The Hobbit (2012/2013)

[lamaros]

One of the last chapters ain't called "The Battle of Five Armies" for no reason.

That's pretty epic.

But the tone of the book isn't 'epic', so the events aren't really played out in a "action overload" way, more an "oh, shit!" one. IIRC.

[Ingmar]

Given the Dol Guldur offscreen stuff will be in the flim there's plenty of room for him to space the action in a more movie-like manner.

[Johny Cee]

Given the Dol Guldur offscreen stuff will be in the flim there's plenty of room for him to space the action in a more movie-like manner.

Boy, I am eagerly anticipating and dreading the White Council showing up to drop a beat down on the Necromancer.  It could be clownshoes.  It could be epically badass.

Galadrial alone is basically some kind of cheat code unlock super-hero.  She's older then the sun and the moon, left heaven to go rule a kingdom, and was the only one that didn't take any of Feanor's shit.  After Sauron went down, she marched her boytoy and his troops over to Dol Guldor, and she personally "threw down it's walls". 

There is a reason even the good guys were scared of her.  I just have this fear that Jackson is going to have her throwing lightning bolts or something retarded. 

[Fordel]

I've been living under a rock and only just saw the trailer today. Love it, can't wait. 


It gives me a good feeling, like I can come home again. You know how at the end of a book/movie you really enjoy, you want more, but know you can't have more because the story is over?


Well now I get more!

[Reg]

I'm sorry Fordel. In order to be taken seriously as a movie critic and artiste you'll need to repeat that while wearing this beret.

[Tannhauser]

He'll also need clove cigarettes and a can of PBR.

[Simond]

And to hate fun.

[Azazel]

Anyone concerned that the Hobbit might not be a faithful adaptation should not follow this link....

[Ironwood]

Isn't it more likely that Sherlock is just a little confused ?

[Johny Cee]

Anyone concerned that the Hobbit might not be a faithful adaptation should not follow this link....

There is a difference between faithful in spirit and faithful in detail. 

Most people, and my personal issues with Jackson's adaption, are pissed with Jackson's failures in adapting the feeling/themes.  Denethor becomes a bad caricature that people laugh at when Gandalf and Pippin punk him, rather than a tragic figure who is wrong but is sympathetic.  I never had a problem with changes that didn't fuck the story or stayed within the spirit of the work.


The best example I can point to: Lynch's Dune.  Lynch changed SHITLOADS of things, and it didn't work that well as a movie, but you can taste the spirit of the books.  Scifi did a miniseries a few years ago, more rigourous in it's adaption, that was like watching paint dry and felt like bad paint by numbers.

[Ingmar]

I never sympathized with the book Denethor particularly. Honestly if you asked me which characters Jackson had gotten most right Denethor would probably be one of the first ones I thought of.

[Sheepherder]

Apparently Ironwood was right, Jackson has the skill to fuck this up.

[Khaldun]

I also think Denethor isn't even particularly sympathetic in the books. The main thing in the books is that Tolkien is on again about nobility in the blood and that shit, so Denethor isn't just your garden-variety bad father or tyrant, but also has some store of genuine power derived from his bloodline. But Jackson quite wisely decided to drop that whole shit completely, because it's absolutely devastating to anything approaching a modern dramatic sense of character. If Aragorn is the real shit simply because his bloodline runs true, if Faramir never makes a mistake because he's somehow the real Numenorean deal, etc., then there's never any chance that they'll make the wrong choice or fail at the challenges in front of them. Jackson & his screenwriters made a strategic decision to create some sense of a dramatic arc in Aragorn and Faramir's stories (successfully imho in the former case, not so much in the latter) and that means that the collateral is that Denethor can't be much more than a bully, bad father and tyrant, because the "more" that he is in LOTR is all about that sense of grand heritage and inherent aristocratic worth.

I like the trailer a lot. My only anxiety with the whole project is what the narrative of the Dol Guldur stuff is. I see two primary dangers: one that it's just pointless spectacle, with no story at all; two that he overworks the narrative connections between Dol Guldur and the Battle of the Five Armies, which will draw away from the focus on Bilbo and the dwarves and probably lose some of the whimsy that's crucial to this story. That said, Tolkien invites a kind of connection himself in the appendices to LOTR, in which he makes clear that Gandalf's meeting with Thorin solved a problem that was much on his mind, that Smaug would become Sauron's mightiest force in the North in the event that the Necromancer did in fact turn out to be Sauron, which Gandalf clearly is certain about well before his journeys there. The Big G spells it out that killing Smaug was one of two crucial preparations for war against Sauron, the other being rooting him out of Dol Guldur (which in any event Sauron himself was preparing for).

Also, I recall that Gandalf makes two trips to Dol Guldur: the first is a secret spy mission where he finds Thrain and the map and the second is in the company of the White Council as part of a full-on attack against the Necromancer. In the books, the first trip actually takes place well before the events of The Hobbit. I think the little story in the appendices makes it clear that G. had to keep Thorin's attention on Smaug rather than rushing a bunch of dwarves off to Dol Guldur, where they'd all get wiped out, once he hears how his father died. (Maybe that's spelled out more in Unfinished Tales, I don't remember.) I'm guessing that Jackson will find some way to compress this all together and use it to give Thorin an even more dramatic character--a choice between different kinds of vengeance, etc. Though Thorin is already pretty well set up as a tragic character who outright fails to live up to the challenge of power, unlike Dain and Bard.

[Sheepherder]

The main thing in the books is that Tolkien is on again about nobility in the blood and that shit, so Denethor isn't just your garden-variety bad father or tyrant, but also has some store of genuine power derived from his bloodline. But Jackson quite wisely decided to drop that whole shit completely, because it's absolutely devastating to anything approaching a modern dramatic sense of character. If Aragorn is the real shit simply because his bloodline runs true, if Faramir never makes a mistake because he's somehow the real Numenorean deal, etc., then there's never any chance that they'll make the wrong choice or fail at the challenges in front of them.

He is not as other men of this time…by some chance the blood of Westernesse runs nearly true in him, as it does in his other son, Faramir, and yet did not in Boromir. He has long sight. He can perceive, if he bends his will thither, much of what is passing in the minds of men, even of those that dwell far off. It is difficult to deceive him, and dangerous to try.

You're reading too much into it.  It's not midochlorian count (EDIT: Or maybe it is, given that in the end Vader kills fucking everything).

Denethor went bugfuck crazy despite his breeding.  Faramir (with the exact same sentence referring to father and son) didn't give a shit about the ring even though it was a arm span away from him.  Isildur, who was from Numenor and stabbed motherfucking Sauron to (corporeal) death couldn't toss the thing when everyone was telling him it was made of evil and trapped puppy souls.  Boromir (of low breeding) lost his shit at Frodo then hit his head on a rock, recalling to him his purpose in life: murdering the shit out a metric fuckton of Orcs; so, overall, good guy.

Also, I feel like I should not be the guy to be telling you this.

[Tannhauser]

In order to prepare Gondor, Denethor stared into the abyss (the palantir) and the abyss (Sauron) stared back.  It filled him with despair.  I thought his movie version was fine. 

[Samwise]

In my mind, the key difference between Faramir (who in the book is able to give up the ring more easily than anyone except maybe Sam) and Denethor and Boromir (who both coveted it) is that Faramir had studied history from Gandalf (whom Denethor disliked) and had actually learned something useful from Isildur's story.

I'm pretty sure there was even a line in the book where Sam said that Faramir reminded him of Gandalf.  Faramir said that it was the blood of Numenor that he was seeing, but my takeaway is that this was visible in Faramir moreso than in other men of his family because of his personal outlook and the choices he made, not so much his chromosomes.

[Sheepherder]

Pride is a constantly recurring fatal flaw in a lot of Tokien's writing.

[Khaldun]

Yes, but there's also people who live up to their breeding and those who don't. It's kind of a binary switch--you are tested and you either fail of your promise or you don't. Once you prove true, you are pretty much all set.

[Sheepherder]

Right, and it just so happens that both the dudes who live up to their breeding are not arrogant douchebags.

Whereas on the other hand you have the Witch King, Denethor, Boromir, Balin, Thorin, Smaug, Isildur, Sauron, and Saruman just to name a few notable examples of douchebags that got their comeuppance because they thought they were hot shit.  That's not even touching the reason the Numenoreans are damn near extinct.

[Ironwood]

It was the volcano, right ?

 

[Tannhauser]

Well, they were the only Men who could stand toe to toe with Sauron.  Today yer average Rohirrim or Gondorian would piss their pants just seeing Sauron across the street buying a mocha.

[Der Helm]

Well, they were the only Men who could stand toe to toe with Sauron.  Today yer average Rohirrim or Gondorian would piss their pants just seeing Sauron across the street buying a mocha.

To be honest with you, I would as well.

[UnSub]

I wouldn't have picked him as a mocha drinker, myself.

Triple shot espresso, extra hot, no sugar, perhaps. That would help keep his eye open.

[Der Helm]

Would explain the whole fiery eyeball thing as well.

[Teleku]

I wouldn't have picked him as a mocha drinker, myself.

Triple shot espresso, extra hot, no sugar, perhaps. That would help keep his eye open.

I'd figure plain coffee, black as his heart.

[UnSub]

That'd be too easy on the barista. No, Sauron would ask for something a bit more fiddly.

[palmer_eldritch]

I thought the thing with Tolkein's Denethor was that as a Stuart/Steward rather than an actual king, he could never be a decent ruler. it didn't matter who his ancestors were, and it didn't matter very much whether he was a good/strong man or not. As long as Gondor was ruled by a man sitting on a little stool in front of the throne rather than the actual throne then it was pretty much doomed.

[Ironwood]

No, not really.

The Stewards were highly regarded and came from a long line of 'decent' chaps.  Faramir was also a good 'un.

The problem was Denethor in particular thinking he was better than he was and striving with Sauron mano a mano.  Not a good idea.

Also, Boromir had ideas well above his station and asked as a kid if he could ever become king.  Denethor said 'don't be so fucking stupid' which really, really gave him an inferiority complex.  That showed in his dealings with Aragorn and explained how easily the Ring fucked his mind over.

Gondor was pretty much doomed because Sauron had a massive fuck off army, to be honest.  And a Ring out there somewhere that was a game-ender.

[lamaros]

I don't really think you're disagreeing.

[Sheepherder]

They are.  Contrary to Palmer's assertion, Denethor was a good ruler, as I recall, Gandalf even says as much.  He's just terribly mistaken about his ability to punch in Sauron's weight class.

[Ironwood]

Yeah.  The Denethor we see in the books is one who has already dipped into a contest of Will with Sauron and lost mightily.  The trouble is, he's so proud he doesn't even realise it.

He was a Good Steward from a line of Good Stewards, but it was the end of a long, long war that Sauron should have won.  He was tired and in despair.

[Tannhauser]

Well then he's like the movie Denethor.  I wish I could remember book Boromir's reaction to meeting Aragorn. "Hi, I'm Aragorn, I've been chilling up here with hot elf ass while you fought and bled to protect my kingdom.  Thanks by the way, guess I'll head down there and claim my crown, LOL"

[Ironwood]

The movie put Denethor more in a 'broken mind' frame, rather than a 'broken spirit'.  It was only at the end when Faramir was poisoned that he totally lost it.

Frodo also gave a good accounting of the meeting of Boromir and Aragorn.  Boromir respected him mightily and would have followed him anywhere once his true claim was verified.  He was more honourable than the ring ever allowed him to show in the Fellowship.

[Khaldun]

They are.  Contrary to Palmer's assertion, Denethor was a good ruler, as I recall, Gandalf even says as much.  He's just terribly mistaken about his ability to punch in Sauron's weight class.

Gandalf says pretty much that Denethor is kind of like a super-middleweight trying to do heavyweight--e.g., it's close but no cigar. He makes it clear to Pippin that Denethor is not just some asshole, but a real player who can very nearly match Gandalf in will and insight.

[HaemishM]

And let's face it, even Saruman, a non-mortal is corrupted by the influence of Sauron through the Orthanc. What chance did Denethor have?