Guillermo Del Toro to Direct "The Hobitt" Films

[Kyrian]

New Line Cinema has announced that the director for the new movie The Hobbit and its pending sequel will be Mexican born 43 year old Guillermo del Toro.

http://www.chattershmatter.com/2008/...nd-its-sequel/

Interesting stuff.

In some ways I wish they had done the Hobbit movies first - for obvious chronological reasons and also because Rings was a much darker and richer series than the Hobbit (even Tolkien himself claims that the Hobbit was cotton candy compared to what Rings ended up as), but I'll take what I can get.

Interesting that they plan a Hobbit sequel to bridge the 60 year gap between the Lonely Mountain and the Fellowship.

It will be interesting to see how they handle Smeagol, Aragorn (and being 60+ years younger?), and so forth. It will also be interesting to see how Del Toro handles the 3-pronged battle of following the books, tying into the Rings movies and taking his own creative liberties.

[Hodur]

Sequel? Sequel? That better mean they're making the Hobbit in two parts because if they start pissing (more) all over Tolkien so they can have a bunch more high grossing blockbusters I'm sending somebody a letter bomb. The idea of even having the The Hobbit take place in the context of the Middle Earth of the Silmarillion was an afterthought for Tolkien and consequently it set up a bunch of continuity problems that he dealt with until the day he died. I can't imagine Peter Jackson and his "writing" team being able to deal with that other than "hey, let's just bring in a bunch of really big monsters" which is what he seems to do when he doesn't have any other ideas (I saw a little bit of King Kong the other night, what a farce.)

Presumably Aragorn was in Rivendell when Bilbo first visited, but he was 10 years old and did not yet know he was the heir of Isildur. It would be cool if they showed a human kid but didn't elaborate on who it was, but Jackson, et al, are not capable of that sort of subtlety. Presumably Legolas was there when the dwarves were imprisoned in Mirkwood since his father was Thranduil, the king of the Mirkwood elves, although he's unnamed in the Hobbit.

I don't know, I guess we'll see. I'll probably go see it in the theaters, but you can't make me like it

Originally Posted by Kyrian

New Line Cinema has announced that the director for the new movie The Hobbit and its pending sequel will be Mexican born 43 year old Guillermo del Toro.

http://www.chattershmatter.com/2008/...nd-its-sequel/

Interesting stuff.

In some ways I wish they had done the Hobbit movies first - for obvious chronological reasons and also because Rings was a much darker and richer series than the Hobbit (even Tolkien himself claims that the Hobbit was cotton candy compared to what Rings ended up as), but I'll take what I can get.

Interesting that they plan a Hobbit sequel to bridge the 60 year gap between the Lonely Mountain and the Fellowship.

It will be interesting to see how they handle Smeagol, Aragorn (and being 60+ years younger?), and so forth. It will also be interesting to see how Del Toro handles the 3-pronged battle of following the books, tying into the Rings movies and taking his own creative liberties.

[Alyssia Kanath]

It's confirmed I believe that they're doing the Hobbit in two parts. But that's where some of my own concern sets in as the second movie supposedly isn't going to be dealing with the actual Hobbit storyline but what goes on in between the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Which makes me wonder how they hell they're going to do that without writing stuff themselves that Tolkien never himself bothered with. Which may just kind of piss all over the lore...who knows.

I suppose we'll see. Though they do say that they'll be doing the Hobbit in a different style than LotR...to reflect it being more of a "child's tale" in the way that Tolkien first wrote it..much lighter and not so dramatic and foreboding.

I have my own reservations but we'll see how they do. WETA is going to be involved still due to PJ's involvement which I think is good for the sake of visual effects. We'll have the same gollum at least (hopefully)

[Hodur]

Originally Posted by Alyssia Kanath

Which makes me wonder how they hell they're going to do that without writing stuff themselves that Tolkien never himself bothered with.

What's to wonder? A full half of each LotR movie was new material from writers with a hundredth of Tolkien's story telling ability. That's what gets me about screenwriters. Some of them are good at telling a well crafted story in 120 pages, but most of them are hacks rewriting the same movie over and over again. Then they take a classic and somehow think they're improving it by hacking it all up. Fran Walsh had two major movie writing credits to her name when she did the Lord of the Rings. Phillipa Boyens had NONE. And yet they had the gall on the commentary to say that they decided the best thing to do would be to disregard the storyline and start from scratch. You decided that how, exactly, and with what credential or authority? We're lucky we got anything that even resembled the Lord of the Rings. Fortunately, PJ realized early on what a bloodbath it would be if he screwed the pooch on the dramatization of the most popular book ever since the bible and he probably put the brakes on the real absurdities. Still, we got an eight minute teetering stone staircase sequence, a twenty minutes of hyena attack and subsequent storyline detours for no good reason at all, and bizarre eight tusked elephants the size of the VAB at Cape Canaveral.

I gotta stop or I'm gonna have a stroke.

[Kyrian]

Originally Posted by Hodur

What's to wonder? A full half of each LotR movie was new material from writers with a hundredth of Tolkien's story telling ability. That's what gets me about screenwriters. Some of them are good at telling a well crafted story in 120 pages, but most of them are hacks rewriting the same movie over and over again. Then they take a classic and somehow think they're improving it by hacking it all up. Fran Walsh had two major movie writing credits to her name when she did the Lord of the Rings. Phillipa Boyens had NONE. And yet they had the gall on the commentary to say that they decided the best thing to do would be to disregard the storyline and start from scratch. You decided that how, exactly, and with what credential or authority? We're lucky we got anything that even resembled the Lord of the Rings. Fortunately, PJ realized early on what a bloodbath it would be if he screwed the pooch on the dramatization of the most popular book ever since the bible and he probably put the brakes on the real absurdities. Still, we got an eight minute teetering stone staircase sequence, a twenty minutes of hyena attack and subsequent storyline detours for no good reason at all, and bizarre eight tusked elephants the size of the VAB at Cape Canaveral.

I gotta stop or I'm gonna have a stroke.

ROFL

The problem for me was trying to explain to my wife, who knew forever that I was a Tolkien die hard, that the movies took a lot of absurd liberties. So now I cannot watch the damned movies with her without saying "Well in the books that wasn't like this" because I am almost embarrassed for Tolkien (and myself) - to make sure that she realizes the movies were on the brink of being terrible at times, and certainly struggled to do justice for the books.

What confuses me is that there are a lot of parts in the movies (Fellowship, Return, Towers - in that order) that are actually very well done, and then so many scenes that were poorly done, and not needed.

My wife was laughing at the scene where they light the beacon of Gondor - because as they panned from one beacon to the next, she was giddy about how absurd it would be to imagine people hanging out there on watch to light the beacon. Several of them looked like the top of Mt. Everest ... can you imagine people hanging out there just in case a beacon is lit?

Of course, then i try to explain that in actuality, Denethor (the guy they portrayed as an idiot moron in the movies) was the one who lit the beacons and that Pip and Gandalf were actually riding and saw them ... to which I realize she is droning out and I don't bother any further

On the other hand, my two older children, who are 7 and 4, think the beacons, monster elephants and hyenas are all quite exciting

[Gesamyn]

Some good points!

However, the size of the Oliphaunts didn't bother me!

Tolkien described one as...

a vast shape crashing out of the trees... Much bigger than a house... a beast of vast bulk, the like of him does not walk now in Middle-earth; his kin that live still in latter days are but memories of his girth and majesty.

'High upon his neck still desperately clung a tiny figure - the body of a mighty warrior, a giant among the Swertings.'

This is a painting by Alan Lee which appears in a Houghton Mifflin edition of the trilogy:


If you imagine the tower with arrow slits is tall enough for a man to stand and shoot through, then that is one huge beast. Smushing horses was a bit much for me, but going by some accounts, the Oliphaunt may have indeed been big enough to do it!

[Raina]

Veteran Brit thesp Sir Ian McKellen has confirmed he'll be reprising his role of Gandalf in the forthcoming adaptation of The Hobbit, according to Empire magazine.

He said: "Yes, it's true. It's not a part that you turn down. I loved playing Gandalf. I spoke to Guillermo in the very room that Peter Jackson offered me the part and he confirmed that I would be reprising the role."

The Guillermo in question is Guillermo del Toro, who was recently named as helmsman for two Lord of the Rings prequels slated for release in 2010 and 2011 - the afermentioned Hobbit and an "original story" bridging the 60-year gap between Tolkien's first Middle Earth outing and the Lord of the Rings trilogy. ®


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[Hodur]

Originally Posted by Raina

an "original story" bridging the 60-year gap between Tolkien's first Middle Earth outing and the Lord of the Rings trilogy. ®

*head asplode*

[Slayne]

Under the right conditions, a single, innocent-looking fluffy cumulus chronicle about casting can, in less 24 hours, become a massive, towering, Tolkien tornado.

<sits on the steps and watches the asplosion>

hehehehehe.....

[Raina]

Originally Posted by Slayne

Under the right conditions, a single, innocent-looking fluffy cumulus chronicle about casting can, in less 24 hours, become a massive, towering, Tolkien Tornado.

<sits on the steps and watches the asplosion>

hehehehehe.....

Just never forget the Hodur factor... it may cause chaos and random side effects in the forming of said Tornado...

*stares* *poince* Oho Pretty Colours!

~Rai