I grew up with the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings. From elementary school through college and even into grad school I probably averaged reading the whole thing about once a year. And yeah, read and liked the Silmarillion (except for the whole Celestial Choir creation myth which was boring and didn't strike a chord with me...heh heh...get it? Chord...oh never mind).
I loathed all previous attempts to make Tolkien's world into a movie. I really tried liking Bakshi's version. I could tell he put a lot into it and it almost worked for me. But in the end not quite. And I never speak of the monstrosity that was the first attempt to make the Hobbit into a movie.
My brother and wife are equal to me in their love of Tolkien. We all had a very well developed sense of how the world felt and smelled and sounded, and we all thought previous versions were horrible.
Then came Peter Jackson...
Tolkien's world has so many layers, many only barely hinted at in the Lord of the Rings and only vaguely grasped in The Hobbit. The stories work well just as adventure tales but they also have their own history that every now and then you get a sense of and it is as if you can smell the dust of centuries in the pages of the book. And I grew up with the original editions with Tolkien's artwork and maps. Somehow his drawings captured for me the ancient feel of the story. Even when you don't know about Morgoth and the First Age you somehow know that Smaug, Shelob and the Balrog are leftovers from a much greater, far more dangerous and unimaginably ancient time. And when you realize that those ancient times included armies of balrogs, many dragons and swarms of spiders like Shelob you realize why the likes of Elrond and Galadriel seem like they have already seen too much when the action of the Third Age rolls around.
When I heard about Peter Jackson (who??) making the Lord of the Rings, I thought of the other attempts to turn this amazing world into a movie and thought, like the bowl of petunias falling to earth in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, "Oh no, not again."
I saw The Fellowship of the Ring with my brother and wife, so we were three hard core fans with our own deeply personal vision of Tolkien's world crafted partly based on Tolkien's own artwork and maps, and partly on many years of reading and re-reading the books.
We were all three blown away by The Fellowship of the Ring and all said, "Yeah. THAT is how to do it."
Sure we each could nit pick a bit, but we had loved it. Moria was amazing, more than I had imagined it to be. The Balrog was prefect. The way the countryside was dotted with ruins that hinted at the ancient roots of the world caught that dust-of-centuries smell the books seemed to have. We all wanted more.
The next two movies weren't as good but they still rocked. I could nit pick even more than I could with the Fellowship of the Ring (Gimli, Faramir, Denethor, Eowyn etc. were just not done right...) but Helms Deep and the siege of Minas Tirith were amazing. The desperation of the Riders of Rohan was done amazingly...and I always loved the Riders of Rohan because they so clearly are essentially a last remnant of once great Ostrogoths (right down to the names). And in my most optimistic dreams I couldn't imagine the Ents being done that well on screen. Even in my imagination I always had some trouble envisioning them convincingly and somehow when I saw Peter Jackson's version I felt it was right.
You can never get the same depth on screen you can get on the pages of a book. But Peter Jackson came as close as anyone could.
I have been waiting for his version of the Hobbit for a long time now. I almost wish they gave him the Silmarillion to do because I honestly believe he could do it and do it right. The Hobbit is different. Could he do it? He had better.
I just kept ignoring the whole King Kong debacle. This is Peter Jackson. He can do it.
My wife, kids and I have been excited about it. Today was just the perfect day to do it. We had a fair amount to celebrate. My wife's birthday. My step-daughter winning a big national women in computers award and getting into MIT (her early choice school...which we can't afford but we'll find a way). So to celebrate we did The Hobbit followed by dinner (dinner turned out so-so...we were reminded that it is REALLY hard to find good Italian food in NYC, surprisingly).
The Hobbit is a great kid's story. In a sense Peter Jackson lost a bit of that aspect, though by no means all...my son loved it so much he could barely keep still from excitement. But the one flaw in the book is that it somehow doesn't quite fit with the Lord of the Rings. Here is Gandalf, one of the 5 super beings sent to Middle Earth to combat the great evil of Sauron and he's helping a bunch of dwarves get back their gold? WHY? Of course given that The Hobbit was it's own story originally explains it, but Peter Jackson, partly because he wants to turn it into three movies, has time to link the stories and I found those more explicit links satisfying and it made the motivations of some of the main characters whose lives span two or three ages of Middle Earth more understandable.
The motivation of the dwarves also makes more sense. It always seemed a bit ridiculous that it was all just abut gold. Greed isn't such a noble motive. But losing your home, having no place you belong and wanting to regain your home suddenly makes a lot more sense and it is addressed really well. And gives Bilbo a better motive for WANTING to help...he wants the dwarves to have the same sense of home and belonging that matters so much to him. Yeah even a hobbit (at least one with some Took in him) would be into that kind of adventure.
Yeah I can nit pick. Yeah the Pale Orc's scars seem just too perfect and symmetrical. The dwarves' hair and beards are a bit silly (but when haven't hairstyles and fashion NOT been a bit silly?). The make up was badly done here and there.
But it works. It works to the degree that all four of us weren't ready for it to be over at the end. I could tell when the end was near and I thought to myself, "not yet." And when the credits started my son (who was hungry by then) said "it's already over???"
We already can't wait for the next movie.
Oh, and making a former Dr. Who into Radagast was brilliant. I never watched the Sylvester McCoy Doctor (I stopped with Peter Davison because he will always be Tristan Farnon to me...then didn't start watching again until the new version), and they made Radagast very different than I imagined, but somehow the convergence of Dr. Who and Radagast worked for me...very powerful, very old, and just a bit crazy.
Now let me just say...Galadriel. Yeah she wasn't in the book but it kind of works having an impromptu meeting about why Gandalf is wasting his time with this adventure and what is going on in Mirkwood. And it gives them a chance to have Galadriel in a slinky dress backlit. And, unless I am very mistaken, getting a bit frisky with Gandalf!
Thank you once again, Peter Jackson, for bringing Middle Earth to life. The books are still better, but it is hard for any movie to be better than the book (sorry, Harry Potter fans...those books don't do it for me but the movies are fun). But Tolkien's world has such depth and history in every rock, that to make a movie that even hints at that depth and history is an amazing thing.
I can't wait for the next movie!