THE SIMPSONS NEWS

Been doing some scenes lately that are really mechanical. What I mean by that is, I’ve been drawing trains. Think The French Connection. I’m really surprised how into it I am. I’m really enjoying it. Time passes really fast when I’m drawing them. Only thing is. I’m going really slow and I’m not going to meet quota this week at all.

MOVIES (The Hobbit)

(EDIT: An update to this post has been put up here: The Hobbit Movie news. Are you Geek enough for D&D 4th edition? Artists go to Washington to fight Orphan Bill.)

A few months back, I listened to my unabridged audio version of The Hobbit on CD. When I listened to it, I was paying closer attention to the story to see if I could picture how a movie version of the book would work. Personally, I looovvee Tolkien‘s books. I like The Silmarillion, The Hobbit, and The Lord of the Rings trilogy, but that doesn’t mean that I blind myself to some of the clunky elements in the books that won’t translate well into a movie format. As far a translating The Hobbit into a movie, the book is very very clunky. It has a very big problem. The climax of the book isn’t what you expected the climax to be. My conclusion after I listened to the entire book was that it would make a lousy movie. At least if they stayed true to the way Tolkien wrote it.

If you haven’t read the books, I will warn you right now that the following paragraphs may contain spoilers. Although, I try to not give anything away.

Okay, so I’m going to try to explain why I think The Hobbit needs some mayor tweaking if it’s going to be made into a movie. For starters, the way the main plot of the story is presented, it seems like it’s the story about a bunch of Dwarves and a Hobbit who are going to steal back their gold from a dragon. This causes the reader to believe that at some point the dragon will, somehow, be slain by these guys and they will get the treasure, The End. That’s the superficial impression you get when you read the story for the first time but the book doesn’t end that way. After the death of that dragon a whole different story starts that seems like it has nothing to do with the original point of the book.

The thing is, the story Tolkien is trying to tell is much deeper than it seems at first. Truth is, the dragon guarding the treasure is not the dragon that’s supposed to be slain. If fact the dragon dies in a really anticlimactic way. As the reader, your like,

“That’s it? That’s how he dies? That’s really kinda lame. I expected more. Okay then, the story is over, time to put the book down. But there’s still a lot of book left, what the heck is going on here?” That’s when Crazy Tolkien fan steps out from behind a bush, with arms on his hips and says,

“Foolish mortal! That’s not what the story is actually about! HAH ha ha ha haaa! The story is actually about GREED. The dragon is merely the external symbol of the greed that will begin to manifest itself inside all the characters that know of the treasure and believe they are entitled to it.” Yes, I’m afraid that Crazy Tolkien fan is right. The story is not about the dragon protecting the treasure but it’s about the greed the treasure causes in the first place. The treasure is a little bit like the One Ring but unlike The Ring, it does not have any evil in it. It’s just something so overwhelmingly beautiful and wonderful, that it causes, even good people, to want to have some of it. Problem is, if you don’t know this, and you set the story up to be a “get the treasure from the dragon” story you will mislead the audience and they will be left scratching their heads. So what to do?

Set it up from the beginning. Make sure to show that the people who are going after the treasure may very well be going after it for more than just “their right” to have it. Perhaps even show in a flashback, how desire for it had caused greed to show it’s ugly head before. As long as there is some clues or some foreshadowing of where the story might be headed as far as the greed for the treasure is concerned, there shouldn’t be too big a problem. It’s something Tolkien might have done a bit better in his book.

Part of the way the film makers are already trying to fix the fact that the book seems to be two different stories, is the fact that they are going to make two films out of it. This is a really good idea since the book itself seems to be two different stories put together, in spite of the fact that one story, stems from the other.

I think that the filmmakers might split the story as follows: The first movie will be about the Dwarves and Bilbo the Hobbit journeying to the Lonely Mountain to get the treasure from the dragon ending with the death of the dragon and the obtaining of the treasure. The Second movie will be about the conflict that happens, once the treasure is obtained. The second movie will have a great climax. There’s a big battle that occurs and it will probably be very dramatic if done right. Even though the writers will have a to fix a problem that I will write about in a second. The first movie SHOULD have a big climax as well, but as Tolkien wrote it won’t work, namely the death of the dragon. As I’ve written before, the dragon dies in a very anticlimactic way. The way Tolkien wrote it, he introduces this heroic guy in the later part of the book, and about three chapters later, he kills the dragon. The characters that we’ve been reading about for pages and pages have very little to do with the death of the dragon. Sure, if it wasn’t from a message from Bilbo to this heroic guy, the dragon could not be defeated, but there is still no emotional connection between the reader and this heroic guy that was introduces only a few chapters before, making the death of the dragon feel a little cheap and almost a little like Deus ex machina. The solution then, is to introduce this guy, earlier in the story. Give this guy a parallel storyline that goes on at the same time as the Dwarves’ and Hobbit’s storyline. That way, by the time the characters meet and help each other beat the dragon, the audience will feel more connected to the heroic guy and it won’t seem so much like Deus ex machina.

Doing this, will also help the problem with the second movie climax, which is that by the time we get to the big battle at the end of the book, we need heroes to root for in the battle. We need to see those heroes during the battle so we have a point of interest within the battle, otherwise the battle will be kinda dull. So we have the Dwarves in the battle, and the Heroic guy as well that we could relate to (Bilbo kinda gets knocked out and doesn’t really do much). We also have Legolas in the battle…wait…Legolas? YES, Legolas! It’s perfect. The Wood Elves are in the battle as well. Legolas is a Wood Elf. Elves are immortal, so Legolas could actually be there looking exactly the same as he did in the other movies. Why wouldn’t the elves bring their best warriors? Wouldn’t Legolas be one of them? Heck, he can even make a cameo in the first movie as well, when the Dwarves meet up with the Wood Elves in Mirkwood. Had Tolkien written The Hobbit after The Lord of the Rings, he probably would have put Legolas in. In any case, it would be really cool for fans.

Oh, and just as a side note, I really hope they don’t have any talking animals in the movie. Animals talk in the book all the time, but in the movie universe, they don’t seem to and if they start talking in this movie, I think it will seem real “cheesy”.

Anyway that’s my two sense about how I think The Hobbit movie should go. What do you think?

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