LOS ANGELES (AP) - Guillermo del Toro is directing "The Hobbit" and its sequel, which will span the 60 years between the first book and the beginning of the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy, New Line Cinema announced Thursday. 9news.com

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Cool.
He should do well with it.

The kids and I were recently watching the animated version and they were asking why no "real" movie has been made.

They say the damnedest things.

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Sequel? What happened after The Hobbit was that B. Baggins, Esq., lived in comfort and quiet, and did his best to avoid the Sackville-Bagginses. Makes for a boring movie.

Or are they shooting the one book as two movies?

Fred

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I think it's about events going on elsewhere in Middle Earth - things hinted at in the appendices to Lord of the Rings.

I'd like to see them do some Silmaril tales.

This is great news - a vast improvement on Jackson. My main worry now is that the sequel will avoid the available Tolkien material, using a lot of new material instead.

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User Friendly has the answer.

Fred

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Ouch!

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Ah, the Simerillion. That's the hardest reading book I own, and I've read it several times
#EDIT: Anyone have the luxury of owning a hardback copy of Frodo Lives! ?

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Excellent!

If anyone can incorporate the darkness necessary to give the Hobbit its proper gravitas, it is Guillermo del Toro.

I just hope they keep side characters, like Beorn who help develop the story and give the world its depth. (C.f. Tom Bombadil, and Old Man Willow, who were left out of Jackson's rendition...)

I also hope they stick to Jackson's length - i.e. making the movies long enough to do the story justice, rather than trying to stick to typical length movies.

Looking forward to it!

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Jump in with both feet!
- Me, indulging my inner eight-year-old

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Occam's Ghost to Grant Hutchison.

Del Toro: "I was never into heroic fantasy. At all. I don't like little guys and dragons, hairy feet, hobbits -- I've never been into that at all. I don't like sword and sorcery, I hate all that stuff."

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"All your bias are belong to us." Ara Pacis
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Nope, but I've got a hardback copy of The Silmarillion with foldout maps and all...

And I'd have to agree about the difficulty in reading it... damned near worse than the Bible!

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"Where the telescope ends, the microscope begins. Which of the two has the greater view?" - Hugo

"Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened." - Churchill

The Silmarillion is a gorgeous book. More immersible than Lord of the Rings, IMO. The Children of Hurin is high on my reading list.

But the more I think about it, the more I believe Jackson got it right. Any truer to the source material, we'd have had the entire Tolkien Society in ecstacy, but everybody else (including casual fans of the books) glancing at their watches and muttering, "Did they really have to include the bath song?"

There's a middle ground between those two extremes. A lot of things - like, indeed, the bath song - are entirely irrelevant and could be dropped without any impact whatsoever. My main problem with the films isn't so much what was missed out, which Tolkien himself said was an inevitable part of any film adaptation, it was the changes to the characters. Which Tolkien himself said was a complete no no.

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I honestly think Jackson found that middle ground, although I certainly do not think the films are flawless. IMO he produced a film that hit the spot with two vital groups: the popcorn-munchers* and the books' casual fans. The only two groups who appear to be dissatisfied are the Tolkien purists (a very small demographic whom Jackson knew would go to see it anyway) and people who simply don't like that sort of thing.

It's worth keeping in mind that Tolkien was not a film maker.

It is perfectly possible that Two Towers would have been as good as, if not better, than the film we actually got if, say, Faramir had said, "Don't worry Frodo, unlike my brother I shall not covet the ring." But it might have been disastrous. I don't think Jackson took decisions like this lightly.

My feeling at the moment is that I would love to see a Hobbit that follows the book exactly, including the dwarves' crockery song, the oft-ignored giants playing football on the mountain, and Bombur going on about his dream of a feast while the others are starving.


*People who watch films for the sole purpose of being entertained.