The Hobbit (2011 - 2012)

Originally posted by Exabyte
Such shily implied vast history changes in the background would *really* bother me (compared to small, but explicit sillinesses like Arwen rescuing Frodo, or dropping Tom Bombadil, or even Elves in Helm's Deep).

And dropping the Witch-king from the Third Age is definitely vast. I plan on re-watching the film today, so I'll let you know.

Can anyone confirm whether they explicitly mention the Witch-king in the White Council scene (or if that's just what I inferred from seeing the Witch-king in Dol Guldur)?

I can't remember if they said "Witch-king," but they most definitely referred to him as "Angmar" throughout the scene.

I plan on seeing the film again today, if possible. I'll try to let you know. 🙂

...So, I have bad news.

·Gandalf reveals the Necromancer residing in Dol Guldur, and Saruman responds with: "That's absurd. No such power exists in this world. This 'Necromancer' is nothing more than a mortal man, a conjurer dabbling in black magic."
·Galadriel and Gandalf telekinetically speak, and she orders him to show the blade: She calls it a "relic of Mordor"; Elrond calls it a "Morgul blade," and Galadriel continues "...made for the Witch-king of Angmar...and buried with him." She continues: "When Angmar fell, men of the north took his body, and all that he possessed, and sealed it within the high fells of Rhudaur."

Some more stuff about how it's impossible, etc. Gandalf cows before Galadriel too much in this scene - she would revere him as much as he would her, if not more so. Gandalf comes across like the little brother who no one believes.

Also: So..."black magic" of some kind exists to be "dabbl[ed]" with, but not necromancy? Huh?

All of this is awful, and really hinders my enjoyment of the film. I have read in a few places that the filmmakers were essentially blocked from including any real details from other parts of the fiction, but that doesn't seem entirely true, what with mention of the Blue Wizards and some other parts...maybe, due to their removal of Glorfindel from LotR, they figured that the whole plotline of the prophecy (etc.) wouldn't make much sense? Maybe they'll try to come back and have a "gotcha!" moment for Gandalf in the next two films, where he reveals that he knew it was Sauron all along? I don't know.

🙁

Personally, this doesn't concern me that much. There's 6+ hours left between the next two films. I'm sure they'll address it at some point and clear it up.

They can't clear up a f*ck up as big as this - the worst in a series of them.

It's forgivable when something is omitted from the book, for the sake of time or pacing (Tom Bombadil sucked and was useless), or they make alterations for similar purposes... but when it's simply details being discussed in conversation... and they get them wrong...

... especially when they went to all the trouble of purposefully injecting the film with details and lore... it's just... aaggh! I've heard a good few people (and reviewers) say they preferred this film to any in the Rings trilogy, and some of the reasons given are proving to be beyond my ability to understand and see both sides of.

Assuming, of course, they don't know that the Witch-King is a Nazgul, I don't see a problem with it. Gandalf is the only one who begins to suspect they might have returned in the film. This isn't necessarily ignoring all of the lore. While there was no "burial" mentioned in the literature, this doesn't mean it can't be used as filler in the film. From the film's point of view, "someone" they're calling the Witch-king was buried. It doesn't necessarily mean that it is the "true" Witch-king.

There's still two movies left to go. Plenty of time to explain themselves.

It still doesn't make any sense. They've gone to the trouble of adding lore to this story (that the lore actually has nothing to do with), so why then alter that lore for no reason other than unnecessary side-drama?

And that "filler" sentiment is simply exasperating. The Hobbit didn't need any filler to begin with. Introducing altered lore and distracting, reference-filled, side-drama in to a story that is already one film too long as it is makes my wallet and patience hurt.

Originally posted by The Rover
...So, I have bad news.

She calls it a "relic of Mordor"; Elrond calls it a "Morgul blade," and Galadriel continues "...made for the Witch-king of Angmar...and buried with him." She continues: "When Angmar fell, men of the north took his body, and all that he possessed, and sealed it within the high fells of Rhudaur."

Well, Gondor will be pleased to hear that there was never any war against Minas Morgul... or what (third, and still not Sauron-connected) persona of the Witch-king will those wars be attributed to?!

Also, both the terms "Morgul" and "Witch-king" and the fact that the Witch-king was known to be at least 700 years old by the fall of Angmar, and populated the Barrow-downs with ghosts, make it rather unplausible to portray him as a normal mortal who would need a(nother) necromancer to live a little longer...

I have read in a few places that the filmmakers were essentially blocked from including any real details from other parts of the fiction, but that doesn't seem entirely true, what with mention of the Blue Wizards and some other parts...maybe, due to their removal of Glorfindel from LotR, they figured that the whole plotline of the prophecy (etc.) wouldn't make much sense?

Originally posted by Exabyte
Well, they didn't name the Blue Wizards, did they? Neither say where they disappeared to. I think they said no more than can be inferred from the appendices/LotR. As would be the "true" Witch-king story and the prophecy. Hey, maybe we'll see Arwen rescue Earnur from Witchy 😄

I thought the Blue Wizards part was tongue-in-cheek - Tolkien himself never firmly settled on names for them.

I don't know what to make of it. I still enjoy the film; it's just...not what it could have been. (It also seems very stunted to hear just about every possible Elvish place-name uttered in the movie.)

Exasperating? Is it really that serious? If it's really an issue of your wallet and patience, perhaps you should stay absent from the other parts.

Neither of those two will stop me from going to the others, because I simply didn't get enough the first go around.

Oh I'll see them. Just like I saw the Star Wars Prequels and the Harry Potter films. Some movies are too big to pass up, no matter how many... problems. Plus what I would b*tch and moan about like a woman if I ignored them? My shoe collection?

Geez guys, mountains and molehills. So the film makes some changes to the continuity- so what? It better fits the flow of it being a film, not a book, and offering simpler explanations for things that otherwise require a very elitist knowledge of the lore to make any sense.

This is just like Gimli not knowing that Moria was a death-trap (if nothing else you'd think Aragorn, who had only recently been through it, might have mentioned something) and Ragagast telling Gandalf that the Greenwood was turning evil, with Gandalf not replying "Yes, I know that from when people stopped using the term 'Greenwood' when it started turning evil two thousand years ago."

These things don't matter, and you are looking at things in an unhelpful way if you think they do. If you are really desperate to fit the scene into continuity, just remember that a Nazgul is not necessarily tied to its body and maybe the 'men of the North' were trying to prove Glorfindel wrong- after all, literally speaking, we are not told how the Witch-King managed to escape in the long-term after losing the big battle. Maybe he fled in spirit form after losing his body. That does raise the question of why they'd go to so much bother just to get his old sword back, but that's just an amusing aside, not a serious point.

However, the entire continuity works with only trivial changes if the Witch-King is out of action between Arnor and the War of the Ring. All in all... none of it matters.

It's not that it's wrong, it's why. They change or screw up something for the plot--okay. Doesn't matter, so long as it works.

But why introduce that thread at all? It's an error about something that was introduced for the sake of filler. And the filler was introduced because there's too many films in the series, and not enough of the original tale to fill them. It's just one problem that traces right back to the initial decision to split this simple story up in to so many long movies. That error is indicative of what I feel is a greater failing on the filmmakers' part: the length of the series and the overall drop in quality it produced.

If you want to take exception to the lengthy style they have chosen for the films, that's fine. Personally, I quite like them doing it so extensively and hence introducing simplified versions of the background material, but then I'm a shoe-in for that. We'll see in the long-term how its popular appeal holds.

But the tone from some quarters is that it has to match the original, and that's simply not so.

No, people who demand a perfect adaptation are unrealistic and rigid. Especially from a world like Tolkien's. But that doesn't mean it needs to be stretched out thin either. Like... butter scraped over too much bread. So you have to start filling it in with external lore, and awkwardly at that. That flub aside, much of the dialogue that concerned Dol Guldur, Gundabad, Gondolin, Radagst etc., felt shoehorned and forced. Like they were trying to sound epic and impressive instead of just being so.

Which is the problem, I feel. This novel wasn't epic, or grand, or anything. It was a rather simple adventure story told from one little fellow's bewildered perspective. But in order to maintain the tone of the Rings films, they needed to make it epic and grand feeling. And to me, they failed.

Originally posted by Ushgarak
Geez guys, mountains and molehills. So the film makes some changes to the continuity- so what? It better fits the flow of it being a film, not a book, and offering simpler explanations for things that otherwise require a very elitist knowledge of the lore to make any sense.

[...]

These things don't matter, and you are looking at things in an unhelpful way if you think they do. If you are really desperate to fit the scene into continuity, just remember that a Nazgul is not necessarily tied to its body and maybe the 'men of the North' were trying to prove Glorfindel wrong- after all, literally speaking, we are not told how the Witch-King managed to escape in the long-term after losing the big battle. Maybe he fled in spirit form after losing his body. That does raise the question of why they'd go to so much bother just to get his old sword back, but that's just an amusing aside, not a serious point.

However, the entire continuity works with only trivial changes if the Witch-King is out of action between Arnor and the War of the Ring. All in all... none of it matters.

"So what"? Because it wasn't necessary - the story worked the way it did, and now it doesn't make any sense at all. Why alter it? And where do you get your assumption that "a Nazgûl is not necessarily tied to its body" - all of the evidence (textual, I'll grant you) is to the opposite.

I realized today, after checking the trailer, why I was cued to notice these abhorrent errors and why they really bothered me: They showed Gandalf in Dol Guldur in the trailer, which lead me to believe that they were flashback scenes of when he met Thráin there - now I have to assume they're from when he ousts Sauron [?]; they also teased Mirkwood with Bilbo amid spider's webs.

Also: Aren't we allowed our opinion on the bastardization of the book? Sorry it's not all rainbows and "this is better than The Lord of the Rings"! We aren't demanding a "perfect" adaptation - we just wish that they'd maintained the actual plot of the book.

"It wasn't necessary' is nothing to do with whether it fits the original or not. As I said above, if you didn't like the inclusion of extra material, that's fine, but the complaint was about them changing that material, and that's a different argument.

As for Nazgul- one of their central defining characteristics is their return after seeming destruction.

Why change it? To make it fit the film and the story as they are presenting it better. Not changing it would be a mistake in that light.

Yes, you are allowed your opinion, and likewise I am allowed to criticise it.

Originally posted by Ushgarak
"It wasn't necessary' is nothing to do with whether it fits the original or not. As I said above, if you didn't like the inclusion of extra material, that's fine, but the complaint was about them changing that material, and that;'s a different argument.

Why change it? To make it fit the film and the story as they are presenting it better. Not changing it would be a mistake in that light.

Yes, you are allowed your opinion, and likewise I am allowed to criticise it.

...But it doesn't "fit the film and the story" any better - it needlessly complicates things, when the story - as presented in the original source - lays it all out quite simply.

It's bad storytelling, and a bad adaptation. That is the most important aspect of the film.

That's your opinion; I don't share it. And again, you are arguing for not putting extra material in there at all, whilst my comment was aimed at those expressing outrage that they changed said material. If you don't think simplifying that background is helpful here, you're stuck in the wrong perspective based on your privileged level of knowledge.

They had to add mountains and hills and stuff to make the enviroment of the Dwarves more acceptable.

Dwarves love mountains for digging jewels, gold, and bronze so it's logical to add these locations.

Guys, think like this is Warhammer...you need a perfect setting for a battle otherwise it's too stale.

I know because I'm a dwarf and I will cut you miserable maggots with my twin blade axe!

Dwarf RULE!