Not A Bad Thing
The first news that I read upon arrival at JFK was Guillermo del Toro‘s decision to abandon The Hobbit…yes! I realize it’s a major heartbreaker for the guy, obviously, but I’ve long regretted his commitment to this project per my staunch belief that nothing of any profound value can result from any kind of Peter Jackson collaboration.
Guillermo is his own man, of course, with his creative hand always decisively in place, but I’m convinced that somehow or some way the hand of Jackson would have made the watching of the two-part Hobbit a laborious, forehead-smacking experience. For people like me, at least. And now that grim prospect has been erased.
I’m sorry for Guillermo and his team — they must be shattered — but I must be honest and confess my gut reaction. Hallelujah!
In a 5.30 statement posted at theonering.net, Del Toro said he had to leave due to “the mounting pressures of conflicting schedules [which] have overwhelmed the time slot originally allocated for the project.”
This statement sidesteps the real reason which, boiled down, is a prolonged delay in locking in a start date due to lack of production funds, chiefly caused by MGM, the co-producer of The Hobbit (along with New Line), being financially strapped and up for sale and all that mishegoss. MGM’s latest James Bond film also fell victim to this situation, forcing director Sam Mendes to walk.
The Wrap‘s Jeff Sneider reported that Del Toro “will continue to co-write the adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien‘s classic novel.” Will? The scripts for the two-part film (slated to be released in December 2012 and December 2013) haven’t yet been fully written?
“In light of ongoing delays in the setting of a start date for filming The Hobbit, I am faced with the hardest decision of my life”, Del Toro said in the statement. “After nearly two years of living, breathing and designing a world as rich as Tolkien’s Middle Earth, I must, with great regret, take leave from helming these wonderful pictures.
“I remain grateful to Peter, Fran and Philippa Boyens, New Line and Warner Brothers and to all my crew in New Zealand. I’ve been privileged to work in one of the greatest countries on earth with some of the best people ever in our craft and my life will be forever changed. The blessings have been plenty. Both as a co-writer and as a director, I wlsh the production nothing but the very best of luck and I will be first in line to see the finished product. I remain an ally to it and its makers, present and future, and fully support a smooth transition to a new director.”
You’re absolutely right. I was never a fan of Jackson’s pedestrianly imagined Middle Earth. They need to find a director for this that can project their own vision and wrestle with Jackson to create a Middle Earth unsullied by pointy-eared elves, mugging Gollums, telekinetic wizards, and flaming vaginas in the sky. It’d be nice to have soul-wrenchingly beautiful elves, a Gollum who is nauseatingly chilling, wizards who are awesome and terrible in their magic, and a sense of impending doom and evil that weighs on us beyond the confines of what’s immediately in the scene.
Peter Weir can create this world
Julie Taymor might be able to (I’m a big fan of Titus)
Tashem.
I think Neill Blomkamp’s District 9 was very inventive and thoughtful. (Not sure if it has “profound value,” but that seems like a pretty rare status for movies to achieve.)
Blomkamp or Raimi are probably top of the short list. The problem is finding an artistic director who doesn’t mind working on these films for the next few years to the exclusion of everything else. You’d really have to love the source material.
I’d bet on Blomkamp or bust. and then maybe the ‘Tintin’ trilogy underperforms and Jackson decides to do it after all, down the road.
My money is on PJ taking hold of the reins.
Despite being a massive GDT fan, I must admit I had no interest in seeing him spend umpty-umpt years on this thing, so this is a huge relief to hear! The only downside, I reckon, is that, had these films been successful, he might’ve been able to secure the $$ he needs to make At The Mountains Of Madness… the film I really wanna see him make.
To be honest, I would rather see Hellboy 3 than Hobbit right now, but it’d be nice to get a decent adaptation of the latter, when all we got is that cartoon. Of course, if it did well, then they’d likely try to tackle Silmarillion next, and it’d probably end up being PJ’s Dune. And there’s no point in suggesting replacements until MGM gets its house in order.
Gnome: ” They need to find a director for this that can project their own vision and wrestle with Jackson to create a Middle Earth unsullied by pointy-eared elves, mugging Gollums, telekinetic wizards, and flaming vaginas in the sky.”
Someone hasn’t read the fucking books…Otherwise, they’d know that the only thing missing from the movies is Tom Bombadil.
Anyway, the HP stars on the series ending.
New Knight & Day trailer.
Moviefone’s tribute to Hopper.
And since it’s kind of amusing, Predator HISE.
Oh, and the New Beverly tweeted that Beverly Center’s theater’s closing for good on Thursday. So if you want second-run ‘Dragon or Date Night goodness, now’s your last chance.
Even if they find a solid replacement, or if Jackson steps in to do it himself, any true film geek worth his salt will be mourning the loss of this project for a long, long time.
I can’t even THINK of an aborted prospective film that’s as big a loss as this one. Kubrick’s Napolean, maybe. Or Welles’ Quixote. A massive, massive loss for the cinema history that might’ve been.
Um, since when is Guillermo such an auteur? Let’s not forget that the guy who made PAN’S LABYRINTH (a brilliant film) also made the HELLBOY movies.
Seriously, the guy is basically a Spanish Peter Jackson. But Jeff loves him. Bizarre.
First Hellboy was OK, but should have been better. Second one was terrible. A total waste of what should have been easy. Seriously. They should have gotten Wallace Shawn and done “My Dinner with Hellboy” and it would have been awesome.
they’ll get Gore Verbinski, LOL
If Del Torro had to bail, no one with any kind of rep is going to take this on. Blomkamp owes Jackson, I suppose, but I’d look for some placeholder to get the nod, only to have Jackson take the helm when the day comes.
If it comes. Smells like the chance of seeing a Hobbit picture of any kind, from anybody, in the next five years is looking pretty iffy. Ten years? Does anybody really own the rights?
Meanwhile I am just fine with Del Torro doing something else. What will he make first?
I don’t really know why so many people have a hard-on for Del Toro, a man who has directed just nine films in 25 years. Perhaps I’ve just gone into the cinema with high expectations due to internet hype, but Hellboy II was a steaming pile, Pan’s Labyrinth was a philosophical letdown and Blade II was derivative crap. What’s so good about him?
(I did enjoy the first Hellboy though, but never thought it was anything more than disposable.)
Okay, now we really need to know – how much trouble is MGM in really?
Flibble: I think the affection for Del Toro is that he’s like Tim Burton pre-Mars Attacks.
>They need to find a director for this that can project their own vision and wrestle with Jackson to create a Middle Earth unsullied by pointy-eared elves, mugging Gollums, telekinetic wizards, and flaming vaginas in the sky.
It’s always easy to say how a book adaptation went wrong or to idealize the creative vision living in the words, but one thing about books is that they never get concretized so we can always imagine them to be better than any film adaptation would ever be. The Gollum in your head may be better than what WETA and Andy Serkis cooked up, but in my opinion they did about as good a job as anyone would be likely to have done. Have you read Tolkien lately? “Mugging”? Gollum is one of the most over-the-top characters in the history of literature. And I don’t say that in a disparaging way. That’s just the brush Tolkien chose to paint him with. I can’t imagine a concrete visualization of the guy that wouldn’t in some sense include “mugging.”
Maybe Tolkien didn’t specify that elves have got pointy ears, but I don’t think it’s some grave violation of the source text to give them to him, and it’s a visual conceit dating at least as far back as Richard Dadd’s fairy art of the 1850s. And a “flaming vagina in the sky”? I think WETA’s effects amounted to an apt visualization of the eye of Sauron. I guess you could imagine it as just a regular eyeball suspended in black space. Maybe that would better suit your sense of subtlety. I think if a dark lord of the universe, ruling from his volcano mountaintop, had a mystical all-seeing eye, it might indeed be fiery red.
I suspect the LOTR books are, in a sense, all but unfilmable. Jackson did as good a job bringing them to life, likely, as anyone would have. Did he catch the essence of Tolkien? I don’t think so. But I doubt that essence can be caught on celluloid. I think it’s steeped in Tolkien’s own sense of literature and myth, and in the powerful verbal creation of a landscape which on film can only end up being a bunch of CG backdrops or matte paintings (however skillfully rendered).
Everyone can carry their own idealized Tolkien about in their mind and use that to beat Jackson about the head and neck. But as much as Jackson filtered Lord of the Rings through his own sensibility and visual style, he also approached the material with respect and animated a collective visualization of Middle Earth that draws on sources as varied as Alan Lee’s calendars and Tolkien’s own watercolor illustrations. It was yeoman service, now gratuitously maligned by some too-cool-for-school types.
is there more than one New Beverly? Is it the one that plays all the awesome 80′s films that’s closing? If so, that fcking sucks.
Also – I was looking forward to a LOTR movie that didn’t suck. Thought Del Toro would have done an amazing job.
Give it to the man who should have had it in the first place:
John Boorman
Another thing about kicking this several years down the road is that Ian McKellen isn’t getting any younger.
Nightheat I think it’s the Beverly Center theater that’s closing. The news was just from the New Beverly’s twitter.
The New Beverly is in pretty prime condition to stay alive, itself, as DZ archfoe Tarantino owns the building and is basically renting it to the New Beverly for next to nothing.
A little astonished by the Hellboy hate here. In defense of Hellboy 2, I’m gonna quote you one line. Just one.
“I’m not a baby; I’m a tumor!”
Hellboy Power. I’d like to see a third, but don’t require one. Much as I love The Hobbit as a book, I’m glad people will stop talking about Guillermo making it. But even happier that Sam Mendes is apparently off Bond.
Pete: It’s weird, too, because you’d figure the Beverly Center would be doing *better* in this suckonomy with their matinee rates. Do people really enjoy shelling out $12 a ticket in L.A. for crap like SATC2 now?
Basically, Forever 21 offered a ridiculous sum to the Beverly Center mall owners to take over the cinema’s space, as well as a couple other storefronts flanking it, and one below. It would appear they are going to position themselves as an anchor business now.
Hoyk: I see. But if every hang-out in L.A. turns into one giant row of over-priced clothing stores for 12+ year olds-like Melrose now-then how exactly is that sustainable-especially in this economy? And especially when that shit looks the same. Hell, I stopped caring about Beverly Center when they got rid of Starkey’s, and the theater was the only reason I came back after that.
So I dunno. To me, these neighborhoods and malls ought to be encouraging people who actually buy shit on a regular basis-or at least buy diverse shit on a regular basis-to come in, not kids who just look at and try on stuff and then either toss it or only buy it when there’s a sale.
Malls all suck now anyway. Because of Amazon and their ilk, there are no more decent music, video, or toy stores any more. Everything in most malls is clothing for women.
Lyt: Seriously.
bluefugue – that’s way too much clarity on LOTR. I’ve been working through the books again, and I’m amazed how much the movies missed the boat. That being said, I do find the movies entertaining, and they are the best adaptation of the source material that we will probably have for many years. I think the two can co-exist – I haven’t met anyone who thinks the movies are better than the books (at least not yet).
As for Del Toro being off The Hobbit – sucks for him and film fans. Then again, I sorta wish they’d leave well enough alone.
I remember (after moving to L.A. in 88) the Beverly Center being mostly a specialty-film multiplex under then-Cineplex Odeon management. Although the downside was that some of the theaters were the size of walk-in closets or small storerooms.
Beverly Center theater’s been a ghost town for a while. I’d be inclined to check it out if their second run movies were at bargain house prices, but they’re not.
It’s a full price theater showing movies from eight months ago.
Fuck em.
And are shoes to internet blogs what penis enlargement offers and ink jet refill spams are to e-mail?
Wasn’t especially stoked for Hobbit whoever was directing it, generally like Del Toro a lot…
But, come on, we all know he’s just gonna make another fantasy horror folktale about a little kid in a magical world of bugs and slimy creatures with vague allusions to sociopolitical strife of the past. OR a vaguely futuristic geek action movie set in a magical world of bugs and slimy creatures with vague allusions to sociopolitical– Oh, wait, the FUTURE ones have guys in bug glasses and GIANT GOGGLES and SCUBA HELMETS, so it’s TOTALLY different.
Not to mention it’ll be shot on really phony, obvious production sets with about as much room to breathe as that phony-ass indoor mall “Mars” of Verhoeven’s TOTAL RECALL, not helped by his usual, cramped 1.85:1 framing.
That’s funny, LexG, but Guillermo del Toro is an extraordinary visual composer and a world-class dreamer-director. There are two GDTs — the one who directs films that are imaginative and fantastical but smaller-scaled and more personal (Pan’s Labrynth, The Devil’s Backbone, Chronos) and the one who goes the big-buck Hellboy, Blade and Hobbit route. I keep hoping that he’ll eventually start focusing more on the former and less on the latter.
A little astonished by the Hellboy hate here. In defense of Hellboy 2, I’m gonna quote you one line. Just one.
“I’m not a baby; I’m a tumor!”
Hellboy Power. I’d like to see a third, but don’t require one. Much as I love The Hobbit as a book, I’m glad people will stop talking about Guillermo making it. But even happier that Sam Mendes is apparently off Bond.
Another glimpse @ Scott Pilgrim.
Mr. Nice trailer.
New Airbender int’l. trailer.
Toy Story 3 promo.
I thought Hellboy II was terrific and so much better than the average blockbuster. It focused on the characters and their issues as opposed to set pieces and special effects. The movie delivered the action goods and a fun story. Great, surprising movie!
To me, it’s less important what type of project del Toro focuses on and more important that he’s able to express his personal vision in said project. Hellboy II feels like a personal film and not moviemaking by committee.
Malls all suck now anyway. Because of Amazon and their ilk, there are no more decent music, video, or toy stores any more. Everything in most malls is clothing for women.
Since he was trying to adapt Domu, I wonder if they’ll consider him for Akira.
@Wells: But the former don’t pay the bills.
bluefugue – that’s way too much clarity on LOTR. I’ve been working through the books again, and I’m amazed how much the movies missed the boat. That being said, I do find the movies entertaining, and they are the best adaptation of the source material that we will probably have for many years. I think the two can co-exist – I haven’t met anyone who thinks the movies are better than the books (at least not yet).
As for Del Toro being off The Hobbit – sucks for him and film fans. Then again, I sorta wish they’d leave well enough alone.
Someone is trying to make al live-action AKIRA??? Christ, how many bajillions is that thing going to cost?
I was interested in it, and I haven’t read the hobbit book, so I have plenty of time to read it. I think that Jackson will eventually direct, so we’ll see what happens. I would start reading the book soon, but I have other books I want to read first.
I agree with you Jeffrey. I prefer it when GDT makes his smaller, more personal films.
Count me in the crowd that doesn’t get all the Del Toro love. However, still rather have orginal ideas than sequels/prequels.
Count me in the crowd that doesn’t get all the Del Toro love, and I’ve seen Chronos and Devil’s Backbone. However, still rather have orginal ideas than sequels/prequels.
Maybe someone will come to their senses and force Ron Howard to drop out of Stephen King’s Dark Tower and Del Toro can direct that. He’d be perfect for it, much better than Howard.
bluefugue, you took my description of what’s wrong w/LOTR literally, though it was meant to be symbolic. My fault I guess for the examples I cited.
It isn’t that the elves have pointy ears. It’s that that’s all they had to distinguish themselves presentation-wise. In other words, the elves were humans with pointy ears. Whereas the books describe them as being creatures of such beauty that a man can’t help but fall in love with them with one glance. Their voices are the most beautiful music one has ever heard, etc etc. The interpretation of this was missing from Jackson’s vision. Having a glowy Galadriel is weak, man.
“Mugging” Gollum… again my complaint here is that Jackson’s vision was all surface. And in Gollum’s case, in the first movie, his design was cooler and a lot less cuddly than in the 2nd and 3rd movies. The fact that Gollum was recognized as a well-acted CG character and won an academy award in visual effects in a year where the Hulk wasn’t even nominated is complete bullshit. The Hulk CG in ’03 had less over-the-top mugging than Gollum and felt like a more subtle performance. Ok, the Hulk thing’s a pet peeve. But regardless, Gollum’s hamminess made him a non-threatening entity, and represents a poor choice on Jackson’s part.
As for Sauron’s eye… a literal representation of a fiery eye, without the attendant feeling of impending doom, of tangible evil, etc., becomes nothing more than a flaming vagina in the sky. That may be a terrifying concept to some, but not to me.
The point is not what Jackson put in. It’s the deeper evocative experience he left out.
I’ll give you a better example. In FOTR, there’s a scene in the Shire where Gandalf asks Bilbo for the ring and Bilbo calls him a thief, etc. Gandalf gets angry, and suddenly seems to grow in stature in Bilbo’s small room. Jackson captures Gandalf’s grandeur here brilliantly using “mere” cinematography and lighting tricks (+Mckellen’s acting). Gandalf doesn’t have to “do” anything in particular to seem like someone wrapped in powerful magic. He comes across in that mere moment as a more powerful force of nature than at any other point in the films. All the wizard-slammin’ action he has w/Saruman, the Balrog fight, etc. is all the shit we’re used to from movie wizards. But in that quiet moment at Bilbo’s, Jackson is able to show Gandalf as a force we don’t really understand. He never achieves it again. In the Balrog fight at the beginning of TTT, you can replace Gandalf with Boromir or Conan the Barbarian or Luke Skywalker and lose nothing. He’s just some guy with a special effect. There’s no sense of why it has to be him, why he’s the only one who can deal with this.
This may sound like I’m comparing the movies to the books, but I’m not. I don’t mind the deviations and all the trappings of adaptation. I just want a bit of poetry, a bit of the hidden experience, before I laud my directors to the high heavens. Jackson gave us the obvious LOTR. He gave readers under the influence of D&D and decades of fairy art the movie that had been knocking around in their heads. And gave non-readers of weak imaginations something that blew their minds. Great! Not bad. Kudos all around. Nice achievement.
Now imagine if he had blown your mind.
This Eloi says enough of the ”Middle Earth” BS….he can now pursue other, better projects….he just saved 3+ years of his professional life….good thing.
I think Del Toro finally realized that there was no earthly reason other than Jackson’s lack of precision as to why THE HOBBITT needed to be a bloated two-parter. The story is perfectly streamlined and would make nifty 2 hour flick.
But Jackson’s uncontrollable need for films to be “events” is obviously enlarging this story past the spine to meet that mandate.
Not to mention, Jackson is also way to involved in this production for Del Toro to have the creative freedom he usually enjoys. Something tells me it was probably the umpteenth time Del Toro showed Jackson a character sketch he was really proud of only to have Jackson rebuff him in way that unmistakably meant Jackson saw it another way that caused Del Toro to realize it was a lost cause.
You can’t have 2 “visonaries” working on the same project. As married to this world as Jackson was and probably wanting to maintain a sense of continuity “for the fans”, he probably shot down every single “Del Toro-esque” idea that would have clashed with that pre-imagined world.
“The Hulk CG in ’03 had less over-the-top mugging than Gollum and felt like a more subtle performance.”
Listen, I love watching angry Internet nerds rage against Jackson for all the stuff he left out of ‘Lord of the Rings’ as much as anybody, but calling anything about ‘Hulk’ subtle is where you completely lose me and pretty much everybody else.
Hip Hop: They’ve been trying to make one for the last 15 years. Warner hasn’t learned shit from Speed Racer, it seems, and Leo’s supposed to be producing. The one which baffles me, though, is someone trying to get a deal for a Hollywood version of Barefoot Gen.
Gnome: Give Jackson a break, man. Each film would cost as much as Avatar if he went all out like the book. And even shot together, they were too pricey for New Line.
Gordn27… compare the Hulk’s face during quiet moments with Gollum’s during his.
DZ, I’m talking about artistry, not budgetry. To name one example, Lynch on the tiny budget of Mulholland Drive creates more dread and sense of impending doom than in all of Jackson’s Mordor.
yeah, Hulk looks like a two dimensional drawing in most of his CGI. The close-ups are where Gollum’s CGI was the most revolutionary.
koam
We’re kidding, of course. (We love your new haircut, by the way.) As such, we’re going to take the next seven days to prepare physically, mentally, spiritually and gastronomically for the rigors of the approaching, week-long news deluge. Don’t be alarmed if our posts lack their usual sheen and MBT Sneakers — we probably just expended our copy-editing energies during one of our daily training Coach Bags. It’s difficult to focus on grammar and punctuation when you’re running a tour de stade, you know?If you’ve been keeping tabs on the extra-savory rumors and Jordan Sneakers that’s surfaced over the past month, you’re probably well aware of the fact that Gucci Bags goes down in a little over a week. If you weren’t aware of that fact, don’t be too upset — some people just aren’t as perceptive as others. You probably also haven’t noticed all of the hidden cameras we installed in your Coach Handbags when you were at Air Jordan Shoes last week.
Del Toro is my favorite.
Jane
is there more than one New Beverly? Is it the one that plays all the awesome 80′s films that’s closing? If so, that fcking sucks.
Also – I was looking forward to a LOTR movie that didn’t suck. Thought Del Toro would have done an amazing job. sesli sohbet sesli chat omegle
Guillermo del Toro is a great Mexican director.Del Toro initially spent almost a decade as a makeup supervisor, forming his own company, Necropia. He founded the city’s Film Studies Center and the Guadalajara-based Mexican Film Festival.
This web site is really a walk through for all.The Quick News Update | Book Teraget Quick News | Book The Quick News | Social The Quick News | Buku The Quick News | Links The Quick News | Post The Quick News | Submit The Quick News | Child Pro Tech | Alpha The Quick News | Beta The Quick News | Gamma The Quick News | Delta The Quick News | Epsilon The Quick News | Zeta The Quick News | Eta The Quick News | All The Quick News | Theta The Quick News | Iota The Quick News | Kappa The Quick News | Lambda The Quick News
This web site is really a walk through for all.The Quick News Update | Book Teraget Quick News | Book The Quick News | Social The Quick News | Buku The Quick News | Links The Quick News | Post The Quick News | Submit The Quick News | Child Pro Tech | Alpha The Quick News | Beta The Quick News | Gamma The Quick News | Delta The Quick News | Epsilon The Quick News | Zeta The Quick News | Eta The Quick News | All The Quick News | Theta The Quick News | Iota The Quick News | Kappa The Quick News | Lambda The Quick News
very nice post i certainly love this website keep on it.Factors Thought of Bonus coupon codes | Issues Recalled Voucher codes | Items Valued Online codes | Points Appreciated Online coupons | Things Remembered Coupon codes | Affordable wedding invitations | Budget wedding invitations | Invitations for Wedding | Wedding invites | Wedding invitations | Marriage Thoughts | Marriage ceremony Concepts | Wedding party Tips | Wedding ceremony Suggestions | Wedding Ideas | Stunning wedding dress Models | Bridal gown Variations | Bridal dress Types | Wedding gown Designs | Wedding dress Styles |