Thursday, April 4, 2013

What's Up With The Hobbit?

It is practically impossible to take a novel and make it into a movie that its readers like, but Peter Jackson managed to do it in Lord of the Ring. His daring epic series consisted of three three-hour movies, but that was fine.  After all, three movies to cover three books wasn't at all unreasonable or unexpected. LOR fans would have been disappointed with anything less.

However, more is not always better; and this is painfully true in the case of Jackson's newest production.  The Hobbit, stretched to another trilogy through the addition of material from other Tolkien manuscripts, is not the hit with fans that the LOR movies were. With part one, An Unexpected Journey, now out on DVD and part two, The Desolation of Smaug, hitting theaters in December; much of the hype surrounding the LOR movies is missing.

Now, there is no question that The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey delivers on action and special effects.  It is a good movie in and of itself. However, fans of Tolkien's book (published in 1937) will hardly recognize the book and the movie as being one and the same.  While Jackson largely remained faithful to the original in his LOR series, he takes sweeping liberties with The Hobbit.

Unfortunately, the fate of The Hobbit trilogy seems to be the sad but common tale of the desire to make a buck outweighing the desire to make a great movie. There is no question that Warner Brothers will make money from the trilogy.  Already, the first installment has grossed more than a billion dollars. With two more to go, these movies will keep Warner Brothers in the black for some time.

But while the studio prospers, it is the hard core Tolkien fans that suffer. We may never get to see a movie made that is closely based on the original book.  In the meantime, I'll still go and see the remaining two movies.  But I won't buy the DVDs.

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