{"id":23469,"date":"2013-12-28T09:41:06","date_gmt":"2013-12-28T14:41:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=23469"},"modified":"2013-12-28T09:41:06","modified_gmt":"2013-12-28T14:41:06","slug":"reasons-a-true-to-the-text-version-of-the-hobbit-wouldnt-work","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2013\/12\/28\/reasons-a-true-to-the-text-version-of-the-hobbit-wouldnt-work\/","title":{"rendered":"Reasons a true-to-the-text version of The Hobbit<\/em> wouldn’t work"},"content":{"rendered":"

Actually, Dr. J<\/a> says a more faithful movie would stink (note that there are mild spoilers in the quoted section and bigger spoilers in the full post):<\/p>\n

I love J.R.R. Tolkien\u2019s The Hobbit<\/em>. I read it for the first time when I was six years old and have returned to it many times over the years. I still have a soft spot in my heart for the cheesy cartoon version of the story that Rankin\/Bass did when I was a kid. I\u2019ve shoved the book into each of my children\u2019s hands as soon as I thought his reading skills could handle it.<\/p>\n

So I can understand it when writers I respect, such as Daniel Larison at the American Conservative<\/em>, express a sense of horror at Peter Jackson\u2019s film adaptations of the beloved book, particularly the second film, The Desolation of Smaug<\/em>, which is now in theaters. The criticisms abound. Why did Jackson think he could turn a 200-page children\u2019s book into three lengthy films? Why does he have Gandalf wandering around mountain tombs and an old, ruined fortress, settings that appear nowhere in the book? Why did he put Legolas in the film when the elf does not appear in the book? Why does Bard the bowman get a complicated back story that\u2019s absent in the book? Why does Smaug chase the dwarves around the halls of Erebor when they never even confronted each other in the book? (Are you noticing a pattern here?)<\/p>\n

What appears to be the common desire of these critics is for Jackson to have made a simpler Hobbit<\/em> with the story told in one or (at most) two films and with a script that hews closely to the text of the original book. As something of a Tolkien purist myself, I completely understand this wish. However, although I disagree with some of Jackson\u2019s decisions (particularly the elf\/dwarf romance in the Desolation of Smaug<\/em>), I have to come to his defense on his overall approach to these films. In fact, I\u2019m certain that the \u201cfaithful film adaptation\u201d of the 1937 Hobbit<\/em> these critics seem to want would in fact turn out to be awful, or at least fall far short of Tolkien\u2019s ultimate vision. Here are five reasons why:<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Actually, Dr. J says a more faithful movie would stink (note that there are mild spoilers in the quoted section and bigger spoilers in the full post): I love J.R.R. Tolkien\u2019s The Hobbit. I read it for the first time when I was six years old and have returned to it many times over the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[32,28],"tags":[868,122,420],"class_list":["post-23469","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-media","tag-jrrtolkien","tag-movies","tag-thehobbit"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-66x","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23469","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23469"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23469\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23470,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23469\/revisions\/23470"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23469"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23469"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23469"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}