the second two hobbit films are an absolute travesty. like worse than the star wars prequels. that last one was almost unwatchable. peter jackson has something wrong with his head

Agreed. I wish Guillermo del Toro had directed those films as it was originally planned.

Also, it really didn't have to be a whole other trilogy.

I was in favor of them doing 2 movies, which was the original plan under del Toro I believe. I thought 2 films would have been a good amount of room for them to tell the whole story in full plus contextualize it all with a bit of info from the LOTR appendices (Unfinished Tales also has a whole segment on the "Quest of Erebor" which was written for LOTR but taken out of the final draft altogether).

The first movie wasn't even that bad, especially the beginning was done pretty well IMO. I have no idea what the fuck happened next but it was bad. the shit with orlando bloom and kate from lost is unforgivable

Jackson is a just another dude, who like George Lucas, has an incredible amount of vision but very poor taste. The best movie was Fellowship where he was working in a constrained way with people looking over his shoulder and on actual budget. Things seemed organic and lived-in and real. The bigger the budget and the bigger the expectations, the worse the result.

Peter Jackson can choke on the flaming phallic shafts of winged and non-winged balrogs.

i hate to even think about those abominations the hobit films. they were utterly untrue to the spirit. of the book. its not some grand epic tale its a children's story jrr told his sons. total fucking sellout. and yes they added shit from the lotr appendixes loosely based of course.

what really pisses me off is that I really like the actors for bilbo and mithrandir. waste.

I think studio Ghibli should do the Hobbit but that's just a dream. :)

Really? I think the same dude did a bit of lotr too. i never checked them out for some reason.

I don't think they cast Bilbo correctly. He was a lot less true to the character than he seemed as played by Ian Holm. Even Ian Mckellan as Gandalf fell kind of flat in the midst of how bad the Hobbit movies were though. And seeing Chris Lee in that celluloid abomination just hurt my heart. Kind of surprised he even wanted to do it when they made it so Hollywood.

Legit though, the first 20 minutes or so of the first Hobbit movie were really good. I never dreamed that they would attempt the singing and plate throwing, let alone make it look both good and feel like the scene from the book. I thought they captured it really masterfully. But then here comes Dr. Who riding on a bunny sleigh and tripping on mushrooms. smdh

I think the Hobbit and ROTK cartoons were done by the same people, but the first LOTR cartoon was done by someone different who declined to do the sequel.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hobbit_(1977_film)

I never seen any of these cartoons... guess I have my weekend planned out.

I think you may find yourself looking for things that aren't there in LOTR. Themes, symbols, meanings, insights, historical value... but that's just Gormadoc "Deepdelver" Brandybuck's humble opinion.

Weren't you just defending LOTR's merit to be critically analyzed with more "serious" literature? IMO there are a lot of interesting things to be analyzed even through the framework of what are popular critical lenses today. Themes of stewardship of the Earth and environmental destruction, especially as linked to the debasement and alienation of our own existence as living beings connected to our world. Tolkien's social liberalism and coexistence morality as both a vehemently anti-fascist call to arms contemporarily, and a starkly outdated and structurally racist model obsessed with racialism and ethnic character by today's standards. Or his truly weird concept of feminism/female empowerment (women are absent from his story altogether except in the rare example when they aren't, and they are basically deified. is worship a form of objectification? Is it feminist or anti-feminist to have a female protagonist subversively pick up a sword and go to war with the men?) Tolkien's universe as an essentially modernist reaction to WWI and industrialization (is it really so different than other literature of the time, perhaps just maligned and dismissed because it is fantasy?)

I dunno if it deserves to be taught in a 20th century lit class or something, but it's not just a two-dimensional adventure story either.

That's all very face value, which is sort of why it's considered pop lit. The question is does the material have the depth for critical analysis. I can't really answer that, and that's a debate in itself. But I don't think it challenges the greatest works of the English language in that regard.

What does it tell us about how Churchill handled the war? How did the Blitz affect Tolkein's narrative structure?

The writing itself is a little pedestrian, too, if I remember correctly.

It's nice to read something like Heart of Darkness or Blood Meridian, finding yourself occasionally taken aback by the genius craftsmanship in some paragraph or sentence.

I agree with you basically, but I'm not sure what you mean by "face value," and "does the material have the depth for critical analysis?" I mean LOTR doesn't have the psychoanalytic aspect that characterizes most of the definitive works of the 20th century, but there are many layers and many lenses to criticize something through. A failure to think of critical things to say about it would be more indicative of a failure of the critic than a failure of the text. Virtually any text can be critically analyzed given the multitude of angles literary criticism is capable of. What I was saying is that I don't think academics think it is worth the time to analyze, not that it can't be.

yeah it wavers between really prosaic ("he went there, they said this, and alas! they all felt this") and extremely overwrought in its pretension to be a medieval fairy story or epic nordic poem. There are some really beautiful lines and sentiments in there though.

Its good writing. Is it on the same level as Conrad or McCarthy?

Bitch, plz.

Gormadoc "Deepdelver" Brandybuck does not know how to argue with this statement because it relies on knowing what "would have" happened which is impossible to know.

Far out dude

Another vote for the hobbit cartoon, don't forget 2 blaze tress every tiem they do it in the movie, or you may not understand the characters or themes properly

"The greatest adventure ... is what lies ahead ... "