leek too, pretty much a negi.....
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WizArtist II
"How can you have a yellow alert in Spacedock? "
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I actually found the animated version on YouTube
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Those are supposed to be grim, battle-hardened dwarves under Thorin Oakenshield, that movie made them look like scared little garden gnomes.
That's another thing, I look forward to seeing all the dwarves played by actors, I thought they looked cool in the prologue of LOTR, taking the rings, and accompanying Gimli to Rivendell.
I just hope they won't be too heavily used as comedy relief, except for that first time when they burst forth into Bilbo's mudroom.
Registered: Aug 1999
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Dont forget TALKING SPIDERS! Ohhhh yeah- that was the creepy part of the old cartoon (which I'm still very fond of).
Talking Smaug too- hopefully it'll be cool and not tragicly lame like that Dragonheart movie.
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
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For the sake of credibility I think for the wolves, spiders and eagles to speak it'll have to be in something other than English (or Westron, whatever it is we hear as English) and perhaps subtitles too. Either that or not have them talk at all and just play it off of the animation instead. That is assuming they want to keep a tone consistent with the existing films.
Smaug on the other hand really needs to speak as it's rather vital to the plot. Though it runs the risk of being Dragonhearty, if they played it as quasi-psychic dialogue, vaguely similar to how they did Sauron, but with more coherance then it could work. Just for fun, I wonder who would be a good as the voice of Smaug? James Earl Jones would be a little too obvious I think, perhaps John Rhys-Davies? He has the basso voice and I doubt he'll be willing to come back to play one of the dwarves. As I understand, he had a bad reaction to the makeup.
Beorn will be a tricky one to cast too, though my initial thought would be a John Goodman type perhaps a more Scandinavian or Germanic type would be better. Then again there's always Michael Clarke Duncan. Weird thought - Billy Connoly? Not very bear like, I'll grant you, but he has the look of a wild man of the wood about him and the idea of a scrawny Glaswegian turning in to a hulking great black bear has a certain irony to it.
Daniel Butler
I'm a Singapore where is my boat
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Hrm. I'm doubtful of this, because of what the initial post said - either adult it up, or keep the kiddiness. I'm not sure which would be worse, honestly, because I loved The Hobbit as a kid, but I really don't enjoy watching kid's movies. :-/ (For example, all those songs...even as a kid they annoyed me greatly. Why, I would think, are the goblins bloody singing? And when did they rehearse all this?)
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There were songs in LotR too and Jackson & Walsh managed to incorporate some of them without breaking out into musical theatre, so I'm not worried.
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the songs in the animated movies are not in the books. "Where there's a whip there's a way" was not part of the last leg to mount doom. :-)
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