2008 Woodie Awards
Possible to have too much of a good thing?
Ben Brown-Steiner
Issue date: 1/21/08 Section: Entertainment
There have been exciting and worrying announcements recently pertaining to two of the most beloved movie franchises: Harry Potter and The Lord of the Rings. First, it has been made public that the current crew of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince was informed that the final movie, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, will be split in two parts. Second, after some years of silly bickering, Peter Jackson and New Line came to an agreement to make the prequel to The Lord of the Rings trilogy, The Hobbit, and it will also be done in two parts.
For both these cases, I sincerely hope there is more of a reason for the two-parters than blockbuster sized cash flow at the boxoffice. Indubitably, the dollar signs are part of the reason. Wikipedia has a list of the fifty highest grossing films of all time, and collectively, the Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings movies have claimed the second, fourth, sixth, seventh, eleventh, thirteenth, fourteenth and nineteenth places. (Pop Quiz: Who has first place? You get 2,371,529,925 DiCaprio Dollars if you guessed The Titanic)
For The Deathly Hallows, I'm not too concerned about their ability to botch it up. While the book is not the longest in the series (with 784 pages, compared with 870 for Order of the Phoenix) it does have the highest concentration of crucial storyline. And there are some points in the plot where it isn't inconceivable to stick a "To Be Continued..." format.
But there are a lot of potential disasters that make me nervous. The five Harry Potter films already out have running times between 138 and 161 minutes. So does this mean that the Deathly Hallows will run for five hours, with a several month intermission to squeeze more money out of the frothing Harry Potter Fan Cults? Or would it be better to make a three hour movie that we can watch all at once? My instinct tells me that a combined running time of nearly five hours is ridiculous but, then again, Peter Jackson has made it happen already. The extended Return of the King runs for over four hours, but then again he had a third of one of the most sweeping fiction stories of all time to work with.
Which brings me to The Hobbit. I'm all for a Hobbit movie. The book is more playful and action packed than the trilogy, but it is relatively short and straightforward. So how are they splitting it up, you ask? Simple, they're not going to. Are you flummoxed yet? (Bilbo Baggins was "flummoxed" at least twice in The Hobbit, and this is quickly becoming one of my favorite words.)
Instead, the plan is for the first movie to be The Hobbit in its entirety, and the second movie to be a "narrative bridge" (Elijah Wood's words) in the sixty years between the end of the Hobbit and the beginning of the Lord of the Rings. This sounds like they're playing with fire. An intelligent fire. With horns. And wings. And a sword. And a whip.
I guess I just don't trust the ability of the writers to come up with a story line that even compares to that that Tolkien could come up with. The man was a genius, creating his own languages and religion and an entire history for Middle Earth. Sure he was influenced by legend and history, but everything in his stories was connected to and a product of his own mind.
I am thrilled for The Hobbit movie to come out, which is planned to be around the end of 2010. I anticipate it to be of the highest quality as the other movies. However, this new "narrative bridge" just makes my eyes twitch. Maybe there's a reason Tolkien never wrote a "narrative bridge" between The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings trilogy. As my roommate says: "Don't mess with Tolkien.
For both these cases, I sincerely hope there is more of a reason for the two-parters than blockbuster sized cash flow at the boxoffice. Indubitably, the dollar signs are part of the reason. Wikipedia has a list of the fifty highest grossing films of all time, and collectively, the Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings movies have claimed the second, fourth, sixth, seventh, eleventh, thirteenth, fourteenth and nineteenth places. (Pop Quiz: Who has first place? You get 2,371,529,925 DiCaprio Dollars if you guessed The Titanic)
For The Deathly Hallows, I'm not too concerned about their ability to botch it up. While the book is not the longest in the series (with 784 pages, compared with 870 for Order of the Phoenix) it does have the highest concentration of crucial storyline. And there are some points in the plot where it isn't inconceivable to stick a "To Be Continued..." format.
But there are a lot of potential disasters that make me nervous. The five Harry Potter films already out have running times between 138 and 161 minutes. So does this mean that the Deathly Hallows will run for five hours, with a several month intermission to squeeze more money out of the frothing Harry Potter Fan Cults? Or would it be better to make a three hour movie that we can watch all at once? My instinct tells me that a combined running time of nearly five hours is ridiculous but, then again, Peter Jackson has made it happen already. The extended Return of the King runs for over four hours, but then again he had a third of one of the most sweeping fiction stories of all time to work with.
Which brings me to The Hobbit. I'm all for a Hobbit movie. The book is more playful and action packed than the trilogy, but it is relatively short and straightforward. So how are they splitting it up, you ask? Simple, they're not going to. Are you flummoxed yet? (Bilbo Baggins was "flummoxed" at least twice in The Hobbit, and this is quickly becoming one of my favorite words.)
Instead, the plan is for the first movie to be The Hobbit in its entirety, and the second movie to be a "narrative bridge" (Elijah Wood's words) in the sixty years between the end of the Hobbit and the beginning of the Lord of the Rings. This sounds like they're playing with fire. An intelligent fire. With horns. And wings. And a sword. And a whip.
I guess I just don't trust the ability of the writers to come up with a story line that even compares to that that Tolkien could come up with. The man was a genius, creating his own languages and religion and an entire history for Middle Earth. Sure he was influenced by legend and history, but everything in his stories was connected to and a product of his own mind.
I am thrilled for The Hobbit movie to come out, which is planned to be around the end of 2010. I anticipate it to be of the highest quality as the other movies. However, this new "narrative bridge" just makes my eyes twitch. Maybe there's a reason Tolkien never wrote a "narrative bridge" between The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings trilogy. As my roommate says: "Don't mess with Tolkien.
Viewing Comments 1 - 1 of 1
dernhelm
posted 1/21/08 @ 10:36 PM EST
I'm not too excited. DH was my least favorite of the seven... all those unnessisary deaths that would have been better served elsewhere. I'm not into the whole "milk the most money out of us you can" bit, so I'm really hoping they'll take the storyline seriously this time. (Continued…)
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