The Hobbit; and BLOG PROBLEMS

**my blog continues to act up on me. To see new posts, click on the "july" link, to the right.

I've always thought that The Hobbit would make a much more natural and in some ways more satisfying conversion to film than the Lord of the Rings. The narrative is straight-forward and fairly conventional, the big baddie is a visible Dragon, rather than an omnipresent, ethereal "eye", the battle scenes are more physical and less magical. One does miss the loss of the back-story that gave LOTR such depth as a novel, as there isn't much of it in the Hobbit to be omitted.

I would not be surprised, at all, to see The Hobbit outgross and end up being far more popular among the mainstream than any of the LOTR movies. I like the direction they are going, with two prequels. There certainly is enough backstory between The Hobbit, the appendices, and I suppose the Silmarillion to fill two movies. Seems like the Hobbit has a natural halfway point with the escape from the Elves in Mirkwood . . . and that escape could be juxtaposed with the cleansing of Dol Goldur (hinted at in the Hobbit, and explained in more detail in the appendices....we'd get to see saruman and gandalf fighting all manner of unclean things).

I've always felt that the hobbit has unfairly been called a children's book. The last third, at least, is as dark as any portion of LOTR. Thorin's death...smaug's rage, the destruction of the city...pretty disturbing stuff. The beginning, I grant you, is a child's tale.