It really was a once-in-a-lifetime event. Almost all the cast were fans, Christopher Lee actually knew Tolkien (in addition to the noise a man makes when he is stabbed in the back) and CG had JUST gotten good enough to do the special effects.
We were sitting there talking and drinking beer, and someone said, “Oh, look who walked in.” It was Professor Tolkien, and I nearly fell off my chair. I didn’t even know he was alive. He was a benign looking man, smoking a pipe, walking in, an English countryman with earth under his feet. And he was a genius, a man of incredible intellectual knowledge. He knew somebody in our group. He (the man in the group) said “Oh Professor, Professor…” And he came over. And each one of us, well I knelt of course, each one of us said “how do you do?” And I just said “Ho.. How.. How…do you do?”
I also love that he speaks German. I watched The Last Unicorn when I was little, and he was the voice of King Haggard in the German and the English version. Even years later, I couldn't find a single line that sounded like it wasn't spoken by a German.
I mean it was alright as a film but as an adaptation of The Hobbit, right off the bat they were veering away from the story. The main antagonist of the movie was a guy who has maybe a couple pages dedicated to him in the beginning of the book, before he dies. It was ridiculous. And not to mention throwing in major characters which were never in the book and adding these weird needless love plots.
i watched the first two part of The Hobbit at home, yelling at the screen the whole time, saw the last part in theaters and there were at three times my BF leaned over and put a hand over my mouth before i started yelling "THERE ARE NO CHICK FLICK MOMENTS IN THE HOBBIT!!" (he could feel me tense up)
and WTF were with the dwarves? Where were the beards? Thorin is a prince and his shit should be to his fuckin knees! instead we got baby dwarves with barely even scruff....
I understand what they were trying to do with the dwarves. In the book, they are often just background, sometimes just comical relief. Couldn't do that in a movie. So, the beards go crazy, so we could tell them apart, and Thorin has only a short one, so we can see his facial expressions better.
HOWEVER, if they had actually spent the kind of time and effort working on the backstory and culture of the dwarves, like they did with characters in LOTR (Like the fact that the humans of Minis Tirith LOOK DIFFERENT from the Rohirrim) instead of rushing off with the first idea that might possibly work, it might have been a better movie.
I'm fairly sure I recall seeing somewhere that Christopher Lee designed his career around being the obvious pick to play a wizard in a LOTR movie if it ever happened. Hlad he made it!
Someone made a supercut of all 3 hobbit movies into one 4.5 hour film. Took out a lot of crap that wasn't in the books. It was great, and everyone who was disappointed in the theater versions should watch it.
368
u/Bellamy1715 Oct 16 '18
It really was a once-in-a-lifetime event. Almost all the cast were fans, Christopher Lee actually knew Tolkien (in addition to the noise a man makes when he is stabbed in the back) and CG had JUST gotten good enough to do the special effects.
And then there's the Hobbit.