I'm very excited about these movies. And making it into two films is actually a cool idea. For those who haven't read
The Hobbit (library -->), the journey of Bilbo Baggins is a small and isolated part of events on a much greater scale than he truly understands. These larger events set up the action for
The Lord of the Ring but are never narrated in any detail. It's as if Tolkein wrote this adventure novel, then right at the end added, "By the way, there also was a grand international campaign to defeat the Lord of Shadow in his dark forest stronghold." Actually seeing those events narrated in detail should be endlessly fun. It will also require a host of original characters and settings, a first for this series.
EDIT: On the other hand, making Bilbo's journey a two-parter sounds like a terrible idea. I hope one movie focuses on his journey and the other on the broader war. If they try to do both over two movies, it will seem disconnected and anti-climactic.
Tom Phoenix said:
Anyway, great to hear Jackson is going to direct the films. While I am sure die-hard fans of Tolkien will disagree, I think he mostly did a good job adapting the books. I just hope he won't resort to the use of Hollywood tactics this time around. The Battle of Five Armies is dramatic enough in itself, it doesn't need "spicing up" with tactics that want to make you facepalm.
I agree, just as long as it still has a male model skateboarding on an orc's shield while shooting arrows at unlikely speeds into enemies within unpractical proximity. And I
really hope they have a lot of shots where the camera follows a traveling projectile in slow-motion. You just never see that, you know? It's so fresh. And the combatants better spin around a lot and not hold their weapons properly. Fight scenes shouldn't just be choreographed, they should be
conspicuously choreographed. If they aren't, fight scenes create the illusion of danger, which we obviously don't want. So yea, as long as they do all that, and don't use any Hollywood tactics, it should be great
.
I did like the movies, but Legolas was like the 'Hollywood tactics' character. Won't miss him, hope they don't replace him, hope he dies in a fire. Every time something cool happened, Legolas showed up to ruin it. The Oliphaunts were really cool until Legolas climbed one with his swords, killed it by doing nothing, then skateboarded (again? really? amazing) down it's trunk. Peter Jackson faceplam. His face. My palm.
