I believe it was in Tolkien's will that any future adaptation of The Hobbit needed to include Alfrid Lickspittle because he always regretted that he thought of such an amazing character only after the book was published.
Is that the same will that said any Lord of the Rings video game needs Shelob to be a hot goth chick?I believe it was in Tolkien's will that any future adaptation of The Hobbit needed to include Alfrid Lickspittle because he always regretted that he thought of such an amazing character only after the book was published.
The EA Return of the King movie game missed that memo.
From what I've heard, all the **** with Alfrid in the third movie was forced onto Jackson by WB. Jackson wanted to kill him off alongside the Master during Smaug's attack on Lake-Town, but the studio wanted more comedy in the third movie for they make him keep the character around.
And yet he did the best he could with them. I'll go to bat for the Hobbit trilogy before I EVER defend the Star Wars prequels.Whoever made that call, awful
I dont blame Peter Jackson for those movies. He was put in about the worst position you can be put in as a director
Definitely watching. Hope it’s good and successful so that more LOTR animation could be on the cards.
Anyone watching the animated film later this year?
Oh, I agree Peter Jackson was absolutely trying to do his best and make them work. But he was put in a position to fail from the start. The Star Wars Prequel had entirely different sets of problems since they didn't have a major studio to deal with like Jackson did
Except he didn't fail. The decision to make it three movies helped save the production and PJ circumvented around the meddling at least on the attempted forced "love triangle" thing (never got the impression Legolas had a romantic interest in Tauriel). And all 3 movies were hits regardless.
I am not talking financial failure. I am talking qualitatively. As far as whether or not they're good films, they're hard failures for me.
That's your opinion then. For me, still better than the SW prequels.
I dont like the Prequel Trilogy for Star Wars either. But I don't like The Hobbit Trilogy either. Both are hard failures from a quality standpoint, imo. And obviously it's my opinion. Anything I say on here unless I am quoting numbers for box office or something tangible is my opinion.
If anything I wish that they had been made a little sooner, preferably before New Line Cinema was absorbed into WB because they almost certainly wouldn't have interfered the way that WB did. Jackson jumping into The Hobbit right after King Kong when he was still on his A game would have been something, and to boot Martin Freeman absolutely still could have been Bilbo at that time.
Blame The Golden Compass for that. New Line was too impatient to wait for PJ and sunk a bunch of money into trying to make a very not-family friendly book trilogy into a family film while trying to appeal to the LOTR crowd by getting Christopher Lee to do a pointless cameo and replaced the polar bear's original voice actor (look up the Comic-Con trailer; Iorek is heard briefly with a Russian accent) with Ian McKellen. They had to sell off the international distribution just to finish the movie and it backfired when it made a lot more money overseas than in the US. That's what did New Line in.
I can't fault them for attempting to get another franchise under their belt because back in the mid-2000's everyone was after the next big fantasy franchise but to be honest even having seen The Golden Compass in theaters back when it came out I've forgotten mostly everything about it in general, including that it directly contributed to New Line sinking. At least fans of that franchise got something out of it years later with the HBO series.
It fit HBO better than a PG/PG-13 "general audience" movie. No way a very anti-religion fantasy book written by a known atheist was gonna pass for a kids movie. That was a fool's errand.
It seemed to be one of those things that any kid below middle school age wouldn't bother with but sure enough they still tried to market it as such complete with a line of action figures.
I dont think any 1 single decision did The Hobbit in. Making it 3 movies was a bad decision. So was forcing Peter Jackson into essentially rushing this in production to the point the set documentary that WB itself included shows he often showed up to set having no idea what was being shot that day. The various added reshoots hurt the movie. In general trying to make it Diet LOTR hurt it. This one was death by a thousand cuts
