Hall of Fire Reviews - Post Them Here! [SPOILERS!]

[Stranger Wings]

Since I'm fresh from seeing it again, I can confirm that she doesn't vanish, although PJ is cheekily trying to make us think that at first. When the camera pulls back from the close up of Gandalf and Galadriel's hand clasp, if you look at Gandalf's face you can clearly see him following her movement away off screen with his eyes. Very cleverly done....

Exactly. A welcome bit of subtly from Captain Obvious.

So subtle that a lot of people didn't catch it, including those who saw the early 48fps screening and reported a materializing/dematerializing Galadriel. Of course, it's possible that this is exactly what she was at one point, and the crew came to their senses later.

On a similar topic, pretty impressive that Saruman can call an ad-hoc meeting like that and Gandalf just happens to show up at the right place and time by sheer coincidence; and that he just happened to acquire pertinent information only moments before. What was the meeting supposed to be about if they didn't know about Radagast's discovery yet anyway? Galadriel and Saruman came a long ways.

In the filmiverse, Elrond makes it clear that the meeting was called to discuss Gandalf's unauthorized "quest." And since Gandalf happens to arrive at the same time of the meeting, it is turned into an interrogation.

A strange bit of story-telling, if you ask me...

[Alatar]

On a similar topic, pretty impressive that Saruman can call an ad-hoc meeting like that and Gandalf just happens to show up at the right place and time by sheer coincidence; and that he just happened to acquire pertinent information only moments before. What was the meeting supposed to be about if they didn't know about Radagast's discovery yet anyway? Galadriel and Saruman came a long ways.

Its pretty clear that Saruman called the White Council meeting to take Gandalf to task over a helping a bunch of dwarves wake up a sleeping dragon. Immediately before Saruman appears Elrond states something to Gandalf about Thorin's quest like "Its not me you're answerable to.." and then they turn to see Saruman. Also, at the end of the meeting its clear from Gandalf and Galadriels telepathy session that he has been playing for time to let the Dwarves continue their journey before Saruman can interfere.

[halplm]

Secondly, The Hobbit also is rooted, although on the outskirts, in Tolkien's already existing own mythology. No other author can match that.

But we only know that by reference to his other works; the only way they make The Hobbit better on its own, for someone who has never read anything else by Tolkien, is that the unexplained names and details add a sense of depth and history to the world, and many authors achieve that.

In sum: I find The Hobbit exceptional, but not singular.

I would beg to differ. The ties to the further history of Middle Earth not only provide "unexplained names" and such, but also provide motivation for and details about the characters. Other authors have tried to do this, but in almost all cases, the depth feels hollow, and the motivations and cultures of those involved are more obviously explained.

Tolkien had a respect for his readers that most authors do not, that allowed him to tell his story in his world, with it's history. IMHO, no other author has managed this anywhere close.

[Dave_LF]

In the filmiverse, Elrond makes it clear that the meeting was called to discuss Gandalf's unauthorized "quest." And since Gandalf happens to arrive at the same time of the meeting, it is turned into an interrogation.

So why didn't he summon Gandalf? Are we to assume he wanted to take him by surprise, and would have just nabbed him as he walked by Rivendell if he hadn't decided to stop there anyway? And that Galadriel (at a minimum) knew this and chose to go along with it?

Also, at the end of the meeting its clear from Gandalf and Galadriels telepathy session that he has been playing for time to let the Dwarves continue their journey before Saruman can interfere.

Ah; I interpreted Galadriel's smile as "so you can sense these things too," but that makes a lot more sense. I wonder if some of the scenes they cut from this section would have spelled this all out a bit more.

[Stranger Wings]

In the filmiverse, Elrond makes it clear that the meeting was called to discuss Gandalf's unauthorized "quest." And since Gandalf happens to arrive at the same time of the meeting, it is turned into an interrogation.

So why didn't he summon Gandalf? Are we to assume he wanted to take him by surprise, and would have just nabbed him as he walked by Rivendell if he hadn't decided to stop there anyway? And that Galadriel (at a minimum) knew this and chose to go along with it?

Also, at the end of the meeting its clear from Gandalf and Galadriels telepathy session that he has been playing for time to let the Dwarves continue their journey before Saruman can interfere.

Ah; I interpreted Galadriel's smile as "so you can sense these things too," but that makes a lot more sense. I wonder if some of the scenes they cut from this section would have spelled this all out a bit more.

My understanding is that the White Council sans Gandalf planned to discuss what Gandalf was up to, and that Elrond and Saruman planned to object and try to put Gandalf in his place (eventually). Then Gandalf shows up, and is therefore brought into the discussion (and interrogated).

Either that, or Gandalf and company's arrival in Rivendell really was well-planned, Elrond was expecting him, and Elrond effectively organized a White Council meeting as a...well...ambush for Gandalf.

Either way, it is convoluted.

[River]

Secondly, The Hobbit also is rooted, although on the outskirts, in Tolkien's already existing own mythology. No other author can match that.

But we only know that by reference to his other works; the only way they make The Hobbit better on its own, for someone who has never read anything else by Tolkien, is that the unexplained names and details add a sense of depth and history to the world, and many authors achieve that.

In sum: I find The Hobbit exceptional, but not singular.

I would beg to differ. The ties to the further history of Middle Earth not only provide "unexplained names" and such, but also provide motivation for and details about the characters. Other authors have tried to do this, but in almost all cases, the depth feels hollow, and the motivations and cultures of those involved are more obviously explained.

Tolkien had a respect for his readers that most authors do not, that allowed him to tell his story in his world, with it's history. IMHO, no other author has managed this anywhere close.

While I agree with you about what Tolkien achieved, Dave does have a point. I was very slow to get into Tolkien. Partly because my parents were pushing LOTR at me and that just made me obstinate and partly because we had this godawful radio adaptation we listened to on car trips (not the BBC; I have yet to hear that one) that totally put me off. So I first read The Hobbit when I was 20. I grew up on a heavy diet of myths and fairy tales. When Tolkien wrote of Faerie and various sorts of Elves, I sensed that he was drawing up a larger world but I thought it was either an homage to or pastiche of the stories I grew up with. Well, okay, the radio adaptation hadn't left me that naive; I sort of had it figured that the Necromancer was really Sauron when the first mention of him cropped up. But I still didn't see The Hobbit and the world it was set in as anything particularily outstanding. Then I read LOTR and the Sil and realized I was more wrong than right. Tolkien did draw on old fairy tales and mythologies to build up his world and, as I understand it, he did it very deliberately. But he took those tales apart and made them into something new and unique. I've yet to encounter anyone else who's done this so thoroughly. At the same time though, The Hobbit itself is so heavily cloaked as a simple children's story that it's difficult for a naive reader to appreciate that achievement without reading any of Tolkien's other works. For myself, The Hobbit got me interested. LOTR made me a fan.

[Stranger Wings]

Secondly, The Hobbit also is rooted, although on the outskirts, in Tolkien's already existing own mythology. No other author can match that.

But we only know that by reference to his other works; the only way they make The Hobbit better on its own, for someone who has never read anything else by Tolkien, is that the unexplained names and details add a sense of depth and history to the world, and many authors achieve that.

In sum: I find The Hobbit exceptional, but not singular.

I would beg to differ. The ties to the further history of Middle Earth not only provide "unexplained names" and such, but also provide motivation for and details about the characters. Other authors have tried to do this, but in almost all cases, the depth feels hollow, and the motivations and cultures of those involved are more obviously explained.

Tolkien had a respect for his readers that most authors do not, that allowed him to tell his story in his world, with it's history. IMHO, no other author has managed this anywhere close.

The big difference is that Peter Jackson is no JRR Tolkien, and his attempt to add depth is both very clumsy, and often serves to shrink the world of Middle Earth rather than expand it. Wizards bumping into other wizards randomly, orcs of legend brought back to life that somehow know where the dwarves are, the White Council proceedings moved to the timeline of the Hobbit (when by Tolkien's timeline, the "suspicion of Sauron rising" meeting happened much earlier), the events of Smaug's attack seemingly moved into a more recent past, etc, etc.

PJ adds things that subtract, IMO. He shrinks Middle Earth.

[Pearly Di]

It is not a film director's job to expand Middle-earth. No film adaptation could capture the entire history of Arda. Probably not even a 50 hour mini-series!

You can't treat two different art forms - literature and cinema - as if they were the same thing.

Of course PJ conflates, compresses. His business is DRAMA. It is drama that brings audiences, not the depth of an imaginary world. The production design, the sets, the writing, the big canvas of the cinema screen, can effectively hint at the depth of Tolkien's Middle-earth and its history.

I am not convinced that another director and crew would have spent half the time PJ & Co have done in painting in such a rich background.

[Dave_LF]

They almost certainly would not have. For all their faults, I think the Jackson adaptations are better than we really had a right to expect from a big-budget production.

Which is why I'm still rooting for someone to try a small-budget one.

[Stranger Wings]

It is not a film director's job to expand Middle-earth. No film adaptation could capture the entire history of Arda. Probably not even a 50 hour mini-series!

You can't treat two different art forms - literature and cinema - as if they were the same thing.

Of course PJ conflates, compresses. His business is DRAMA. It is drama that brings audiences, not the depth of an imaginary world. The production design, the sets, the writing, the big canvas of the cinema screen, can effectively hint at the depth of Tolkien's Middle-earth and its history.

I am not convinced that another director and crew would have spent half the time PJ & Co have done in painting in such a rich background.

Who said it is his job? He can do whatever he wants, as he has the rights.

However, I think a director should try to capture the essence of their source material, and IMO, a lot of that has to do with the illusion of depth, verisimiltude and great expanses of time. PJ constantly chips away at that illusion, and for that reason, I find his adaptation to be very off. Even when he gets the dialogue and the thematic content right, he usually manages to break the illusion Tolkien so deftly created.

It is drama that brings audiences, not the depth of an imaginary world.

Really? Then how come Pride and Prejudice adaptations make so much less money than far less dramatic fare, such as the Avengers? Film is not the stage. There is a lot you can do with it that breaks normal dramatic conventions. Furthermore, Tolkien clearly did something right, as his books continue to be all-time bestsellers. If it was just the "drama" that drew people to the books, why wouldn't the Dungeons and Dragons books be hailed as Tolkien's equals? Because of the incredible depth of his world. He takes a reader on a journey to "survey the depths of space and time" and that is his enduring appeal.

In that context, I agree with you that getting the drama of the stories right is important. But why wouldn't painting a deep, wide, rich and layered world, on top of the drama, be appealing to audiences? Indeed, the language of cinema is very well-suited to creating such an illusion. IMO, it was pretty well done with the first two Star Wars films, for example.

I can think of a good number of directors who would have done a less ham-handed job than PJ of capturing this. His sense of drama is of the screenwriting 101 sort. Conventional, clumsy, sophomoric and thinly-veiled. It is always so blindingly obvious what he is saying and doing.

Tolkien would not have been pleased with the treatment of his story as some sort of big budget hackneyed stage play. That is how PJ has adapted these, I think. A more visionary director, with a better sense of the language of cinema (let's say, Alfonso Cuaron, Peter Weir or a resurrected David Lean) would have done a much better job, IMO. We got passably competent, when I believe we should have gotten cinematic masterpieces. And this was PJ's intent from the beginning, with LOTR. He was just shooting for "action adventure with some intelligence and depth." He never wanted to shoot for the stars.

Ah well. I will still watch the next two, and purchase the EEs, sucker that I am!

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Sucker!



(I agree about Weir and. Lean; not Cuaron

[Stranger Wings]

Sucker!



(I agree about Weir and. Lean; not Cuaron

I wouldn't judge Cuaron by Prisoners, even though I do think it was the best of the HP films (perhaps because I never read the books, and don't care so much about that world). I would judge Cuaron by Children of Men, which IMO is a modern mythic masterpiece like no other.

But just thinking about a David Lean "Lord of the Rings" gets me excited, even if it is physically impossible.

[Alatar]

I was very slow to get into Tolkien. Partly because my parents were pushing LOTR at me and that just made me obstinate and partly because we had this godawful radio adaptation we listened to on car trips (not the BBC; I have yet to hear that one) that totally put me off.

That can only be the appalling Minds Eye production where all the hobbits are played by women and it sounds like it was recorded in a bathroom.

[Pearly Di]

David Lean might have done to LotR what he did to E M Forster's A Passage to India! !!!!!!! Not a bad film, but hardly a masterpiece. Who watches it these days?!

SA, you are not quite understanding my point. Which is hardly that Tolkien doesn't write a great dramatic story. Tolkien writes GREAT drama. Which is why LotR was begging to be made into a film one day.

But the craft of literary narrative is a different beastie from cinematic narrative, the language of film, which by its nature needs compression and conflation of plots, themes and sometimes characters in the original source material.

Also, my argument is that PJ DID include the canvas, the backdrop, of Arda and its history. His script references Númenor. It references the Valar. The films include Gil-galad and Círdan ... non-speaking parts but they're there. And much, much more world-building, world-painting stuff.

As much as I like Cuaron, Del Toro, Weir & co, would they have done as much?

The nearest comparison to what PJ has done is the HBO series of Game of Thrones (I haven't read the books). Granted, this is a 20 episode affair, with another season due to start. And Westeros does not have the spiritual depth of Middle-earth (IMO). But this is the best world-building I've ever seen in a mini-series.

[River]

I was very slow to get into Tolkien. Partly because my parents were pushing LOTR at me and that just made me obstinate and partly because we had this godawful radio adaptation we listened to on car trips (not the BBC; I have yet to hear that one) that totally put me off.

That can only be the appalling Minds Eye production where all the hobbits are played by women and it sounds like it was recorded in a bathroom.

Yes. Yes it was. Glad to meet a fellow survivor.

[Dave_LF]

I haven't heard their Hobbit, but in LotR, they cast Smurfette as Sam. And I'm not making a joke; Sam was voiced by same the actress that Hanna-Barbera used. That should tell you all you need to know.

[Primula Baggins]

Also, my argument is that PJ DID include the canvas, the backdrop, of Arda and its history. His script references Númenor. It references the Valar. The films include Gil-galad and Círdan ... non-speaking parts but they're there. And much, much more world-building, world-painting stuff.

As much as I like Cuaron, Del Toro, Weir & co, would they have done as much?

Di, I agree with your post pretty strongly, but I have to put in a word for Peter Weir's adaptation of Master and Commander. For those who don't already know, the film was adapted from two or three of a series of twenty historical novels by Patrick O'Brian that I think are brilliant in their recreation of the era and its people—a complex and astounding piece of world (re)building. Weir put as much into the physical authenticity of the film adaptation as PJ et al. put into recreating Middle-earth, and I love the result almost as much. The casting and performances are impeccable despite some surprising choices.

I think Weir would have made an amazing LotR. Maybe within a smaller world (or maybe not), but just as detailed.

And more tasteful. . . .

[JewelSong]

I can think of a good number of directors who would have done a less ham-handed job than PJ of capturing this.

Maybe so. But they didn't try. It's all very well and good to state that "Oh, so-and-so would have done a much better job!"

Except nobody ventured to try.

I agree with Di, I think the amount of Tolkien's world that PJ & crew have managed to portray in LOTR and the Hobbit is nothing short of remarkable.

The key thing for me is talking to people who have never read the books (and probably never will) who were completely drawn in and enchanted by Middle Earth and the mythos that Tolkien created, via PJs films.

[kzer_za]

But why wouldn't painting a deep, wide, rich and layered world, on top of the drama, be appealing to audiences?

I would say that this is just what PJ did with LotR (jury is still out on The Hobbit) - not perfectly, but mostly quite successfully. The secondary world of the LotR movies really did captivate and draw in a lot of people not familiar with the mythos, includnig many well outside the typical action crowd. And while their impressions of the world may not match up with Tolkien's perfectly, in many cases it's not that far off. LotR has much more history and world-building than most speculative fiction movies, including both detailed flashbacks and fleeting references to the past. Of course, a lot of the credit goes to Weta, Howe/Lee, and the other visual designers.

I don't think this is just because he had good source material. With its mountains of backstory/exposition and a complex plot structure, LotR seems like an especially challenging work to adapt, and good source material hardly guarantees a successful movie.

With that said, I do agree that a David Lean LotR would probably be good. But would David Lean even want to direct it?

[Stranger Wings]

David Lean might have done to LotR what he did to E M Forster's A Passage to India! !!!!!!! Not a bad film, but hardly a masterpiece. Who watches it these days?!

SA, you are not quite understanding my point. Which is hardly that Tolkien doesn't write a great dramatic story. Tolkien writes GREAT drama. Which is why LotR was begging to be made into a film one day.

But the craft of literary narrative is a different beastie from cinematic narrative, the language of film, which by its nature needs compression and conflation of plots, themes and sometimes characters in the original source material.

Also, my argument is that PJ DID include the canvas, the backdrop, of Arda and its history. His script references Númenor. It references the Valar. The films include Gil-galad and Círdan ... non-speaking parts but they're there. And much, much more world-building, world-painting stuff.

As much as I like Cuaron, Del Toro, Weir & co, would they have done as much?

The nearest comparison to what PJ has done is the HBO series of Game of Thrones (I haven't read the books). Granted, this is a 20 episode affair, with another season due to start. And Westeros does not have the spiritual depth of Middle-earth (IMO). But this is the best world-building I've ever seen in a mini-series.

I understand you fully. My point is that cinema need not be hampered by the conventions of theatrical drama (especially not the 101 conventions). I am not arguing for everything to be explained and explored. I am, however, arguing for the vastness and mystery of the world to be maintained, even if it means a slightly less "neat and tidy" storyline. My favorite directors are very far divorced from the stage medium. They use the camera as a paint brush, and harness its strengths for the medium. They are able to create a sense of depth and awe in a few moments, whether that is through the movement (or stability) of the camera, the lighting, or a script that allows for some level of ambiguity, not-so-neatly connected plot points, and an avoidance of melodrama. Today, there are only a few such directors in "big budget" cinema, and they are Cuaron, Weir, PT Anderson, Malick, Scott (sometimes), Soderbergh, perhaps Del Toro (though he's very hit or miss) and from time to time, Nolan.

IMO, any one of them would have done a better job than PJ, even if they cut out half the story. They all have (except for Nolan, perhaps) a much more Tolkienian aesthetic, if you will.

You see, I'm not arguing for MORE detail, and more STUFF from Tolkien's books. I am arguing for less, in a lot of ways. Less STUFF, and a greater attention to capturing the mystery and yearning that these stories create in a reader. That can be done on film. Many of my favorite directors (and their cinematographers) do it. Peter Jackson is not one of them. And so IMO, he is very ill-suited for the Tolkien style.

Though he occasionally grasps small flashes of brilliance. In the Hobbit, I see that only in Bag End, with a touch of it in Gollum's cave.