King Ondeher wrote:
It seems to me that PJ and co. made some huge last minute changes without thinking them through, and ended up with an awful mess of a film.
I have heard many grumblings like this online, and would like to make a few points perhaps to explain:
- The Lord of the Rings Trilogy was 3 Books, 3 cohesive plots, with 3 separate starting and ending points for each. New Line Cinema decided at the corporate level that they wanted to replicate the financial success of LOTR, so they made the decision ultimately to go with 3 Hobbit movies. This is the ultimate constraint that Peter Jackson, Del Toro, and Co. had to work with.
- The Hobbit is one book, and does not come with 3 separate acts to make a convenient 3-part story.
- Any good director breaks down the "Story-telling 101" basics when tackling a project like this. A big problem with the 3-part Hobbit trilogy is that there is no way to look at the first third of the book and include a plot-relevant, provoking antagonist, or what is often referred to as "the heel". The Goblin King has no long-term motivations or impact on the story, he shows up in a chance encounter. You also don't want to show too much of Smaug to lose suspense over the 2nd movie when he first appears. So PJ, given the confines of his situation (being asked to do 3 movies), decided to take a few creatives liberties with Tolkien lore to create one - Azog - and give him a meaningful, direct, connection with one of the leading protagonists. I would not be surprised if Azog replaces Bolg entirely.
- Without a good "heel", curb appeal for a movie would go down the drain amongst 90% of moviegoers, ticket sales and reviews would suffer, and the whole series would begin on poor expectations among the vast majority of audiences - who are not very passionate Tolkien fans like yourself and care nothing for indelible accuracy in the film rendition of the book.
- Similarly, Games Workshop was likely kept completely in the dark on this plot change by the fim team. This would be to prevent leaks of the changes to get out and for hard-core enthusiasts like yourself to bash the film on the internet prior to release without giving it a chance. This would also hurt the movie before it began. Film teams are (contrary to what you might believe), very conscious of core fans of a genre, and go to great lengths to appease this core group while also creating something that is appealing to the majority.
- Without appealling to the majority, you and I don't get to enjoy films like The Hobbit or the LORT trilogy on film with the large, $200M budgets. We instead get animated films and Russian slapstick efforts. We as fans should have the patience to grant a few creative liberties to the director in order to take our beloved books mainstream.
- As far as not including Thrain, etc.. I suspect it had something to do with not having enough time on screen and again, not confusing the average movie-goer. You and I know Thrain's history, but the 3 hour movie didn't even have enough time to properly introduce all the 13 Dwarves, let alone historical figures with no direct impact on the plot.
While you of course can argue with any decision PJ and Co. made, when I evaluate probable rationales I see a lot of logic and careful decision making on their part, and that should be appreciated. I think for having to make a full-blown feature film out of the first third of a novel (which is very difficult since move novels, like The Hobbit, build up to 1 or 2 climaxes which are always in the last half of the story) PJ did a very good job. I feel fortunate we are able to watch these films in the first place and have such a talented director and actors/actresses to put our favorite stories on screen in the epic fasion they deserve.
{ PORTAL }
Print view
Top
"Leave Sauron to me."
