So I saw The Hobbit

[cleolinda]

Due to the computer trouble (see the previous entry) and also my general and regrettable allergy to deadlines, I haven't finished the Breaking Dawn thing yet. However, even if I do finish it this weekend… I'm not sure when it will be appropriate to post it, given the really, really awful events in Connecticut. Charlie's Over-Protective Father

Comments

[lied_ohne_worte]

Hm, just came back from viewing it, and your review helped me understand my own reactions a bit better.

Tentatively, I think I liked this one more than LOTR, mostly though because ROTK in particular just messed too much with characters as they are and continue to be in my head - Faramir and Denethor in particular - and also because of completely unnecessary plot changes. I don't mind the additions in the Hobbit all that much as they so far didn't take out anything essential that I really enjoyed. Also, I really, really didn't like Elijah Wood's Frodo, which meant about half of the movies was slightly irritating. Bilbo is perhaps a shade too petulant (not sure if that's the English word I mean) for my taste, but on the whole I like him far better.

I watched the 3D version, not that I wanted particularly, but it was the only non-dubbed version available in my nearby city of a million inhabitants. It worked fairly well for me, because they also used it on non-action scenes, such as the ones in the beginning at Bag End etc, so it felt a bit less like a gimmick

I do feel compelled to point out that the pine cones are in the book as well - but Beorn's reaction is more or less like your "okay, sure", so you're in excellent company.

Apart from Thorin's hero shot, my favourite scene was probably the White Council. There is just something about it that should ring familiar to anyone who has ever been in a highly frustrating committee meeting; Gandalf's mental conversations with Galadriel are (with a somewhat more exalted subject matter and a lot more precision) more or less what some friends of mine and myself do by eye contact in a certain recurring meeting where everyone else is just incredibly obstructive and annoying.

They had to hit a really narrow line in that scene, by showing that Saruman is arrogant and dismissive of sources of lore he considers inferiour, that Gandalf really is the wiser of the two at that point already, that Galadriel would have preferred Gandalf to head the council, but they had to achieve that without raising red flags about Saruman's intentions that would anyone watching the movies later in chronological order shout at Gandalf in FOTR not to go to Isengard because any fool should see that Saruman is evil. I'm looking forward to how they solve that problem in the coming movies, what with attacking the necromancer etc.

A question to any other movie watchers: Did I see things or was there a rather obviously female-looking dwarf running out of the mountain in the starting scenes? I could swear I saw one that didn't at all look like a male dwarf, and I'm not sure how I feel about the whole thing. Perhaps one can interpret the books as meaning that female dwarves only choose to appear like males when they leave their homes, which this one obviously didn't expect to have to do, but perhaps there are some dwarf-custom scholars here who could educate me?

Finally: I like that we have yet to see the whole dragon. Far more threatening the way they did it, and helps us to be as surprised as poor Mr. Baggins is presumably going to be when he sees him for the first time.

[an_lagat_glas]

Yes, there were (visually obvious) female dwarfs! Also in the marketplace in Dale, I think. What do the books say about them?

[lied_ohne_worte]

Without consulting the books, so I might be misremembering/misinterpreting:

- They are rarely seen by outsiders, being "guarded jealously" or something, which has given rise to the foolish belief that there are none, and dwarves grow out of stone.

- They do in fact exist, but there are significantly fewer than there are men, and not all of them choose to marry. Both female and male dwarves may be more interested in their craft than in the other sex, or they might have wanted to marry someone they couldn't get, so they preferred not to marry at all, meaning that the ratio of dwarves who get married is rather low (I think I recall a third of male dwarves marry, or something), leading to problems making more dwarves.

- When dwarf women do go out, they are in clothing and appearance so similar to the men that outsiders think they are in fact male.