It’s been years since I read The Hobbit. I considered doing so before the movie, but then realized that since the films would be stretched over three years, I might as well wait for a bit because I’ll forget the end again by the time the final installment in the trilogy came out. As a result, I couldn’t tell if scenes were actually made up in the movie or if I’d just misremembered the book so poorly.
“Was Saruman in The Hobbit?” I asked my roommate as we were leaving.
“No!” she – a rabid Hobbit/Lord of the Rings fan – replied. “No! They were just making stuff up!”
According to most doomsayers, the world will end on the 21-22 of December 2012. If you are prompt about it, you can greet the apocalypse one Tolkien movie fuller. The first trailer for The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey is here to tantalize us a full year before its December 14, 2012 release date. Check out the trailer below:
As my roommate pointed out about halfway through our (first) watch of the trailer, we only see shots of scenes we’ve already grown accustomed to: Bilbo’s house in the Shire, Rivendell, some cave snippets that look suspiciously like the caverns of Moria. Given that we’re a year out, it’s not that surprising. It’s highly doubtful that special effects are anywhere near done and clearly the first bout of filming was done in sets that were already designed for the first trilogy.
The use of familiar sets and the voice-over narration adds a somberness (and some LotR trilogy foreshadowing) to the trailer that is not entirely in keeping with the tone of Tolkien’s book. Gandalf walks across a thin ledge. Galadriel appears, looking ethereal and distant. We see Bilbo silhouetted against the light, the ring glittering on an outcropping of rock–and we all know how that ends.
Still, there’s nothing like a teaser for this well-loved adventure story to kick start the holidays.
I can’t wait.
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Are you excited about the movie? What do you think of the trailer?
It’s been years since I read The Hobbit. I considered doing so before the movie, but then realized that since the films would be stretched over three years, I might as well wait for a bit because I’ll forget the end again by the time the final installment in the trilogy came out. As a result, I couldn’t tell if scenes were actually made up in the movie or if I’d just misremembered the book so poorly.
The Book Canaries 