The Hobbit (2012/2013)

[Ingmar]

Oh, it is certainly more a problem for Turbine than for New Line. It is really irritating as a fan of the books when Turbine has to make stuff up or use euphemisms because they can't refer to some character by name or whatever. And I choose to blame  Mr. Cranky Son. 

[Samwise]

Casual observers (I know you know this, Ingmar) should note that the Silmarillion would not exist if not for Cranky Son -- JRR was never able to assemble it into anything coherent before he died, and Christopher spent years digging through crap and even rewriting the missing bits so that it could be published as an actual book.  I'd consider it to be as much his work as his father's in many ways.

[Ingmar]

Sure, although I've always been under the impression that Guy Kay was pretty much responsible for any actual creative (rather than organizational/editing) work involved.

[Mrbloodworth]

We should discuss copyright law now.

Or we could get back to the handsomeness of dwarves and how that devalues them as a species.

[Samwise]

The only thing about Hot Dwarf that bothers me is how short the beard is.



I'm not sure whether it's Middle-Earth canon that dwarves never shave as a matter of honor or if that was a later invention by other fantasy writers, but a dwarf without a big bushy beard just doesn't look like a dwarf to me.

[Ingmar]

The other thing that should bother you is that it is the wrong color!

[rattran]

Perhaps that's supposed to be a girl dwarf.

[Tannhauser]

They showed girl dwarves fleeing Erebor, no sign of beards.  So in 'The Two Towers' when Aragorn was talking to Eowyn about dwarven women having beards, he was being a racist fuck. 

[Samwise]

IIRC Gimli's movie line about humans not being able to tell male and female dwarves apart is actually from the book.

[pxib]

They showed girl dwarves fleeing Erebor, no sign of beards.

Weta concepts for female dwarves:

[Ratman_tf]

IIRC Gimli's movie line about humans not being able to tell male and female dwarves apart is actually from the book.

It's in one of the appendixes. According to Tolkien, male and female dwarves are indistinguishable except, and I'm assuming here  , their genitals.

[Cyrrex]

The only thing about Hot Dwarf that bothers me is how short the beard is.



I'm not sure whether it's Middle-Earth canon that dwarves never shave as a matter of honor or if that was a later invention by other fantasy writers, but a dwarf without a big bushy beard just doesn't look like a dwarf to me.

I think the thing that bothers ME about Hot Dwarf is that he is clearly a human being, and doesn't look remotely like a dwarf.

I haven't seen the movie yet, so only judging by this pic.  Is he also 6 feet tall?

[Tebonas]

Writing Carrot into the Hobbit would have been awesome, but no.

[Khaldun]

Fili, Kili and Thorin are all presented as being slightly taller than the really dwarfy-dwarves but there's no effort made to get them to appear "dwarfish" in their proportions, unlike the others. So your eye is often very aware as you watch that their height is a kind of trickery--that they are proportioned as adult humans and yet are kind of the same height as Bilbo and the other dwarves.

There is some language in the book about how Fili and Kili's beards are "still golden" and it's implied are rather short compared to the others, and in general, there's a lot made out of the fact that they're very young (and Thorin's blood-kin). Of course, some of the other dwarves in the book have blue beards, which I think Jackson was wise to take a miss on.

[Ironwood]

At the end of the day, it doesn't really matter since they're both deadmeat, but it still bothers me.

[Khaldun]

I was re-reading the Battle of Five Armies stuff this morning. I actually think that whole bit has potential to be pretty kick-ass. This is another place where Christopher Tolkien bitching about the plumping up of the action in the films is just kind of dumb, because his dad could write some pretty vivid shit about violence when it suited him. He could hardly avoid it given his interest in Norse and Germanic source material, in any event.

The idea that JRR should be treated as some great thinker about ethics and morality is also dumb, and is only forgivable from CT because: a) family connection and b) work on The Silmarillon, where JRR Tolkien's subpar Catholic wankery came to the fore most strikingly. The "deep ideas" of the Tolkienverse are basically "Catholicism uber alles",  "rip off Milton only make Satan a less interesting character", "indulge in reactionary nostalgia for hereditary aristocracies and preindustrial yeomen". Tolkien's work is great not for his alleged ideas but for his aesthetic commitment to world-building and detail, which let him imagine something far more interesting than his philosophic leanings, such as they were.

[eldaec]

Are dwarves and men supposed to be related in Tolkien?

I vaguely remember orcs and elves having a thing.

[Ironwood]

Orcs were just elves.

Dwarves were their own thing and we never really figured out what made them.

Hobbits just appeared with men, which I always thought was odd.

[palmer_eldritch]

Orcs were just elves.

Dwarves were their own thing and we never really figured out what made them.

Hobbits just appeared with men, which I always thought was odd.

Hobbits don't really fit into Middle Earth at all, which is half the fun. They're almost modern (by Tolkien's standards), living a life that would be familiar to people only a generation or so before Tolkien's youth. Except underground and shorter. They're an anachronism.

That's what Tom Shippey says anyway and I tend to let him explain it all to me when it comes to Tolkien.

[Tebonas]

Weren't Dwarves secretly made by Aule and hidden under the Earth as an illegal creation because Elves were supposed to be the first race on Middle Earth?

[Ironwood]

No, that's WoW you're thinking of.

 

[rattran]

Your alt has the right of it. Dwarves were made in secret, then put aside until after elves were around.

I recall reading one of the notes in the books Haemish despises about Tolkien speculating that perhaps hobbits were dwarf/elf crossbreeds.

[Ironwood]

I honestly though the smiley would do without the green.

(It's just as lame when WoW Copied it and Butchered it.  Also, Troggs.  Why did it have to be Troggs.)

[Khaldun]

So see, the romance subplot of the second Hobbit movie is canon!

The Silmarillion talks about this, but it's a bit hard to see why Aule gets off scot-free for doing what Melkor tried to do simply because Eru ends up liking what he made. In fact, Aule arguably does what we're told Melkor *couldn't* do: make something new. Unless of course Eru wanted him to. But then if that's so, Eru wanted Melkor to rebel as well and then, well, hello theodicy or some other form of apologetic. Same goes for Manwe and Yavanna who also make some shit that Eru Himself didn't make and then get post-facto blessing for it. No wonder Melkor is such a grouch about it all.

[croaker69]

So see, the romance subplot of the second Hobbit movie is canon!

The Silmarillion talks about this, but it's a bit hard to see why Aule gets off scot-free for doing what Melkor tried to do simply because Eru ends up liking what he made. In fact, Aule arguably does what we're told Melkor *couldn't* do: make something new. Unless of course Eru wanted him to. But then if that's so, Eru wanted Melkor to rebel as well and then, well, hello theodicy or some other form of apologetic. Same goes for Manwe and Yavanna who also make some shit that Eru Himself didn't make and then get post-facto blessing for it. No wonder Melkor is such a grouch about it all.

The difference is intent.  Melkor want peons to dominate and Aule wants children to teach.

[Ingmar]

Weren't Dwarves secretly made by Aule and hidden under the Earth as an illegal creation because Elves were supposed to be the first race on Middle Earth?

Yes, but nobody can mention that because the Silmarillion isn't licensed.  

[HaemishM]

I recall reading one of the notes in the books Haemish despises about Tolkien speculating that perhaps hobbits were dwarf/elf crossbreeds.

I don't despise the Silmarillion, just the upmteen other editions of the Lord of the Rings saga that his father apparently left in a notebook vault the size of Fort Knox.

[Yegolev]

I don't understand what is going on now.  How many of the 13 were women?

[HaemishM]

Only the cute ones.

[Yegolev]

So, three or four.

[TheWalrus]

Took my eight year old daughter to see it. She loved every minute. I thought it was great, and didn't even really mind a bit when it dragged on about 2/3 through. Still loved it.

[HaemishM]

You know, for as long as it was, I didn't think it dragged all that much. Maybe a few too many lingering glances and that goddamn rock giant fight, but other than that, it didn't feel 3 hours long to me. The more I think on it in hindsight though, it felt very EMPTY to me. The supplementary materials they added to the timeline were all kind of fun, but ultimately, they really did feel like something a lesser writer extrapolated from about 2 paragraphs worth of text. I fear for the next 2 movies, especially if they get longer than 3 hours.

[Khaldun]

If the next two are about 90-110 minutes, fine. If each is well over two hours, not fine. Especially not the second one, which might be really padded if it doesn't go up to Smaug's demise.

[Merusk]

If the next two are about 90-110 minutes, fine. If each is well over two hours, not fine. Especially not the second one, which might be really padded if it doesn't go up to Smaug's demise.

I expect at best it will go up to Bilbo going in to the mountain, but not Smaug's demise.  They'll have Beorn, Mirkwood Spiders, Elven Halls & Laketown to get through before the discovery of the door and Bilbo's entry.  That's in addition to whatever else Jackson is going to throw in for the white orc and necromancer story lines.

Though pushing through to Smaug's demise would follow the formula of having a battle scene towards the movie end, so maybe it will include it.  I'm not betting on it, though.

[Samwise]

IIRC the title of the next movie is "The Desolation of Smaug".  I think he's going to wrap up the Smaug storyline there and maybe go light on the LotR tie-in stuff until movie three.