DVD Talk Forum - The Hobbit

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More like ripping off Harry Potter. Didn't the little guy faint or get knocked out or something? Jackson and that Token fella are so unorginal. Why doesn't Token think up something original? Maybe like a new language or something? It can't be that hard.

Quote:

Originally Posted by whoopdido (Post 11310799)

lol

I've never read the book, just seen the cartoon. It seemed like Bilbo just lied about being knocked out so they wouldn't call him chicken. He was on the rock watching the battle & said he didn't want anything to do with it & put on the ring. Next it shows him taking it off after the battle & going up to a dying dwarf. I think he just ran off and waited until it was safe. Probably a smart thing to do considering his size and lack of fighting skills.

Spoiler:

Is Jackson starting to put a bit of the weight back on? I sure hope so. Never trust an ex-hobbit.

Man, I'm just hoping they keep all of Guillermo del Toro's stuff from the script in the finished film.

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Originally Posted by Why So Blu? (Post 11320305)

Man, I'm just hoping they keep all of Guillermo del Toro's stuff from the script in the finished film.

no, just no.

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Originally Posted by covenant (Post 11320310)

no, just no.

Uh, why not? Considering he almost directed and invested all that time, it's only fitting.

Is there a summary of del Toro's contributions to the script out there somewhere?

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Originally Posted by Why So Blu? (Post 11320312)

Uh, why not? Considering he almost directed and invested all that time, it's only fitting.

Quote:

"In his journal, I spied many creatures with no precedent in Tolkien, such as an armor-plated troll that curls into a ball of metal plates. Del Toro said that it would be boring to make a slavish adaptation."

"Even the major characters of “The Hobbit” bore del Toro’s watermark. In one sketch, the dwarf Thorin, depicted in battle, wore a surreal helmet that appeared to be sprouting antlers. “They’re thorns—his name is Thorin, after all,” he said. The flourish reminded me of a similar arboreal creature in “Hellboy II,” which was slightly worrying"

"He admitted that there had been discomfort over his design of Smaug. “I know this was not something that was popular,” he said."

Yeah, fuck that.

Del Toro is not doing the Hobbit. Jackson is. Therefore, it should be 100% Jackson's movie. Del Toro's ideas have no business being in the final version.

Del Toro did contribute to the screenplay as well. So his part may still be kept. I doubt they would have a need to change that.

Quote:

Originally Posted by whoopdido (Post 11320337)

Del Toro is not doing the Hobbit. Jackson is. Therefore, it should be 100% Jackson's movie. Del Toro's ideas have no business being in the final version.

His name is on on the screenplay, so yes, he does.

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Originally Posted by Why So Blu? (Post 11320475)

His name is on on the screenplay, so yes, he does.

Then take his name off. It was Jackson's vision from the start. Hopefully Del Toro's stuff doesn't muddle up the final product.

Take Tolkien's name off this fucker too! This is Jackson's movie, damn it!! :grumble:

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Originally Posted by whoopdido (Post 11320509)

Then take his name off.

Whether Del Toro's credited with the screenplay has more to do with the amount of work he put into it than whether or not any of his work is in the finished product, per Writers Guild rules. Jackson could've rewritten the screenplays from scratch when he took over directing, but Del Toro would still likely get a credit.

Well considering he had a hand on the script. I don't know wtf his contribution could exactly be considering it's an adaptation. His hand was in the production but...no matter wtf whoopdido fears..it's going to be a Jackson film all the way. It's his direction. I'm not sure we'll see any specific GDT influence that'll stick out. The man has a style yes...but it's his visual that is much more visible than his writing.

I would imagine if anything del Toro contributed made it into the final film, it's because Jackson wanted it to. He literally can do just about whatever the hell he wants to it, and if he felt something Guillermo brought to the table was worthy, I don't see why he'd cut it simply because it wasn't his idea.

Of course, there's tons of precendence for that sort of thing...

I love Del Toro's work, but his vision of The Hobbit wouldn't have worked after what I read. I am guessing he has about as much to do with this movie as Oliver Stone did with 1996's Evita. He wrote a version of the script and was at one point attached to direct. So, they have to acknowledge his involvement in some way, despite most of his material going by the wayside.

I didn't know about Stone on Evita but GDT did a lot more than just write and about to direct. He was heavy in pre production. It's not even that he's not directing this that bothers it's that he lost some years on this project. Granted he's doing Pacific Rim (after the failure of Mountains of Madness) but...it's sad to see a great director gone for a bit and not produce something cuz they're deep in one project.

DID SOMEONE SAY TRILOGY?

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Originally Posted by Deadline

Peter Jackson first mentioned at Comic-Con two weeks ago that he was toying with what to do with all the extra footage he has shot for a two film adaptation of The Hobbit. Now, reports are hot and heavy that he’s actually going to turn his two films into a trilogy. When I spoke with Peter Jackson about The Hobbit in San Diego, he was very excited about the 125 pages of notes in an appendices that JRR Tolkien wrote and included in the final The Lord of the Rings novel Return of the King. I’m told now that the possibility is perhaps better than it was then that this might happen, but that it is by no means a certainty. There are internal discussions, and I have to say, they make me wince. There wasn’t a wasted second in LOTR, with the films building to a satisfying, nearly $1.2 billion worldwide gross and Oscar-winning conclusion. I read The Hobbit numerous times and I don’t think that Bilbo Baggins has three films in him.

Jackson told me that the notes written by Tolkien presaged his intention to update The Hobbit and give it more of the weight of Lord Of The Rings. Here’s what he said:

“That goes back to JRR Tolkien writing The Hobbit first, for children, and only after did he develop his mythology much more over the 16 or 17 years later when The Lord of the Rings came out, which is way more epic and mythic and serious. What people have to realize is we’ve adapted The Hobbit, plus taken this additional 125 pages of notes, that’s what you’d call them. Because Tolkien himself was planning the rewrite The Hobbit after The Lord of the Rings, to make it speak to the story of The Lord of the Rings much more. In the novel, Gandalf disappears for various patches of time. In 1936, when Tolkien was writing that book, he didn’t have a clue what Gandalf was doing. But later on, when he did The Lord of the Rings and he’d hit on this whole epic story, he was going to go back and revise The Hobbit and he wrote all these notes about how Gandalf disappears and was really investigating the possible return of Sauron, the villain from The Lord of the Rings. Sauron doesn’t appear at all in The Hobbit. Tolkien was retrospectively fitting The Hobbit to embrace that mythology. He never wrote that book, but there are 125 pages of notes published at the back of Return of the King in one of the later editions. It was called The Appendices, and they are essentially his expanded Hobbit notes. So we had the rights to those as well and were allowed to use them.” Said Jackson: “We haven’t just adapted The Hobbit; we’ve adapted that book plus great chunks of his appendices and woven it all together. The movie explains where Gandalf goes; the book never does. We’ve explained it using Tolkien’s own notes. That helped inform the tone of the movie, because it allowed us to pull in material he wrote in The Lord of the Rings era and incorporate it with The Hobbit.”

The prospect of The Hobbit being turned into a trilogy would be welcome to New Line and financier Warner Bros and MGM. The actors would get an extra payday, and have a lot of leverage. And after Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn split into two films and The Hunger Games announced its intention to do the same and tell a three-book tale in four films, it seems logical. But the fact is, Jackson has already turned a single book into two films here; can he squeeze out a third without boring his fans?

I don’t think anybody would say that the last Twilight Saga benefited creatively by splitting one absorbing tale into two films. Watching Bella give birth to her vampire child was excruciating, it went on and on and on. Werewolves fought vampires, none of them got hurt. Bella grew emaciated, turned skeletor skinny, then died and came back to life. Edward and Jacob stood around, brooding. All of this happened halfway through the last book by Stephenie Meyer, and readers got to see a cool ending with those creepy vampire characters played by Michael Sheen and Dakota Fanning. That doesn’t come until the finale. But the movie grossed over $700 million worldwide!

I’d like to think that Jackson would be immune to a blatant cash grab. But let’s face it: in Hollywood, at the end of the day, it’s always about squeezing out the most money possible, knowing fans will endure whatever slop gets served to them if they are addicted to the earlier films. You can see evidence of that in the last three Star Wars movies, which are now being served up again in glorious 3D. Let’s hope Jackson doesn’t spoil the return to Middle Earth. Lord of the Rings was a groundbreaking trilogy because it was fueled by three fully realized books by Tolkien. Jackson has already cut one book and a set of Tolkien notes into a double feature. As a fan of LOTR, I’m concerned.

Source.

CHOO-CHOO! ALL ABOARD THE CASH TRAIN TO MIDDLE EARTH!

Not sure why the SW trilogy applies, the prequels were always planned that way. If PJ was given another truckload of cash to shoot more scenes, I wouldn't complain (didn't everyone just go there separate ways?) but I'd be concerned The Hobbit story would get lost in all of it. If he can find logical themes for three films and cut them in a way that supports that than fine...but for the last three yrs they were developed as two films. So, huge risk.... I'd prefer he just stick to extended versions for the two films.

Yes to seeing Beren and Luthien. Hell, is the Hobbiton set still standing? Someone convince the studio to scrounge a couple million together for Jackson to film the Scouring. He's earned it, just let him shoot whatever the fuck he wants at this point.

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Originally Posted by WeylandYutani (Post 11321290)

I believe that Jackson is limited to using material from The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings books because those are the only works J.R.R. Tolkien sold the rights to.

His heir, Christopher Tolkien, is very much opposed to having any of his father's works adapted into films, so Jackson can't use any material from any of Tolkien's other Middle Earth works like The Silmarillion, Unfinished Tales, or Beren and Luthien unless it has been referenced in The Hobbit, LOTR, or its Appendices. I'm not sure how much stuff they could legally make up wholesale, like the "The Adventures of Teenaged Aragorn."