[AthenaDX]

I loved it alot. The music was by far my favorite part though, the dwarves singing made me want to include it in one of my D&D nights fo shure.

However, I hadn't ever read the book, my boyfriend who went with me had. He was rather peeved that they added so much stuff to it that he thought was un-needed and was just being done to squeeze more money out of it. I kinda liked the stuff that helped explain the dealings before LotR.

Can't wait to see the last couple movies. Gonna download the extended scenes LOTR and watch that for now.

[dorknexus]

AthenaDX, on 17 December 2012 - 11:44 AM, said:

However, I hadn't ever read the book, my boyfriend who went with me had. He was rather peeved that they added so much stuff to it that he thought was un-needed and was just being done to squeeze more money out of it.

Hobbit Hipster?

[jon.kiparsky]

No, literate.

[lordofduct]

I never understood the quibbles between book and movie.

And that goes either direction... one being better or worse than the other.

They're completely different mediums with very different narrative styles.

There is things you can do in a book that a movie just can't do, and not because we don't have the special effects for it... but just because it doesn't translate at all. Imagine a book that is completely internal narrative... how would you do that as a film? You can't... unless you just had like a black screen with random nonsense relevant to the current topic flashing across the scene or some oddness... just not as effective. And it'd be LONG.

Vice versa a book just can't pull off things film can. You can't have a chase seen or heart thumping action scene like that in a film. You can have fast paced parts of books... but a film can just pack a chapter's worth of visual info into a single frame of video. Books can't do that.

To complain about one or the other is to complain about a picture being better or worse than a song of the same subject matter. One isn't supposed to immitate the other, they're supposed to be distinct in their own, but related on theme.

"This movie is aweseome!"
"The book was better..."

"This painting is gorgeous!"
"The photo looks more realistic..."

A book and a movie will be different. They'll be VASTLY different. And that can be a very good thing! So get dafuq over it (not directed at anyone here as no one personally made the statement, but only referenced it).

This post has been edited by lordofduct: 17 December 2012 - 03:07 PM

[jon.kiparsky]

To me, it's like making a ballet of the Burghers of Calais. If you think it needs to be done, you missed the point.

Making a book of a movie would be equally idiotic - if you were to try to turn Casablanca into a novel, you'd be just as much of a fool as if you tried to turn the Hobbit into a movie.

[supersloth]

i don't have a problem with them making the hobbit into a movie, but i do have a problem with them modifying and adding shit to a 200 page children's story to turn out 9 hours worth of movie. 6 would have been MORE than plenty.

[adolf625]

I loved it, liked it a lot more than LotR, but I do believe they are just milking it like has been said before, the book is not long enough for a trilogy, but its like everything else, they bleed it for every dime they can get.

[lordofduct]

Why can't they turn a book into a movie or vice versa?

They're two different mediums again. Maybe you want to show a re-interpretation of the overall themes through a different medium.

This doesn't guarantee quality in any way... you can get shit out of it even if the source material is good.

But really? The Hobbit not turned into a film? So many of its themes lend superbly to the screen. Just not it's entirety.

[KYA]

I did not care for the 48 fps. I saw it in 3D + HFR. Blech. Movement looked way too fast, a lot of the film looked like a soap opera.

[jon.kiparsky]

lordofduct, on 17 December 2012 - 05:40 PM, said:

They're two different mediums again. Maybe you want to show a re-interpretation of the overall themes through a different medium.

I suppose a genius can interpret a work of genius and get another work of genius out of it - Huston's adaptation of the Maltese Falcon would be an example of this case, or Kurosawa's Ran. However, generally it's simply a sign of a weak mind without imagination. Having seen Peter Jackson's work, it's safe to say he's not an exception to that rule.

[lordofduct]

lol

Implying 'The Hobbit' is a work of genius.

'The Hobbit' and 'Lord of the Rings' trilogy isn't a wholly original idea either.

Art is imitation, always has been, always will be. There is no original art.

[jon.kiparsky]

lordofduct, on 17 December 2012 - 10:39 PM, said:

Implying 'The Hobbit' is a work of genius.

Maybe it isn't, sure. What's important here is the derivative work: why would you go to the trouble of creating a movie from one of the best-known novels in the English language if you weren't going to at least try to do something with it? That "something" might as well be genius: you could at least try. Better a noble failure than a simple void.

The reason I say "read the book" is not necessarily because the original is a work of genius, but because Tolkien got it right. There's nothing missing from the book. Jackson's literalisms add nothing for a reader with imagination, because you were already there when you read the book.

And also, because you can make better popcorn at home (chipotle, smoked salt, freshly roasted cumin, and a bit of sugar...) which goes with a book just as well as it does with a movie.


And now, let's follow you off into tangentville.

Quote

'The Hobbit' and 'Lord of the Rings' trilogy isn't a wholly original idea either.

Of course it isn't. Who would ever claim that it was? Certainly not Tolkien: he was a philologist compiling ideas from many sources to provide a mythology for languages he'd composed, stealing ideas from many sources. The Kalevala, Beowulf, and the Arthurian myths are three of the most obvious, but you're going to find echoes in French lore (I think there's an episode in which a horn is sounded which is lifted directly from a legend of Charlemagne) and who knows where else. Do you think those are there by accident?

Quote

Art is imitation, always has been, always will be. There is no original art.

Thhis commonplace utterance reflects a deep misconception about the relation of genius and originality, and that misconception is, that there is one. Where this idea would come from is a mystery to me, but if you think about what constitutes genius, originality is neither necessary nor sufficient. There's plenty of original work which is not genius, and there is plenty of genius work which is not original.
Imagination, which is quite a different thing, seems to be a requirement, but originality? For an example, take one of my favorite pieces of sculpture, Rodin's Burghers of Calais. There's nothing original about the idea: he began with the theme, which was proposed by the people of Calais themselves, and he competed against other sculptors for the commission.
However, there was a tremendous amount of imagination required to create the work, which is clearly a piece of genius.

So to say that Tolkien was not original does not imply that his work did not come up to the level of genius (we can have another argument about whether it did or it didn't), nor does it forgive Jackson for the absolute desolation of imagination that I witnessed sitting through the interminable first effusion in his series. Rote transcription studdded with lumps of undigested filmic cliche, stuck lifelessly into a travelogue setting. Basically, I felt like I was sitting through the English Patient again, with less desert and more forest. That is, to say that "Tolkien is not original" or "there is nothing original" doesn't seem to relate to the question of whether there is any point at all in re-making a piece of work in another form, and not being a genius about it, or at least having something that you're trying for that could be genius.

[lordofduct]

I was referencing imitation and originality because your criticism was that a film based on a book is not original.

Sorry I don't slam around obscure references like you do Mr. Kurosawa... I'm not all edumacated on the arts like you obviously are.

See this elitism of yours. This is what I was talking about in the first place. So thank you for being my example.

This post has been edited by lordofduct: 17 December 2012 - 10:01 PM

[jon.kiparsky]

I said "pointless" and "lacking imagination", not "unoriginal".

Edit: although, now that you mention it, I saw very little in Jackson's film style that could be called "original" - but the same is true for someone like Hal Hartley, who certainly has a lot of imagination and a lot of point.

This post has been edited by jon.kiparsky: 17 December 2012 - 10:04 PM

[jon.kiparsky]

lordofduct, on 17 December 2012 - 11:58 PM, said:

I was referencing imitation and originality because your criticism was that a film based on a book is not original.

Sorry I don't slam around obscure references like you do Mr. Kurosawa... I'm not all edumacated on the arts like you obviously are.

See this elitism of yours. This is what I was talking about in the first place. So thank you for being my example.

WTF? I like good movies and I like good books, and I like to talk about them. If you haven't seen Kurosawa, why don't you? There's nothing stopping you, and his movies are absolutely great, you'll love them. Try to see them on the big screen, though, if you can. The cinematography is awesome.