2 films

Over at AICN, an article written while filming said that the dwarves do ride ponies. They film on normal horses because they are supposed to be smaller and would look as a regular adult looks on a horse. If they used ponies, they'd be gigantic compared to the pony.

I imagine they use horses for the main actors, then ponies for their little people stand-ins.

Absolutely. I think it's a given. Keeping it in the same universe was a great way to go. Changing it up this quick would have been akward. Kind of like when I watched the animated movie a few years ago, after being such a fanboy about the new trilogy. Those animated movies just ain't right.

Sorry, fixed.

Yep, two 3-hour films from a book that you could probably read in less than 6 hours. But at least there shouldn't be any complaining about stuff being left out. Let's just hope we don't get half a dozen "endings" this time.

LOL I was just funnin' ya

Thanks!!! I've enjoyed these films. However, I haven't watched them since the very first DVD release. They're just too long for my tastes to be able to sit down and watch them on occasion. Very good movies nonetheless.

I find it ironic that the lightest book of the four (in tone and scale; don't know about page length) is going with the two-movie trend. Kind of boggles the mind how long the trilogy could have been. I know stuff was left out, but I liked the scope and pacing of those and would have had a tough time with any more length.

EDIT: I'm talking about the EEs, of course.

There's actually only two books: The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings.

I'm with ya there, and there's only one movie in three parts.

So The Hobbit is one book and two movies, and LOTR is one book and one movie.

Technically, but LORD OF THE RINGS was originally released in three seperate volumes (primarily for publishing costs).

I know, hence my fix.

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Well, it doesn't help that the animated films really aren't that good...

I have to agree that they aren't that great. I once thought they were, but that was more or less because they were all that existed if you wanted to see a visual presentation of a Tolkien story. The Hobbit was pretty faithful overall , but they changed ROTK to where it was unrecognizable. The animators chose to make Gollum some amphibian creature with no explanation for his appearance, and the dwarves looked like silly old men more than anything else.

Sorry but I didn't buy Aragorn being an Indian either.

I seem to recall the Bakshi cartoon portrays Elrond as a dude that walks around with a cape draped over his pajamas.

The Bakshi cartoon was quite a travesty in retrospect. It started out quite faithful, but then fell apart due to rotoscope overkill. I would have been interested to see how Bakshi would have finished the story. The Rankin-Bass version of ROTK, which was allegedly made to pick up where Bakshi's left, scrapped everything and omitted a lot of the characters.

I've never even seen it but in the trivia section of imdb or maybe it was the faq...in any event, the studio made them change Saruman to Aruman because Saruman and Sauron were too similar. That decision was later reversed, but there are still a couple references to Aruman in the movie.

This is in reference to Ralph Bakshi's 1978 animated LOTR. Wikipedia has info on this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saruman#Adaptations

Wow. Christopher Lee is going to be 90 years old next May. I hope he survives long enough to finish his scenes for the Hobbit.

I'm pretty sure they've already filmed the majority of Christopher Lee's scenes, barring any pickups, this past summer. There was a rumor of Peter Jackson shooting Ian Holm's and Christopher Lee's scenes in London this past summer, which was confirmed with the 3rd video blog back in July (at least for Lee):

http://www.bleedingcool.com/forums/f...bit-today.html

http://www.reelz.com/movie-news/1117...peter-jackson/

I thought he was ten years younger, what a full life! Hopefully he sees the finished film(s). Gotta be nice to know you'll live on in such a significant series.

Yeah it would be a shame if he didn't get a chance to see the final product. Apparently he's a huge Tolkien fan. He's the only cast member that actually met Tolkien and he reads The Lord of the Rings every year. Supposedly his lifelong dream was to play Gandalf but by the time the movie came along he was too old.