THE HOBBIT (2012/2013): News, Rumors, Pics Till Release

Well it just did.

 

Utter bullshit.

Of course thats why the unabridged recording of the Hobbit is over 11 hours long.

Sure you can speed read through the Hobbit very quickly if you wished, but you wouldn't be doing it at a speed that reflected how fast people move and actions take or how people actually speak.

 

Wrong, utterly utterly wrong. The Hobbit has a huge amount of events in it. But it appears to be less then the other books because its written simpler. Almost no dialogue, little description of detail (at least in comparison to how he wrote the Lord of the Rings). Even his prose is much shorter in the Hobbit. But a huge number of events take place. Compare them to similar events in Lord of the Rings and you will see a sizable page difference.

Bilbo's story is (the time from his point of view in his universe) takes as long as Frodo's does, once Frodo packs and leaves Bag End (So kill a few chapters out of Fellowship). The difference is the stakes for the most part are smaller, and that the writing is much, much sparser.

Now you might not like that he is making the films in the same style and manner of the Lord of the Rings. Now thats a valid issue. Perhaps you wanted a brisk first person telling jumping from event to event. Maybe you wanted little to no dialogue, like the story. Thats fine.

But once the choice was made to tell the story in the third person (like Lotr), to have events take time to actually occur, to show the passage of time and getting from place to place. You are looking at a long story. Remember the Lord of the Rings was written just like the Hobbit as one book. Jackson told an 11 hour version of that book, and left hours still on the cutting room floor.

Sp far the only thing I don't like is unlike LoTR, where the first teaser announced it was a multipart film, so far no trailer has mentioned this being a multiple part film. Sure there has been a lot of mainstream press, trade press, and geek press, but the actually tv and movie trailers have yet to make notice of that.

Frau Blucher

Actually I strongly disagreed with you about Jackson not having to cu (he always cuts things from movies) just because he can make a three hour movie anytime doesn't mean he isn't cutting a lot of material as well. He is known for shooting a huge amount of material.

I disagreed about most extended cuts not being good. In fact that aren't that many films that actually have extended cuts released. Now a lot of films put out cut scenes, but the vast majority don't actually edit them into extended cuts. The majority of actual extended cut films I have scene I enjoyed more.

I also don't think keeping a run time from studio mandate is a good thing. If a book as the material for 3 or four hours I want to see it. If a studio says you must turn in a cut of 2 hours (something quite common back when I was younger the 70's and 80's) doesn't mean thats the best way to tell that story. See plenty I disagreed with you.

 

Yeah, I think anyone who thinks there isn't enough material in The Hobbit to sustain at least six hours probably hasn't read the book in a while. There are quite a number of little adventures along the way, but it's written with such brevity--for children, I might add--that things move on at a fairly rapid pace. Add to that whatever they've come up with for the White Council and Dul Guldur and I'm sure there's abundant material there.

My only concern has been where the break point between the films might be. The only thing I can think of is that they're doing a similar thing they did with Helm's Deep and the march of the Ents. There they took some events that were relatively low key in the book and really raise the tension and the stakes so they served as a worthy climax.

 

Nope. I happen to come from a universe where The Hobbit is a relatively slender book compared to any one of LOTR's three parts. No amount of reframing the argument can fully lead away from that. I also come from a universe where less happens in The Hobbit for a number of reasons, not least of which is it's pretty much entirely just about Bilbo's quest (while LOTR branches off from Frodo).

Also:

But I'm not looking at a trilogy. Hell, Jackson wasn't looking at a trilogy until recently. I think you can make a pretty plausible case for the Hobbit to be a three-hour film, and this is for part of the reasons you suggest here - the ability to plausibly expand the setpieces of the novel. And three hours of course would be longer than FOTR was in cinemas.

But past that point you're going to start just draaaaging material out or throwing in bucketloads of Appendices (which, obviously, Jackson plans to do). And even with those Appendices, you're not dealing with the sheer breadth of material that FOTR, TTT or ROTK had to draw on.

Can he pull it off? I hope so. Is it entirely sane to doubt that the director of King Kong and the Lovely Bones may not get things to work? Totally.

 

Careful, an attitude like that could get your Internet privileges revoked.

 

Yea, it's pretty stupid to so publicly announce something so against the "Rulz of teh Interwebz"

 

It's okay for a movie character to be shitfaced.

Just not literally.

 

Still utter bullshit. Complete and utter bullshit.

I was responding to a poster who stated and I quote,"You could tell the entire Hobbit novel in two hours and forty minutes"

Thats utterly not true, at least not for live action.

What you can do is tell an abridged version of the Hobbit in two hours and forty minutes.

With the exception of short stories, films are generally abridged versions of the original material. They aren't "the entire novel".

No one (at least to the best of my knowledge) here has argued that you can't make an abridged version of a film and have it in a standard film length. We have all of the history of modern cinema to tell us that it is possible.

But the people who seem to just blindly say that there is no way you can film the Hobbit and make it multiple films (which they even said with two) are utterly wrong. Period. There is no literal factual basis to back up their beliefs.

Pride & prejudice over 8 hours and length for the rather faithful BBC production, considered the best telling of the book, its length is within 10 pages of the Hobbit.

A&E coproduction of Mister Midshipmen Hornblower is over 8 hours the book is also nearly the same length (and like the HObbit is very sparse in actual dialogue).

Both of those versions still don't tell the complete novel they are working from, but both tell the most faithful retelling that to date as been made for filmed media.

And we have a large number of long form telling of novels that by and large are far more faithful then standard 2 to 2 and a half hour motion pictures made off those same stories.

Yet for some reason the idea that its being done for theatrical release as opposed to television broadcast makes it an invalid endeavor.

Its utterly ridiculous.

NOw just to add, because I am a rational being, I frequently state that just because you absolutely can tell a long form version of a book in 8 plus hours (or shorter or much longer), doesn't mean that the version being done, here it's Jackson telling of The Hobbit, is going to be well done, or faithful. It could be utterly awful.

But that doesn't change the fact that it is absolutely incorrect to think a true telling of that book is going to be done in 2 hours and forty minutes.

 

Fellowship of the Ring: 177,227 words.
The Two Towers: 143,436 words.
Return of the King: 134,462 words.
The Hobbit: 95,022 words.

Now this length of material does not quite reflect how Jackson handled the films. The Two Towers as a film (which I am just back from seeing with a live orchestral performance here in Dublin, part of the trilogy sequence that began last year and concludes next year and is pretty awesome) is the most stretched thin of these, in that a brief part of it is consigned to FOTR and a bigger chunk of it is shifted over to ROTK.

But every single individual film in the LOTR trilogy had more material to work with than the Hobbit trilogy as a whole. That's less of a controversial opinion than it is quite literally demonstratable.

And I consider one of the strengths of the film trilogy was its ability to condense Tolkein's tomes. That really was driven home to me watching the Two Towers today - juggling three strands of story arc, a dozen principal characters and a major theatre of war, it's relentlessly kept moving by the scope and the variety of its action. And as observed, it draws the least amount of text - these strengths are more obvious to me in the other two films.

No one has said it's factually impossible. This is perhaps the most basic straw man imaginable. Obviously it's factually possible that someone can make three Hobbit movies because that is what is happening.

Just as, for example, it is possible to make a three hour King Kong movie. And I know this because it happened. I also consider that film a bloated, misguided mess of a picture. And the concern that the Hobbit films will feel bloated and that it will drag out its material (and/or otherwise pad it with a lot of new material of variable quality, which we know is happening) is not the same thing as saying these films cannot be made.

This is a gamble. Whether Jackson can pull it off is a good question - I hope he can, and does - but it's definitely a gamble.

 

If you reread the thread you will find apply evidence of people saying its just not possible to tell the Hobbit in multiple form without a huge amount of padding.

Each of the Lord of the rings films are heavily abridged (any film version I have watched is going to be somewhat abridged),

And there is no one that I can recall who states you can't tell a shorter heavily abridged version of the Hobbit.

All I have repeatedly stated is it is absolutely possible to film a long form version of the Hobbit that is longer then one film, thats longer then two films, and that could be three.

And that we have a large number of long firm versions of literary tales that have been made in long form, to show that absolutely it is possible.

But on the other side we have people making statements about being done because Jackson is creatively dead, that he is only doing it for the money.

Which considering he was hired to produced three LoTR films and to pretty much keep them 2 and a half hours, and with that limitation he filmed enough material for three more 2 and a half hour films (even though it didn't impact his paycheck in the slightest), and would have keep shooting even longer, but had to stop has New Line only funded them for so many days.

As for the length of the books, ie the word count there hasn't been a single person who has stated that the Hobbit has more words then any of the LoTR films, none.

And just because his final cut of Fellowship was 3 hours and what 30 minutes or so, doesn't mean he couldn't have made a 10 hour adaption thats is as faithful to the book as his 3 hour 30 minute version. Clearly he wanted longer then the studio did initially, but he had almost no power as a filmmaker back then, now he does.

The only discussion that's been over that is that page for page, word for word, more actually events happen in the Hobbit and that is due to the change in writing style that Tolkien did between those two different stories.

What in my post is factually inaccurate.

I make no claim about the quality of the work, or that it's even going to be even slightly faithful to the book.

As for King Kong thats a completely different beast. Besides a couple of cut scenes and concepts the original film is all of the source material. LoTR and the Hobbit have a lot of material (so much so that even with most of his extended cuts close to the length of two films, you can still see a lot that was cut out from the books).

 

New Air New Zealand in flight safety video:

http://www.youtube.com/user/airnewzealand/featured?v=cBlRbrB_Gnc

 

Awesome even if it's very silly. Loved PJ's cameo.

 

2-Disc soundtrack album announced!

Linky

Spoiler: Tracklist - Special Edition version

DISC 1:

1. My Dear Frodo
2. Old Friends (Extended Version)
3. An Unexpected Party (Extended Version)
4. Blunt the Knives performed by The Dwarf Cast
5. Axe or Sword?
6. Misty Mountains performed by Richard Armitage and The Dwarf Cast
7. The Adventure Begins
8. The World is Ahead
9. An Ancient Enemy
10. Radagast the Brown (Extended Version)
11. The Trollshaws
12. Roast Mutton (Extended Version)
13. A Troll-hoard
14. The Hill of Sorcery
15. Warg-scouts

DISC 2:

1. The Hidden Valley
2. Moon Runes (Extended Version)
3. The Defiler
4. The White Council (Extended Version)
5. Over Hill
6. A Thunder Battle
7. Under Hill
8. Riddles in the Dark
9. Brass Buttons
10. Out of the Frying-Pan
11. A Good Omen
12. Song of the Lonely Mountain (Extended Version) performed by Neil Finn
13. Dreaming of Bag End

EXCLUSIVE BONUS TRACKS

1. A Very Respectable Hobbit
2. Erebor
3. The Dwarf Lords
4. The Edge of the Wild

 

Time to start pinching pennies! I gotta have that!

 

Love it! And very spoileriffic track titles (especially in terms of where we can expect Film 1 to end).

 

I can't wait!

And I don't care that I will probably double dip a year or two later for the Complete Recordings.