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Post by berkley on Nov 26, 2021 14:27:19 GMT -5
I didn’t watch The Hobbit films. I may do. I wouldn't, honestly, and I say that as a huge fan of the Peter Jackson LotR trilogy. Each moment of grace in the Hobbit trilogy is paid for by ten bad video game sequences (the escape from the Goblins' tunnels is particularly awful), Legolas defying gravity, action movie clichés and the mandatory bad guy who dies, comes back, dies again and comes back again. There was no magic in those film; only a sense of a franchise being milked for all it was worth -it was like a Middle Earth Transfomers movie. The cast was all right and I enjoyed the Dwarves' visit at Bag End, and it was admittedly cool to see Elijah Wood as Frodo again, but the whole thing went downhill from there.
the only way I'll ever see them is if a friend of mine has them on at his house sometime when I'm visitng - there's a particular friend I have who is a big fan of LotR, the books and the movies, and I know he's seen the Hobbit films and probably has them on disc or on a hard drive. Pre-pandemic, he used to have big BBQs once a year or so and would show movies on an outdoor screen. Having to please guests with kids, there was no telling what we'd end up watching - one year I was forced to sit through Jumanji.
I hadn't heard about the over-sized tunnels until now but knowing how Hollywood works (much like comics in many ways) I predict that in the next sequel, the Misty Mountains will be inside the tunnels instead of the tunnels inside the mountains!
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Nov 26, 2021 15:23:41 GMT -5
I wouldn't, honestly, and I say that as a huge fan of the Peter Jackson LotR trilogy. Each moment of grace in the Hobbit trilogy is paid for by ten bad video game sequences (the escape from the Goblins' tunnels is particularly awful), Legolas defying gravity, action movie clichés and the mandatory bad guy who dies, comes back, dies again and comes back again. There was no magic in those film; only a sense of a franchise being milked for all it was worth -it was like a Middle Earth Transfomers movie. The cast was all right and I enjoyed the Dwarves' visit at Bag End, and it was admittedly cool to see Elijah Wood as Frodo again, but the whole thing went downhill from there.
the only way I'll ever see them is if a friend of mine has them on at his house sometime when I'm visitng - there's a particular friend I have who is a big fan of LotR, the books and the movies, and I know he's seen the Hobbit films and probably has them on disc or on a hard drive. Pre-pandemic, he used to have big BBQs once a year or so and would show movies on an outdoor screen. Having to please guests with kids, there was no telling what we'd end up watching - one year I was forced to sit through Jumanji.
I hadn't heard about the over-sized tunnels until now but knowing how Hollywood works (much like comics in many ways) I predict that in the next sequel, the Misty Mountains will be inside the tunnels instead of the tunnels inside the mountains!
Yeah, that's pretty much it. I wouldn't have minded huge caverns, myself, but the whole sequence is taken straight out of any random comedy/adventure film, with none of the attempted realism of the LotR movies. Characters fall from dizzying heights unto solid rock with no harm whatsoever, there is a chase evoking that of Temple of Doom, and at no time do you get the impression that our characters are in any kind of peril whatsoever. It's all cartoony violence and Super Mario action. I understand that since The Hobbit is a children's book, Peter Jackson may have gone for a more light-hearted tone; but for this customer, it was an ill-considered decision. Oh, and of course Legolas is in there... and Galadriel... and Saruman... and Radagast, in a comic-relief role... and everybody finds out that Sauron is back (but have apparently forgotten it by the time LotR begins). Sure, Unfinished Tales is a logical place to mine for padding material, but I am convinced that a done-in-one Hobbit movie would have been a better idea. |
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Confessor
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Post by Confessor on Nov 27, 2021 9:36:24 GMT -5
I am convinced that a done-in-one Hobbit movie would have been a better idea. Amen to that, RR! |
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Post by thwhtguardian on Dec 16, 2021 19:43:57 GMT -5
I am convinced that a done-in-one Hobbit movie would have been a better idea. Amen to that, RR! I think that was the major failing, there just wasn't a good reason to make the Hobbit into a trilogy and when the films stick to the book the scenes are mostly good to great (minus the Goblin scenes you mentioned) but when they leave the book the scenes only range from bad to worse in quality. Someone should make a fan edit of just all the book scenes; I'm sure there is enough there to make more than a decent film. |
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Post by Confessor on Dec 17, 2021 2:51:35 GMT -5
I think that was the major failing, there just wasn't a good reason to make the Hobbit into a trilogy and when the films stick to the book the scenes are mostly good to great (minus the Goblin scenes you mentioned) but when they leave the book the scenes only range from bad to worse in quality. Someone should make a fan edit of just all the book scenes; I'm sure there is enough there to make more than a decent film. I'd legitimately love to see a fan edit like that. |
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Post by Deleted on Dec 21, 2021 15:53:51 GMT -5
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Post by Deleted on Dec 25, 2021 13:35:21 GMT -5
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Post by thwhtguardian on Dec 27, 2021 12:57:35 GMT -5
So, I finally finished reading the Silmarillion...and I have to say that I feel like those that say they enjoy reading this more than the Lord of the Rings, or that it's Tolkien's best work are just being elitists who feel lost by their favorite world being made mainstream by the films. There's a lot there to like from his take on the creation myth, to the love story of Beren and Lúthien,the rise and fall of Númenor, the war of wrath and even the rise of Sauron and the Rings of Power, but between them all is frankly a whole lot of garbage. We don't need all the recitations of names and lists of geography that take up so many of the pages between the mini narratives.
I get it, they're included to give the book the feeling that it's a piece of antiquity...but you only need to use that technique once or twice to sell the audience on that, you don't need to do it each time a new character walks on to the page or everytime a new place is introduced. Sure, that's what they did in Gilgamesh, the Illiad and Beowulf, but doing so had purpose then. By reciting a lineage of a character it can give the storyteller a short hand for characterization, " You know who Hercules is right, well this character is his great-great grandson so you can tell what he's like." or it could be used to get an audience invested in the tale you're telling, " You know King Agamemnon? Well, hiss daughter was so and so who marred this other guy who's name is popular in this village" making you think, "I'm related to a king? Wow, I better listen." but neither of those techniques aid Tolkien's work, these are completely fictional characters so knowing that Elrond is descended from some mythical hero doesn't help me understand Elrond better...because that mythical hero has no relevance to me, and likewise I know it's wholly a work of fiction so there's no way a listing of decedents is going to make me feel more connected to the story because I know I'm not related to Túrin Turambar no matter how far I trace his relations...because they aren't real.
So it just all comes across as excessive to me and only hinders the story rather than enriches it.
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Confessor
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Post by Confessor on Dec 27, 2021 18:24:26 GMT -5
Yeah, I've been trying to read The Silmarillion on and off for 30+ years and mostly find it to be utterly impenetrable. In more recent years, after a lot of trying really hard to get into it, I have enjoyed bits of the book, like the tale of Beren & Lúthien for example, but most of it is still impenetrable s**t in my opinion.
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Dec 27, 2021 18:43:16 GMT -5
By far Tolkien's greatest work, for all that he didn't put it together in its final form himself. It's a true mythology, one that in its intricacy rivals Homer's. I would no more skip the genealogies of the characters than I would skip the names of the heroes who were at Troy. This Tolkien elitist leaves in a huff!  |
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Post by Deleted on Dec 27, 2021 18:44:12 GMT -5
Yeah, I've been trying to read The Silmarillion on and off for 30+ years and mostly find it to be utterly impenetrable. In more recent years, after a lot of trying really hard to get into it, I have enjoyed bits of the book, like the tale of Beren & Lúthien for example, but most of it is still impenetrable s**t in my opinion. You just described my experience. |
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Post by Deleted on Dec 27, 2021 18:55:38 GMT -5
By far Tolkien's greatest work, for all that he didn't put it together in its final form himself. It's a true mythology, one that in its intricacy rivals Homer's. I would no more skip the genealogies of the characters than I would skip the names of the heroes who were at Troy. This Tolkien elitist leaves in a huff! It's not a novel and most people have a terrible reading experience because they approach it as if they were going to read a novel like the Lord of the Rings. It started as an epic poem and has gone through various drafts and incarnations, an epic poem, a series of lays, a story cycle, etc. etc. which Tolkien began assembling into a book, but never finished. Christopher finished it. But it is an anthology of history and folklore of Middle Earth and needs to be approached as that, and not as a novel. Except the publishers, and their marketing team, wanted another Tolkien novel to sell to cash in on Tolkien's popularity. The Silmarillion is not that. It's more like reading a Middle Earth version of Robert Graves The Greek Myths, Edith Hamilton's Mythology, Bullfinch's Mythology or Genesis/Exodus from the OT than any kind of novel or single work. Such books are not for everyone, and I don't really think it's a work for a mass audience, but that is how it was presented by Ballantine? (I think that was the publisher) which was a disservice to the work and to the potential audience. -M |
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Post by thwhtguardian on Dec 27, 2021 19:54:46 GMT -5
By far Tolkien's greatest work, for all that he didn't put it together in its final form himself. It's a true mythology, one that in its intricacy rivals Homer's. I would no more skip the genealogies of the characters than I would skip the names of the heroes who were at Troy. This Tolkien elitist leaves in a huff! It's not a novel and most people have a terrible reading experience because they approach it as if they were going to read a novel like the Lord of the Rings. It started as an epic poem and has gone through various drafts and incarnations, an epic poem, a series of lays, a story cycle, etc. etc. which Tolkien began assembling into a book, but never finished. Christopher finished it. But it is an anthology of history and folklore of Middle Earth and needs to be approached as that, and not as a novel. Except the publishers, and their marketing team, wanted another Tolkien novel to sell to cash in on Tolkien's popularity. The Silmarillion is not that. It's more like reading a Middle Earth version of Robert Graves The Greek Myths, Edith Hamilton's Mythology, Bullfinch's Mythology or Genesis/Exodus from the OT than any kind of novel or single work. Such books are not for everyone, and I don't really think it's a work for a mass audience, but that is how it was presented by Ballantine? (I think that was the publisher) which was a disservice to the work and to the potential audience. -M The thing is, I can accept the repetition in actual classics because it was part and parcel of its creation...but for a modern work just trying to give you the feel of being a classical work it just isn't needed because that's not how we tell stories anymore. If it was done once or twice it would be an effective literary technique in that it would immediately call to mind the classics but more than that and it becomes excessive and instead of contributing to the mood of the work it actually becomes a detriment. And at the end of the day, in the Silmarillion, the lineages and recitation of geography are just literary techniques invoking the classics and have no other intrinsic value than that and when you over use a particular technique in a work its value naturally becomes less and less. It goes from, "Oh, this is cool, I feel like I'm really reading a mythical work from Middle Earth." ...but after the fourth time in a twenty page stretch it no longer evokes a positive feeling of authenticity...and that's not an exaggeration I counted how many times Tolkien was doing it at one point while reading and it really was that often, and if it had gotten so that I felt I needed to stop and keep count then it means it may have been worse in a section before then. |
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Post by Deleted on Dec 27, 2021 20:05:27 GMT -5
It's not a novel and most people have a terrible reading experience because they approach it as if they were going to read a novel like the Lord of the Rings. It started as an epic poem and has gone through various drafts and incarnations, an epic poem, a series of lays, a story cycle, etc. etc. which Tolkien began assembling into a book, but never finished. Christopher finished it. But it is an anthology of history and folklore of Middle Earth and needs to be approached as that, and not as a novel. Except the publishers, and their marketing team, wanted another Tolkien novel to sell to cash in on Tolkien's popularity. The Silmarillion is not that. It's more like reading a Middle Earth version of Robert Graves The Greek Myths, Edith Hamilton's Mythology, Bullfinch's Mythology or Genesis/Exodus from the OT than any kind of novel or single work. Such books are not for everyone, and I don't really think it's a work for a mass audience, but that is how it was presented by Ballantine? (I think that was the publisher) which was a disservice to the work and to the potential audience. -M The thing is, I can accept the repetition in actual classics because it was part and parcel of its creation...but for a modern work just trying to give you the feel of being a classical work it just isn't needed because that's not how we tell stories anymore. If it was done once or twice it would be an effective literary technique in that it would immediately call to mind the classics but more than that and it becomes excessive and instead of contributing to the mood of the work it actually becomes a detriment. The repetition is part of the package for an epic poem as much as a paragraph is a part of a prose work though. If you are composing an epic (which is meant to be recited and listened to, not read) the repetition is part of the structure. We are just a written culture who has forgotten what the oral storytelling tradition consisted of and lack the literacy necessary to partake of an epic, just as someone who has never encountered the comic format lacks the literacy to parse panels and pages and the progression of the narrative visually until they learn how to do so, the difference is we as an modern audience never get to encounter an epic poem in its natural form. It's a reason why a lot of people don't like to read plays but do enjoy seeing them performed. They are not meant to be read, they are meant to be experienced. But Tolkien wasn't writing or composing for a modern popular audience, he was doing it for himself but the brand became so lucrative publishers wanted to put it out there to cash in on the popularity. -M |
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Post by Deleted on Dec 27, 2021 20:11:02 GMT -5
Also the long lists in epics were not meant to give audiences reference pints, they were delaying tactics meant to give the orator time to read the audience and determine how to tell the story-they are meant to be tailored to the audience not monolithic stories told the same way every time. While reciting those lists from memory to keep the audience attentive, the orator was taking time to figure out what to tell next and how to tell it. It also gave them something to fill the time if they forgot something or couldn't "remember a line" but modern audiences have a recency bias and think of everything as having a set written form as the norm and correct way a story needs to have.
Tolkien was hearkening to the earlier forms of the epics and figuring out the ways he wanted to tell these stories and what way would work best, and the lists are there as part of that process/format of the epic, not an attempt to give the audience touchstones to reference and connect with.
-M
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