The Hobbit

[cairech]

Saw a movie last night!  It was called "Lord of the Rings: A Phantom Menace."  They dug up a few power players from LOTR, plus a cutie-pie messenger boy who later tries to keep Arwen on the path to the Gray Harbors.  There were some story elements from the Hobbit, but I'm not sure why, since basically it was "The Transformers Go Camping."

HONESTLY

Comments

[madrun]

This made me snort tea through my nose. YOU ARE SO RIGHT.

Alex and I had a spirited conversation about the movie after it was over. Alex has read the book about 10 times and is INTIMATELY familiar with the story of the hobbit. He felt that the movie was a good reflection of the story, it was much more accurate than the LOTR movies, and he really enjoyed it.

I didn't hate it, exactly, I just found it veering between "irritating" and "boring". I DETESTED the Dwarves. They don't look like dwarves, they don't act like dwarves, they are not dwarves.

Alex says I'm "too heavily influenced by earlier pop culture, specifically the Bakshi movie". He called attention to the fact that I kept harrumphing throughout the movie and actually sang "15 birds" under my breath throughout the entire last scene. I conceded the point.

[madrun]

Also, Alex said that if they reflected the actual story of the Hobbit, which basically boils down to "dwarves do something stupid, get captured, are rescued by Bilbo, and then do something stupid again" that no one would go.

[cairech]

There are some factually correct story elements in the movie, but the spirit of the story is completely wrong. Yes, they climbed pine trees to escape wolves. NO, they did NOT climb trees because some huge orc had a vendetta against Thorin. Yes, Gandalf set fire to pine cones that they flung at the wolves. No, they did not escape the fire because the trees dominoed and their tree leaned over a precipice and they just barely got away on the backs of heroic eagles. They hung around the trees for most of the night and almost burned themselves down - short term thinking by the very fire wizard who should have known better - before gratefully slipping away via deux ex machina. And it wasn't avian nobility that granted that device; Gandalf knew he had a big debt to re-pay the eagles for it

[saxondog]

As I have said about the earlier movies. I just wish Jackson had actually read the books and not just the Cliff Notes versions as it seems.