Kiss and Make Up or Someone Has Come to Their Senses
BBC NEWS | Entertainment | Jackson to produce Hobbit movies
Peter Jackson, Oscar-winning director of the Lord of the Rings movies, has signed a deal to produce two films based on JRR Tolkien’s The Hobbit
I loved The Hobbit when I read it at maybe 10 or 11 and I was dreding a film version that was outside the cinematic landscape that Jackson made.
The Hobbit is Tolkien-lite and in my opinion much better for it. When I read The Lord of the Rings I couldn’t see the point of reading any more after Frodo dropped the ring in Mount Doom. I’m told that important things happened after but I’d had my fill of wondering around even if he was going home.
Tolkien is a brilliant world builder and creator but he could have done with a bit of fire under him when he was writing. A bit too self indulgent if you ask me.
What surprises me is that they want to turn the Hobbit into two movies, rather than one. This strikes me as the kind of calculated Hollywood decision that is motivated purely by greed. The Hobbit could, at best, fill one film. And if part one does not earn billions (which, I suspect, is likely), the second part will probably be downbudgeted and look cheap in comparison, pretty much ruining any chance of a good Hobbit experience in the cinema…
I think the Hobbit (the book) has a fantastic first sentence (like Neuromancer) but the rest does not live up to it (also like Neuromancer). Lord of the Rings I will always remember as taking up most of a summer to read, with only one chapter that was exciting.