Only the title is longer than Jackson's
August 26, 2017 4:18 AM Subscribe
If you found Peter Jackson's Hobbit film series a tad padded, maybe the 1985 Soviet television movie The Fabulous Journey of Mr. Bilbo Baggins, The Hobbit, Across the Wild Land, Through the Dark Forest, Beyond the Misty Mountains. There and Back Again, which tells the same story in only 1 hour 11 minutes and 52 seconds, might be more to your liking. Note: you may want to disable youtube's subtitles as the source already has English subtitles.
Can't wait to watch this. The Peter Jackson Hobbitses were awful.
posted by glaucon at 5:05 AM on August 26, 2017 [1 favorite]
posted by glaucon at 5:05 AM on August 26, 2017 [1 favorite]
This looks interesting and compact. I haven't yet completed all of the Peter Jackson Hobbit films because ... too many / too long. Dreading PJ ever getting the film rights to The Silmarillion.
posted by Wordshore at 5:06 AM on August 26, 2017
posted by Wordshore at 5:06 AM on August 26, 2017
I had no idea this even existed. Interesting.
PJ doing the Silmarillion? Well on the one hand it's basically a historical sketch, so plenty of legitimate opportunity to pad and interpolate without trampling on what is already there. On the other hand though, Jackson's interpretations have been at their worst whenever they run up against the philosophical and mystical aspects of Tolkien's work, and without that stuff the Silmarillion is pretty shallow. It would be like re-interpreting the Bible as an action movie; sure it might make a decent action movie, but it would miss the whole point of the original work.
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 5:17 AM on August 26, 2017 [2 favorites]
PJ doing the Silmarillion? Well on the one hand it's basically a historical sketch, so plenty of legitimate opportunity to pad and interpolate without trampling on what is already there. On the other hand though, Jackson's interpretations have been at their worst whenever they run up against the philosophical and mystical aspects of Tolkien's work, and without that stuff the Silmarillion is pretty shallow. It would be like re-interpreting the Bible as an action movie; sure it might make a decent action movie, but it would miss the whole point of the original work.
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 5:17 AM on August 26, 2017 [2 favorites]
Oh, crap :( In 2014, Jackson announced his plans to make a total of 72 movies based on The Silmarillion, a history of Middle-earth.
posted by Wordshore at 5:22 AM on August 26, 2017 [4 favorites]
posted by Wordshore at 5:22 AM on August 26, 2017 [4 favorites]
Well, the first one is going to be trippy as hell.
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 5:25 AM on August 26, 2017 [1 favorite]
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 5:25 AM on August 26, 2017 [1 favorite]
In 1977, Rankin-Bass told the story in 78 minutes (with the aid of a few songs).
posted by Gelatin at 5:32 AM on August 26, 2017 [5 favorites]
posted by Gelatin at 5:32 AM on August 26, 2017 [5 favorites]
Sort of a double but this has a better version on YouTube.
posted by octothorpe at 5:38 AM on August 26, 2017 [2 favorites]
posted by octothorpe at 5:38 AM on August 26, 2017 [2 favorites]
glaucon: Can't wait to watch this. The Peter Jackson Hobbitses were awful.
I didn't appreciate The Hobbit (the book) as a kid. I re-read it recently, and it makes more sense to me now. It's a heist/caper, with a reluctant middle-aged man being convinced to be part of a caper crew. In some ways, it's closer to Ocean's 11 than it is to the big end-of-the-world emotions of Lord of the Rings... but Peter Jackson wanted to make LotR again, so he tried to cram those big emotions in. The result was pro-wrestling quality dramatics.
posted by clawsoon at 5:41 AM on August 26, 2017 [8 favorites]
I didn't appreciate The Hobbit (the book) as a kid. I re-read it recently, and it makes more sense to me now. It's a heist/caper, with a reluctant middle-aged man being convinced to be part of a caper crew. In some ways, it's closer to Ocean's 11 than it is to the big end-of-the-world emotions of Lord of the Rings... but Peter Jackson wanted to make LotR again, so he tried to cram those big emotions in. The result was pro-wrestling quality dramatics.
posted by clawsoon at 5:41 AM on August 26, 2017 [8 favorites]
Yeah, wait, Rankin-Bass had _SONGS_ y'all.....
posted by ish__ at 6:21 AM on August 26, 2017 [1 favorite]
posted by ish__ at 6:21 AM on August 26, 2017 [1 favorite]
Buffering....Does Smaug look like Margaret Thatcher? Please, please, please.
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 7:42 AM on August 26, 2017 [1 favorite]
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 7:42 AM on August 26, 2017 [1 favorite]
A few years ago a fan edited Jackson's Hobbit films into one, removing almost anything that wasn't in the books. It made a tight, dandy movie.
Jackson has said that his original vision with Guillermo del Toro was two films, significantly tighter. But del Toro dropped out due to the long delay and the cash-strapped MGM then demanded it be expanded to THREE long films (they missed out on the cash cows that were the original trilogy). Jackson has his shortcomings but the fault is not entirely with him.
I never liked the Rankin-Bass version. It came out when I was in college and it just seemed a little...childish. In retrospect, the Hobbit was written as a fairy tale, a children's book. The Rankin-Bass treatment works fine on that level.
posted by Ber at 7:55 AM on August 26, 2017 [1 favorite]
Jackson has said that his original vision with Guillermo del Toro was two films, significantly tighter. But del Toro dropped out due to the long delay and the cash-strapped MGM then demanded it be expanded to THREE long films (they missed out on the cash cows that were the original trilogy). Jackson has his shortcomings but the fault is not entirely with him.
I never liked the Rankin-Bass version. It came out when I was in college and it just seemed a little...childish. In retrospect, the Hobbit was written as a fairy tale, a children's book. The Rankin-Bass treatment works fine on that level.
posted by Ber at 7:55 AM on August 26, 2017 [1 favorite]
Now I'm curious about the ideological environment around the making of the Soviet version. In the following year, Gorbachev launched glasnost and perestroika. The film quotes, almost verbatim, Tolkien's paragraph about the dwarves - they're not heroes, but prudent people who value treasure above all; some tricky and treacherous, but some honest so long as you don't expect too much from them. The description makes me think that Tolkien was pretty much saying "bourgeois middle-class capitalist". (But with a certain paternalistic aristocratic fondness.) Considering the role that bourgeois middle-class capitalists played in Marxist and Soviet theory and propaganda, surely the decision to include this bit while dropping so much else meant something given the context of the times. But what?
posted by clawsoon at 8:16 AM on August 26, 2017 [2 favorites]
posted by clawsoon at 8:16 AM on August 26, 2017 [2 favorites]
something something Leonard Nimoy
posted by under_petticoat_rule at 8:57 AM on August 26, 2017 [3 favorites]
posted by under_petticoat_rule at 8:57 AM on August 26, 2017 [3 favorites]
I've known about this for some time (possibly from that earlier thread) but was dismayed by the stupid fake subtitles. We've pulled out some of this, without subtitles, for MST Club preroll filler. We sometimes find some weird things for preroll stuff....
posted by JHarris at 9:31 AM on August 26, 2017
posted by JHarris at 9:31 AM on August 26, 2017
About a year ago I found a pretty great fan edit of Peter Jackson's Hobbit movies. It cuts the extraneous crap right out. It was called "There and Back Again - A Hobbit's Cut" and gets the whole story told in just a little over 3 hours. They make it to Rivendell in under 40 minutes! I highly recommend it. There are lots of shorter fan edits of course. A few of them are here.
Obviously the video linked on the FPP scratches a very different itch from the Jackson versions or any subsequent edits thereof.
posted by wabbittwax at 9:47 AM on August 26, 2017 [4 favorites]
Obviously the video linked on the FPP scratches a very different itch from the Jackson versions or any subsequent edits thereof.
posted by wabbittwax at 9:47 AM on August 26, 2017 [4 favorites]
The Fabulous Journey of Mr. Bilbo Baggins, The Hobbit, Across the Wild Land, Through the Dark Forest, Beyond the Misty Mountains. There and Back Again
Clearly an adherent of the Moll Flanders school of title writing.
posted by jedicus at 10:14 AM on August 26, 2017 [2 favorites]
Clearly an adherent of the Moll Flanders school of title writing.
posted by jedicus at 10:14 AM on August 26, 2017 [2 favorites]
…the dwarves - they're not heroes, but prudent people who value treasure above all; some tricky and treacherous, but some honest so long as you don't expect too much from them. The description makes me think that Tolkien was pretty much saying "bourgeois middle-class capitalist".
Unfortunately, it makes me think "anti-semitic stereotype." I love me some Tolkien, but he was far from perfect and it shows through in his works somewhat. I don't know if the Dwarves were intended to embody a whole bunch of negative stereotypes about Jews, but once I saw it I couldn't un-see it if you know what I mean.
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 11:45 AM on August 26, 2017 [5 favorites]
Unfortunately, it makes me think "anti-semitic stereotype." I love me some Tolkien, but he was far from perfect and it shows through in his works somewhat. I don't know if the Dwarves were intended to embody a whole bunch of negative stereotypes about Jews, but once I saw it I couldn't un-see it if you know what I mean.
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 11:45 AM on August 26, 2017 [5 favorites]
Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The: Unfortunately, it makes me think "anti-semitic stereotype."
Huh, yeah, you're right.
I love me some Tolkien, but he was far from perfect and it shows through in his works somewhat.
It's all about bloodlines with Tolkien. I can't think of a Tolkien character who isn't defined - or at least boxed in - by their race and ancestry. Even Bilbo and Frodo, the most complex characters he created, have to have just the right combination of hobbit humbleness and Took-fairy-ancestor adventurousness in their ancestry to make suitable ring bearers. A champion of equality, Tolkien was not. Everybody has their role to play, even the greedy dwarves, and nobody can escape their blood.
That's another thing that makes it a fascinating work for a Soviet adaptation. It's three years since the death of Brezhnev; Soviet intellectuals are restless after his stultifying regime and unsatisfied that they're not rewarded in relation to their talent; dissidents have been mostly silenced but nobody has been killed for a while. Tolkien is clearly feudal and reactionary, but he has written a ripping tale. [googles] Tolkien Through Russian Eyes, discussed briefly here, sounds like it could be a fascinating read, a glimpse into the Soviet Union at a time when wild new currents were swirling beneath the ice:
posted by clawsoon at 12:48 PM on August 26, 2017 [3 favorites]
Huh, yeah, you're right.
I love me some Tolkien, but he was far from perfect and it shows through in his works somewhat.
It's all about bloodlines with Tolkien. I can't think of a Tolkien character who isn't defined - or at least boxed in - by their race and ancestry. Even Bilbo and Frodo, the most complex characters he created, have to have just the right combination of hobbit humbleness and Took-fairy-ancestor adventurousness in their ancestry to make suitable ring bearers. A champion of equality, Tolkien was not. Everybody has their role to play, even the greedy dwarves, and nobody can escape their blood.
That's another thing that makes it a fascinating work for a Soviet adaptation. It's three years since the death of Brezhnev; Soviet intellectuals are restless after his stultifying regime and unsatisfied that they're not rewarded in relation to their talent; dissidents have been mostly silenced but nobody has been killed for a while. Tolkien is clearly feudal and reactionary, but he has written a ripping tale. [googles] Tolkien Through Russian Eyes, discussed briefly here, sounds like it could be a fascinating read, a glimpse into the Soviet Union at a time when wild new currents were swirling beneath the ice:
In one version of The Hobbit -translated by Rakhmanova, while the censor was successful in expunging all references to East and West, nothing was done to edit out Rakhmanova's excessive use of references to God, which never explicitly appeared in Tolkien's original text!Generalissimo. One can imagine the calculation behind that word choice: "Clearly, comrade censor, it's criticizing fascists! There are no Soviet Generalissimos!" But then Correction-Labour Burrows, a clear dig at the Soviet system; will the censor let it pass? Will the reader smile? And the censors are making their own calculations, not always in line with the system they've sworn to uphold. What's going through the mind of the censor reading "God" again and again and letting it pass?
In Murav'ev's version of LOTR we get a lovely dose of socialist realism -the Lockholes become Correctional-Labor Burrows!
and this wonderful phrase is included in one of the most hilarious translations that Murav'ev affords us:
These Big bosses, thugs of the Generalissiomo's, are everywhere. One of us only has to begin to dissent, and they drag him off to the Correctional-Labor Burrows straight away. The first one they took was old Doughnut, Will Bluntpaw, our mayor, after him there's no counting them, especially since the end of September they've been jailing them in droves. Now they are even beating them with deadly blows.
posted by clawsoon at 12:48 PM on August 26, 2017 [3 favorites]
I don't know if the Dwarves were intended to embody a whole bunch of negative stereotypes about Jews, but once I saw it I couldn't un-see it if you know what I mean.
There was a previously about this last year.
posted by ActingTheGoat at 2:04 PM on August 26, 2017 [2 favorites]
There was a previously about this last year.
posted by ActingTheGoat at 2:04 PM on August 26, 2017 [2 favorites]
I had always assumed Tolkein's dwarves were caricatures of Scots. I feel like there are a lot of very similar stereotypes about the scottish in England as there are of jews in the rest of europe.
posted by RustyBrooks at 11:32 PM on August 26, 2017 [2 favorites]
posted by RustyBrooks at 11:32 PM on August 26, 2017 [2 favorites]
And the mining and warmaking seem like a better fit with Scottish stereotypes than Jewish ones. It's probably my ignorance showing, but "iconic swordsmiths and warriors" is not something I associate with European Jews. (Is there a Jewish Claymore that I don't know about?)
On the other hand, from ActingTheGoat's link, Tolkien said they were Jews. That's a pretty strong counter-argument.
posted by clawsoon at 9:00 AM on August 27, 2017 [1 favorite]
On the other hand, from ActingTheGoat's link, Tolkien said they were Jews. That's a pretty strong counter-argument.
posted by clawsoon at 9:00 AM on August 27, 2017 [1 favorite]
Well, there you have it.
posted by RustyBrooks at 11:14 AM on August 27, 2017
posted by RustyBrooks at 11:14 AM on August 27, 2017
One of the things that cracked me up/baffled me about the Jackson films is that he decided to take the often buffoonish character of Thorin and turn him into a hunky tragic hero.
posted by brundlefly at 3:00 PM on August 30, 2017 [1 favorite]
posted by brundlefly at 3:00 PM on August 30, 2017 [1 favorite]
Thorin is tragic in the books too, though, just not hunky.
As a child prince his beloved home is ravaged by a horrendous terror, he spends basically his whole life as a tradesman, scraping and saving up funds, dreaming of the day of going back to bring his curses home to his people's oppressor. He finally manages to do that with the help of his colleagues, Gandalf and a (usually) friendly burglar, who apparently betrays him at the end... only it turns out his true enemies, the Goblins, have always been lurking at the gates, held at bay only by the now-deceased terror's might. He sustains a fatal blow in the scramble for the riches, and gets to experience the coming true of his lifelong dream for at most a couple of days. At the end he comes to realize his avarice was his flaw, and forgives the helpful burglar before passing into the Halls of Mandos for all the remaining ages of Middle Earth.
posted by JHarris at 7:03 PM on August 30, 2017
As a child prince his beloved home is ravaged by a horrendous terror, he spends basically his whole life as a tradesman, scraping and saving up funds, dreaming of the day of going back to bring his curses home to his people's oppressor. He finally manages to do that with the help of his colleagues, Gandalf and a (usually) friendly burglar, who apparently betrays him at the end... only it turns out his true enemies, the Goblins, have always been lurking at the gates, held at bay only by the now-deceased terror's might. He sustains a fatal blow in the scramble for the riches, and gets to experience the coming true of his lifelong dream for at most a couple of days. At the end he comes to realize his avarice was his flaw, and forgives the helpful burglar before passing into the Halls of Mandos for all the remaining ages of Middle Earth.
posted by JHarris at 7:03 PM on August 30, 2017
Tragic, yeah. For sure. But hero? I remember him also being an egotistical ass.
(It's been a while.)
posted by brundlefly at 1:52 AM on August 31, 2017
(It's been a while.)
posted by brundlefly at 1:52 AM on August 31, 2017
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