Fran added: ‘We always saw The Hobbit more in the golden light of a fairytale; it’s more playful. But by the time you get to the end, Tolkien is writing himself into that place where he can begin that epic journey of writing LOTR [Lord of the Rings], which took, as he put it, his life’s blood. All those heavier, darker themes which are so prevalent in the later trilogy start to come [more] into play in There and Back Again.’
DID YOU KNOW?
Guillermo del Toro read all of Tolkien’s books on Middle-earth to prepare for writing and directing The Hobbit.
Although The Hobbit was written for children, both Guillermo del Toro and Peter Jackson believed that The Hobbit movies could be darker. During a live chat in 2008, Peter confessed to fans: ‘I personally feel that The Hobbit can, and should have a different tone. The “tone” of these stories shouldn’t be defined by the pressure our characters were under in LOTR – the world is a different place at the time of The Hobbit; the shadow is not so dark. However, what should stay the same is the reality of Middle-earth and the integrity we bring to it as filmmakers.’
Across the years, The Hobbit has been translated into over 50 languages, but more translations are being done even today. In May 2011, The Hobbit was published in the Irish language, much to the delight of fans. Irish Gaelic is a minority language but many classic books have been translated into it over time. When the Harry Potter books were launched in Irish Gaelic they proved to be a big hit but experts predicted that An Hobad (The Hobbit) would be the best-selling Irish language book ever. Fans are hoping The Lord of the Rings books will be next to be translated.
The book’s launch was held at An Siopa Leabhar (The Book Shop) in Dublin and the experts who had the task of translating it, Professor Nicholas Williams and publisher Michael Everson, were on hand to answer questions.
DID YOU KNOW?
There is no word in Irish Gaelic to describe elves like the ones that feature in The Hobbit so they had to invent a new word: ‘Ealbh’.
In September 2012, HarperCollins published a Latin version of The Hobbit called Hobbitus Ille to celebrate the book’s 75th birthday. It was translated by Mark Walker and the publisher stated it was ‘great for students learning Latin, but also for fans who want to dip in and find favourite passages.’
The first line reads ‘In foramine terrae habitabat hobbitus’ (In a hole in the ground, there lived a hobbit).
In April 2012, it was announced that Tolkien’s oldest grandson – Michael Tolkien – was to release two fantasy books for children with Gerald Dickens, the great-great grandson of Charles Dickens. Michael Tolkien is a keen poet and critic, having retired from teaching in 1994. He was born in Birmingham and the two books will be based on stories read to him as a child by Tolkien. Gerald Dickens will narrate the audio book versions. The first book is called Wish and was influenced by the 1923 Florence Bone tale, The Rose-Coloured Wish. Rainbow is the second book and is again influenced by the work of Florence Bone, only this time by her story, The Other Side of the Rainbow.
Tolkien fans are hoping that The Hobbit movies will inspire people to pick up a copy of the book and read it for themselves rather than just enjoy the films, because although they are said to be true to the book, there are differences. On 25 March each year it is Tolkien Reading Day, a joint venture by the Tolkien Society and fan site TheOneRing to encourage people to pick up a classic Tolkien book and read it.
Chief of the Guards
Name: Chief of the Guards
Alias: The guard, Turnkey
Race: Elf of the Woodland Realm
Played by: Not yet cast
Character description: Mirkwood elves are usually golden haired with bright eyes. They are 6’ tall or more and wear green and brown clothing. The Chief of the Guards is a friend of the King’s Butler. He works in the dungeons and is fond of wine.
Chief Wolf
Name: Chief Wolf
Alias: Hound of Sauron
Race: Wolves of the North, Wargs of Wilderland
Played by: N/A
Character description: A big, grey wolf, he communicates with his fellow Wargs using their own language. The Wargs and the goblins often worked together on raids and shared the treasure. They enjoy doing evil and wicked things. Although pretty unbeatable, the Wargs do hate fire.
Long before Guillermo del Toro stepped down as director, he told the New Yorker in an interview: ‘There will be different sensibilities involved in this movie than there were in the original trilogy. First of all, because we have the travelogues in The Hobbit, which goes to places and variations on races that were not addressed in the trilogy. My belief on the “Wargs” issue is that the classical incarnation of the demonic wolf in Nordic mythology is not a hyena-shaped creature: it is a wolf. The archetype is a wolf, so we’re going to go back to the slender, archetypical wolf that is, I think, the inspiration for Tolkien.’
In a webchat with fans he stated that the Wargs: ‘…will be different from the Hyena ones established in the Trilogy; they will be faithful to the creatures in the book and will be redesigned accordingly.’
CinemaCon
The Official Convention of The National Association of Theatre Owners, CinemaCon, takes place at Caesars Palace, Las Vegas in March/April time. For Hobbit fans, the 2012 event was extra-special as an exclusive preview of the movie was to be given.
The audience were told by an onscreen Peter Jackson to put on their 3D glasses and following this, he briefly talked about the history of movies and how different frame rates were introduced when the move away from silent films was made. He explained that for the past 70 years moviegoers had been seeing films with a standard 24 frames-per-second, but that The Hobbit would be showing at 48 frames-per-second. The preview of 10 minutes then started.
Quickbeam from TheOneRing.net wrote in his review: ‘For a breathless moment I felt rather like someone in an audience seeing their first color film after endless years of only Black & White photography. Someone had lifted the glass off the windshield and you were looking at something *real* and in three dimensions.’
Some audience members were less than complimentary about the new 48-frames-per-second style, though. Peter Sciretta from Slashfilm thought it ‘looked like a made-for-television BBC movie. The movement of the actors looked strange, almost as if the performances had been partly sped up. But the dialogue matched the movement of the lips, so it wasn’t an effect of speed-ramping. It didn’t look cinematic.’
Quickbeam didn’t hate it, but described it as ‘just a matter of taste.’ He continued: ‘My gut reaction to what I saw was: “Wow, that sure does look different,” because like everyone, I’ve been used to the film-like quality of projected images used throughout my lifetime of going