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

[Angel4576]

If done right, it could be genius. If it's done wrong then it'll be a train-wreck.

PJ seems far more at home with Tolkien's material than he did with KK so I doubt he'll make that mistake again.

On the one hand I'm skeptical about stretching what should be a simple story too thin. On the other, if he does it right then we'll have six great movies instead of five.

[Relayer1]

With the appendices, there's plenty of material, especially with how sparse The Hobbit is on some events. It's just down to how well it's done.

Money is certainly an issue - for a relatively small extra outlay they get 3 x '£250 mill' films rather than two. I have no problem with that if they're good, After all, I don't think we'll be going back to Middle Earth again after this...

[The Mirrorball Man]

No really, stop it with the Appendices. Please. There's certainly not "plenty of material" to find there. Just a quick recap:

Appendix A deals with the fall of Numenor, the history of Arnor, Gondor and Rohan, and the tale of Aragorn and Arwen. Not much here that could be used in The Hobbit.


Appendix B is a short chronology. That's what Peter Jackson is likely to use to expand his story, but again, there's not much there that ties directly to the narrative. The only elements which could be used deal with the Necromancer, Dol Guldur, the Gladden Fields and Thrain.


Appendix C is a list of hobbit family trees. Nothing to use there.


Appendix D is about different Middle Earth calendars. Nothing to use there.

Appendix E is basically Tolkien's notes on writing and spelling. Nothing to use there.

Appendix F deals with languages and translation. Nothing to use there.


In addition to that, I guess Peter Jackson could use the material he hasn't used for his Lord of the Rings movies: Tom Bombadil, the Barrow-Downs and the Scouring of the Shire.

[Klaus]

The argument is that there's "plenty" to use given the way a few short scenes in the book can be longer on film... i.e. the fight in the Chamber of Mazarbul from FotR, which was one of the action highlights of the trilogy, is half a page in the book.

[nvek86]

According to the following link, the studio has registered the names The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug and The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies.

http://www.theonering.net/torwp/2012...-movie-titles/

I'm guessing the first one could be the new title for the second film (since There and Back Again doesn't really fit any more) and the second one is for the third one.

[Agenda]

The Lord of the Rings: 1157 pages and 3 movies.

The Hobbit: 300 pages...and 3 movies?

[Captain Craig]

^^^^
This smells of blatant attempt at cash grab. I sense lots of created from scratch material to pad these pages of screenplay. Will the Tolkien loyalists be up for this much "creative liberty"?
They expect the audience to blindly show up. Is treating your audience as silly blind sheep that smart?

[Skywalker]

Since most of the audience are silly blind sheep (who aren't especially familiar with Tolkien's books), I think it's very smart to treat them as such.

[Out Of My Vulcan Mind]

TheOneRing.net reports that New Line has registered another potential title:

The Hobbit: The Battle of Five Armies

Edit to add: whoops, just noticed someone already posted this. Carry on then.

[SalvorHardin]

Beyond Antares wrote:

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The Lord of the Rings: 1157 pages and 3 movies.

The Hobbit: 300 pages...and 3 movies?

Each of the Lotr movies is 3 hours long or more, if you take into account the extended editions.
No one says each Hobbit movie is going to be that long.

[Klaus]

It comes down to how much you trust PJ I guess... I'm on board with the vast majority of the decisions he made in LotR, so I'm going to proceed on the assumption that this will also be done appropriately until given evidence otherwise.
But I'm less panicky/cynical than some...

[SalvorHardin]

Klaus wrote:

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It comes down to how much you trust PJ I guess... I'm on board with the vast majority of the decisions he made in LotR, so I'm going to proceed on the assumption that this will also be done appropriately until given evidence otherwise.
But I'm less panicky/cynical than some...

[Reverend]

Captain Craig wrote:

---

^^^^
This smells of blatant attempt at cash grab. I sense lots of created from scratch material to pad these pages of screenplay. Will the Tolkien loyalists be up for this much "creative liberty"?
They expect the audience to blindly show up. Is treating your audience as silly blind sheep that smart?

Well it won't be totally from scratch as Jackson has said since way back when that they'd be staying with Gandalf when he's off on his own in Dol Gulder (sp?) or meeting with the White Council. These events come straight from Tolkien and I think the LOTR trilogy screenwriting team have more than proven they're capable of adapting, expanding and even condensing Tolkien's material in a respectful and faithfully manner.

...Still, while I'm more than willing to give them the benefit of the doubt, I had a hard enough time seeing how a two part telling of 'The Hobbit' could be structured, never mind a three parter.

I mean where would the break points be? What could serve as good climaxes for parts one and two? I suppose the escape from the Goblin King could be a good place end part one. It'd put 'Riddles in the Dark' fairly late in the first film, which can't be a bad thing. That still leaves you with the problem of what to do with the middle part (always the problem with a trilogy.) I suppose escaping from the elves would be a logical place (they do a lot of escaping in this book, no?) but that would also mean they spend almost the whole film in Mirkwood.

Of course Part of it all depends on where the balance of the "new" material will be placed. Will it be evenly dispersed or will most of it be jammed into parts 2 & 3? Perhaps what they have in mind for part two is to keep the action with Gandalf with the climax being the routing of the Necromancer while Bilbo and the Dwarves are relegated to the b-story (like Merry & Pippin and Frodo, Sam & Gollum in tTT.)

Indeed, they're no strangers to moving things around to craft a film. In Two Towers they used Helm's Deep as an extended climax where in the book it was a very brief chapter (with a much less desperate tone I might add) and it came from about half way through the book. Then of course in RotK they spend about an hour filling in the material from the tale end of tTT book, completely hack out the scorching of the shire (completely understandable IMO) and reduce Tom Bombadil's chapter to a single line and give it to tree beard...then cut it out of the theatrical cut.

...bottom line: while on the surface it seems like a fairly mercenary move, I think Jackson and co have earned the benefit of the doubt.

[Agenda]

SalvorHardin wrote:

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Each of the Lotr movies is 3 hours long or more, if you take into account the extended editions.
No one says each Hobbit movie is going to be that long.

Trust me, I've been trying to take that into account, but even if the movies are only 2 hours long, it's still crazy.

[Emh]

Allyn Gibson wrote:

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I think this move -- to move to a trilogy -- could prevent that.

If you think about the chronology of events in The Hobbit and where the "split" that ended the first film was rumored to take place (at the barrels sequence), then the second film would have been top-heavy with battle sequences -- in addition to the Battle of Five Armies, there also would have been the Dol Guldur business. The story of the Dwarves would have been crowded in its own movie.

Splitting all the LOTR background material into a third film would prevent that. Material leading to the White Council's attack on Dol Guldur can be seeded in the first two films (which would adapt The Hobbit), and then, in the third film, Bilbo asks Gandalf on the way home from Lonely Mountain, "So where were you during all that time?" and Gandalf tells the tale of what's basically the opening move in the War of the Ring. This way the latter half of The Hobbit gets the room it needs to breathe, as does the White Council material, without it all stepping on each other.

If that's what Jackson does, then they've basically gone back to the original plan -- a Hobbit adaptation and a Lord of the Rings prequel/bridge film. And I'd suggest that the best possible names for this bridge movie would be either The Return of the Shadow or The White Council, though I like the former better. And I don't think this would require a lot of filming. It would really amount to re-editing the films and doing pick-ups where the narrative goes a little thin because they were trying to compress so much into the second film.

That's an excellent analysis of what could be. I hope you're right (but I think I've made it pretty clear how much I hope it's a bridging film of some kind)...

nvek86 wrote:

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According to the following link, the studio has registered the names The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug and The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies.

http://www.theonering.net/torwp/2012...-movie-titles/

I'm guessing the first one could be the new title for the second film (since There and Back Again doesn't really fit any more) and the second one is for the third one.

Damn. Killed that excitement before it could get started.