As many of you know, Peter Jackson's film adaption of
The Hobbit will be released in a few weeks here in the US. Like the previous films, I am looking forward to seeing it when it comes out. Unlike Jackson's
The Lord of the Rings, which I really enjoyed, I actually read
The Hobbit this time around before seeing the film. For
The Lord of the Rings it was the other way around, which was ultimately a mistake. The books are
so much better, but, of course, that is not really a surprise. Having finished
The Hobbit two weeks ago, I decided to order
Bilbo's Journey: Discovering the Hidden Meaning in The Hobbit by Joseph Pearce. It is published by our friends at Saint Benedict Press. This short guide to Tolkien's
The Hobbit has been a joy to read and very insightful.
I haven't yet ordered the Catholic Courses
The Hobbit
taught by Pearce, but that might change after Christmas. We shall see.
6 comments:
Timothy,
The Annotated Hobbit is also an interesting read, as is The History of the Hobbit.
Warning: the movie will be much different than the book. The movie will include material from the appendix of The Return of the King and other source material from Tolkien (and perhaps a little creative license). The intent is to tell the story of what is going on in Middle Earth that leads up to the events of the The Lord of the Rings while Bilbo is having his adventure. If you recall, Gandalf is not present during much of The Hobbit. The movie will show where Gandalf was and what he was doing.
Michael P.
Michael,
The fact that it is going to be three movies seems a bit much. Could be good or could get really off course.
Back in the early seventies, I read the Lord of the Rings trilogy for the first time and was amazed. About a year or two later I read the Hobbit and was kind let down (so soon after reading the trilogy). But about a year ago I read the Hobbit again (for only the second time) and loved it! I am looking forward to seeing it in the theater soon!
The early reviews on The Hobbit are far from encouraging......currently the movie has only a 71% positive rating on RottenTomatoes.com. Now, normally a 71% rating would not be terrible, but when you consider that this 71% is after only the first round of reviews. Most movies, even really terrible ones like Transformers Dark of the Moon, will have over 90% positive after the first round, because the early reviewers are always the most enthusiastic. Most movies start out overwhelmingly positive reviews, then the ratings goes down. So the fact that The Hobbit starts out with a relatively low rating of only 71% after the first round of reviews, is not a good sing.
Also troubling is the fact that none of the reviews are raves, none of the reviewers actually get really enthusiastic in praising the movie, the comments go from 'this is really bad' to 'this is mediocre, but it is not as terrible as I thought it would be' there's really no overwhelming, enthusiastic praise loaded with superlatives, as is common with the first round of reviews for most movies.
And when you consider that the original Lord of the Movies from 10 year ago got 97% positive reviews, and all those reviews were just gushing with praise, reviewers seemed to be trying to top each other with how much praise they could heap on them. If one reviewer called it the greatest storytelling achievement in the history of western civilization, then the next one would respond that it is in fact the greatest storytelling achievement in the history of the Milky Way galaxy, the reviews were all superlatives filled with all sorts of lavish, wildly over the top praise. The fact that this is not happening again,is troubling.
I hate to say it, but I think this movie has 'fail' written all over it.
I'm a nitpicker...The Lord of the Rings is not a trilogy, it is one book which was split into three parts, against Tolkein's wishes because of a paper shortage and because the publisher had zero faith in the manuscript and figured that serializing it might be a good way to generate interest by creating artificial 'cliff hangers'....but it is still only one book.
Like I said....nitpicker.
Timothy,
Yep, they needed 3 movies to be able to cover all the additional material in addition to story of The Hobbit itself. So, in a sense, it's going to go very much off course, but it will be intentional.
I don't pay much attention to the reviews. Most I've read were critical of the 48 frames per second versus the customary 24 frames per second, that and the additional source material that makes the movie experience so much different than the book itself.
If you're expecting the movie to follow the book in much the same way The Lord of the Rings did, and will be confused by all the stuff that's not in the book, you'll be disappointed. If you're excited to see a movie that's more expansive in the material covered to tie into more of Tolkien's world and the events leading to The Lord of the Rings, I think you'll be pleased. I'll let you know if I am after seeing it.
Michael P.
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