Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! And Smaug was awesome! And something about all that gold under the mountain just tickled my fancy. I totally understand the greed of the dwarves. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
Then you would probably also like Audrey Hepburn. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Am I correct?
But he cut some of the most interesting parts! Just to make stupid action scenes with orcs (how did they get through Mirkwood?).
...as does the person in the OP, only she more so. Just sayin' Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
He got one full movie I watched (part time) out of less than a third of the book, without such improvements. Sounds like he cut and eviscerated more than he added - including scenes and perspectives key to the moral core and motivation of the book. He did that in the Lord of the Rings, as well - making Frodo (the "best hobbit in the Shire") a wet-eyed drip and Samwise (resourceful and athletic and well equipped) pudgy and not notably competent, removing Bombadil (the key to the nature of the Obsession), having Faramir take Frodo and the Ring to his father in a destructive (and time consuming) inversion of one of the central moral decisions of the trilogy, removing the entire Scouring of the Shire (Tolkien said he wrote the entire trilogy to get to those scenes), and so forth. They say Smaug is a great dragon, though - and that's something we will have, like a decent dinosaur. With Spielberg out of the way a serious film of Moby Dick is now possible; likewise we now have reason to hope for a decent film version of one of Ursula Le Guin's wizard tales.
Ursula le Guin. You could be right. I wonder who owns the rights? Despite all the things that you say are wrong, The Lord of The Rings films are still brilliant, don't you think?
The Red Book of Westmarch. My favorite non scientific book of all time [truth be told it's my favorite of all time]. I agree with everything you said except I don't get "...(the key to the nature of the Obsession)..." So I'm curious. My oldest son and I went last night. There was one point where I felt like I was in the book and that's when Bilbo entered Smaug's lair. I've never been impressed with Jackson's Middle Earth. It would be more impressing if I hadn't read Tolkien for 40 years prior to seeing the movies. Great film undertaking which was worth doing. I was pretty disappointed with the revisionism you mentioned. Especially what he did to Farimir.
When they announced 3 more Tolkien movies I was hoping for the Silmarillion because I actually really enjoyed that book
Yes, Jeri Ryan was quite a looker as "Seven-of-Nine." Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!