Middle-earth Journeys

ARGH!!!!! Oh for heavens sake!!! Beorn is NOT the last of his kind!! According to LOTR and the Appendices, he AND HIS PEOPLE continue to guard the toll roads and he is succeeded by his son Grimbeorn. And it sounds like PJ's giving Thranduil the same character assassination treatment that he gave Denethor in LOTR. No interaction with other species? What rubbish! The Elves of Mirkwood had commerce with the men of Laketown! It was an important point in The Hobbit, and the impetus behind the alliance between Bard and the Elvenking. ACH! I'm too mad to even go into the rest of the mess related in that article. It's all complete hokum!

I'm sorry. I am now officially of the opinion that PJ & Co. have gone completely off the tracks with this movie. I will watch The Desolation of Smaug, but my heart is heavy for all the crimes committed against The Professor's tale.

Excellent rant! I imagine they need to do some of this to justify this Tauriel character as something of a rebel. Maybe, again, they've made male teenagers the target market--big mistake.

Make sure to check into theonering.net today if you want to see the first images of Beorn!

oh Lindariel

I think if anyone could pull off looking YOUNGER than they did in LOTR (maybe with a little help from CGI), it would be Viggo Mortensen. We've seen him get shaggy, craggy, and grimy for a variety of movies (remember his look in The Road?) and then emerge later for premieres looking breathtakingly young and fabulous. If I didn't know better, I would suspect he had a nasty, mouldering portrait in the attic somewhere!


if only.......

FYI: there are many new Hobbit movie stories posted at TOR.n today that look really interesting!

Et notre ami Topaz de VW a la grande, l'immense chance d'être sur place, là-bas en Terre du Milieu en ce moment, nous attendons ses reportages et ses photos avec impatience

Wouldn't that be fun?

Here is a review of the DOS movie by the legendary Quickbeam at TOR.n:

http://www.theonering.net/torwp/2013/12 ... ts-fandom/

Be warned: there are many spoilers at the end! It appears that there are quite serious departures from the book!

Well Merry, after reading Quickbeam's report, I am sure of one thing. Any chance that Christopher Tolkien would ever sell the movie rights to The Silmarillion are now completely GONE!!! I think Peter Jackson should be billing these movies as "Peter Jackson's The Hobbit."

I can accept the kinds of changes that are absolutely necessary to translate a book to the movie screen -- foreshortening of the plot, merging of similar characters, making overly "poetic" dialogue more believable, etc. PJ had already started going waaaaaaaaaaaay off the rails in The Hobbit, Part 1, and Part 2 sounds like more or less a complete departure from even the broad outlines of Tolkien's tale.

I have no doubt that the movie will be extremely entertaining. I expect I shall enjoy it tremendously -- especially if the Smaug visuals even remotely live up to the gloriousness that is Benedict Cumberbatch's VOICE. But it won't be Tolkien. It will just be Tolkien-like . . . sort of . . .

Well, Lindariel, I doubt that there was much chance that CT would have given up those rights anyway, wouldn't you say? I'm not sure how a coherent narrative plot could have been formed of The Silmarillion, anyway.

But I think you're expressing your own disapproval of the moves PJ is taking, and I agree. In some ways, I don't think the moviemakers did adequate fundamental thinking about what kind of movie this would be. Maybe this is due to the unfortunate beginnings of the process. And what they call an 'organic' process--writing as they go along and adjusting to amendments suggested by actors, etc.--while creative, can sometimes just result in confusion and exhaustion. So I think your approach is best: enjoy it for what it is and don't have any high expectations.

For myself, I've not seen Aiden Turner before and I think he's kind of cute! So I might enjoy seeing him in romantic mode! (I say this in an entirely Platonic and grandmotherly sort of way. )

You're right about Christopher Tolkien, Merry, but the optimistic side of me was holding onto the tiniest hope that an inspired and truthful cinematic telling of The Hobbit might, might, might have persuaded him to consider selling the movie rights to The Silmarillion. I agree that the entire book lacks sufficient through-narrative for a movie, but there are individual stories that could be beautifully adapted -- The Tale of Beren and Luthien being the most obvious, The Children of Hurin another. I also think a through-narrative specifically about the creation, theft, and war over the Silmarils could be conceived. Alas, I think PJ's off-the-tracks recreation of The Hobbit will have permanently cemented Christopher Tolkien's ban on the sale of any more movie rights. Too bad! Perhaps his successor will have a more lenient view . . . . One can only hope!

I definitely agree with you about Aidan Turner -- quite a dish! I greatly enjoyed his performance as the vampire roommate in the BBC's Being Human. Curious to see how this love triangle is going to play out.

You know, if I had to pick out an age-appropriate movie dwarf for myself (Oh, Lord, has it come to this?), I think it would be Dwalin. I'm sort of enjoying his physical prowess and yet he still seems more thoughtful than most of his companions.

Vous me faites sourire, Merry! vous avez raison de trouver qu'il est le plus sensé, réfléchi, le plus âgé aussi peut-être? ayant vécu beaucoup de choses.
J'ai vu ce jour ''La désolation de Smaug'', le dragon est impressionnant, magnifique; pour mon goût il y a trop de longueurs sur les batailles, pas tellement de nouveautés ,des redites de Seigneur des Anneaux, quelques bons morceaux mais je suis moins emballée par ce 2ème épisode, PJ retombe toujours un peu dans les mêmes pièges, il s'amuse, et rajoute trop de choses au récit d'origine. Les interprètes sont ce qu'ils sont, je les trouve un peu trop 'numérisés 'pour certains, pas assez proches des humains. Et les monstres,orcs et compagnie, sont de plus en plus horribles!

I also think that Dwalin can't be too much different than Balin, although they don't look like brothers in the movies. But Balin is the most thoughtful of the dwarves so, despite his warrior build, Dwalin isn't too far behind.

Thanks for your review, Michka! I won't be able to see the movie for a couple of weeks, so I won't know for a while. Good to know now, though, that Smaug is worth waiting for. Did you enjoy Beorn's house?

Eh bien, je n'aime pas cette ''bête'', l'ours est trop monstrueux ,il aurait pu être davantage ressemblant à un ours réel; Béorn est vraiment trop velu ,et l'accueil des nains est plus amusant dans la version de Tolkien,( le récit de Gandalf et l'arrivée petit à petit des 13 nains chez lui, le surprenant et l'intrigant)quant à la maison pleine d'animaux de toute sorte , c'est une autre idée, je pense,de PJ comme il aime à rajouter!je crois que je dois retourner voir le film pour étudier et discuter des détails, mais dans l'ensemble, j'aime moins ce 2ème volet ,à part Bard(très beau) et l'antre du dragon, ce Smaug énorme dans Erebor qu'on découvre un peu plus. A suivre....