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[drcpunk]

mnemex have now seen the first of the three Hobbit movies.

Basically, I'm with osewalrus on this: It would be nice if Jackson trusted Tolkien more.

I can deal with the changes. None of them gave me the problems that some of the changes in the Lord of the Rings movies did. This is probably because in the Lord of the Rings movies, Jackson tended to undercut anything threatening to become too heroic or grand, whereas in the first Hobbit film, he makes the characters more proactive and competent. It's not what Tolkien wrote, but if you're going to make changes, making changes that make the characters look better, not worse, is the way to go.

The next batch of changes are the inevitable Hollywoodization, lest the audience have to work its pretty little heads to hard figuring out the tricky old plot. And, it's not that these changes wreck the movie, but they take something that's different and try to homogenize it, which is a shame.

At least one change saved some screen time. Gollum starts off with the ring in his pocket (or whatever passes for a pocket in his loincloth). This means that when he plans to attack Bilbo, he reaches into his pocket, rather than having to go paddle to his island and back. Okay, I can deal with that.

Then, there are the additions. Some are kind of cool. Some are absurd. One is absurd and magnificent at the same time.

And, yes, we'll see the next two, as, I suspect, will osewalrus. But, it would be nice if Jackson trusted his source material more, especially for the last third, which did something rather remarkable and ethically complex.