The Hobbit Reaction Post

[author_by_night]

So I saw the first part of The Hobbit today.

First let me say that I'm not a LOTR expert, and that I last read The Hobbit years ago. So I speak carefully of inaccuracies.

I definitely feel this movie was not one for people who love the books and want a faithful adaptation. It's very much for people who were fans of the LOTR movies - maybe alone, or maybe as companion pieces. (I eventually resigned myself to being a fan of the HP movies as companion pieces myself.) Frodo is in the prologue, and an older, wiser Bilbo is the narrator. It does serve a purpose to people who might not really recall Bilbo, as he wasn't really in the movies. For someone like me who was introduced to the books through TH, however, it was a little jarring. Still, I understood why they did it. Other liberties were taken. We're given backstories that were never mentioned, at least  in The Hobbit, but I've never read The Simillarion (nor has the LOTR fan I went with) so perhaps we're missing something there. And Galadriel... did we even hear of her in the first book?  I don't think they hurt the movie, but they didn't add much to it either.  And the Saruman part would have had more of a punch had we not been hinted towards his future evil.

Martin Freeman did not disappoint as Bilbo; he definitely was not a Frodo 1.0, from what I could tell, and I liked that. His character development rang true for me. Also, the guy who played Kili? Yummy. And I no longer picture him as female. (When I read the book all those years ago, I somehow thought Fili and Kili were women at first. Then they were called men and I was all "wait, huh?")

 I may actually re-read the book, because I'd like to go back to the original story.  

Comments

[fiones]

It's actually a very close adaption to the book, but it includes a lot of stuff from the Appendices. None of the extra backstory was made up, it all came from the appendices in Return of the King. The thing to remember about the book is that it follows exclusively Bilbo's perspective, but a lot of other stuff is going on during that time frame that we never get to see since it's not part of his narrative. Cinematically, it doesn't work. Gandalf would barely even be in the movie if they didn't include the White Council and the Necromancer.

Plus, a lot of stuff in the book is covered in like a paragraph when it would probably be an actual lengthy event (I'm looking at you, Battle of Five Armies)

[ani_bester]

Most of what was added was from the Simillarion, so if I looked at this as not a Hobbit adaptation but of a Middle Earth mythos adaptation it worked.

The only things added that drove me nuts was the one-handed orc out for revenge. That wasn't from anything and it felt tacked on to me :/

Radagast too was far expanded, but IMHO it worked better.

Overall though, I was delighted with the movie, my main complaint was in a few areas I felt it dragged

[tartanboxers.livejournal.com]

Here's the thing as I see it (and as a complete Tolkien geek). When The Hobbit was originally written, LOTR did not exist yet. JRRT didn't even have in mind that the ring Bilbo found was THE Ring or even evil. In fact, in the original published version, Gollum gave Bilbo the ring and they parted on friendly terms. All that was ret-conned so the LOTR story became possible.

All the backstory and wider political situation was filled in later after LOTR came into existence. That's why you don't really see much of it in the original Hobbit. But it's in the appendices of LOTR.

I think the differences between the film and the book are also a question of POV. The book, IIRC, is pretty strictly from Bilbo's POV (minus author intrusions, which mainly occur early on). He was unaware of the wider political situation as things were happening, but the movie made the choice to show all that.

The part where you see Galadriel, Saruman, Elrond, and Gandalf meeting is a session of the White Council, and while it's not in the book, it could have happened. The placement of Dol Guldur affects Galadiel fairly directly, since it's very close to Lorien. They left this out of the LOTR movies, but she actually went there herself with an army of elves from Lorien and destroyed the place while everyone else was off attacking Mordor.

Anyway, the really big change they made was to add Azog to the story. Azog appears in the appendices and he did have a grudge against Thorin and his family, only the battle where they have all that out takes place before The Hobbit in actual canon. PJ just moved those events up to make them concurrent with the story, but this mirrors his history of moving up Aragorn and Arwen's tale into the main LOTR. (A&A made their choices and were a done deal years and years before LOTR in canon.)

I think you can probably tell I didn't hate it. *grin* I quite enjoyed it for what it was, not being a particular fan of The Hobbit as a book.

[author-by-night.livejournal.com]

You know, I may need to take back and say the opposite of what I said earlier, upon reading your thoughts and some other people's posts. Maybe it was that the movie was for hardcore fans, actually? Because my Dad went with me, and he calls himself a big fan and shared my sentiments, but... I think there's even a difference between really hardcore fans, fans who really like the series and remember things more basic fans wouldn't. (The last two being really casual fans and then people who mostly - or only - just know the movies.) I mean, in a way, it's almost like if in the Harry Potter movies they'd had Remus and Sirius have a long scene together. (ETA: Not necessarily in a slashy way! Although I have friends who would've been beside themselves with joy if they'd done that.) Hardcore fans like me would've been thrilled, but I think even some fairly big fans I know would've been a little more "meh" about it. Not a perfect comparison, but hopefully I'm making sense.


All the backstory and wider political situation was filled in later after LOTR came into existence. That's why you don't really see much of it in the original Hobbit.

Ahh, that makes sense now. And I think in general the way they opened it helped ease us into the story. Because I mean, even I hadn't really read The Hobbit in years, so I was only faintly familiar with Bilbo's character - it was a different way to be introduced to him. :) Plus, there is something kind of artistic about Frodo stepping out so Bilbo can step in...