There's a Hobbit movie coming. Well, three of them, to be precise. I am not impressed. There may have been hints of this attitude in a previous post, but let me lay out in more detail, for those who are interested, why I can't get worked up about the new movies. It's really about how Peter Jackson and his merrie band failed us with the LOTR trilogy that was given into his care. He's already forfeited all the trust the director of Meet the Feebles was ever going to get from me. Detailed thoughts after the jump.
First off, let me say that I was prepared to accept the first movie as tolerable. Of the three films, it had the fewest changes of substance and was most faithful to the original narrative and, far more importantly, the original characters. Sean Astin's accent was so bad I cringe every time I hear him speak in the movies, Arwen's appearance at the Ford of Bruinen elbows out one of the greatest characters in Tolkien's mythology, but I can forgive all this. Some concession has to be made to the modern times we live in and having an elven woman be the dashing hero is one of the lesser offences. I have other quibbles, but let them pass.
After the first film I was cautiously optimistic about how the rest of it would go. But then The Two Towers was released and the sun appeared dark in my eyes and all was dust and ashes. Gimli went full retard. Théoden was a complete and utter wuss. Treebeard was your senile grandfather who spoke in non sequiturs. Elves came to Helm's Deep. Aragorn gets lost over a cliff into a river... what? There's an awkward scene with Aragorn and Éowyn. Warg riders attack... wait, this is Tolkien still, right? Not some Frank Frazetta comic?(Probably NSFW depending on how your search engine filters are set.)
And I still haven't mentioned Faramir or Elrond convincing Arwen to dump Aragorn. At this point, it's hardly still Tolkien and we haven't gotten to the third film. The character names are right, but no one is acting the way they are supposed to. If the characters are all acting out of character then it's not the same story. A cheerful Hamlet? An unambitious Macbeth? A forgiving Edmond Dantes? An unbelieving Alyosha Karamazov? A disloyal Sancho Panza? A satyric Mr Darcy? An intelligent Bertie Wooster?
This, then, is my problem with the films and why I refuse to speak of them charitably. They are not Tolkien. They are a corruption, a perversion, a view of Middle-Earth via Andy Warhol. It is a fantasy through the lens of Hollywood and the pretensions and idiocies that the worldly wish us to accept. I don't need to think of women as being exactly the same as men except for the plumbing, so I don't need to have Arwen substitute for Glorfindel. I don't believe all men are truly cowards in their hearts, so Aragorn doesn't have to be filled with self-doubt. I can believe that certain defeat does not have to be feared, so Théoden doesn't need to run away and hide. I can believe that some men can keep their word, even when it is inconvenient and/or difficult, so I don't need to have Faramir frog-march the hobbits back to Osgiliath.
At root, these movies were made by a man who gives no evidence of having firm morals or any logical grounding for the principles he does seem to value, and the end product shows this clearly. Why should we think that he will do any better with three Hobbit movies?
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