The Hobbit films, previously to be directed by Guillermo del Toro and now to be directed by Peter Jackson again.

tolkien rewrote almost the entire gollum chapter in the hobbit before publishing LOTR -- iirc in the original version gollum isn't really that attached to the ring and actually helps bilbo find the way out!

funny actually as I read the book again recently, that the ring didn't even turn you fully invisible. In bright sunlight people could see your shadow.

can't believe this shit is going to continue for two more movies

If you're lucky. Waiting for Disney to acquire the rights and announce to the world that they're gonna do The Silmarillion in 6 films with concurrent spin-offs based around Tom Bombadil, Fatty Bolger and the sons of Elrond tbh*

*I would pay to see most of this

The Hobbiting World of Bilbo Baggins

Don't you want to learn more about the complex and fascinating Pale Orc?

Tolkien's best-loved character.

I think it's more that Gollum is 500 years old and has spent 450 of those years in a hole in the ground*. There's a line during the riddles about him vaguely remembering being above ground and happier - and he doesn't much care for the memories.

*which makes him a very old hobbit, but not some sort of pre-hobbit, FFS.

it's not that hard to look it up Andrew

http://tolkiengateway.net/w/images/thumb/8/88/Hobbits_comparison.jpg/631px-Hobbits_comparison.jpg

i would have looked it up but i thought it'd be much much more fun to ask you lovely people instead.

I did look it up! - and then paraphrased.

stoors wear boots and you gotta believe me

Hobbit hobbit hobbit hobbit oh BTW DRAGON

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qq3UmifZaqM

dragon? yeah, for another 6 hours

*instant dwarfshot* But I kid the etc

sucker for a pun

I so want to resist the call of the craptastic but I know I'll see this one too and be disappointed. I cringed a few times just watching the trailer.

Oh yeah, this again.

Methinks Game of Thrones increasingly makes this look like child's play, because, well ...

If anything the problem with the first one was it wasn't child's play ENOUGH...

otm

Pretty much, because if you're going to use GoT on any level, book or film, to beat Tolkien's original Hobbit with, then fuck right off -- different intended audience/goals/origins. Jackson's interpretation of the Hobbit as expanded universe ultraedition, though, understandably fair game.

Book or TV rather but anyway.

haha this one has the tunnel/smaug stuff in it? the third one's just gonna be three hours of the battle of five armies.

honestly think we might as well start saying film when we mean stuff like GoT. have ned's back here tho

ORNALDO BLOOMPS

I was fine with the heavy expansion/adaptation of the orig material, Jackson's was a failure of tone IMO. It was like this annoying palimpsest of LOTR heavy epic and Hobbit genial magicking and completely retarded no-stakes action set pieces.

Riddles in the Dark and everything with Radagast were fucking awesome though, more Radagast pls.

Jon OTM. The Hobbit is a book of wonder and the LOTR a series of disillusionment and Jackson bolloxed them both up to differing degrees.

to be clear I mostly adore the LOTR films and think they did what they were trying to do brilliantly.

I love the Fellowship, especially in it's extended form, but the others have too many problems I can't overlook.

Yeah Fellowship by far my fave. But then that's true of the books too.

Just saying that GoT is doing the magical medieval thing better than The Hobbit did. Different creatures, absolutely, but I'd say there's more than a little audience overlap, and as far as zeitgeist goes, the GoT mythology seems to be resonating more than Middle Earth Redux; The Hobbit seemed to land like a rock in a deep lake, making a big splash then sinking into the dark, never to be seen again.

I too wish The Hobbit were more fun, since the first one failed massively as both drama and action, imo. And I'd be really curious if any kids (say, pre-12) had the fortitude to sit through a three hour slog.

I love Fellowship and Two Towers movies. King is a mess.

The LOTR films worked for me and still work, quite happily however at times haphazardly; it's not the book but can never be the book, that's the nature of adaptation (and in this GoT is similarly close-and-yet-not). I came in thinking of the Hobbit films as essentially an indulgence and excuse to get WETA to make a massive fuck-off dragon and as that looks like what we're getting, bring it.

The only thing that could likely get me to see this after sitting through The Hobbit is if Peter Jackson bred himself a real, live dragon.

what, like a fathered a dragonchild? thats p gross

"Peter Jackson and Guillermo del Toro would like to announce..."

...Pacific Rim Job.

xpost Ha!

Dragon sex will be the next big thing for rich people after space gets boring.

"About 135,000,000 results (0.25 seconds) "

Ah, of course, Cosmo's got you covered:

http://www.cosmopolitan.com/sex-love/positions/the-dragon-sex-position

Thx for googling so that I don't have to.

Dragon sex:

https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcS3DxZt7DXf8E7uW5VetxWy_MiRBbf2RD2TBq-o8UOzIudBGgC9

Hey, baby, how about a little dragon head?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0lQ4z7we9Y

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=qrgbIP7Vvc4#t=186s

Holy shit, did you dredge up that Wizard People bit from memory?!

i've um heh seen it a lot

the number of articles i've seen praising GoT for being more 'adult' and 'complex' than tolkien (salon ran one of these the other day) have pretty much killed any interest i had in seeing or reading it (which was minimal to start with).

yesterday I was idly wondering if you could chart some audience-aging trajectory from Harry Potter to GoT. idg people's fascination with this crap tbh. Tolkien is on another level but these Hobbit movies look so far removed from what made them work idgaf about them either.