The Hobbit

  • Guest, it's time once again for the massively important and exciting FoH Asshat Tournament!



    Go here and give us your nominations!
    Who's been the biggest Asshat in the last year? Give us your worst ones!
Seananigans

Seananigans

Honorary Shit-PhD
<Gold Donor>
13,690
34,179
How can a board of gaming nerds not know it's "dwarves" and not "dwarfs?" Fucking Christ, people.
 
McCheese

McCheese

SW: Sean, CW: Crone, GW: Wizardhawk
6,918
4,315
All dwarves are dwarfs, but not all dwarfs are dwarves.


I am against irregular plurals so I prefer dwarfs, even if it is not technically correct in middle earth.
 
Chris

Chris

Potato del Grande
19,436
-10,733
etchazz_sl said:
i've only ever read the first edition of "the hobbit." when does all this shit supposedly take place? the version of the book i read, there is absolutely no tie in to the LOTR whatsoever. in fact, gollum bets the ring on the game of riddles and loses it fair and square and never even complains about it. there is never any mention about the ring being anything more than just an invisibility ring. and i've read all three LOTR books as well and don't remember any mention of a necromancer in those, either. are there newer editions that his son wrote or added to or something? i don't remember any of this shit from the book that i read. in fact, i don't think the dwarves even meet bard until after he slays the dragon in the book. i don't recall the barrel part in the book to have any action in it at all (don't they just escape in the barrels and float down stream?) i know they added all the stuff with the dwarves in the lair with smuag, cause in the book, only bilbo goes in and smaug and he talk for a while and then smaug thinks that he was sent by the humans from lake town and then takes off to destroy them. i don't think he even knew the dwarves were with bilbo (although i haven't read the book in a long time so i could be remembering it wrong).
Click to expand...
It isn't in The Hobbit book at all in any version, though The Necromancer is mentioned as being why they won't go near southern Mirkwood and is what has darkened the forest (it used to be called Greenwood). Obviously The Ring is in it too and portions of the dialouge around that were retconned in a later edition (sounds like you have the original).

Gandalf vanishes during the middle portion of the book unexplained and the Lord of the Rings appencies say that it is because he met up with the White Council to deal with The Necromancer thinking that it was just a Ringwraith...
 
Blackyce

Blackyce

Silver Knight of the Realm
836
12
McCheese_sl said:
Tolkien himself revised The Hobbit when he began work on LOTR. He basically retconned all the stuff about the ring and Gollum to create a connection with The Lord of the Rings. Since it was Tolkien who did it, I'd say that the revised version is canon and the first edition is an outdated curiosity.
Click to expand...
In fact, he was going to revise the whole book. The Gollum scene was only his first example he gave the publisher. He never heard back from them until he was sent a proof for the next edition of the book several years later with the new chapter. He then set about to rewrite the whole book, got three chapters done and was told by others it "wasn't the hobbit anymore" so he stopped.
 
Phazael

Phazael

Confirmed Beta Shitlord, Fat Bastard
<Aristocrat╭ರ_•́>
14,659
31,514
Chris_sl said:
What?
Click to expand...
The attack on Dol Goldur happened at the same time as the Erebor events in the hobbit, but Gandalf going to Dol Guldur happened over 300 years prior to the Hobbit. First time he went there, Sauran fled to conceal his presence. Second time he went was 50 years before the hobbit and Gandalf confirmed that the Necromancer was Sauron. That second trip was also where he met Thorin's father in the dungeons and got the key from him for Erebor. The entire quest for Erebor was actually Gandalf throwing the Dwarves under the bus to keep Smaug busy so that he could not come to Saurons aid when the White Council attacked Dol Guldur. The movie seriously altered both the timing and nature of some of those events.
 
Eomer

Eomer

Trakanon Raider
5,472
272
Chris_sl said:
It isn't in The Hobbit book at all in any version, though The Necromancer is mentioned as being why they won't go near southern Mirkwood and is what has darkened the forest (it used to be called Greenwood). Obviously The Ring is in it too and portions of the dialouge around that were retconned in a later edition (sounds like you have the original).

Gandalf vanishes during the middle portion of the book unexplained and the Lord of the Rings appencies say that it is because he met up with the White Council to deal with The Necromancer thinking that it was just a Ringwraith...
Click to expand...
Long story short, Tolkien was continually revising and changing shit in Middle Earth. The Hobbit and LOTR were the only two stories out of literally hundreds that he ever finalized and published before his death. I remember reading an article about The Hobbit and LOTR, and basically when Tolkien was writing The Hobbit he didn't realize that Gollum's ring was The One Ring until he had outlined the LOTR arc. So yes, Tolkien ret-conned his own work. As far as the Necromancer shit goes, Tolkien always intended that to be happening concurrently with the rest of the events in the Hobbit. That's why Gandalf is missing half the time. That wasn't ret-conned, although perhaps when he wrote it he didn't link the Necromancer and Sauron.

I dunno if the poster who said something about the Necromancer events happening "300 years before" was confusing other Sauron related events or what.

edit: ah, I see Phazael straightened things out
 
Xeldar

Xeldar

Silver Squire
1,546
133
Real problem: The tone of the writing in The Hobbit and LOTR are completely different. The Hobbit is primarily an adventure book (and not a very good one) - Hardy Brothers, Huck Finn. Ole' Frodo and his magical ring get Thorin and the boys out of some real pickles! But they shot Hobbit in the same LOTR solemn graveness. It's off-putting. About a quarter of the way through the movie, I started rooting for the orcs. Those fuckers have balls. Ass-door assaulting Mirkwood and Rivertown. If The hobbit was re-shot to be about the orcs hunting Frodo, it'd be an awesome movie. With HD movies, I can completely notice how movie propish their makeup is, their costumes are, that boulder is, that tree is.

I enjoyed Smaug and Frodo talking and everything in Rivertown. Overall, it's a very meh movie.
 
Muligan

Muligan

Trakanon Raider
3,231
901
Seems like I read somewhere before that Jackson, when attempting to get the blessing to bridge the books/films per say, was given access to a lot of things the Tolkien had written that may have not even been published. It is hard to tell what Jackson has read in terms of notes, journals, etc. that the Tolkien family has kept to themselves. As others have said, Tolkien has always been known as an evolving writer never really satisfied with his work as he looked through it over the years. Not defending Jackson but just saying in attempt to get the resources to make the movies that he wanted, I'm sure he found a lot of "filler" material that could have been from the depths of a Tolkien safe or closet.
 
Thorpe

Thorpe

Lord Nagafen Raider
465
376
Muligan_sl said:
Seems like I read somewhere before that Jackson, when attempting to get the blessing to bridge the books/films per say, was given access to a lot of things the Tolkien had written that may have not even been published. It is hard to tell what Jackson has read in terms of notes, journals, etc. that the Tolkien family has kept to themselves. As others have said, Tolkien has always been known as an evolving writer never really satisfied with his work as he looked through it over the years. Not defending Jackson but just saying in attempt to get the resources to make the movies that he wanted, I'm sure he found a lot of "filler" material that could have been from the depths of a Tolkien safe or closet.
Click to expand...
Interesting if true. I know the Tolkien family has hated on all the movies, but I'm not sure if that hate started after the LoTR trilogy was released or well before that.
 
C

Chesire_sl

shitlord
331
1
Rivendell - gated mcmansion community
Mirkwood - Trailer Park

So the trailer park elf king had centuries of being a neurotic egomaniac with an inferiority complex . Of course he was mightily offended by being made too bow too the dorm king. Not too mention once the dorf empire was crushed , mirkwood became the economic engine of the area .
 
Wombat

Wombat

Trakanon Raider
2,169
899
My review isn't anything you haven't already heard: it's better than the first chunk; I'm still looking forward to the fan edits that chop this movie down to about 1 hour once all three parts are out (just subtract the elf-on-orc killing and you're halfway there); some of the special effects are really bad, mostly overhead shots of dwarves or orcs moving across terrain; the necromancer changes seems difficult to reconcile with the timeline, though it could be as easy as "Galadriel shows up with reinforcements at the end of the third movie, they blow up Dol Guldur, and everyone says 'that's the last of that!'".

I honestly liked the Legolas bits though. I thought this version of him, clearly reflective of his father, was nicely contrasted with the version from The Lord of the Rings. Tauriel may be entirely invented, but she's a well done invention.
 
E

etchazz

Trakanon Raider
2,707
1,056
i think they should have just made this 2 movies. there's just not enough material in "the hobbit" for three, three hour movies. they could have chopped several hours of all this filler crap out of the movies and it would have made them much better. i think the problem is that peter jackson is too focused on connecting these movies with the LOTR, when it would have been a better idea to just make these a stand alone movie. people know that the ring that bilbo finds winds up being the one true ring. even if you never read the books, if you watched the original LOTR trilogy you know the ring's true source and its significance. that's one of the biggest problems with director's nowadays; they treat the audience like they're retarded. sure, some of them really are, but most can comprehend what's going on. you don't need to hand hold them through the entire plot.
 
Phazael

Phazael

Confirmed Beta Shitlord, Fat Bastard
<Aristocrat╭ರ_•́>
14,659
31,514
If you look at what makes money in theatres and television, its hard to not play to the room, though. He went out on a limb with King Kong and took shit over that movie, so its back to the well, as it were.
 
Ravishing

Ravishing

Uninspiring Title
<Bronze Donator>
8,456
3,577
etchazz_sl said:
people know that the ring that bilbo finds winds up being the one true ring. even if you never read the books, if you watched the original LOTR trilogy you know the ring's true source and its significance.
Click to expand...
I can't wait until I'm sitting down watching these 6 movies with my kids and they experience it all without any knowledge of what lay ahead. I like this direction and don't think movies should be dumbed down just because our generation has knowledge of future events.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.