So, a week ago, I settled down with a few tortillas, some deli meat, a slab of cheese, a glass of wine, and my copy of "the Hobbit."
This is one of my all-time favorite books. The copy you see above is the same copy my mom read out loud to me from when I was 8 years old. We went through it in a few days and when we were finished I picked it back up and reread it immediately. This book is simply timeless and ageless. I loved it as a kid, I love it as an adult, I'm sure when I'm 80 years old I'll be downloading the audiobook onto the chip in my brain (that's where technology's headed, right? Right?). I'm always sort of stumped when people tell me they haven't read it. My roommate informed me the other day that he'd actually never read it, though he did own it and I was shocked. "I'm not sure we can be friends anymore," I said.
This isn't going to be one of my traditional reviews, as I stated in my last blog post. You don't need me to layout the good and nonexistant bad points of "the Hobbit" for you--most of you have probably read it already and if you haven't, you know you should. In case you actually need someone to tell you to read it, consider this my demand: go and read it--right now. Quit your job, get off your butt, go buy the book, and sit in the sunshine with a tortilla, some cheese, and some wine and read it. If you don't like "the Hobbit" you seriously don't have a soul. And I may have to reconsider being friends with you. Just saying. So if you don't like it, don't tell me. I don't want to have my soul crushed.
I thought what I would do instead of my review is talk a little bit about the movie coming up: some of my concerns, hopes, fears, and expectations for it. If you've ever watched a movie based off a book with me, you'll know it's pretty annoying to do. My roommate and I have been watching the "Game of Thrones" series together. He's just beginning the second book and I've finished through the third book. During episodes of the second series, my poor roommate has to sit through the following comments made by me about every five seconds: "That's not how I pictured it from the book." or "That is NOT how that happened!" or "I don't really remember THAT happening." After three episodes of this, my roommate finally said: "AJ, nothing is how you pictured it in the book. Please shut up." He's very reluctant to watch "the Hobbit" with me because he knows how truly excited I am to sit in the theater and compare the movie to the book. I love doing that. It's so much fun to me!
There are a few things I'm definitely concerned about and talking animals are the first. In the LOTR movies, they didn't have a whole lot of speaking animals, but in "the Hobbit" you have talking Wargs, Eagles, and Spiders. I'm curious to see if they have the animals growl or otherwise make sound and caption it? Or do they go the whole animals talking with moving mouths look? Talking animals are always hard to portray in movies in a non-ridiculous way, I find. They could also go the CG route, which I'm not fond of, but tends to work well. I'm really interested to see how that works out.
Another thing I think needs to be in the movie is all the music from the book. There's a lot of singing that goes on in the book--a lot of really ridiculous singing. What I loved about the animated movie of "the Hobbit" is that they take on Tolkien's lyrics and make some music. I adored the animated feature as a kid, so whenever I read the book, I sing the songs from the animated movie in my head. The animated feature had the advantage that it was already pretty ridiculous, so it could do the songs and pull it off. I don't know if you can have actors playing elves sing songs like: "tra-la-la-la-lolly" etc. and not have it be totally absurd. And at the same time, the music is, to me, an integral part of the book. So it would really suck if they left it out.
I'm really concerned that Peter Jackson is bringing back the cast of the LOTR movies for "the Hobbit". I understand that they're very beloved characters and that they will bring in an audience, but most of them really have nothing to do with "the Hobbit," so I'm hoping what Jackson does is have it be like story time with Bilbo Baggins, telling how he came about the ring to Aragorn and Legolas and all the rest. That would make the most sense to me. Then again, the actors are all very high profile, so it's hard to believe that Jackson would bring them back for such a small role. That's my biggest concern--that Jackson is really playing with the story's basic premise to bring back these beloved characters. I'd like to believe that he wouldn't do that, but it's hard to tell with Hollywood.
Those are my biggest concerns with the upcoming movies, but I do have a lot of hopes as well. Since they're splitting the book into two movies, I think we can expect the attention to detail to be very high. All the dialogue should be on point, straight from the book. They shouldn't need to deviate from the original story for the sake of time. And that's a great relief for me. Keeping that in mind, I'm actually really excited for the movies to come out. It'll be interesting to see how they take on the challenge of the talking animals and the songs and to see what Jackson is doing with the cast of LOTR. Knowing him, I'm sure it'll be something daringly creative. And that's never a bad thing. Well, rarely a bad thing.
Supposing you couldn't guess, my rating for the "Hobbit" is 10/5. It exceeds all expectations for a novel. It surprises you in pleasant ways, and entertains you in others. There's nothing bad about this book, it's an easy, but not boring read, great for humans of all ages! Read it to your children, read it to your senior citizens, but most of all read it to yourself. You deserve it!
Happy reading, lovely friends! I hope you're enjoying some sunshine wherever you are!
AJ
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