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I for one hope he doesn't give it a new look. Last thing we need is more LoTR movies that are visually divorced from the original three.

I mean, sure, things like Lake Town and the Lonely Mountain and whatnot can all be to the director's vision, but if we see Hobbiton again (which we will, given the amount of singing that goes on there before Bilbo leaves), it better look the same. Ditto for Gollum.

Gollum I wouldn't mind being less... Gollum-y. I mean, you only see him in LotR, what? 60 years later, after he was tortured for God-knows-how-long? I'd expect him to have a little more hair.

First off, the Weta guy from OP said the look would be consistent. What his word is worth at this point is questionable, of course. Moving on . . .

I would actually support a visual change as the tones of the works are totally different. Bilbo Baggins was only very generally (if at all) an inhabitant of Middle Earth when the Hobbit was published. Middle Earth was the world of Beren and Luthien rather than Aragorn and Arwen--much less hobbits!--until the 1950s. In his later years, after seeing how wide an audience he apparently had, Tolkien hoped that people would adapt his stories to different media. For example, the Odyssey is recognizable both in James Joyce's voice and in the voice of the Cohen Brothers. While I don't think Tolkien's work has the breadth of the Odyssey, I think it could certainly support mutually exclusive visual styles. Just think of all those illustrations by the Brothers Hildebrand. They are not less legitimate than John Howe's or Alan Lee's work. There are even grave difference between those two artists although their impressions were pretty well harmonized in the production. The style of Jackson's LotR is IMO too serious to make for a good Hobbit movie duology.

And, KK, I am not concerned about del Toro burdening the Hobbit movies with grotesque violence so much as his grotesque sensibilities giving it creepiness that is utterly alien (Mirkwood aside) to the spirit of Bilbo's adventure.

Da Boss wrote:I would hope he wouldn't have a prominent role.
It was ~70 years before most of the events of LOTR after all.

On the Pan's Labarynth stuff, I did really enjoy it, and I'd agree that it's a great exploration of fantasy. Visually, it's similar to a lot of Del Toro's other work, and I don't mind that at all, because I find his style entertaining.
My reservations come from the fact that the Hobbit isn't like that at all, at least in my head. It's classic fantasy, not steampunkish, not wierd and disconcerting. I want this to be a kids movie, in the same way the Hobbit is a kid's book.
The Hobbit has a very dear place in my heart as it's one of the first fantasy books I ever read and it set me off down this nerdy path I've enjoyed so much, and I also used to read it to my little sister when we were kids, and that's one of the reasons I think we've always been so close.
So I really hope Del Toro doesn't mess it up too much!

Word.

Da Boss wrote:The Hobbit has a very dear place in my heart as it's one of the first fantasy books I ever read and it set me off down this nerdy path I've enjoyed so much, and I also used to read it to my little sister when we were kids, and that's one of the reasons I think we've always been so close.

Yeah, my mum read it to me and my sister when I was like, 8 years old - she did all the voices! I'll always remember that. I read it myself when I was 10, and it set me on the fantasy/wargaming path too. To this day, 'The Hobbit' is why I prefer WHFB - if more people I know played it, I probably wouldn't play 40K much at all. I just prefer the 'Fantasy' setting to Sci-Fi.

I didn't read the Hobbit or TLOTR until I was well into my 20's

GG

Manchu wrote:While I don't think Tolkien's work has the breadth of the Odyssey, I think it could certainly support mutually exclusive visual styles.

It could, audiences won't. You tell people that you've just made a Lord of the Rings prequel and then show them something that is tonally and visually different, you'll have people decrying it. It doesn't matter what the origins of the stories are, or how when The Hobbit was written it wasn't as attached to the 'Aragorn/Frodo' story as it is now - in the mind of popular culture, the two are linked intrinsically. To detach them visually and stylistically would be too much for most people to bare.

As for whether Peter Jackson's style would work for The Hobbit or not is simply a matter of opinion.

I'd love to see the Silmarillion on the big screen.

the_ferrett wrote:I'd love to see the Silmarillion on the big screen.

About 99% of everyone else (myself included) wouldn't though. There's no audiance for it.

Well if The Hobbit does well, you can bet you will see a Silmarillion film.

GG