I keep repeating, "I have to see it for the cast, forget about the storyline . . . "

[dameruth]

Oh, look. Peter Jackson is adding girl!Legolas to The Hobbit.

Lucky for PJ that Martin Freeman will be on the screen pretty much the whole time and providing me with a welcome distraction from whatever will be happening to the original plot.

(Thx to lamiel_writes for the link.)

Comments

[tardis_stowaway]

While I didn't like 100% of the choices PJ made in turning LotR into movies, I thought overall he did an extraordinary job with a difficult adaptation. Non-canon characters are worrisome, true, but I trust him and cowriters Fran and Phillipa. I'm also inclined to give the benefit of the doubt to their decision to write in a female character, because unfortunately The Hobbit is even more of a sausagefest than LotR.

[dameruth]

True on the sausagefest, and I'll admit that Jackson and Co. did do a good LOTR adaptation in some respects (I'm willing to admit that things need to be changed to successfully adapt a book to the screen), but I still can't forgive them some grave lapses of judgment -- mainly the borking of Faramir's character (and, to a lesser extent, Denthor's), and the way they made Elrond a controlling Daddy-Dearest jerk who was trying to hustle his daughter out of Middle-Earth (also, I thought the bit with Aragorn floating down the river so he could hallucinate about that needless plot addition was a big, clunky wrench thrown into the pacing of the second movie).

So, yeah, not sanguine about possible changes to "The Hobbit."

[captain91]

change... the hobbit? *looks confused* WHYYYYYYYY?
anyone want to pay the director a visit with me? *sharpens axe*

...
then i can steal fry on my return trip!

[dameruth]

Yeah, sometimes classics are classics because they're *good as they are*, but somehow that goes right by some people doing adaptations. :P

LOL! Sure you don't want to pick him up on the way over, so you can sic him on them? He's a vicious shedder, and his hair's mostly grown back now. ;)

[tehomet]

OMG.

As a feminist, I'm glad. As a Tolkien fan, I'm nervous. *sigh*

[dameruth]

"As a feminist, I'm glad. As a Tolkien fan, I'm nervous. *sigh*"

That sums up my feelings just about perfectly. As tardis_stowaway puts it, above, the story (like most of Tolkien's work) is a total sausage-fest . . . but like I said to captain91, sometimes classics are classics because they're *good as they are*, and I wish those who want to do revisionist adaptations could realize that . . .

[laireshi]

I keep repeating "I have to see it for the cast, and it's not The Hobbit anyway, just some fan-video or whatever"...

[dameruth]

Yeah, I'm going to try and look at it as AU fanfic (with a whopping great budget) and keep my sanity that way. :)

[angely78]

I.... just..... what?

if they decide to put her in the Rivendell or Mirkwood scenes, fine. I'm ok with that. There were elves in those scenes and presumably some of those elves were women. Hell, we never met Arwen's brothers or her mother and we can assume (or at least I do) that there were more women in that family even if Arwen's mother herself had passed on (possible, even for elves. Come to think of it wasn't Elrond half-elf to begin with? Why does my brain insist on remembering something like that?)

If they, however, decide to dump her in the main plot, as in traveling with the 13 or whatever.... then we have issues.

[dameruth]

Yeah, true -- adding a character in a logical way to the "background" is a possibly-okay way to go about things (especially since they're stretching a relatively simple story into two movies!), but if they go to overboard with putting this gal front and center, I'll be annoyed.