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Dec. 17th, 2012 08:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkat1. The problem with the heat in the building is I live with three men...sigh. They keep fiddling.
2. So..My bro took his daughter (age 8) and one her friends (age 8) to the Hobbit, and was very upset and disappointed. He'd just read the book to his daughter and was well expecting something more in line with the animated version or the play version that I appeared in way back in 1981, which was only two hours and a fairly straight-forward adaptation of the book.
Apparently, Peter Jackson found that version sort of boring, and well got ambitious.
He railed about the film to my mother, who as a result now has no interest whatsoever in seeing the film - dang-it. Wish she'd told me on Friday, so I could have seen it this weekend - although, not sure I'd have managed it - no time. Dang brother. His reaction? The film was three hours long with a lot of material that was not even in the book, and the film was scarier and more violent than the book - and if he'd known, he would never have taken his daughter to it. She attempted to reassure him - by reminding him that she had taken us to Exclaibure in 1981, at the ages of 9 and 13 respectively or thereabouts. And that was worse - it had a sex scene. (Actually it was a violent rape scene in the first 15 minutes...Uther raping Igraine, while Merlin murmered in the background.) My parents apparently didn't think a fantasy could be well so...adult at that time? We dealt with it well or better than my parents did at any rate - both squirmed throughout the movie.
Hmmm...it's admittedly been a while (25 yrs) but I remember the Hobbit being fairly violent and not exactly a children's book. More pre-teen (I read it at 12/13 years of age or however old you are in the 6th grade). Granted, I know that Jackson added a bunch of material from Tolkien's appendixes. Things most people haven't read. Mainly because it requires a somewhat industrious and obsessed reader to hunt down and read the appendixes - which aren't in the Hobbit, they are at the end of the Return of the King and the Lord of the Rings books. Plus, very small print. Personally, I'm curious about the appendixes...because I haven't read them, and it would make The Hobbit new and shiny to me - I don't need it to be like the book or play or animated film versions - I'm fairly low maintenance when it comes to film adaptations, apparently. As long as it adds something new to the party, I'm happy. But my brother went into the film not expecting to see anything but what was in the actual book. How he managed that I don't know. Was pretty common knowledge - all the reviewers mentioned the added material and it's been a controversy for about a year now.
Still is a controversy. So far on my flist - only![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
selenak liked it. Everyone else...not so much.
2. So..My bro took his daughter (age 8) and one her friends (age 8) to the Hobbit, and was very upset and disappointed. He'd just read the book to his daughter and was well expecting something more in line with the animated version or the play version that I appeared in way back in 1981, which was only two hours and a fairly straight-forward adaptation of the book.
Apparently, Peter Jackson found that version sort of boring, and well got ambitious.
He railed about the film to my mother, who as a result now has no interest whatsoever in seeing the film - dang-it. Wish she'd told me on Friday, so I could have seen it this weekend - although, not sure I'd have managed it - no time. Dang brother. His reaction? The film was three hours long with a lot of material that was not even in the book, and the film was scarier and more violent than the book - and if he'd known, he would never have taken his daughter to it. She attempted to reassure him - by reminding him that she had taken us to Exclaibure in 1981, at the ages of 9 and 13 respectively or thereabouts. And that was worse - it had a sex scene. (Actually it was a violent rape scene in the first 15 minutes...Uther raping Igraine, while Merlin murmered in the background.) My parents apparently didn't think a fantasy could be well so...adult at that time? We dealt with it well or better than my parents did at any rate - both squirmed throughout the movie.
Hmmm...it's admittedly been a while (25 yrs) but I remember the Hobbit being fairly violent and not exactly a children's book. More pre-teen (I read it at 12/13 years of age or however old you are in the 6th grade). Granted, I know that Jackson added a bunch of material from Tolkien's appendixes. Things most people haven't read. Mainly because it requires a somewhat industrious and obsessed reader to hunt down and read the appendixes - which aren't in the Hobbit, they are at the end of the Return of the King and the Lord of the Rings books. Plus, very small print. Personally, I'm curious about the appendixes...because I haven't read them, and it would make The Hobbit new and shiny to me - I don't need it to be like the book or play or animated film versions - I'm fairly low maintenance when it comes to film adaptations, apparently. As long as it adds something new to the party, I'm happy. But my brother went into the film not expecting to see anything but what was in the actual book. How he managed that I don't know. Was pretty common knowledge - all the reviewers mentioned the added material and it's been a controversy for about a year now.
Still is a controversy. So far on my flist - only
selenak liked it. Everyone else...not so much.![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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Date: 2012-12-18 01:49 am (UTC)If your Mom loves the book, and if she likes Martin Freeman (who is fantastic as Bilbo), and Ian McKellan, then there is no way she would dislike this version. It looks gorgeous. I hope she'll reconsider and go w/you!
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Date: 2012-12-18 03:31 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-12-18 06:16 am (UTC)http://screeninvasion.com/2012/12/book-v-film-the-hobbit-an-unexpected-journey/#.UNAHKRygm_0
but the inclusion of those characters didn't (from my POV) make the battles more violent or scary... at least when I read the book the battles seemed to be pretty much the same. It is just that we have names of villainous orcs, and back stories for them... instead of just having fights with nameless orcs. I guess that might seem scarier? But orcs are always scary, regardless.
In this first film they only hinted at the Giant Spiders... (we saw them from a distance) ... I think they will be more featured in the 2nd film. But even Harry Potter had Giant Spiders!
Anyway, I'm sorry your brother was so put off by it, because I do think that you and your Mum would enjoy it.
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Date: 2012-12-20 02:49 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-12-20 03:36 am (UTC)(it is just something very small and silly that I hope will be funny to you)
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Date: 2012-12-20 11:51 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-12-18 02:39 am (UTC)For what it's worth, Tolkien's own children were 14, 12, 8 and 3 when he finished the first draft of the book. I don't know which of them he read it to - presumably not the 3-year old! - but his own kids were its first audience.
But don't children's books often have lots of violence in them? Especially older ones. It's just that it's supposedly "child-safe" violence, where scary things do happen to the good guys, but then the bad guys get beaten forever and all's right with the world.
no subject
Date: 2012-12-18 03:26 am (UTC)I agree, most children's books are violent. It was particularly hard locating non-violent kids books for my niece...but I did, only to discover my brother was reading her The Wizard of OZ. Here I'd gotten her The Borrowers (which he said was too old) and he's reading her the OZ books? My brother never has made logical sense...he has his own brand of logic. LOL!
For me, the scariest thing about The Hobbit were the huge spiders, which were also in the Lord of the Rings...and in the books.
I know Tolkien added the war bit with Gandalf. In the series, he disappears for a bit, and we're told where he went in appendixes. That might be what he was reacting to.
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Date: 2012-12-18 02:50 am (UTC)My secondary pair of favorite characters are Bilbo and Thorin, and the movie absolutely nailed them, which made my dream of falling in love with Tolkien heroes on screen to finally come true.
I've been mostly spilling my fandom joy on Tolkien boards, I know the opinions are mixed but if you love tragic flawed underdog characters, who are trying to keep their dignity and pride while everyone kicks them down, it might be the movie for you.
It had a lot of silly CGI fights and falls and what not, but the heart of the movie: the dwarves and Bilbo, shined through.
It's not a whimsical children Disney cartoon of course, it never was advertised as such.
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Date: 2012-12-18 04:55 am (UTC)The basic gist is that the Hobbit was initially a little story he told his kids, that was unrelated to the Silmarillion, which he'd been working on at the time. His publishing company told him they'd publish the Silmarillion after he did a sequel to the Hobbit, which his how he started on LotR, and part way through, decided they all occurred in the same universe.
So the LotR appendices wind up including major timelines (among other things, talking about where people were while offscreen), histories, linguistics, calendars and such...
It's kind of the dividing line between people who just like to read the books and people who are obsessives. The Tolkien obsessives love the Appendicies and stuff beyond possibly even more than the actual books, perhaps because of what having all the external backing material says about Tolkien as a storyteller and world-builder.
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Date: 2012-12-18 07:16 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-12-18 07:59 am (UTC)I read basically every scrap of Tolkien there is, appendices and all, and the stuff they added is not from there. It's taking one line like"and there is Radagast the Brown living in the east" and make it into half an hour of really stupid movie.
As for the brutality, yes there is some in the book, but it's never so graphic. Like everything else the movie overdid it. And all the pompous drama. They really butchered it...
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Date: 2012-12-20 02:48 am (UTC)