Ian Holm will be in it, somehow. I imagine they'll do an intro or something of him and Frodo reading the Red Book.

@Ven: I don't think you're incapable of understanding my position. I said, from what you posted so far, I get the impression that you don't, as I've encounter people who treat the films the way you complained about, but I don't consider myself one of them.

I 'll need some time to type up my issues with the movies, but I'll get working on it.

Also, Tom Bombadil had no business even being in the book; Tolkien himself admitted that in a letter later on. Cutting him should never have even been a question. He's totally out-of-tune with the rest of the world and story.

And Frodo was in his early 50s, I believe, though he was young when the ring actually passed to him. Granted, Hobbits age slightly slower than humans, but having him played by an 18-year-old really stretches the story, and, ultimately, changes his character (or at least sets a precedent that Jackson follows up on many times throughout, of making Frodo less heroic and more of a wimp.)

Wasn't Frodo 30 when he got the ring and didn't age since then?
Elijah Wood looks like 25 to me in the movies, so it does seem really fitting for me. Although I don't really like him.

I am curious to read your reply since you seem to know what you are talking about.

He had the ring for... I want to say 17 years (my copy of the book is loaned out at the moment) before the quest began, and he was, I want to say 52, which would leave his halted aging at 35. So, you do have a bit of a point, but casting someone that young is really a head-scratching moment for me, especially since they cut out most of Frodo's more youthful moments (like dancing on the table, singing "The Cow Jumped Over the Moon" at Bree....)

And... this is a bit crazy, but I'm thinking of starting another thread where I'd review the films one scene per post, since I have a lot to say on the subject, and I would need to watch the films again to give a really thorough analysis, as it's been a while, but they're a bit long, in case you never noticed. :p

I'd read that thread! xD

Yeah, I guess they didn't want another all too cheerful hobbit when they already had Merry and Pippin? It might have seemed too much in the movie.
I know that happened in Transformers 2 and it was annoying. :<
Of course Transformers can't be compared to LotR but you get what I mean. xD

Okay, I'll add that to my growing list of thins I need to get on task with, then. Luckily, I actually want to do that one. :p

And, I, for one, am very happy they cut out Frodo's song-and-dance show. That would have looked ridiculous.

And... uh... don't bring up Transformers with me. Seriously, don't. :p

Huh, I guess you don't like popcorn movies.

I don't actually many movies, as a rule, actually. I blame TVTropes.

Oh well, I like many many movies. Crank, Matrix, Inception, Hangover, Transformers, A Knight's Tale, LotR, Harry Potter, X-Men: First Class, and so on and so on. But that doesn't matter here. xD
I'm looking forward to your thread, though.

Yeah, not getting into other movie discussion here, as much as I have things to say about some of those.

I will try and get that review thread going, though I'm somewhat busy lately.

I wouldn't have thought something like Transformers would quality as a popcorn movie, though I haven't seen number two.

Now I'm wondering if I should read The Hobbit before the film arrives. I've seen the cartoon a rediculous number of times -not enough to memorize the songs though- but have yet to actually read the book. Got as far as the trolls on an airplane and that was pretty much it. Didn't even read if for my children's fantasy lit class. I got by on what I knew from the cartoon. ;). (Which of course I do not condone in any way.)

This needs to be a movie.

Oh my. I may need to pay more attention to what I type in the future. That does beg a few questions though. How do said trolls get there?

I'm seriously considering writing a short story about trolls on an airplane. :|

Maybe the three trolls from the Hobbit. :p

That would be interesting.

One would hope the plane doesn't start falling when the sun comes in through the windows.

Heh, Gandalf should totally be on the plane, too, pretending he's not a demigod wizard. :p

And smoking pipeweed in the bathroom? (finding someway to get around the smoke detectors I imagine.)

So looked up The Hobbit on IMDb to check some stuff up. I heard that Jackson wasn't acting as director but was senior producer though IMDb has him listed as director.

I also noticed the screen writer, Fran Walsh, is the same woman he worked with for all three LOTR movies and King Kong. It's likely that The Hobbit will be along the same lines as the other movie.

Oh, and also because I feel like mentioning it, one can't really blame Jackson for everything that happens in the movie. Directors don't get free reign, producers like to stick their noses in too, and even the creditted screen writer doesn't have total control over what actually ends up in the movie.

He's been director for a while, now, after Del Torro backed out because of the delays.

Fran Walsh is his wife, actually. :p

And, watching the interviews with both of them (and the third member of their unholy trinity, Phillipa Boyens) I get the distinct impression that at least an overwhelming majority of the deviations were them trying to (and I quote Boyens here) "improve Tolkien".

Also, just saw this:

Anyone want to take a stab at how this could possibly fit into the story and work well? I'm at something of a loss, and honestly not very happy to hear this, even with the disclaimer.

Isn't Legolas a sylvan elf? He's Prince of Mirkwood, isn't he?

Oh well. I'm actually intrigued about it, but then I consider the movies to be inspired but seperate entities from the Tolkein stuff. I wonder who made that "Improve Tolkein" comment. That sounds like it's asking for trouble there from the purists at least. I imagine there are enough people that don't care that much about his work to care.

Thinking about it, are there any women in The Hobbit?

No, I don't think there are, which is undoubtedly why they're doing this. I just don't see how her character can fit into the story at all. The elves are mysterious bad guys who get a last-second change of heart in the book. Giving them sympathetic characters in the movie is going to make the whole scenario very different, though... maybe it'll work well, if Bilbo is spying on them and learning that they're not bad people, just scared.

Also, I think they should have made some of the dwarves female. I mean... only like 4 of them are important to the plot, anyway, in the book. Who really cares if Dori, Nori, Ori, Fili, Kili, Bifor, or Bofur get a sex change? Too much potential for hilarity given Gimli's comments about bearded dwarf women in the Two Towers?

Heh. When I see changes made like that I tend to think that they're there for politcal ass-covering. Not going to talk about that. Then there's generic plot stuff. Don't particularly want to go there either. Would feel like unneccessary filler that's probably already been thought about.

Has anyone scene the photos of the dwarves in costume? I'm pretty leery about this look for them. They seem very... videogame-ish.


Oin and Gloin


Dori, Nori, and Ori


Fili and Kili


Bifor, Bofur, and Bombur


Balin and Dwalin

Tis Gimli's da! And cousin apparently.

I'm sure they're caked in make-up but I think they look kinda neat, minus some of the outfits. At least they don't all look the same. I question Kili's drawfness though. Looks a little bottom heavy.

Dori's hair looks cool. :D

I'm really going to have to wait to see them on-screen to really judge. The way these photos were taken, everything looks really exaggerated to me. They barely even look real, some of them (Dori, Nori, and Ori, in particular).

that's pretty much how it needs to be done to get the shape right, seeing as we only have human actors to work with.

You read The Hobbit? I've only seen the old cartoon, but I did enjoy Jackson et al.'s LOTR films.

Sigh.... here's the long-awaited picture of Thorin. Except... that's not Thorin. Not to me, never will be.



And here's a pic of all the dwarves together. I'm really not very interested in this movie anymore.



As a contrast, this is how I'll always picture Thorin, and damn it if that pic doesn't excite me more than everything I've seen on Jackson's film so far.

The dwarves make me think of Dragon Age....which I also enjoy.

I dunno if I'll watch this in theaters though....but get it on DVD? Why not.

I want to see the movie, mainly to see how it compares to the book, and see how badly Jackson screws it up.

You might find Suzerain's LOTR review thread here interesting.

I always think of cartoon Thorin, grey hair and somewhat snooty looking with a tall head. Th epic there kinda makes me think of Conan the Barbarian if you were to making him out of plasticine and squish him up a little bit so he's more dwarf shaped.

I like the dwarves here in that they are more or less dwarfy looking and distinct enough from each other to be recognizable (get's annoying when watching a movie and every few minutes someone has to ask "who the hell is that?"). Still not fond of the guys on either end though. The guy on the left looks a little heavy on the pillow stuffing and the guy on the right looks more like a really heavy halfling. Maybe it's just that the way he's standing gives him a peeny waist. I've never really thought of dwarves as having peeny waists.

I think Kili, on the right, looks more like a man than a dwarf. He'd make a good ranger, honestly.

And Bombur, on the left, is just totally ridiculous, as expected.

And speaking of my reviews, I should really get the next scene up...

I'm not all that invested in the Lord of the Rings series, but of all the books, I enjoyed The Hobbit the best, so I'll probably see this movie.

Plus, even if I didn't like the book - it stars Martin Freeman as Bilbo Baggins, and Benedict Cumberbatch as the voice of Smaug! As a Sherlock fan, I have to giggle and clap at this.

I really want to hold out faith that this'll be decent, if not good, but after seeing those dwarves, I'm really having my doubts. I have a very hard time meshing those guys pictured above with what I've seen in my imagination from like... 10 readings of the book. Anyone else want to weigh in on this? I'll be surprised if anyone actually pictured the dwarves that way.

And, you know, you'd think a story as simple and straightforward as The Hobbit would be relatively easy to adapt to film, but I don't trust Jackson and his unholy trinity of smug, self-serving screenwriters to do anything but mutilate the original plot in effort to cram as much "cool" stuff into the movie as possible.

I'm looking forward to it personally. Have been a long time. After seeing the outfits of the characters, it makes me want to see it more.

It does seem like it's taking forever to come out. Next December is still a long way away.

Does anyone know if they're filming both movies together, like they did with the Lord of the Rings films?

I am looking forward to it, just because I have been waiting for a decent translation of the book for a while (Can't be any worse than the cartoon versions >.>). The Hobbit is my favorite and probably the one I have reread the most of any book I have ever owned. I love the characters and the story.

That picture of Thorin made me both excited and a little skeptical. My first thought was that it reminded me of what used to be the representation of Klingons on Star Trek the Original XD

I think I agree with you on the Klingon end, Gladde.

I like the costumes for the most part. As far as they dwarves themseves go, I think these would sort of be a more contemporary, cool looking dwarf like the way DnD 3.0 brought in skinnier, 'cool looking' halflings. Make sense?

*nods* The dwarves definitely have a more modern, DnD look to them. I can't get the Klingon image out of my head now though XP

I also expect that there will be changes to the story. I didn't notice them with LOTR because I had only read the books once and I did not remember much. I just hope that the changes won't be too severe. The story is already perfect as is, so I can imagine what would need to be cut out or changed. Whereas with the LOTR books, I was glad with some of the cuts/changes they did make. It took forever for Frodo to actually get to going...

They definately seem to follow the more recent DnD trends rather then the earlier ones. Of course, not really sure how much of the Tolkein dwarf and TSR/WotC dwarf resemble each other.

I haven't read The Hobbit, and I'm tempted not to until I see at least the first movie.