[Ducky]

I don't know how many people are aware, or even care, but recently the trailer for the first of the new Hobbit movies was finally release :D

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0k3kHtyoqc

We have to wait until December 2012, which is a little disappointing, but the trailer is everything I wanted it to be. Apart from the dwarves looking a bit silly...

So, what are you thoughts and expectations of the up coming movie?

[Suzerain of Sheol]

I saw it when it first got released, forgot about this thread.

I'm glad to see that they got the dwarves' song right, that could have gone much worse. Their appearance... I'm not even going to comment on. It is what it is. I will just say that they don't look like they come from a single culture at all, some of them look like different species. >_>

I'm not really sure what's going on with the tender touch between Galadriel and Gandalf, but I can't believe that even Jackson and his writers would be so brazen as to do something that offensive to the lore. If they need romance for this film that badly... that is *not* where it should be forced in. That said, I'm thinking that's just in there to make us wonder if they're going to go there. I don't think they're going to be any sort of relationship between them, beyond empathy with each other as ring-bearers.

I'm really leery of the whole secondary storyline they're including. For one thing, they legally *can't* use the material on the White Council from the Book of Lost Tales as they don't have the film rights to it, and... I'll just leave it that I don't have much faith in their ability to invent the story details that are missing, based off of the additions they made to the LotR trilogy films.

[Ducky]

the Dwarves look for to comedic, and just make me think of snow white.

As far as the sound track and visual aesthetics of the trailer, they seem to have stuck exactly to the formula of the other LotR movies, which is what I wanted.

It has been along time since I read the book, so i don't remember it all to well. I can't really make any comments on the storyline. though i was very confused by the scene with Galdriel.

[Suzerain of Sheol]

That's kind of interesting, I was talking about the dwarves' appearance with my dad, and he speculated that they made them look that they, rather than the way they appear in the book, so that they didn't look like the Seven Dwarves. :p

And, Galadriel is not the book. She is, however, part of the White Council, which is where Gandalf goes when he leaves the Dwarves' party during the Hobbit. They're fleshing out that storyline in the film and focusing quite a bit on it, so... they're going to have to make up a lot of material. All they really have to go on is a few throwaway lines in the Tales of Years in Appendix B of tLotR.

[Ducky]

I think it's the fact that they look stupid and all have very unique appearances. Like of the 7 dwarves with there defining characteristics and appearance.

I don't think i like the idea of them making up a whole new storyline to beef out the films. I'd rather they made the one movie, than two parts with unoriginal content to fill them out.

[Suzerain of Sheol]

Yeah, I really don't think there's any way they could film the Siege of Dol Guldur that would satisfy fans of the book. I mean, a battle between Sauron (who is now physical, despite having no physical body in Jackson's version of the story...) and Gandalf, Saruman, Galadriel, Elrond, Cirdan, Glorfindel, and others... how are they going to display that? We're talking a metaphysical contest here, a battle of divine (and quasi-divine) wills.

I have a feeling the filmed version is going to involve fireballs and explosions. >_<

[Ducky]

It will certainly be interesting to see how they pull it off. i think there will be a lot of upset fans, but there are also huge numbers of people who are only fans of the movies, and wont know anything is wrong.

right now all I want is a longer version of the misty mountains song. It's just awesome. I prefer it over the version in the 70's cartoon.

[Suzerain of Sheol]

Oh, I'm sure the Siege will impress a lot of people who aren't book fan(atic)s. It's just... sullying the image of Tolkien, when people only watch the films, see stuff like that, and correlate it with Tolkien's image of the story when it's anything but. Blah, nothing to be done about it. :p

And I'm pretty nostalgic about that cartoon. Was my first foray into fantasy, and just had a sense of wonder and magic to it when my 6-year-old mind first saw it. :p My favorite rendition is still Summoning's "In Hollow Halls Beneath the Fells".

[Ducky]

with that being said, the movies are still some of the most faithful to their original books I have ever seen. A lot of movies of books totally mess up.

I haven't watched much of the Cartoon, as I'm to young. All i've seen of it are a few random episodes and clips on youtube. youtube is where I found the song.
So it's worth watching, would you say? I need something new to watch right now.

[Suzerain of Sheol]

I'm not really going to get into it (mostly for the fact I could write a lengthy essay on the subject, and that many other people have already done so) but I hold the film trilogy to be very firmly in the territory of "totally messed up" as you put it. But, that's just my opinion, and it's a minority one in my experience. I suspect there's a relationship between people who have read the Silmarillion and the History of Middle-Earth books and people who don't like the films, but I have no evidence for that.

Anyway, I'm not saying the cartoon is great by any means, just that it was something really special to me at the time. It's hard to say objectively whether it's worth watching with a fresh set of eyes, but... I do feel that those animated films capture the essence of Tolkien's stories better than Jackson's action/war movies. Oh, and they use actual dialogue from the books!

(In case it isn't obvious, the whole book/film debate is an interest of mine. ;))

[Ducky]

i don't really have much to say on the topic myself. I've read the trilogy and the Hobbit. I haven't read anything like the Silmarillion or any other Lore for the universe. While the movies aren't to great representations of the books, i still feel like they're more faithful than a lot, if not most, other movies made from books. There's always going to be a loss through converting text to visual format and shortening and entire story like that into a few hours.

[Suzerain of Sheol]

It's not the loss, it's the *additions* they made to the story, their own inventions that annoy me, hence my worry over this new movie. :p

But then, Tolkien himself thought the series was unfilmable.

[Kali_Namir]

I'm looking forward to it like Mad!!! It was my favorite book out of the 'series' and the rest of the movies have basically been fantastic so I'm hopeful that this one turns out just as good...

[Ducky]

my memory of the books it to vague to really pick up on the additions very well. All in all i feel like they were good movies. Admittedly i actually watched the first movie before i read the book. that probably had a lot to do with my opinion.

I'm glad there ar eother as exited as i am xD

[Suzerain of Sheol]

Well, to be completely honest, I first saw the films when they came out in theatres when I was 11 or 12. I *loved* them back then. My father had read the books to me when I was younger, but I didn't really remember much from them..

But, when I reread the books when I was 18 (then again and again over the last couple years) then went back to watch the movies, I just found innumerable things that they changed or added that made the story or it's presentation *worse* than if they had just left the original version alone. (Just for a very quick example: Gimli no longer being a character, but rather a parody of the modern, Dungeons-and-Dragons-inspired stereotype of what a dwarf is, serving only in a role of comic relief and buffoonery)

Granted, it comes down to Jackson having a different vision for the story than Tolkien, not to mention a very different audience.

[Ducky]

Basically a lot of the changes were needed to appeal to a wider modern audience. I doubt the movies would have been anywhere near as popular overall if they had stuck to the books exactly.