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Underground > Film, TV & Theatre >

The Entirety of... The Lord of the Rings

  
  

Page: 12(3)

 
 
iamus
11:55 / 19.12.07
More pragmatically: Dude, Ian Holm is currently 76 years old. He looks to be in pretty good shape, but honestly, do you think he'd be up to the rigors of a starring role in a big action movie?

Hehe. No. But a perverse side of me wants to see him try.

As for McCoy getting more, high-profile work.... yes!
 
 
Jack Fear
11:59 / 19.12.07
Frankly, I think he's accomplished all the Tolkien-related stuff any man could wish, having played not only Bilbo on film but Frodo in the BBC radio version...
 
 
Spaniel
12:27 / 19.12.07
McCoy!

Tres excite!
 
 
Our Lady Has Left the Building
14:02 / 19.12.07
In terms of what they can put in, there's some stuff that Christopher Tolkien dug out for (IIRC, 'cos I don't have it to hand) The Book of Lost Tales in which the Hobbits and Gandalf are all chilling in Minas Tirith after Aragorn's wedding and Galdalf explains how he manipulated the whole thing in order to stop Sauron from recruiting the last dragon on Middle Earth to fight for him. It is around this time in the LotR chronology that Gandalf discovers that mysterious and spooky evil dude The Necromancer is Sauron and he finds Thorin's father or grandfather in the Necromancer's dungeons. I can see there being a sizeable subplot of Gandalf going off to Mordor and investigating, the last scene might well be Bilbo trotting back to the shire on a pony holding the ring, while in the wastes of Mordor evil stirs and suddenly, above a deserted tower, an eye flickers to life.

I hope they keep the singing goblins in though.
 
 
Axolotl
14:10 / 19.12.07
It'll be interesting to see if they try and keep it a coherent whole, I mean the depiction of the trolls and goblins in the Hobbit doesn't really mesh with that of LoTR. McCoy would make a good Bilbo, and seeing those pictures of McCoy and Holm shows they're not dissimilar looking.
 
 
Keith, like a scientist
14:11 / 19.12.07
Wow...McCoy looks just like Holm. However...how old is McCoy? I guess it won't be a problem making him looking Bilbo age... Bilbo is suppose to be older than Frodo was in LOTR, correct? More of a early middle age guy?
 
 
Axolotl
14:26 / 19.12.07
Wikipedia say Bilbo is supposed to be about 50 at the beginning of the Hobbit, while Frodo is more like 30. But hobbits age slower than men, so how that translates to our terms I'm not sure.
 
 
Jack Fear
14:31 / 19.12.07
Sylvester McCoy is 64. No spring chicken, true; but if Stallone can play Rambo again at 61...
 
 
Seth
14:34 / 19.12.07
What with size doubles, CG body doubles, stuntmen, digital de-aging and make up this is a considerably less demanding action film for a seventy six year old than most. I'd rather see Holm keep the role.
 
 
grant
14:38 / 19.12.07
Well, we've taken aboard your concerns, "El Directo," but I think you'll be pleasantly surprised by what we come up with!

Should I mention the special Liv Tyler cameo?
 
 
Closed for Business Time
14:39 / 19.12.07
Errrr.. Should we get a new thread for this? I don't have the time to do one with any kind of decent opening post myself at the moment as I'm leaving for the airport in about 30 minutes, but surely the three year wait/fantasising/ranting/naysaying in store for us warrants a dedicated thread?
 
 
Seth
14:43 / 19.12.07
I vote that we delete the Iron Man thread and move this one to where it was. That will give us room to spread the Batman thread over two threads.
 
 
Spaniel
14:55 / 19.12.07
I think it needs three. Or maybe seventeen.
 
 
Keith, like a scientist
01:37 / 21.12.07
Sam Raimi... For quite awhile The Hobbit film and Raimi have been tied together. A rumor started somewhere about him taking it over if Jackson and New Line couldn't get together and it keeps persisting... but why? I don't particularly understand the reasoning behind Raimi helming this. He seems completely wrong to me. Is it all based on the fantasy elements of Evil Dead/Army of Darkness? Aren't those kind of parodies? I don't see in his pedigree the right tone to do The Hobbit in a way that matches LOTR. I'd rather see someone like Del Toro or Cuaron take this on. In fact, Cuaron seems perfect (Children of Men + Prisoner of Azkaban = LOTRishness to me).

Anyone have a different opinion? Defense of Raimi as a frontrunner to do Hobbit directing duties?
 
 
Spaniel
02:02 / 21.12.07
Well, for a start I don't think that Raimi is Mr Parody
 
 
grant
14:09 / 21.12.07
It's OK, Sam and I talked it over last night by cell phone as I was falling asleep, and he's very cool about my plans for the franchise. I think what most people see in him is just that he *understands*, you know? He grew up loving these stories, and he's glad to see someone he can trust guiding them from the page onto the screen.
 
 
Spatula Clarke
15:04 / 21.12.07
Jackson's career path is vaguely similar to Raimi's: low budget splatter comedies through crit-friendly 'serious' movie to major license blockbusters. That'll probably be the reason for the link.
 
 
Hydra vs Leviathan
15:27 / 21.12.07
I don't particularly understand the reasoning behind Raimi helming this. He seems completely wrong to me. Is it all based on the fantasy elements of Evil Dead/Army of Darkness? Aren't those kind of parodies? I don't see in his pedigree the right tone to do The Hobbit in a way that matches LOTR.

Would you really have seen in a "pedigree" including Bad Taste, Brain Dead and Meet The Feebles the right tone to do LOTR? Having said that, i'm not sure i want The Hobbit to too closely resemble the Spider-Man films...

Working in some of the stuff linking "The Hobbit" to LOTR would be really cool, but i still can't see it filling more that 3 hours of screen time. The book is considerably shorter than any of the 3 volumes of LOTR, and has a much less detailed style. I'd much rather see a single 3 hour movie, with DVD extras to pad it out to maybe 4 hours (max), than two films with far too much "filler" material.

I'm not sure about how to do the singing goblins, talking trolls etc (aren't there a couple of talking birds or mammals in The Hobbit as well?). IIRC the "in-universe" explanation for the discrepancies was that "The Hobbit" is actually Bilbo's own retelling of the story as an autobiographical adventure novel, and thus he is a slightly unreliable narrator, so what would be really awesome would be cutting back and forth from Bilbo telling his story to some hobbit kids, with singing goblins that look suspiciously like hobbits dressed up in goblin costumes (could be a bit of a homage to LARPers and cosplayers), to the "how it really happened" bit, with "realistic" (ie Jackson LOTR-style) orcs, trolls, etc. I think that would probably be a bit too "meta" for Hollywood, tho...

A couple of years ago there was a fan-made trailer for (the then-speculative) Hobbit movie floating around the Internet, with a pretty fucking nice looking Smaug in it. I'd really like to see Jackson & Co do a "proper" dragon (rather than the Jabberwocky-esque beasts that the Nazgul rode on), especially as just about every Hollywood dragon i can think of never quite lived up to my childhood imagination. Mind you, i think my childhood imagination was very heavily influenced by Anne McCaffrey book covers in that respect (is it wrong to buy really shitty fantasy books just to ogle the covers? my eco-activist present day self says yes, my fantasy art obsessed kiddie self says no)...

Sylvester McCoy is older than my dad? WTF?
 
 
grant
15:51 / 21.12.07
Actually, one of the things about movies is that the standard 90 minute feature is just about the perfect length for adapting an average-sized short story. With novels, you always have to take things out.
 
 
Spaniel
16:17 / 21.12.07
I still find the assertion that the Hobbit could be one film, and significantly faithful to the book, to be very weird. It's so episodic it hurts, and doesn't have anything approaching a cinematic dramatic structure.
 
 
Grady Hendrix
17:41 / 21.12.07
I do think this is weird from an artistic point of view, but I get the decision from a business standpoint. "Gentlemen, have here a machine that will spit out hundred dollar bills. Do we dare to turn it on?"

However, I remember the Hobbit being much lighter in tone and more of a fun romp than LORD OF THE RINGS, which is more of a gargantuan, broody, fraught epic full of massive battles and grand betrayals. I'd hate to see them try to turn the slight but charming Hobbit into the same kind of ominous, lurid spectacle. One's a lovely bedtime story, the other is a massive, martial novel.

If anyone can make it good it's Peter Jackson, and he's certainly got the look of the books pegged, but the Hobbit is such a different book from the LORD OF THE RINGS trilogy that it would suck if they took the stepsister's foot and cut off her heel and her toes so that it fits in the slipper.
 
 
Seth
21:00 / 21.12.07
I can see New Line spinning this off ad-infinitum what with all the supplementary material in the LOTR universe. They've got themselves a cash cow.
 
  

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