As I believe you all have likely gathered from previous posts of mine, I'm quite the Tolkien fan. I've read all of Tolkien's novels cover-to-cover, including the extensive indexes on the characters themselves, and I've seen all of the movies they inspired directed by the one and only Peter Jackson. And the three films based on The Lord of the Rings...don't hate me, but I love them as much as I love the original Star Wars trilogy. Maybe even more. But now Peter Jackson's making a new trilogy based on Tolkien's first book, The Hobbit. And I'm not quite so enthralled with The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey as I was (and arguably still am) with Jackson's first trilogy. Here's a list of the reasons why:
1) Prequel vs. Sequel
When Tolkien wrote the books, there was a great deal of time between them, both in our world and in the characters' world. The Hobbit, published in the nineteen thirties, was the story of a three-foot humanoid name Bilbo Baggins, who went on an adventure with a company of dwarves and the wise wizard Gandalf to recover the home of the dwarves from the dragon Smaug. The Lord of the Rings, released fifteen years later, was set sixty years after the events of The Hobbit. Gandalf explains, in a lecture lasting several pages that somehow manages not to bore the audience out of their skulls (owing to Tolkien's genius in storytelling), how the events of The Hobbit served to catalyze events happening early in The Lord of the Rings. So, The Lord of the Rings is the sequel to The Hobbit; at least, that's how Tolkien intended it. In P.J.'s version, however, The Hobbit is a prequel to The Lord of the Rings. Now, in some ways, I feel this is a positive trait, especially in the scenes with Gollum. However, I feel that the prequel-nature is the cause for more deviations from Tolkien. There are a good fifteen minutes of film making specific references to Mordor and the Dark Lord Sauron, when neither is so much as named in the book, and I feel that it draws away from the storyline as the characters experienced it in the book.
2) Makeup vs. CGI vs. No Makeup at All
All right, let's get to the business of makeup. In P.J.'s original film, the various dwarves and orcs and goblins were created through makeup. And, as those of you who have seen the films can concur, the makeup was masterful. The artists behind it breathed life into the masks of orcs, so that you were seeing a race of malevolent goblins rather than people wearing clay noses, ears and some greenish blush. And the dwarves wore elaborate prostheses to bring them closer to Tolkien's descriptions of their facial features. But in The Hobbit, all that's gone. The orcs and the goblins are completely computer generated. So the audience goes from seeing these beautifully done, realistic orcs that seem like tangible, living creatures to watching a bunch of computer generated, obviously fake humanoids running around the screen. And the dwarves...they aren't even wearing the facial prosthetics that John Rhys-Davies suffered through during his performance as Gimli. So, rather than hardened warriors, they look like a bunch of male models showing off the latest medieval outfits. We were led to expect a certain standard by The Lord of the Rings, and The Hobbit simply doesn't meet those standards.
3) Deviations from the Plot
I briefly mentioned the deviations from the plot earlier. Now it's time to dig deeper, people. The great thing about The Lord of the Rings is that the film version followed Tolkien very closely. Very few elements were cut out, very few were added. And when elements of the plot changed, it had no big impact on the flow of the story. However, this isn't the case in P.J.'s version of The Hobbit. Various elements are added for the sake of the whole prequel-thing, but that's not the point. What's important is that The Hobbit film version is to the literary version what blackberries are to blueberries; elaborating on this metaphor, the film version of The Lord of the Rings would be to the literary version what green apples are to red apples. Many characters from The Lord of the Rings make cameo appearances when they had no place in the book. P.J.'s also invented a few characters, or highly elaborated them, simply for the sake of the plot. Is this - are any of these - really necessary? Well, that's arguable, and you do need to take into account the context. But out of context, I would certainly say no.
No comments:
Post a Comment