Friday, February 01, 2013

The hobbit, not even halfway there and nowhere near back again ...

Sorry to be so late in posting this, but I kind of forgot that I'd seen it. 

 I know, I can hear you now, "how can you give hours of your life to the movie adaptation of a book which was such a big deal when you were a teenager Stuffy, so important to you that you taught yourself to read dwarf runes, (i didn't get out much) but come 2013 you watch the movie, then forget to blog about it?"  

Good question reader, it's not an unmemorable film, there's a really clever meld of normal size actors playing the dwarves, (not dwarfs, Tolkien spent pages on the etymological ramifications of dwarfish and dwarvish, never forget he was a linguist first and foremost) with normal size actors playing normal sized folk, the wizards, the orcs, the elves et al. 


There are stunning action sequences in the mines and the forests, the scenery is awesome, the storytelling powerful and quite true to the original (although rewriting Bilbo's defeat of the trolls was ill-judged). 


Andy Serkis reprises Gollum (in what I thought was the best part of the tale) and I enjoyed Martin Freeman as Bilbo, he seems to be born to the role and I'm really quite looking forward to the next two episodes, so what's the problem? 

Well, it does raise some motivational questions. Why three films?  Lord of the Rings was an adaptation of three massive volumes covering literally earth-shattering events (middle-earth shattering?) war, faith, good and evil, magic, loyalty, love, fealty, folly, treachery, hubris, grandeur, sacrifice, an epic story in every sense of the word. The Hobbit? a tale for youngsters of wordplay, gentle humour, these simple concepts stretched into a massive franchise trilogy delivering technological advance, huge scale spectacle and very articulate Orc kings. 

So, doesn't feel quite right, I blame Harry Potter.
On the Mrs Stuffy scale, a drowsy snoozer.


A precioussss haiku ?

Bilbo steps onward
Hours of awesomeness ensue
Gollum and I? Robbed!


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posted by Stuffy @ 4:25 pm 0 comments