Exchanges with People that Make Your Brain Hurt

[snowflake]

My friend was telling me this one. She and her husband had seen The Hobbit on a date night. I'd seen it twice already so we started talking about it.

She said her brother had seen it too. He told her all about it in a rant about how they had just "ripped off LOTR" and how it was the "exact same story" and "how could they get away with blatant copyright." Apparently the fact that some of the same actors were in it and all the hinting toward the events of LOTR wasn't enough to clue him. She gently explained to him that the books had the same author and that The Hobbit was something of a prequel to LOTR. "Ohhhhh...." 

I remember coming out of Fellowship of the Ring and hearing a girl behind me ranting about the "lousy ending". When her companion explained it was a trilogy, she snorted, "So, they're trying to rip off Star Wars, are they?"

I heard someone rant after Return of the King that they just "copied the spider from Harry Potter. LAME!"

After I watched "The Hobbit" I really wasn't sure where they ripped it off from.  Certainly not the book...   

Are you saying the spider wasn't in there in the Hobbit/Lord of the Rings?  It's been decades since I read them, but I'm pretty sure Shelob WAS in there....  Am I nuts, or confused?

Well, Mirkwood had spiders in it in the Hobbit book, and then yeah, there's Shelob in LOTR. There are definitely spiders in Tolkien.

It was a joke...

Just to clear up, I actually liked the Hobbit movie.  I was referring to the amount of material that was added to it.

There were some sub-plots where I was just scratching my head and wondering how I could have forgotten those when I read the book at least 1-2 times per year between the ages of 7 and 16.  (I haven't read it since I was 25)  As I was driving my baby sitter home she (also a Tolkien fan) assured me that I wasn't going crazy and yes, much of it had been added.

[MommyPenguin]

Minor brain hurt.

I took my youngest daughter, who is 3 months old, to the doctor this morning.  When I was in an examination room with a tech, she was making conversation with me, and asked, "So, is this your youngest child?"  About a three-month-old.  It would be pretty hard to have another child younger than her!  It's only a minor brain hurt, however, because she was just making conversation and wasn't really thinking too hard about what she was asking.  But I still thought it pretty hilarious.

[TootsNYC]

I got to watch my DS brain start hurting while listening to his sister try to explain why she loves cheese toast (piece of bread topped with a slice of cheese and put in toaster oven until the cheese melts and the bread is slightly toasted) but thinks a grilled cheese sandwich is disgusting.

Lol, it's probably the butter or margarine used in grilled cheese that makes it gross to her. Plain bread with a piece of cheese in the toaster oven is probably just different enough tasting. In fact, it sounds pretty good!

Not to mention the differing bread-to-cheese ratio. And the fact that the cheese, while it gets melty, will get melty in a DIFFERENT way since it's directly exposed to the heating coil of the toaster oven.

[TootsNYC]

But on that note I hurt my own brain too. I've started mistyping words, in an autocorrect type of way. Recently I was writing the word "rising" and instead wrote raisin. I don't know if I should be worried.

I did that! After a while it got so bad that I would try to outsmart it by thinking, more slowly than usual, letter by letter, "t h e r e," and then I'd look at the computer screen and see "their."

I think it was particularly bad because I'm a "grouped letters" typist--I type an entire word, not letters. That's what has let me get up to 125 wpm--but it means that there's a SET of synpase-firings that make each word. And if the first two letters are similar to something else, I'll slip over into the other "groove," so to speak.

It has gotten a LOT better lately.

[ScubaGirl]

Just to clear up, I actually liked the Hobbit movie.  I was referring to the amount of material that was added to it.

There were some sub-plots where I was just scratching my head and wondering how I could have forgotten those when I read the book at least 1-2 times per year between the ages of 7 and 16.  (I haven't read it since I was 25)  As I was driving my baby sitter home she (also a Tolkien fan) assured me that I wasn't going crazy and yes, much of it had been added.

From what I read, the director did a lot of research in appendixes (sp?) and the Silmarillion for those scenes.  So they are from Tolkien, just not written at the same time as the book.  But, I could be remembering that wrong.

[hermanne]

Just to clear up, I actually liked the Hobbit movie.  I was referring to the amount of material that was added to it.
I
There were some sub-plots where I was just scratching my head and wondering how I could have forgotten those when I read the book at least 1-2 times per year between the ages of 7 and 16.  (I haven't read it since I was 25)  As I was driving my baby sitter home she (also a Tolkien fan) assured me that I wasn't going crazy and yes, much of it had been added.

From what I read, the director did a lot of research in appendixes (sp?) and the Silmarillion for those scenes.  So they are from Tolkien, just not written at the same time as the book.  But, I could be remembering that wrong.

They happened at the same time as the story, but not written into The Hobbit because they weren't part of that story. (Really it was because Tolkien hadn't connected The Hobbit to Middle Earth yet!)

[snowflake]

Just to clear up, I actually liked the Hobbit movie.  I was referring to the amount of material that was added to it.
I
There were some sub-plots where I was just scratching my head and wondering how I could have forgotten those when I read the book at least 1-2 times per year between the ages of 7 and 16.  (I haven't read it since I was 25)  As I was driving my baby sitter home she (also a Tolkien fan) assured me that I wasn't going crazy and yes, much of it had been added.

From what I read, the director did a lot of research in appendixes (sp?) and the Silmarillion for those scenes.  So they are from Tolkien, just not written at the same time as the book.  But, I could be remembering that wrong.

They happened at the same time as the story, but not written into The Hobbit because they weren't part of that story. (Really it was because Tolkien hadn't connected The Hobbit to Middle Earth yet!)

Some of the stuff is made up by the directors.  I've read the Simarillian as well (admittedly not as much as the Hobbit) and They added to the story of the White Orc specifically to make up for the fact that the dragon won't appear until later.  Not to mention the greatly prolonged battle scenes.

That just made my brain hurt because they had to do it that way to balance the story because the movie was broken up into a trilogy.  BUT it took up so much screen time that maybe it wouldn't have had to be a trilogy if they hadn't added it in?  I'm still wondering how that process went.

[hermanne]

Just to clear up, I actually liked the Hobbit movie.  I was referring to the amount of material that was added to it.
I
There were some sub-plots where I was just scratching my head and wondering how I could have forgotten those when I read the book at least 1-2 times per year between the ages of 7 and 16.  (I haven't read it since I was 25)  As I was driving my baby sitter home she (also a Tolkien fan) assured me that I wasn't going crazy and yes, much of it had been added.

From what I read, the director did a lot of research in appendixes (sp?) and the Silmarillion for those scenes.  So they are from Tolkien, just not written at the same time as the book.  But, I could be remembering that wrong.

They happened at the same time as the story, but not written into The Hobbit because they weren't part of that story. (Really it was because Tolkien hadn't connected The Hobbit to Middle Earth yet!)

Some of the stuff is made up by the directors.  I've read the Simarillian as well (admittedly not as much as the Hobbit) and They added to the story of the White Orc specifically to make up for the fact that the dragon won't appear until later.  Not to mention the greatly prolonged battle scenes.

That just made my brain hurt because they had to do it that way to balance the story because the movie was broken up into a trilogy.  BUT it took up so much screen time that maybe it wouldn't have had to be a trilogy if they hadn't added it in?  I'm still wondering how that process went.

I nearly forgot about the White Orc (blocked it out?) Yeah, that was pure bs, imo.

[BarensMom]

Just to clear up, I actually liked the Hobbit movie.  I was referring to the amount of material that was added to it.
I
There were some sub-plots where I was just scratching my head and wondering how I could have forgotten those when I read the book at least 1-2 times per year between the ages of 7 and 16.  (I haven't read it since I was 25)  As I was driving my baby sitter home she (also a Tolkien fan) assured me that I wasn't going crazy and yes, much of it had been added.

From what I read, the director did a lot of research in appendixes (sp?) and the Silmarillion for those scenes.  So they are from Tolkien, just not written at the same time as the book.  But, I could be remembering that wrong.

They happened at the same time as the story, but not written into The Hobbit because they weren't part of that story. (Really it was because Tolkien hadn't connected The Hobbit to Middle Earth yet!)

Some of the stuff is made up by the directors.  I've read the Simarillian as well (admittedly not as much as the Hobbit) and They added to the story of the White Orc specifically to make up for the fact that the dragon won't appear until later.  Not to mention the greatly prolonged battle scenes.

That just made my brain hurt because they had to do it that way to balance the story because the movie was broken up into a trilogy.  BUT it took up so much screen time that maybe it wouldn't have had to be a trilogy if they hadn't added it in?  I'm still wondering how that process went.

I nearly forgot about the White Orc (blocked it out?) Yeah, that was pure bs, imo.

I thought the White Orc was Azog, who killed Thorin's grandfather in the battle for Moria.

[lady_disdain]

Yes, but in the book, Azog is killed by Thorin's kinsman (I think a cousin, but I am going to leave it vague) Nain, to avenge his father Dain, years before the Hobbit and that was the end of that.

[PeterM]

That just made my brain hurt because they had to do it that way to balance the story because the movie was broken up into a trilogy.  BUT it took up so much screen time that maybe it wouldn't have had to be a trilogy if they hadn't added it in?  I'm still wondering how that process went.

There are two basic possibilities.

1) "We want to add all these great bits to the story!" "Oh, well, guess it'll have to be a trilogy!"

2) "We want to stretch it out to a trilogy to make some mad cash." "Okay, we'll come up with some stuff to add."

Call me cynical, but I think #2 is orders of magnitude more likely than #1.

As for the additions being from Tolkien, what about those mountain-sized stone giants? That didn't seem like his style at all, but I admittedly haven't read much of his stuff.

[RingTailedLemur]

That just made my brain hurt because they had to do it that way to balance the story because the movie was broken up into a trilogy.  BUT it took up so much screen time that maybe it wouldn't have had to be a trilogy if they hadn't added it in?  I'm still wondering how that process went.

There are two basic possibilities.

1) "We want to add all these great bits to the story!" "Oh, well, guess it'll have to be a trilogy!"

2) "We want to stretch it out to a trilogy to make some mad cash." "Okay, we'll come up with some stuff to add."

Call me cynical, but I think #2 is orders of magnitude more likely than #1.

As for the additions being from Tolkien, what about those mountain-sized stone giants? That didn't seem like his style at all, but I admittedly haven't read much of his stuff.

The stone giants were in the book.

[Virg]

PeterM, the stone giants are actually in the book itself, but they didn't play a big role.  Of course, in the movie the scene was big and fully fleshed out but if you look at the story itself, it only represented a few minutes of the characters' experience so I don't see that as a big deal.

For adding Azog as a BigBad, I don't think it took much away from the story, since the big scene fleeing the orcs and hiding in the trees was in the book and it's really not a big change to the story to make the leader of that raiding party identifiable rather than just some random commander.  The whole scene with Thorin charging off the burning tree was fluffed in, but taking that out wouldn't have cut more than ten minutes off the length of the film and it gave Mr. Jackson a chance to show Bilbo's acceptance into the dwarves' group outright rather than trying to demonstrate the more subtle way the book handled it, so again I don't see it as a particularly awful retooling of the story.

As to fleshing out the story for the money, I get the feeling that it was Peter Jackson saying, "I can make a trilogy so I can do the story the justice that I want, and I can point to the box office for the last trilogy to convince the bean counters that it'll be worth it."  I have no doubt that the studio approved a trilogy because of the money draw but I see that more as giving Mr. Jackson his head because he's bankable than any studio exec starting out with that plan.

Virg

[jedikaiti]

<insert generic request for OT conversation to be spun off into its own thread>

 

[Kasia_Kiwi]

Yes, please move on. I love the Tolkien-verse too but this is neither the time, nor the thread.