Released today, a trailer for The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies, the final installment in Peter Jackson’s trilogy of films adapting Tolkien’s novel.
Tag Archives: The Hobbit
Jackson Tells Third Hobbit Movie Title
Peter Jackson revealed on Facebook today that the title of the third film of The Hobbit has been changed to The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies, superseding a couple of other titles had been registered and discussed in the media.
Green Dragon’s reaction at The One Ring gave me a laugh. He wrote:
Personally, I’m disappointed that they didn’t go for The Beorn Ultimatum…
Malnutrition in Middle-Earth?
An offbeat study in the Canberra Times concludes that the evil characters in J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit lost their battle against men, elves, and dwarves because they suffered from vitamin deficiency —
Shunning sunlight, surviving on a sketchy or unbalanced diet based on rotten meat or (in Gollum’s case) the occasional blind fish, they lacked vitamin D, a key component for healthy bones and muscle strength.
The idea is proposed by Nicholas Hopkinson, a doctor at Imperial College London, and his son Joseph, in the Christmas edition of the Medical Journal of Australia. They scoured The Hobbit for references to characters’ living conditions, habits and diet.
Next thing you know, these quacks will be telling trolls to boost their vitamin D levels by getting more sunlight.
[Thanks to Janice Gelb for the story.]
Today’s The Day
If you’re not already in line for it you soon will be – the second Hobbit movie opens in American theaters today. That is, unless you’re among the proud and lonely who loathe and scorn Peter Jackson’s adaptations of Tolkien books and will spend the day with your eyes squeezed shut, a finger stuck in each ear and loudly humming “La-La-La!”
Either way, it’s really not true that you need any help making that ticket-purchasing decision. And yet I enthusiastically recommend you read Mark Lisanti’s silly and quite amusing Grantland column “Should You See It? A Curious Consumer’s Decision-Making Guide to The Desolation of Smaug”, with interrogatories like —
Are you a Tolkien purist?
If you’re the type of person who’s upset that Jackson put Legolas into The Hobbit films for fan service — or if you’re the type of person who’s even aware that Legolas isn’t supposed to be in these films — you are probably going to poop your tunic over how they invented the character of Tauriel for storytelling purposes.
Things become significantly more complicated for Tolkien purists who also happen to occupy the quirky subset of Lost fans who did not find the character of Kate totally off-putting, because Tauriel is, of course, played by Magic Island pariah Evangeline Lilly. Good luck to the unfortunate souls trapped in the intersection of that Venn diagram, wherever you are. Life must be interesting for you.
SKIP IT. Though you HAVE TO ADMIT that Evangeline Lilly was born to PLAY AN ELF who ENRAGES NERDS.
On a serious note — if you come home from the movie in the mood to review it for File 770 please send me what you’ve got!
Simpsons Visit Middle-Earth
In a new couch gag The Simpsons romp through Middle-earth. Homer is a dwarf, Lisa, Bart and Maggie are Hobbits and Marge is Gandalf the Grey.
[Thanks to John King Tarpinian for the hint.]
Sins of The Hobbit
How many things were wrong with the first Hobbit movie? Everything Wrong With The Hobbit An Unexpected Journey In 4 Minutes Or Less stops at 45.
[Thanks to David Klaus for the story.]
Forecast: Smaug
The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug teaser trailer went up on YouTube today. Starring all the folks you saw in the first movie, plus Benedict Cumberbatch as The Wrath of Smaug.
Oh, and Evangeline Lilly as a feisty red-headed elf warrior named Tauriel. You didn’t see her in the first movie. Or Tolkien’s book, come to think of it.
Frankel’s New Hobbit Parody
Parodies are the cornerstone of Valerie Estelle Frankel’s career. Now the author who’s sent up Harry Potter, Buffy, and The Hunger Games has twisted The Hobbit into a Gordian knot of mirth, judging by her description on Amazon:
An Unexpected Parody: The Unauthorized Spoof of The Hobbit revisits the film with mayhem, mirth, and magic missiles—or at least, crumpled newspaper missiles. Torn Teepeeshield, the Hot Prince of the Dwarves, puts aside his developing stardom in dwarf cabaret to quest to the LameOldMountain and destroy the dragon Erpolushun, or in the common tongue, Smog. Gonedaft the Grey, formerly known as Gonedaft the Grizzled and Gonedaft of the Rainbow Tie-die that He So Can’t Pull Off, recruits Bumble Baglunch, country gentleman and professional coward, since as an avid comic book fan and all-around geek, Bumble’s too smart to fall prey to obvious fantasy clichés. Together with Bobbin, Noggin, Rover, Clover, Sloppy, Ploppy, Frappe, Hottie, Spottie, Quaff, Sloth, and Ezekiel the dwarves, they journey across Renfair Earth to revive their franchise. Destiny may be a word writers use to pave over plotholes, but Bumble is determined to triumph nonetheless and play as good a game of goblin golf as his ancestors.
It will be quite some book if it sustains this level of humorous invention all the way through
[Thanks to Willard Stone for the story.]
Tolkien Litigation No Place for the Humble
When the Tolkien Estate and HarperCollins’ sued Warner Bros., New Line and Rings/Hobbit rightsholder Saul Zaentz in November, they told the court that The Lord of the Rings is “reported to be the second most-read book in the United States after the Bible.” (Maybe you thought that honor belonged to Redshirts?)
But in Saul Zaentz’ answer to the lawsuit he is quick to correct the mistaken impression that LOTR’s or The Hobbit’s value has anything to do with the books:
Zaentz admits that The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit (and associated and proprietary characters, elements and marks) are among the most famous and valuable marks in the world, and that an excellent reputation and highly valuable goodwill has been developed in The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit (and associated characters, elements and marks) and in the products, goods and services featuring them. Zaentz denies that this is a result of Plaintiffs’ efforts; rather, the fame and goodwill developed in these marks, products, goods, and services is largely the result of the dedicated efforts of Zaentz and its licensees (including Warner Bros.) over the past four decades.
The answer also calls upon the court the affirm that under earlier agreements with the Tolkien Estate Zaentz holds “broad merchandising rights in such services such as hotels, restaurants, travel agencies, ringtones, and online games, casino gambling and online/downloadable video games.”
This includes Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring: Online Slot Game, the most notorious example of the digital exploitation of Tolkien’s brand. (See What Has It Got In Its Jackpotses?) The Estate’s view is that the “defendants have, with increasing boldness, engaged in a continuing and escalating pattern of usurping rights to which they are not entitled.” However, Zaentz’ answer claims they have been doing this without objection for a long time, and that in 1996 the parties confirmed rights to online video games.
Short Subjects
I’ve been to see The Hobbit, though not as a human guinea pig for the 48-frame rate process — the most convenient screening for me was shown in 2D, 24-frame.
As for the movie: I was pleasantly surprised that this rocking, three-hour epic kept me engaged all the way. No dull stretches, like in a previous stfnal marathon, The Postman, where I took a 10-minute walk in the middle of the film.
True, as the reviewers point out, a lot of The Hobbit’s time is lavished showing the “unexpected party.” But beyond the obvious slapstick comedy, the extended sequence endows every dwarf with an individual character and personality. No doubt it’s sacrilege to say I thought most of the dwarves in the book were fungible except for the two extremes, kingly Thorin and corpulent Bombur, while the movie works hard to make them deeply distinctive in every way, not just in costume and hairstyle. (The riot will begin in five, four….)
The last half of the movie is largely a series of calamities orchestrated in CGI. There was more of that than I needed, partly because I felt I’d seen some of this action before and didn’t like it the first time, watching hordes of goblins chase our heroes through underground passages and over rickety scaffolding within the mountain in a mashup of the mine chase from Temple of Doom and the descent of the unbalanced stairs and landings in National Treasure. But I don’t say they should have done something different – the record box office speaks for itself – much as I found other parts of the movie more to my taste.
Credit where it is due the technology, though, which is crucial to the movie’s dramatic meeting between Bilbo and Gollum, certainly one of the highlights.
With further thought I might also be able to put into words my appreciation for the parallels between the Lord of the Rings trilogy and this first of the three Hobbit pictures. Consider, for example, what does it mean to be a king in Middle-Earth? Contrast Thorin Oakenshield’s obvious nobility and clarity about his role, a character Aragorn kept under wraps for two-and-a-half movies.
Anyway, The Hobbit is a fair trade for the time and bucks required to see it.