There were major differences between the book and the Hobbit films. Mainly in that Tolkien left huge gaps in his narrative which the movies fill. For example, Gandalf just vanishes for about half the story. Tolkien never says where he went, what he was doing, or exactly why. I think he write once sentence saying he had gone on an errand for the White Council, and that is it. The films show why he had to go, and everything he did, and its incredible importance.

Other smaller things are that the Elven King of Mirkwood/Green Leaves never even had a name in the book. In the films he does - Thranduil (which I believe was supplied in LOTR). In the book Azog was dead before the story even started. The movie keeps him alive, makes him the general of the orcs of Dol Guldur, and a personal enemy of Thorin. Likewise in the movie his son Bolg is the general of the orcs of Gundabad, and develops into a rival of Legolas.

Speaking of Legolas, he is not in the book at all, but we see plenty of him in the films (how can we not, when we travel into his home!). Of course there is Tauriel as well. She didn't exist in the book. She was created because the story was an incredible sausage fest. Her character gets a lot of hate because she's not original - and undoubtedly because she is female - two unforgivable sins to many. But she is my favorite character in all the films.

That is just some of it. I am sure there is a lot more.

I read the Jaws book a long time ago too. I also prefer the movie. One thing I hated about the book was that it had Sheriff Brody's wife have an affair with Hooper.

This post has been edited by SubRosa: Dec 8 2015, 03:00 AM

I started The Frankenstein Chronicles. So far really cool, if a bit gruesome. At first I was a little surprised that it is set in 1827. I was expecting it to be in the 1880s or 90s. I guess because there is so much Victorian Horror these days. But in retrospect, I think Mary Shelley wrote The Modern Prometheus in 1816 or so. So it is much closer to the time in her book.

There is definitely a lot of Sean Bean love here. The first episode was packed with delightful Sharpe easter eggs. In once scene we see him open his trunk, revealing a green rifleman's jacket at the bottom. In another he says he served in the 95th Rifles during the war. Two boys are whistling Over The Hills And Far Away in a third scene. And there is even another character who picks up a knife and says "still sharp" in a fourth.

Now I think I will have to do a Sharpes Rifles marathon...

Just started the second episode, and already we have met William Blake and Mary Shelly. Most cool!

But Sean Bean geekness aside, there is some really good writing here. The basic gist of the story is simple. Bean is a police inspector who discovers the body of a dead girl, or more to the point, eight dead girls stitched up into one. We can guess how that came about, and that he is going to hunt down the mad scientist behind it all.

But behind all that we have the trade of the resurrection men - body snatchers who steal bodies to sell to medical schools, which cannot get enough cadavers through legal means (they could only legally get the bodies of executed murderers from the state). The Lord Home Secretary wants to put the resurrection men out of business by passing new legislation that will automatically give the bodies of all those too poor to pay for a funeral to the medical schools. Opposing him are devout Christians who believe that this will deny all those unfortunate souls the Resurrection, because their bodies will have been cut up into pieces and denied a Christian burial. I think the latter view was really well done. For as they see it, this law would make it illegal for the poor to enter Heaven!

So there is a this major power struggle between religious, social, economic, and scientific forces going on in the background. And suddenly creating a creature from the parts of dead bodies takes on a whole new dimension. It goes beyond one man's hubris, or his failure to take responsibility for his actions (two major themes of Mary Shelley's novel). Now it is a political statement as well. That is something we have not seen in a Frankenstein story.

This post has been edited by SubRosa: Dec 11 2015, 02:56 AM

The hatred for Tauriel sounds like some of the rabid Lore fans TES has, . I like things to be the way I have learned them - unless the new way is better. Then I welcome the change, lol.

Yes, the affair between them seemed thrown in just to add a sexual element in, there was no building tension between them first to lead up to it; only a neglectful marriage and a young male body. It was just dumped in there. Really, if not for the ravaging shark I don't think that book would have ever been good enough to attract a movie deal, it was the idea of frightening the public with a massive mechanical shark that they discovered that they could make that sold the story imho.


So tonight I'm watching Dolly Parton's "Coat of Many Colors."

I’m a couple of episodes in to Jessica Jones and really liking it. This one looks like a keeper. Thanks for the reviews, my fellow Jessica watchers!

SubRosa, I’m a fan of Tauriel as well. I loved everything about her.

Tonight I have a date to see the movie where Thor fights the whale. I’m pretty excited about it!

Finished watching [i]The Last Kingdom[i/] today. It was alright, don't know if I'll bother with the next series.

As for the Hobbit films, while I've never seen them, I know enough was invented to pad them(three films, seriously?) that it would be more accurate to say that they're inspired by The Hobbit. They gave each one a subtitle anyway, should have just gone with those instead. Had they done so they probably would have been better received. Well, that and if they'd cut back on the number of Lord of the Rings references, Legolas being the most obnoxious.

I think Tauriel receives as much hate for being dropped into a love triangle as she does for being an addition, especially since it's a pretty ridiculous one Middle Earth. *checks wikipedia* Wait, they took fighting the spiders in Mirkwood off Bilbo? Urgh.

All of those movies are enjoyable to me because I view them as entirely separate from the books. I love the movies and watch them over and over again, but they are after all only movies. For me the books let me fill in with my imagination, so books will always win.

It struck me as funny in the final trailers when the voiceover talked about returning to Middle Earth one last time. Do they think that no one else ever will re-imagine Tolkien’s work? Lol.

Tolkien's books have always been considered unfilmable. Peter Jackson is the only guy in the world crazy enough to try something so impossible. Watching the Appendices you can see why.

Where a regular film has about 90 days of production filming, the first two Hobbit movies and a little bit of the third had 266 days of principal photography. That does not count the vast majority of the third movie. Or the pickups, which took about 6 more months. Where other films might have a second unit of photography, the Tolkien movies had third, fourth, fifth, etc... units. Post-production was another year. Then there is Tolkien's writing itself, which is filled with gaps in the plot like Gandalf vanishing for half the Hobbit, or the Elvenking of Mirkwood not even having a name.

I am sure someday, someone will try filming Middle Earth again. But I doubt it will be anytime soon.

This post has been edited by SubRosa: Dec 11 2015, 10:33 PM

Maybe the person who is going to make the next Middle Earth movie is a kid now who has already seen Peter Jackson’s adaptations. Hopefully they’re saying, “My movie will have Tom Bombadil in it!”

I’d love to see another animated version. There’s also unfinished but published material that could be made into complete stories. Perhaps modernized a bit, say with a few female main characters or *gasp* some humans and elves who are not white.

I hope so about the first! Peter Jackson himself was that kid at one time, and much of the cast and crew.

I would think an animated tv series would be a much more doable prospect than films. The Clone Wars did the Star Wars universe really well in that format. It doesn't cost as much, is easier to get backing for, and so it is also easier to break away from the conservative mold and do something innovative. But acknowledging that women exist, or black people, or black women!!! Inconceivable!

This post has been edited by SubRosa: Dec 12 2015, 12:43 AM

To be fair to Tolkien here:

Galadriel is easily one of the most powerful individuals in Middle Earth. Sauron can't even begin to figure her out, and she's actively working against him. Eowyn slew the Witch-King of Angmar. Of the male characters only Gandalf tops that with his defeating the Balrog in Moria. But Eowyn outdoes every other male in the Lord of the Rings, and is only let down by pining after Aragorn. I'll grant you, they're not main characters, but they've got nearly all the Fellowship beaten.

As for the shortage of black people, that's just part of the setting. They're there, but they're basically in the wrong part of the world, and those lands are hostile to Gondor. Considering where Tolkien drew a lot of inspiration from, it's hardly surprising.

This post has been edited by Callidus Thorn: Dec 12 2015, 01:37 AM

I am not calling Tolkien a sexist. But the fact is he lived in a time where misogyny was not simply accepted, but expected and demanded. He was bucking the trend when he created characters like Galadriel. But OTOH, Galadriel is the classic White Goddess stereotype. She is in the background being supportive, empathic, kind, wise, noble... all passive traits. We never see her pull out a sword and hack off an orc's head in the books, or snap her fingers and turn a goblin to dust, or lead an army into battle. That kind of direct, active action is reserved for males. It took Peter Jackson to actually show us that Galadriel is the most powerful and dangerous elf in Middle Earth.

Except Eowyn. In her we truly see an Action Girl, albeit for only a brief moment. I applaud Tolkien for that. He even lampshades the male active/female passive stereotypes by emphasizing that Eowyn is able kill the Witch King because she is not a man. That is ought to be a Feminist Slogan.

However add Arwen in and there are only 3 women in the entire world. In the real world women make up 51% of the population. Unless you are setting your story in a men's prison, boys boarding school, or some other suitably Greek situation, about 51% of your characters ought to be female. Half the Fellowship ought to be female, and would be if those books were written today. That is why Jackson and company created the Tauriel character, because the books are an incredible sausage fest.

This post has been edited by SubRosa: Dec 12 2015, 01:42 AM

Well, Lothlorien's got Moria behind it, she's fencing with Sauron, and it's made clear that the only reason that place is still safe is down to her. And bear in mind what we're told about the elven rings: that they're tools of understanding, not weapons. So displays of power of that type from her wouldn't fit with what we're told about the elves. Contrast her with Elrond, who's doing the same sort of thing, and she wins out because she's closer to the danger, and acting more directly.



If were talking about fighters here, which was supposed to be the point of the Fellowship in the first place, wouldn't the more relevant figure be the number of women serving in the military?

And, to wander off of Tolkien briefly, I've got something of a pet peeve on this front.

I don't like the idea of modifying an older story for something like this. The way I see it, gender or race or anything like that shouldn't be an issue, that's just how I was brought up, but changing an existing story like that, to "correct" an imbalance of that sort, is actively making an issue of it.

I mean, you've already pointed out above the way the times were when the Lord of the Rings was written, and I don't disagree about how it would be if it was written today(beyond my above question), but is there really any need to go around adjusting existing fiction to reflect the modern world, which it clearly isn't set in?

Frodo, Sam, Merry, and Pippin were warriors? Only Aragon, Legolas, Boromir, and Gimli were what could be called professional fighters. Gandalf sits in between. He is supposed to be a wizard, but he spends more time whacking things with a sword that actually doing anything magical (which always made me scratch my head).




Gender or race or religion shouldn't be an issue. But it is when an author goes out of their way to make it so when they go out of their way to exclude them in order to appease prejudices. Tolkien was writing to his audience when he only put 3 female characters in his novels. He wanted to sell books. He wouldn't have if Aragorn or Gandalf had been female. Not in his lifetime at least.

All stories, whether novel, legends, or myths, are reflections of the social, economic, and political agendas of the societies that created them. They are relevant to that society, even when they are completely false in their portrayals of people, races, genders, etc.... Because even those misconceptions are part of that parent's society's values and beliefs. But when you take these stories out of that time and/or place, they stop being relevant, and just become bigoted. Blindly reproducing a story written in 1750 that presents all Native Americans as evil, unintelligent, drunkards is just parroting the prejudices of the writer, and making a conscious decision to reinforce these negative stereotypes in the modern world. Note this is not to say one should not present some characters with those opinions of Natives, but for the writer to actually present all Natives that way, independent of points of view.

To put it simply, Peter Jackson tried to make his movies more female-friendly because he made a conscious decision not to promote the sexist values of the time that Tolkien wrote his novels. I very much appreciate the fact that he took a higher road, at least in some small measures.

This post has been edited by SubRosa: Dec 12 2015, 03:20 AM

Callidus, I’m sorry I didn’t explain myself very well. I’m not suggesting there’s anything wrong with the originals. I’m saying that I’d like to see some of the stories in a Middle Earth that’s imagined from a modern context, which is not at all a modern Middle Earth.

Sadly I did not get to see Thor fight the whale tonight. Instead I went to see the Katniss movie. It would have been better with fewer scenes and a lot more fire. The highlight of the night’s viewing was a trailer for the animated dinosaur movie.

That looks like it'll be fun. Dinosaurs are so adorable!

More fire! I'll wait for Netflix to see that one, like the others.

And dinosaurs FTW!

Edit: You know what? Forget it. I really don't think this is worth the argument.

This post has been edited by Callidus Thorn: Dec 12 2015, 10:23 PM

Out of the blue this afternoon it dawned on me that after buying Game of Thrones Seasons 1 & 2 on DVD from Amazon.com months ago I never watched anything beyond season 1 episode 1. I watched season 1 episode 2 before supper. Doesn't hold a candle to the book, but not bad at all. I was sorta surprised they chose not to show the hound run down and kill the butcher boy following the incident with Prince Joffrey. M only real complaint is the obvious one . . . the episode needed to be far far longer to do the source material full justice.

At YouTube I've watched a variety of things. More chronicles of the lives of super obese individuals. Various game LP episodes. Some history. News as presented by TYT. Yada yada. I distinctly recall watching at least one video I wanted to link here, but can't for the life of me remember what it/they is/are.

I started The X-files a few days ago. My grandma used to watch it, but I wasn't at her house often enough to really remember much other than this scene where some.... thing(?) was crawling out of some space and it looked like it had been skinned and I was scared for weeks.

Anyway, I'm really liking Mulder. I can't say that I "believe" in aliens, but I kinda enjoy the idea of Area 51 and ancient astronauts the same way I love ghost and paranormal stories.

Also, I finally got caught up with The Walking Dead. I love it. I think it's my favorite show right now.

Is that the original X-Files show? There were a couple of episodes that crawling critter might have been from. The Host is my first thought. It was about a Fluke-man living in the sewers. I think the other was called The Family, it was about a family of horrifically inbreds living in the country.