Hobbit Day is today, September 22, the fictional birthdays of Bilbo and Frodo.
I read both Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit in 5th grade, back in the 1970s. I wrote a review of animated TV adaptation of The Hobbit for a school newspaper project that year as well, and some jealous asshole kid accused me of plagiarism…not because I actually copied it and they knew the source, but because “it was too well written.” That’s how kids ahead of the curve are rewarded, by explaining to their teachers that they actually wrote the things they put their names on and said were their own work. I still have a thing about casual accusations of crimes or bad behaviour that spring from personal bias rather than facts and tend to speak out against them more aggressively than I probably should. But I digress…
Also this week there was a new trailer for The Hobbit released:
Now, while I enjoyed Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings movies, probably about the 90% level, I’ve started to feel that, like Stephen King and other very successful creators, editing is still necessary but rarely exercised. King Kong, for instance, was way too long and had a lot of extra, distracting fat that someone should have cut and didn’t. The Hobitt is going to to be worse…as it’s now going to be THREE FUCKING FILMS:
Really??? Lord of the Rings needed at least 8-10 hours to do it justice. That’s a rich 1500 page book. The Hobbit, not so much. Two movies would be an unecessary stretch. Three is right out. I don’t want to wait to see the story over several years. The story is plenty for a single movie.
I won’t go see this opening day. That could be a plus, as when I went to see Fellowship of the Rings opening day, at a matinee showing, there was a guy in the row in front of me with body odor so bad I nearly gagged when I caught a whiff of it several times during the movie. I tried to laugh it off as “odorama” given that we had hobbits, dwarves, and men out camping for weeks without a proper bath. But still…
I’ll probably catch this on cable, maybe on a future Hobbit Day.
I can’t be the only one who feels like this, am I?