![]() ![]() Likewise, Jackson fleshes out each of the dwarves’ characters. Jackson gives Bard a family and a personality, presenting him as a rogue with an altruistic streak. Only Bard’s son, Bain, was ever mentioned by Tolkien, and that was only in a genealogy reference in The Fellowship of the Ring. ![]() Jackson smoothes the story out by introducing characters early and giving them back-stories. In the book, Bard only appears in time to save the day, for example, and the dwarves are more or less indistinguishable from one another. In other instances, some might argue that Jackson actually improved upon the original text, as Tolkien has a habit of introducing important material very abruptly in his stories. Much of Smaug’s dialogue-what Drout describes as the “aggressive politeness” of the British upper class-was taken straight from the book. ![]() Some favorite moments from The Hobbit book clearly made the cut, such as when Bilbo, so proud of himself for smuggling his friends out of the Wood-elf kingdom, suddenly realizes he’s missed out on jumping in a barrel himself, or when Bilbo quakes at the size of Smaug, who stretches from one end of the room to the other. We’ve returned to them this year to get their take on the new movie and help us navigate the sliding scale from unadulterated Tolkien to Jackson invention. Last year, we consulted with two Tolkien experts, John Rateliff, an independent scholar, and Michael Drout, an English professor at Wheaton College, to help us sort through the cinematic noise and identify true Tolkien threads. In some ways, however, this makes picking out those hidden gems and Easter eggs all the more appealing for fans. The sly allusions to Tolkien’s broader world are still there, but they are even more obscure than before. ![]() To stretch The Hobbit-originally a light-hearted 300-page children’s story-into what, in the end, will likely be a nearly nine-hour epic trilogy, Jackson again relied on three main sources: original material from The Hobbit book, including expanding on minor elements that were mentioned only in passing in that text details that Tolkien revealed in The Lord of the Rings books and their Appendices and things he just made up himself. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |