Another Actor Confirmed For The Hobbit (Spoilers)
- Thread starter Starbreaker
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Ian McKellan confirmed finally today as well...and rumors are that Christopher Lee and Ian Holm may follow after all.
http://www.comingsoon.net/news/movienews.php?id=73122
Shooting starts next month apparently as well.
http://www.comingsoon.net/news/movienews.php?id=73122
Shooting starts next month apparently as well.
It would actually be very cool to see Saruman in his older role as head of the Council, so that is intriguing news.
I read at TORN that Ian McKellen and Andy Serkis were confirmed, but I had not seen anything about Lee and Holm might actually be returning, too, although it might just be idle speculation on Coming Soon's part. Only time will tell...
The article did say that it was rumors abroad about the other two...it would be interesting to see Saraman before his fall as mentioned before. I'm getting excited about the film and in the mood to watch some LOTR!
I'm glad McKellen and Serkis are back. As for Elijah ... hmmm. I liked him just fine in LOTR, I'm just not sure I see the need for Frodo as a framing/ storytelling device. It might be fine onscreen, but at the minute just strikes me as unnecessary padding. We'll see.
^ I agree with this statement regarding the use of Frodo. We shall see how it works out though.
Including Frodo makes sense. Not every moviegoer has a prior familiarity with the books; all they know is the movies. So if you're going to toss a prequel at them, it helps to include a framing sequence that features the characters they know and presents the story as a flashback. Without that clear indication of the story being set earlier, they might be confused by the differences. It's kind of the same reason (well, part of the reason) Gene Roddenberry put a "present-day" framing story around the original Trek pilot and told it in flashback rather than just showing it without explanation.
Also it's just a matter of familiarity. Many moviegoers don't come to sequels out of loyalty to the storyline or the universe; they come for the actors. Elijah Wood was the star of the previous three films in this series, so bringing him back for the next two is a good idea. Just as expanding the story to incorporate elements that tie more clearly into LotR is a good idea. Purity to the source doesn't help give a film broad appeal. The LotR films were a proven success, so it's simply good business to connect the Hobbit films to them as closely as possible.
Also it's just a matter of familiarity. Many moviegoers don't come to sequels out of loyalty to the storyline or the universe; they come for the actors. Elijah Wood was the star of the previous three films in this series, so bringing him back for the next two is a good idea. Just as expanding the story to incorporate elements that tie more clearly into LotR is a good idea. Purity to the source doesn't help give a film broad appeal. The LotR films were a proven success, so it's simply good business to connect the Hobbit films to them as closely as possible.
^ Understandable...not complaining about the use of Frodo as a framing device if that he indeed how they're planning on using him, however if they're using him because people are familiar with that character and aren't familiar with the book...well there are other notable characters such as Galadriel and Gandalf that can serve the same function.
The news isn't surprising, considering they're taking a book with 2 hours worth of story and artificially extending it to two movies. I expect we'll see more cheats like this. Probably a lengthy postscript recapping the Lord of the Rings, too. Jackson could probably parachute in backstory from The Silmarillion to fill time, too.
I will say it's cool that, except for Ian Holm, they're managing to get many of the original LOTR actors back together for this. I just still think they should have made a single movie rather than splitting the story. No book that can actually be read in a single sitting justifies two movies.
I wonder if Eminem has taken up the offer to record a new version of Glenn Yarborough's "The Greatest Adventure is What Lies Ahead"? (Kidding!)
Alex
I will say it's cool that, except for Ian Holm, they're managing to get many of the original LOTR actors back together for this. I just still think they should have made a single movie rather than splitting the story. No book that can actually be read in a single sitting justifies two movies.
I wonder if Eminem has taken up the offer to record a new version of Glenn Yarborough's "The Greatest Adventure is What Lies Ahead"? (Kidding!)
Alex
^ That would be kind of cool (runs away).
No, he can't. The movie rights to The Silmarillion haven't been sold.
Much as I loved Annie Lennox's "Into the West," I really wanted to hear "Frodo of the Nine Fingers" in Jackson's Return of the King.
Seriously, I did.
And yet audiences coped without any framing for the Star Wars prequels, Enterprise, Wolverine, Star Trek09 or any of the other various prequels we've had over the last decade or so. I'm pretty sure that the promotional materials for The Hobbit will emphasise that it's the prequel/ predecessor to LOTR. I think it will be hard for anyone to manage to get into a cinema showing the movie without being aware of that.
It's not like Elijah Wood really puts bums on seats, is it? Again, I'm sure the posters will highlight Gandalf and Gollum and will have a similar look to the LOTR ones for the sake of continuity. The sort of casual viewer who doesn't know his Bilbo from his Frodo probably won't even know that that's Martin Freeman on the poster as oppose to Elijah Wood.
I have no big problem with departing from the source material; IMHO, virtually all of the changes to the LOTR movies were for the better. I just question whether the whole connection needs spelt out quite this explicitly; audiences aren't so stupid that they need things hammered into their heads (well, not all audiences anyway).
I didn't say it always had to be that way, I said it was a reasonable approach to take. There's no single right way to tell a story. Storytellers doing prequels have multiple options available to them, and this is one of them, a perfectly legitimate one.
You cite ST'09 as a counterexample, but it's actually an example of my point, because the filmmakers included Leonard Nimoy and a time-travel backstory that began several years after the events of Star Trek Nemesis in order to make the film as much a continuation forward from prior ST continuity as a restart in the past. Same with Enterprise -- the reason the Temporal Cold War was included (over Berman & Braga's protests, despite what many have assumed) is that UPN was uneasy with the idea of doing a prequel series and dictated that the show needed to contain time-travel elements so that it could still be seen as "moving forward" from previous Trek series. So there is certainly precedent for the makers or distributors of prequels wanting them to have elements of forward continuity to ease the transition.
I'll never understand why people insist on defining storytelling choices with the word "need." It's not about needs or dictates, it's about having a variety of tools in the box, a range of options to draw from. It is narrow-minded to pre-emptively say that a particular option "should not" be tried. Creators should have the freedom to make any creative choice that feels right to them. Yes, I'm saying there's a good reason for making that choice, but that's a different thing from saying that it "needs" to be done that way -- because it's a fallacy to assume there can only be one valid way of telling a story. There can be multiple different approaches, all of which have valid reasons behind them.
This is about making The Hobbit feel more like LotR. Why not? LotR was a hugely successful trilogy. It's perfectly understandable why the filmmakers would want to make these films feel as much like a direct continuation as possible. Not because they "need" to or because the audience is "too stupid to understand" -- that's a completely bizarre way of defining the question -- but because it makes sense to try to recapture the flavor of a successful creation.
^ Fair enough. I'm not entirely sold on this particular storytelling choice PJ has made but given how much I enjoyed the LOTR movies, I suppose I should have faith in him. Like I said in my original post, I'll wait and see how it turns out onscreen.
I'm actually not a huge fan of the LotR movies and enjoy them a lot less than the novels. That said, changing the source material is inevitable. A piece of blockbuster entertainment is responding to radically different sensibilities than Tolkien's text (which really wasn't responding to anyone's sensibilities other than his own, as far as I can tell, but it just so happened that he tapped into what turned out to be a sort of collective nostalgia for the epic poetry and romances that he loved).
Presenting the Hobbit within a storytelling/flashback type of framework actually makes a lot of sense, I think, given the Hobbit's identity as a childrens' story (moreso than the LotR), and its link to folktales. And there is really no reason to resist the temptation to show some of the Dol Guldur material that is only alluded to in the book. That should produce some cool visuals, and that allows you to work more of the LotR characters in. So basically these choices strike me as pretty natural and predictable ones.
Presenting the Hobbit within a storytelling/flashback type of framework actually makes a lot of sense, I think, given the Hobbit's identity as a childrens' story (moreso than the LotR), and its link to folktales. And there is really no reason to resist the temptation to show some of the Dol Guldur material that is only alluded to in the book. That should produce some cool visuals, and that allows you to work more of the LotR characters in. So basically these choices strike me as pretty natural and predictable ones.
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Not to mention the fact that it actually exists as a book (There and Back Again) within the reality of LotR.
Hmm... There and Back Again? Talk about your spoiler titles...
Indeed. What can be told in a book often works better shown in a movie -- and the "shown" version can often take a lot more time.
True, and the LotR is actually full of stories within the story. The characters are constantly telling each other tales of the past, or singing songs about it. There are times when these stories seem to have almost a sort of magical power to ward off evil (on Weathertop) or restore the spirit (Rivendell) or hold back the passage of time (Lorien). There is also a lot of in-story music, especially singing. This is all tied into the multiplicity of languages, of course.
So I actually found that the relative lack of this type of element was part of what was missing from the films as far as capturing the spirit of the source material is concerned, though it would doubtless have been difficult to make that sort of thing work in a blockbuster movie. A more straightforward narrative + soundtrack approach was a lot safer and was very successful.
That said, if the Hobbit brings in a few more of those in-universe story and song elements, than that is all to the good as far as my personal taste is concerned.
Hmm... There and Back Again? Talk about your spoiler titles...
The Return of the King is actually pretty bad in that regard as well, though better than the title that was original planned, which was The Heroes Win
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I wonder if as an inside joke during production PJ will have as a working title "There and Back Again"? Probably not but I'd probably do something like that if I was directing this, especially since they are in effect going back to the beginning of Bilbo's story.
More news and rumors, all from TORN:
Christopher Lee is officially returning.
Elijah Wood and Andy Serkis are definites.
David Tennant is continued to be rumored to portray Thranduil the Elvenking and Legalos' father.
Lastly, Dominic Monaghan is now rumored to return.
In regards to the last rumor, I don't think it's necessary to bring back Merry (or Pippin or Sam for that matter). I just want Ian Holm back as Bilbo for the framing sequence!
Christopher Lee is officially returning.
Elijah Wood and Andy Serkis are definites.
David Tennant is continued to be rumored to portray Thranduil the Elvenking and Legalos' father.
Lastly, Dominic Monaghan is now rumored to return.
In regards to the last rumor, I don't think it's necessary to bring back Merry (or Pippin or Sam for that matter). I just want Ian Holm back as Bilbo for the framing sequence!
Indeed. All of the extend material we'll see in the films will be coming from the Return of the King appendices.
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