Why I hated The Hobbit movie

So, we went to see The Hobbit – ostensibly as my birthday ‘treat’. I stocked up on drinks, popcorn and sweets and stuffed them in my bag (cos, seriously, who can afford to pay the prices they charge at cinemas?)  And James and I got stuck in pretty much as soon as we sat down (oh, okay, before we even got to our seats) and Adrian got cross with all the rustling.  But, hey, you gotta rustle in the cinema, right?

I confess I was doubtful, even before it started.  As I said in my earlier post, I was never a huge fan of The Hobbit (no Aragorn, too many dwarves, etc etc) but the trailer had looked pretty awesome.  But then, I wondered, were they really, truly, honest to godly stretching it out into three parts – each three hours’ long?  Jesus, that’s nine hours’ of cinema for one pretty skinny book.  It seemed a bit unfair.  LOTR got that and it was – what? – seven times longer?

What can I say? I hated it.  In fact, I fell asleep and slept through the most part of it out of sheer disappointment.  Or maybe I was just terribly tired.  I don’t know.

And it got me thinking…why? Why did I dislike it so much?  I don’t read reviews but I know people have said it shouldn’t have been split into three parts, that it was over long and yes, absolutely.  It felt…stretched.  Every scene pulled and tugged until it nearly snapped. 

But it was more than that.  Somehow, it felt as if the very ‘ being’ of the book had been fundamentally changed, pulled out of alignment.  It felt…glossy.  Too glossy.  It felt…epic.  Too epic.  And sexy.  I mean, I seriously don’t remember cute, photogenic, shaggable dwarves in the book.

Be honest - was this how you saw Thorin?

It was like someone sat round the table in Hollywood or wherever, said, ‘Look, we haven’t got Aragorn or Boromir or Faramir or even Legolas, FFS, so what are we doing to do? Who’s gonna be the pin-up?’  Cos, let’s be honest, Bilbo and Gandalf aren’t lust material.  So someone came up with the idea of giving a few of the dwarves a glossy makeover. So they don't actually look like dwarves.  Kinda sad, huh?

Or Kili???

And, ahem, what was with the cutesy big-eyed hedgehog stuff?  That was total utter pure Disney.  Don't get me wrong - I like Disney but in its rightful place, and its rightful place is not, not, not in Tolkien. 

And then all the massive big action movie style moments – the giants slugging bits of mountain; the fights with goblins and wotnot.  In the book they were just – exciting things that happened.  But someone decided that wasn’t enough – they needed to be turned into something bigger, longer, wilder, madder.  It was like they were thinking, ‘Hey, how would this scene be in the game of the movie of the book?’ or ‘What about when it gets turned into a ride at Disney?’  And I guess that’s fine but it brings me onto my last thought…and the major one.

It simply wasn’t representative of the book.  It didn’t capture the ‘soul’ of the book, its essence.  The Hobbit is a small book – one with big adventures and a wide landscape for sure, but its major focus is small, a microcosm – it’s a one man (or hobbit) tale of how Bilbo leaves the safety of the Shire and goes out into the big world to discover…himself. 

And that is what gets lost almost entirely in this movie.  They’ve turned it into a generic action adventure film – it’s Die Hard with sexy dwarves instead of Bruce Willis and with added dragons, orcs and goblins (and, weirdly, a reanimated hedgehog).  And I figure that’s a shame. 

Will I be watching the next two tranches?  Unlikely. 

Now, next question?  If I felt that strongly about the movie of a book I wasn’t even that wild about, should I really go see Cloud Atlas and Life of Pi? 

Paul Freeman talks magic and myth

Yeah, he's a grumpy git. :-) 

Today I’m handing over the blog to Paul Freeman.  Paul’s a good guy, a seriously good guy, and he writes good books.  I always say I don’t really *do* fantasy, yet I’ve read Lord of the Rings a ridiculous amount of times and spent my teens immersed in mythology and magic (hmm, come to think of it, not much has changed).  I’m now dragon-deep in Game of Thrones so…  I don’t know, maybe we all need the occasional flap of wings to fan the flames.  Maybe when the present seems tough we need to immerse ourselves in alternative pasts (fantasy) and/or alternative futures (SF).  Anyhow.  Paul’s new book, Tribesman, is out now and so I asked him if he’d riff a bit on  myth and magic.  And he said yes.  And here it is. 

CUSTODIANS OF MAGIC by Paul Freeman

Cold air misted above the surface of the water. Translucent shapes clinging to the black pool. Frost hardened grass crunched under the boots of the traveller as he approached the glass-calm lake. White wraiths stirred and hovered over the dark waiting for him. Calling to him, beckoning him, needing him. He could taste the cold on his tongue, feel the ice in his blood. He turned away then, unwilling to face the ghosts of his ancestors.

Ever wonder where myths come from? There’s a road near where I live, and the maddest thing happens there quite regularly. A column of mist forms over the road in just this one spot; it’s the weirdest looking thing. Just a small section of road for about ten yards is shrouded in mist. Now, what’s not immediately noticeable is that a stream runs under the road, and every now and then when hot air and cold air interact they make magic. But how would this have looked to the ancients? Is it possible a ghost could be inhabiting the stream? Or a bridge spanning the water could be a portal to another world?

Or what about a burning red sunset? I Googled this to see why it occurs, because I could. I won’t bore you with the details, but I know for sure that if I were sitting on the side of a mountain two thousand years ago, herding my sheep, that red sunset would be a portent of doom.

And that’s before we get into hallucinogenic consumption. How many myths were created by people ingesting mushrooms and other substances? I remember this funny story from school. I don’t know if it’s true or not, but it was told to me and the rest of the class by a teacher. An area close to me was famous for sightings of ghosts, (I live in a crazy place). Dozens of people all saw the same apparitions on the road, and legends grew out of it. Well it turned out some ingredient in the local bread had them all tripping out, and they were all having hallucinations. Like I said I don’t know if that is true. I hope so, it makes a funny story. That is unless you were one of the unfortunates seeing a headless horseman on his way home from work every evening.

And dragons! There is actual proof that they lived. At least – imagine an ancient digging up a dinosaur fossil.  How did they reason that? Which brings me around nicely to, well, me. 

I write fantasy books. A lot of my inspiration comes from mythology, Celtic mythology in particular, being as I'm Irish and all. I have a character in my book, the war god of the northern clans, and I loosely based her on a figure from Celtic mythology, The Morrigan, a dark god if ever there was one. The old tales were deliciously dark. Take The Children of Lír for example. Lír’s wife bore him four children, three boys and a girl. Alas for poor Lír and the children, his wife died, so he married her sister. The sister didn’t fancy having the four children around so she turned them into swans and cursed them to live for periods of 300 years on different lakes. When eventually a monk breaks the curse and turns them back into humans, they are nine hundred year old men and woman, and they die. No kiss from a prince and live happily ever after here.

So much fantasy written today is heavily influenced by ancient mythology, Lord of the Rings for example is laden with references to Norse and Celtic myth. There would have been no Gimli or Legolas without Viking lore, no dwarves, no elves, no ring. And what better place to find a source for our stories? It is our heritage, the dreams and fears of our ancestors come to life. In a lot of ways we are the new myth makers. Modern technology has dispelled the magic, myth and rumour. It is in our hands, in the worlds we create. It is up to the fantasy writers to bring the magic to life. To create spaces where readers can immerse themselves, and believe in the unbelievable. We are the custodians of the magic now.

We need magic, just as we need larger than life heroes. Who wants everything explained away by science? I want to believe in a time of legend when heroes came to life.

Long may the magic live.

Paul's new book is called Tribesman.  Here's the blurb:

A warrior in exile seeks a path home. 

Banished from his homeland, a warrior of the Northern Clans grows weary of life in a harsh, alien land. With the dark god Morrigu haunting his dreams, and a desert princess as a companion, Culainn, a warrior and champion sets forth on a journey north in search of a merchant's daughter abducted by clansmen and taken back across the mountains. Through a land baked by a scorching sun, where bandits roam free and dark beasts stalk the night. 
An ancient evil is rising from the desert. A Benouin myth of a ghost city inhabited by the souls of their ancestors, a bridge to the Underworld is unleashing demonic creatures on an unsuspecting world. Culainn and Persha, warrior and mage stand alone against a tide of darkness. All the while, Morrigu, the dark war god of the north seeks to use Culainn as her own tool, her own champion.

Dontcha just love those ancient evils rising from the desert?  :-)

You can buy it at Amazon.com here and at Amazon.co.uk here

You can also read his blog.  Which contains an excerpt from the book. 

Or just hang out with him on Facebook: 

"At any one time there are only seven great dogs"

‘Have you got Game of Thrones on DVD?’ I asked Rachel.  

She shook her head. ‘Can’t you watch it on Sky?’

‘We haven’t got Sky.’ 

She shook her head again, this time in wonderment. ‘Everyone’s got Sky. You’ve got to have Sky.’ 

I shrugged.  ‘Nope.  No Sky. But I do need Game of Thrones.’

‘Why?’

‘Cos I feel the need for some deep fantasy and I can’t watch Lord of the Rings any more, cos it’s getting crazy – I can say all the lines along with the people.’

‘Even the Elvish?’

‘Especially the Elvish.’

‘Hmm, what about Rome?’

‘Seen it.’

‘Liked it?’  We exchanged a glance which said it all.  I mean, what is there about half-naked tough guys with swords that is not to like?

I perused the shelves and came up empty-handed.  Rachel lowered her voice. Even though the house was empty aside from us.  ‘You could always try R’s room.’  R is her daughter, the erstwhile Mistress of All Evil.  ‘She’d kill me,’ Rachel continued. ‘But she wouldn’t mind you looking.’  And that was probably true – the MoAE and I have always had an entente. But, alas, no.  Just Twilight.

And then, just as I was about to go, Rachel thrust a DVD at me and said. ‘Hey, have you seen this?’ 

Dean Spanley.

‘Never heard of it.’

‘It’s good. Weird but good.  Your kind of weird.’

And last night, I sat by the fire, with a candle burning on the other side, all alone in the house, and watched it.  And it was good.  Cos you know a film is probably going to be good when one of the first lines is ‘Only the closed mind is certain.’

And Young Fisk, the narrator, says: ‘I had supposed certainty to be a good thing – like money in the bank.’  But he comes to realize that there are indeed more things in heaven and earth…  And there are dogs. 

Anyhow, I won’t spoil it. If you haven’t seen it, it’s really rather lovely…even though it's absolutely nothing like Game of Thrones. :-)

The Hobbit (movie v book) plus free book giveaway

I re-read The Hobbit the other night.  I can’t remember when I first read it; in fact I couldn’t remember a whole lot about it at all. Which, come to think of it, is pretty damning, right?  I’m pretty sure I read Lord of the Rings first – when I was about ten, if I recall.  And then again, when I was thirteen and again when I was sixteen.  Let’s just say I was a bit obsessed with it.  Okay, let’s be really honest here, I was more than a bit obsessed with Aragorn.  I had a serious downer on Arwen because, really, what kind of vapid wimp was she?  What did she do when her beloved rode off to battle?  Er, give him a flag. 

Nope, I identified with horse-girl Eowyn because, frankly, she is the only female character in the entire trilogy with any kind of get up and go. 

“I can ride and wield blade, and I do not fear either pain or death. But I do fear to stay behind bars, until use and old age accept them, and all chance of doing great deeds is gone beyond recall or desire.”  Attagirl.

Then again, she hasn't got a lot of competition as female role models are pretty thin on the ground. The elves are just too wafty, Goldberry sings and that's about it...which leaves... Shelob. Great.  

Nope, Eowyn it had to be. And, anyhow, I kind of went off Aragorn a bit by the third book – he was much better as grubby gloomy old Strider.  By the end, he’d morphed into stereotypical king material. And poor Faramir, poor doomed Faramir with his bonkers father, riding hopelessly against impossible odds.  Yeah, I shifted allegiance, fickle teenager that I was.

Anyhow. Back to The Hobbit.  After the broad vistas of LOTR, it all seems a bit tame.  The characters seem too small.  The adventure too trifling.  And what’s at stake?  Gold.   Y’know, not the freedom of the known world; not the soul of mankind but…jewellery. Okay, and a lost kingdom but, tbf, the dwarves (in the book anyhow) seem far more focused on the bling than the homeland.

Lately James has been asking me to read to him at night again. Yeah, he’s thirteen. So what?  Curiously, I love reading aloud and for some even more curious reason, he seems to enjoy listening to me. And there is nothing nicer at the end of the day to sit on the edge of his bed, with the SP curled up and making the odd grunting noise (or scratching off a flea), and just lose ourselves in a story.  We had galloped through the latest Rick Riordan (The Serpent’s Shadow) which was, have to say, a total cracker.  In comparison, The Hobbit seemed…umm…a bit boring, a bit slow.  And no jokes.  Yet James seemed to enjoy it.  Well, he said he did. And, anyhow, in a way it doesn't matter what you read...if you're reading, if you're hanging on to a little bit of childhood. Right? 

My view?  Well…a few thingies bothered me.

*  Too many dwarves. Just way WAY too many dwarves.  I never did get to tell ‘em apart.  Apart from the grumpy leader one and the fat one.  The rest? Just dwarves. They all came across the same. Is that dwarvist?  Bite me.

* Gandalf. Bit of a bumbler really. Flits in, flits out.  And, like, why did he get Bilbo to go on this quest thingy anyhow?  

* Elrond. Now, am I reading this right but it seems to be saying he isn’t ‘all elf’ if you get me. Look…page 70… “In those days of our tale there were still some people who had both elves and heroes of the North for ancestors, and Elrond…was their chief.”  Sooo, why was he all arsey about…oh, never mind.

* Elves in general. Much more sprightly and silly than LOTR.

* The necromancer. Sauron, right?  Routed from the forest and banished.  At no point does he pick up on the ring malarkey – even though he made the darn thing. Okay, so I’m missing something here but I can’t be arsed to burrow through LOTR – remind me, someone, why he’s able to ‘feel’ the ring when Frodo has it; but not before?

* From banishment to massive evil empire in…what?  Fifty years?  Hmm, on second thoughts, that’s perfectly possible. As you were...

* Smaug. HUGE wasted opportunity for dramatic tension, IMHO. Does he ever really threaten?  Nah.  And how does he get killed?  Off-set. By some random guy that comes out of nowhere.

* Bilbo is fifty, right?  So how come he looks like this?  On second thoughts...scrub that. 

Am I being a miserable old cow?  Is this the danger of re-reading books years after you first encountered them?  Mind you, like I said, it’s not like The Hobbit were on my ‘Favourite books of all time’ list.  And, having said all this, I confess I am looking forward mightily to the movie.  Check out the trailer below - it's a cracker!  And I reckon this will be one of those rare cases when the film might well be one hell of a lot better than the book.

Except (update) - see here - my thoughts on the movie  ...  

Did you like it?  Have you read it to your children?  Would you like to?  I have a couple of copies (no, not my old one - new, new, nice and new, unthumbed by my grubby paws) to give away if you’d like to try it out. I may even throw in a bit of dragon hoard if you’re very lucky (or maybe an invisible ring). If you’d like a copy let me know in the comments – and make sure I can get hold of you one way or another. 

And check out the Hobbit blog: http://www.thehobbitblog.com/