The Hunger Games. Twilight. Harry Potter. The Avengers. Batman, Superman, Spiderman. Lord of the Rings. What do all these things have in common? Other than the fact that they are all highly successful films, what's more relevant is that they're highly successful adaptations of works of written fiction. Fourteen of the top fifty movies of all time have been based on pieces of fiction. These film adaptations owe their success to the success of books. Their fanbases are easily transferable, and better still, fans are willing to shell out billions of dollars on merchandise based on the movies.
Bella and Katniss are brands all their own. Team Jacob, or Team Peeta? We invest ourselves in the fiction, and the fiction rewards us with an alternate reality in which we can immerse ourselves. That the immersion doesn't end when the movie does means that producers of these highly successful movies often find themselves the beneficiaries of the success of authors who probably never even dreamed of this level of success.
But there is a weak link in this chain of money-making. That's the books themselves. Waiting for the next YA success means that movie studios have to idly bide their time waiting for the next Suzanne Collins or J.K. Rowling to put the final touches on their masterpieces and sell them to a New York publisher. While they're waiting, movie producers are losing money on movies that are less than sure things. The solution seems obvious to me. Movie houses need to become publishers.
And the books themselves don't need to be successes. In fact, most of the proposed replacements for Twilight are going to fail. While this is devastating in the publishing industry, where profit is negligible and risk high, considering the tens of millions, perhaps hundreds of millions, involved in the creation of modern blockbusters, a few tens of thousand or hundreds of thousands necessary to create the next fiction sensation are literally drops in the bucket. Especially if a few of the bigger houses (Warner Bros., Fox, Paramount) were to join forces with the big five in New York to gain access to their distribution networks and print infrastructure, risk is exponentially reduced.
So there you go: The Next Big Thing. To be successful, movie producers need to create their niches; they need to invest to create a fanbase into which they can insert their next blockbuster. Meanwhile, it's good business sense in New York, as well. An infusion of fresh capital and new blood could re-invigorate a flagging industry. So take a look around your local bookstore. The big names you see there are the big names you're going to see on the screen. It's just a matter of time before people figure this out and start creating their own market.
The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey is a lush movie evocative of the Middle Earth we've come to expect of Peter Jackson. And that's about it. Fans of The Lord of the Rings books will probably love this movie. Fans of the movies will wonder what the big deal is. It's another Lord of the Rings movie and all that entails. A lot of CG (some of it admirable, some of it bafflingly bad), a lot of character prosthetics, and a staggering array of hints, peaks and taunting references to a world that has passed into legend.
It's hard separating this movie from the previous trilogy, and Jackson has done that on purpose, consciously building a prequel to the Lord of the Rings movies. Framing the story around an older Bilbo sitting down to write out the true story of his adventures, it sets it in the days immediately preceding the birthday/going-away party witnessed in the The Fellowship of the Ring. The juxtaposition between the two is jarring and creates an oddly reminiscent tone that will be touched on a few times in the movie. Indeed, much of the back story is told as tales within tales, or remembrances around a campfire.
The core of the story you probably already know. It's the story of Bilbo Baggins's adventure, when he set off with thirteen dwarves and a wizard to recapture the Dwarven homeland from a rampaging dragon. The grand spectacle of scale that we saw in The Lord of the Rings is again present, but the focus is necessarily narrower. It is a tighter, more intimate story about dwarves trying to reclaim their home. As such, whenever the films departs from that narrow story, it suffers. And it does this often. Irruptions of story from the later trilogies muddle the movie, and ponderously bad dialogue (full of fart jokes, digressive asides, and a kind of tongue-in-cheek parody of Tolkien) dilutes the story of Bilbo and the Dwarves.
The Real Protagonist
Interestingly, for a movie called The Hobbit, Bilbo is not actually the protagonist of this story. He is the viewpoint character, from whose eyes the audience receives the story, but Thorin Oakenshield is the actual protagonist. The company of Dwarves follows Thorin, Bilbo follows Thorin; Thorin is the only character with a tangible goal (it doesn't hurt that he's also a Dwarf prince): to reclaim his home. Bilbo has various motivations, but the story does not belong to Bilbo; it belongs to Thorin. This might be a relic from the book, but by disengaging Bilbo from the story, it made for a much weaker movie. Despite the pleasure of watching Martin Freeman on screen, he serves as a placeholder for the audience and does little more than amble along after the Dwarves.
Ultimately, I wonder what the point of this movie really is. Not having read the books, I'm left without the sense of wish-fulfillment that many fans have brought to the movie. These are not characters that I've been imagining since I was a child; nor is it a story I've treasured. It is simply a movie, and not a particularly compelling, or engaging one. It seems like Lord of the Rings2.0, an excuse for Peter Jackson to put on the fuzzy hobbit-feet one more time.
So, if you're a fan of the books, I'm sure you'll love this movie and you don't need my recommendation to see it. If you've never read The Hobbit, I'd recommend you give this movie a pass. It's superfluous, muddled and not worth the price of admission.
Welcome to Friday. It's a big weekend, with The Hobbit opening in the United States to some serious acclaim and a lot of fan excitement. Although I plan to see it, I won't wait in line at midnight Thursday (about the time this post publishes, in point of fact). I waited in line for Fellowship, Two Towers and Return of the King. I've done my fair share of stomping in the cold with people dressed up like Gandolf, Legolas, and Aragorn.
While each of those experiences was fun, and I love the movies, I can't seem to find the energy to repeat it for The Hobbit. I suspect a lot of it has to do with the fact that I haven't read the book. A lot of people tell me The Hobbit is better story; stuff happens, and there's a dragon. Yeah, but G.R.R. Martin's Game of Thrones was supposed to have dragons, too, and so far it's a whole heaping load of boring. So dragons aren't big sellers for me. I also suspect that the dragon won't make much of an appearance until the third film.
Yeah, you read that right. The Hobbit is being released as a trilogy, which means another nine-hour epic watching people walk from one end of the world to the other. So while I might see this film this weekend, it'll be a matinee showing.
I am, however, more than a little excited for a couple of movies making an appearance in the next few weeks. Jack Reacher stars Tom Cruise as some sort of hard-as-iron ex-military police officer hunting down bad guys in New York. Not an altogether original concept, but the trailer makes it look good. Also, Les Miserables is coming out Christmas Day, along with Django Unchained (the D is silent). Les Mis is my favorite novel and I haven't seen the musical, but this looks good. Also, Tarantino is a pretty big draw, so Django is a no-brainer.
Keep an eye out for Zero Dark Thirty, which is being released December 21st.
In the world of books, despite declining numbers, sales bounced back in October, accounting for about ten percent of the 5% increase across all retail markets. It was recently pointed out that fourteen of the fifty top-grossing films are part of book series (Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, Twilight and Hunger Games), generating hundreds of millions, to billions of dollars in U.S. box office revenue. This seems obvious in retrospect, but each of these series generated much of their revenue in large part based on the pre-existing fanbase that the books had garnered. Expect to see more page-to-screen hits in the future.
I recently heard about Naughty Dog's new release "The Last of Us." I'm a big fan of their previous games, including the Uncharted series so I was really excited to hear about this. It looks like a new post-apocalyptic zombie game, which I'm not a huge fan of, but I'm willing to give them a shot.
I'll leave you then with a trailer for another movie in which Tom Cruise plays a character named Jack.
