Big The Hobbit news today as a brand new trailer for The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug has arrived.
Stephen Schleicher
Stephen Schleicher began his career writing for the Digital Media Online community of sites, including Digital Producer and Creative Mac covering all aspects of the digital content creation industry. He then moved on to consumer technology, and began the Coolness Roundup podcast. A writing fool, Stephen has freelanced for Sci-Fi Channel's Technology Blog, and Gizmodo. Still longing for the good ol' days, Stephen launched Major Spoilers in July 2006, because he is a glutton for punishment. You can follow him on Twitter @MajorSpoilers and tell him your darkest secrets...
3 Comments
So excited for this movie, even if Legolas being in there is just completely pandering.
Parts of this look good, and parts of it look like what I call ‘splosions–stuff added into a movie just to be ‘TOTALLY AWESOME!!!’ that doesn’t actually add to the narrative at all. Usually it’s special effects extravaganzas laden with explosions (hence the name) but it can be anything that is only there to TURN IT UP TO 11!!! Here you get to see a chunk of the trailer devoted to Legolas and Elfangeline Lily, who aren’t in the book and almost certainly could have been left out entirely without affecting the overall story even an iota. Definitely ‘splosions.
I never liked The Hobbit anywhere near as much as I liked The Lord of the Rings, so maybe I’m not the best judge, but I really think The Hobbit would have been much better served as one movie or two at the most. The first movie seemed overly long to me, with whole sequences that didn’t need to be there. Frankly I got kind of bored, and I’m not expecting any better for the next two. What makes me most worried is that there doesn’t seem to be much of the narrative left to be used in the third movie except for an extrapolation of the big battle that took place entirely off-screen in the book. I haven’t read it in quite a while, though, so maybe I’m forgetting some stuff.
I liked the first Hobbit movie, but the added material did take me out of the movie because I kept thinking “this wasn’t in the book” when I first watched it. Once I got past that – after repeated viewings – I liked it even more. I like the original book but, to be honest, it was barely part of the Tolkien world. The Hobbit was full of modern references (popguns and the like) and the elves of Mirkwood were more like Brownies and Gnomes than the high elves in LOTRs and lets not even get started on the talking animals. Interestingly enough, after the success of LOTRs, Tolkien started to rewrite The Hobbit in the style of the LOTR, and those who read the portions he rewrote universally told him it was a fine tale, but it wasn’t The Hobbit since the rewrite removed all the charm and humor of the original, and he abandoned the project.
I suggest that anybody interested find and read the three volume “History of the Hobbit” which dissects the story like an autopsy and presents the final authorized edition, the original edition, lots of footnotes, and the surviving portions of the unfinished rewrites.
Peter Jackson’s movies are not faithful adaptations of Tolkien’s books, but they are loving adaptations. I like them a lot and look forward to the next movie, and the expanded edition of the first Hobbit film.