Latest / This Film is Lit / Prequel to The Hobbit - Dune: Part 2 Fan Reaction, The Hobbit Preview

Transcript

Prequel to The Hobbit - Dune: Part 2 Fan Reaction, The Hobbit Preview · This Film is Lit

• 0:09
  Speaker A: On this prequel episode, we discuss your feedback on Dune part two and preview the Hobbit in unexpected journey. Hello and welcome back to another prequel episode of this film is late, the podcast where we talk about movies that are based on books. We have so much to get to. So much feedback, so much previewing. We're just gonna jump right in to our patron shoutouts.
• 0:34
  Speaker B: I put up with you because your father and mother were our finest patrons. That's why.
• 0:38
  Speaker A: No new patrons this week. But we do have our Academy Award winners, and they are Nicole Goebbel honky tonk Kronks Badonkadonk Eric self promotes his book arrested adolescents Harpo rat Nathan Vic Vega Mathilde Steve from Arizona Ent draft Theresa Schwartz Ian from Wine Country, Winchester's forever, Kelly Napier Grey Hightower gratch just scratch. Shelby's torn between promoting Arctic fox copywriting and telling you to read Ocean's echo, that darn skag v. Frank, and Alina Starkoff. Thank you all very much for your continued support at the Academy Award winning level. Appreciate you all very much. Katie let's see what the people had to say about Dune part two.
• 1:21
  Speaker B: Yeah, well, you know, that's just like your opinion, Mandy on Patreon we had four votes for the book and three for the movie. Shelby's torn between promoting Arctic Fox copywriting and telling you to read Ocean's Echo said, last time I passed on choosing between the book and the movie because I wanted to see how they finished the story. I really enjoyed part one so it was close. This movie made the choice easy. I like the idea of what they did with Chani, but I hated what they did with Jessica. I don't like when adaptations throw characters under the bus for the sake of the narrative, but really it comes down to one. Aaliyah shes my favorite character in the second half of the book and the way she interacts with the other characters is fun and fascinating. Brian actually read my favorite scene in the whole book. Now I get why they basically cut her from the film, but that doesnt mean Im not salty. We skipped right to the version of her from Dune Messiah. All that wait and they dont even adapt the best version of her character. I'm feeling a bit robbed here. Speaking of Dune Messiah, I can't even guess what they're going to do with that movie after all the changes they made. I've been holding off on reading book three because I wanted this book to still be fresh in my mind for this episode. I did like some things, including the princess's entries and the gladiator scene was fantastic. But this one I'm giving to the book pretty easily. Also, I'm pretty sure the planet is called Dune. In the first movie, the Baron has a line like, this is my Arrakis, my Dune. It was a meme for a while when the movie came out. Yeah, I believe that is correct. I recall that from the first movie.
• 3:02
  Speaker A: Yeah. Now that Shelby mentions that, I'm like.
• 3:03
  Speaker B: Oh, yeah, I still think. I do think that that line from the first movie is not like. I think it's unobvious enough that the line in the second movie still works.
• 3:13
  Speaker A: Yes. I think you could not know necessarily that that's the actual name of the planet. When the baron says it necessarily, you might not exactly be sure what he's talking about. I mean, it's pretty obvious, but you could misinterpret it, I think, and just think he's talking about. Maybe he's calling it that or the word sand dune. Like, he's calling it his dune. This is his sand dune. I don't know. You could interpret it in ways where you might not realize that's the name of the planet, whereas it's pretty obvious. Cause I think Paul in the second one is like, it went by another name, Dune or something. You know what I mean? Like, he makes it very explicit. So. Well, obviously, I agree with you about Aaliyah. Like I said, I love Aaliyah in the book, and very sad they cut her part out. We'll talk more about Jessica, and that's a very specific point that lots of people brought up. But like I said, I was very close initially, I did not like it at all. I was like, I like Jessica's character a lot in the book. I think she's really layered and interesting and. And kind of complex, and the movie definitely strips some of that out. But I don't mind a movie making that decision for the narrative where, as Shelby said, she explicitly doesn't like it. I get it, but for me, it still worked overall.
• 4:27
  Speaker B: All right, our next comment was from Kelly Napier, who said, I voted for the book because I think the movie, despite its length, sacrificed too much of the plot of the book. The movie was beautiful. Absolutely a spectacle to watch, but my husband, who hasn't read the book, kept asking me to pause it and explain things to him. As you alluded to in the episode, the lore of the book is incredibly nuanced and deep, and the movie really fell down, in my opinion, in communicating those little plot points that really help tie the whole thing together. For example, did you know that neither the princess Irulan. Irulan nor the emperor is never actually named in the movie by any character? If you didn't have the closed captioning on, or if you hadn't read the book, how would you have known who the heck they were?
• 5:17
  Speaker A: I will say this. I don't think you need to know their names. The emperor, maybe his name is not said, but, you know, he's the. Like, I'm fairly certain he's referred to as emperor several times, like, multiple times throughout the course of the movie. They may not say Emperor Shanam, you.
• 5:31
  Speaker B: Know, he's the emperor.
• 5:32
  Speaker A: That's what I mean. Like, you understand what his role is, and it's. I don't know if his name really matters. And similarly for Princess Irulan, I don't know if knowing her name, and I feel like it comes up at some point, but I could be wrong. But, yeah, I don't know how necessary knowing their name is for their. What their role they play, but your point stands. And like I said, I do think it's a fair critique, because you even had some questions, not too many, while we were watching, but, you know, you had some moments where you're like, okay, let's explain more about this. Explain more about that. And I think with a. I will say this. I think it's impossible to make. I think the movie is unadaptable if the standard or the book is unadaptable if the standard are gonna hold it to. Is to be as coherent. Maybe not coherent is the right word, but if you're. If you're still gonna hold it to the standard of being as detailed and, like, every single little nuance of it is gonna translate, I just think that's impossible. Like, in a. With a. With a text, this, like Lord of the Rings. There's a lot of things in Lord of the Rings that happen where you're like, I don't like with the ghosts under the mountain at the end. You know what I mean? There's more about that in the book and stuff, but in the movie, it's kind of really surface level. Glance over. There's stuff like that where I think anytime you get into a fantasy epic like this that has so much world building and lore and stuff built into the universe, it's kind of impossible to do a film that captures all of that or even gets close to capturing all that. And by that nature, it's going to have some holes for people who haven't read the book, but I think that's fine. Personally, I think it still works thematically and narratively. Even if there's stuff that the general audience is like. I don't really know what that's talking about. I think you can still have a perfectly fine moviegoing experience, even while having those kind of, like, gaps in the knowledge that the movie doesn't give everybody.
• 7:33
  Speaker B: Kelly went on to say, also, I think the movie missed an opportunity by not incorporating the time jump. To me, it was much more believable that Paul's relationship with Chani and the growing belief that he was the messiah for the Fremen would happen gradually over time rather than over literal days.
• 7:50
  Speaker A: Real quick, it depends on what you mean by literal days. The movie, I believe, is implied to take place over, like, months and months.
• 7:58
  Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, at least enough time for Jessica's pregnancy to progress to get.
• 8:03
  Speaker A: To the point where she's. I assumed that, yes, my assumption was that she becomes pregnant. She gets pregnant right before the, like, literally the scene in the first movie, we see them sleeping together before Leto is killed, like, that night. I assume that is probably no. Cause she's. She knows she's pregnant before then in the movie, so that's not correct. But within the weeks of.
• 8:27
  Speaker B: Right. Because at the beginning, she's not even showing yet, and then by the end of the movie, she's, like, fairly heavily pregnant.
• 8:33
  Speaker A: So I assume that the whole two movies takes place over the course of about eight, nine months in that range. So the period in the second movie where he's getting to know Chani, it's not two years, obviously, so it is shorter. But I did not interpret it as, like, a couple weeks, even. I interpreted it as, like, several months. Multiple. Multiple months, like, at least three months, if not longer. So again, your point stands that the book has more. But then again, my counter to that would be we actually get to see some of it in the movie. In the book, we're just kind of, like, left to imagine what happened, which is not the end of the world, but, like, we don't see any of their relationship stuff. They're just married and have kids by the time we come back to them. And they had literally just met, like, the chapter before. So you're kind of playing a trading game there of, like, the movie gives you more of seeing their relationship, but it's over a slightly condensed timeline, whereas the book gives you a longer timeline, which feels more realistic, but you don't actually get to see. See as much of it. So, you know.
• 9:33
  Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah, it is kind of a trade off, I guess Kelly went on to say. Plus, it robbed us of Aaliyah, which is truly the greatest tragedy, because she was fantastic in the full agreement. While it is true that they probably would have struggled to cast a two year old in the role, I feel they could have exaggerated the time jump and cast a precocious five year old who could handle the character instead of just cutting it entirely.
• 9:58
  Speaker A: So I agree. I even think they could have. I don't think it would have been outlandish for them to do some weird, like, CG abomination, like, where they have.
• 10:06
  Speaker B: Like, I mean, that technology is a little better now than it used to be.
• 10:09
  Speaker A: Pretty good. Yeah, it's a lot better now than it used to be. And on top of that, if it feels kind of weird and uncanny, that actually works for. Because it should feel weird and off.
• 10:18
  Speaker B: Probably like, one of the rare characters that I would actually work for.
• 10:21
  Speaker A: So if you did a thing where you had, like, a, I don't know, a CG character that was then, like a CG two year old that was, you know, had Anya Taylor Joy's face, like, animated onto it or something like that, like a de aged version of her face, or if you did what Kelly said and make it a five year old, that's fine, too. But I think you could even do the two year old thing. My issue wasn't like, oh, it would look weird, like practically, or like, effects wise or whatever. My issue was tonally, with the way the movie, everything plays out in the movie and the kind of tone the movie is going for all of a sudden. Cause even in the book, it's pretty jarring to have this all of a sudden, this character. I think it would have been even more jarring in a movie, and I think people would have. And again, not the effect of it, but just that there's this two year old that we have to explain why it can walk and talk. And now, again, the movie does that with the fetus a little bit, but it's like telepathy, and you don't really go too much into it. We had actually seen a walking, talking two year old who's like, slinging insults at the baron. That requires your audience to take a leap of faith with you. That I think I can understand the movie. The filmmakers going, I'm not sure general audiences are going to be able to make this leap, even if it looked incredible. Like, even if you, you know, however you did it effects wise or you aged him up to a five year old or whatever. I. Regardless, I think just the actual leap of this, what is happening with that character would have been too much for a lot of audiences, and I think you would have alienated people again, I wish they would have because I don't care. I would have loved it, but I can understand why they wouldn't.
• 12:03
  Speaker B: Yeah. I also think it's funny that two episodes in a row, you covered movies who have a. Everyone drops to the ground except the main characters moment. The dance scene in red, white and royal blue, and then here at the end where everyone bows to Paul except Chani and Princess Irulan.
• 12:20
  Speaker A: I'm gonna recut that scene to. It will get low.
• 12:26
  Speaker B: Where's that at?
• 12:27
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 12:30
  Speaker B: Truly an underappreciated movie trope. When the series Dune prophecy comes out on Max, will you watch that, or are you taking a dune break until the third movie eventually comes out?
• 12:42
  Speaker A: I forgot they were doing that. And that's gonna be, I think, from my understanding, focused primarily on the Benny Jesuit. I will watch it. We probably won't, because Katie, I don't think, is particularly interested.
• 12:50
  Speaker B: So, yeah, I don't really care.
• 12:51
  Speaker A: Yeah. So. But I will watch it because, yeah, I'll be into it. But we probably won't revisit the series as a group until Dune Messiah, assuming they make it, which, again, I think they will, because this movie made a million dollars.
• 13:06
  Speaker B: And then we had a response to Kelly Nathan said, I keep just say Aurelian. Aurelian may not get named in the film, but to me, she seemed way more like a real person with an understandable personality and motivations because of the scenes before she showed up on Arrakis. The book really didn't develop her at.
• 13:27
  Speaker A: All, and I would agree with that. Again, it's kind of similar to the trade off with the condensed timeline where it's like, yes, the book, you know her name, and you learn some stuff about her over the course of the books, specifically from the little intro segments. But you learn a lot more about her and really get a kind of. A little bit more of a feel for what her whole deal is in the film, which maybe if you don't know her name, that's one thing, but it's still, I would argue, maybe more interesting to learn more about her personality and who she is than just knowing her name.
• 13:59
  Speaker B: Our next comment was from Ian from Wine country, who said, I've read the first two books, and while the first was okay, the second one was rough. Like, hard to stay awake while reading it. Rough. They're the kind of books I'm glad to have read but don't need to do so again. That said, the first movie didn't grab me particularly strongly either. I thought it was exceptionally well made, but just another standard version of the hero's journey. And the story was less exciting than some of the copycats that came after it, such as Star wars. However, the second movie got me something about the visuals, like the disco ball spaceship, the reservoir at Sechtabore, the cavalry charge on worm back made the world come to life for me in a way it hadn't before the performances of Rebecca Ferguson and Javier Bardem, two of my biggest talent crushes, along with Florence Puh, who hopefully has a bigger role.
• 14:54
  Speaker A: In the third movie from everything I know, she does.
• 14:56
  Speaker B: Yeah. Brought Jessica and Stilgar to life in a way that never happened for me in the books and was only hinted at in the first movie. The second movie made me go, oh, okay, now I get why this property has been so popular for so long.
• 15:11
  Speaker A: Interesting. Yeah, I mean, I guess I can kind of agree with that. I did. I didn't pick the movie the first time, and I did pick it this time. So it definitely, this movie, I think, did work better for me. But I completely agree about. Well, I agree about Stilgar, for sure, which I like Stilgar a lot in the book, and he brought him to life. I agree in the sense that Rebecca Ferguson and Javier Bardem both do incredible jobs. I think Rebecca Ferguson is fantastic. That being said, her character was already really compelling to me in the books, so it wasn't and actually is slightly less compelling in the movies because of the changes, which we'll talk more about. But the performance is fantastic, so can't fault that.
• 15:50
  Speaker B: And, I mean, honestly, I would agree with the first movie, second movie assessment here, with the caveat that I didn't feel super passionately about either one. I thought they were good. I thought they were well made. Yeah. But my problem with the first movie was that it was like two and a half hours of setup.
• 16:11
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 16:11
  Speaker B: Which it is exactly what it is.
• 16:14
  Speaker A: Yes, but it's a tough sell.
• 16:16
  Speaker B: But it's a tough sell.
• 16:17
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 16:17
  Speaker B: And then, whereas the second movie felt a little more like a story proper.
• 16:21
  Speaker A: Okay. Yes. This is the resolution to all the. Yeah.
• 16:26
  Speaker B: Our next comment was from Nathan, who said, I gotta go with the movie, largely because I really strongly disliked the book. I felt very much alone with this take, but it was a miserable read to me. Don't feel alone, Nathan. I strongly suspect that I would strongly dislike reading the book.
• 16:44
  Speaker A: There's a reason we did a switch episode on this because I knew I would love the book and we both knew Katie would not.
• 16:49
  Speaker B: So I think I would have been in tears reading this book. Yeah.
• 16:53
  Speaker A: No, you would have hated it 100%. I mean, you don't like the movie, so it's. Yeah, it's. Yeah, totally.
• 16:59
  Speaker B: I spent a lot of the time convinced that I was reading an abridged copy because of how there were so many plot lines that had sloppy setup, no resolution and basically no impact on the story. For example, the political intrigue on Getty prime sets up a conflict between the baron and fade Rotha, but that prominently involves revealing an attempt on the baron's life that happens off page and leads to a brief conversation where Feyd Rotha backs down. Their dialogue hints at a greater struggle to come, but they're both dead through unrelated beans in their next appearance, so it never matters. I get the sense that plotlines like this are what people laud as intricate world building. Because Herbert tries to do a lot of things in the book. For me, though, it kind of seemed he just did a lot of things halfway. And because of this, they created a disjointed and confusing world. They never came together as a cohesive story.
• 17:54
  Speaker A: Interesting. I can see that. I can see feeling that way about it. I didn't, but I can understand why you would. Because there's times where I feel that way. But then, as you either thought about it more or as more things happened, I kind of understood. And in the specific instance that he's referencing here, I can get what he's saying in that there's this backstory, you know, with the power struggle between fade routh and Baron that ultimately doesn't matter that much because they both just die, like you said, at the end, at the end of the movie or at the end of the book. So, like, their power struggle between them doesn't really amount to anything, but to me. And I think Nathan acknowledges this when he says that this is the, you know, what people talk about with the. The world, the intricate world building. Because I agree that to me, that what that does is it establishes the kind of world we're living in, the kind of characters these are, even if it's not explicitly important necessarily for these specific characters. Like we learned a lot about. Like that struggle between the Harkonnens or between Baron and fade tells us a lot about the Harkonnens themselves and the way they operate and the way their family, and thus, you can assume, has operated for a long time. And sort of the, because it reminds, it's a little bit similar, like, in a way. And I wouldn't be surprised if this is where some of that comes from to like, how the Sith operate in the Star wars universe, where there's like two of them and then they're all like the, the younger one has to kill his master in order to take their role. Like, it's a very similar idea, feeling kind of thing with fate and Baron Harkonnen. And so again, but I can understand why some of it feels haphazard and like it doesn't go anywhere, because it kind of doesn't. And I guess it's very much a matter of personal taste, whether that bothers you or not. And for me it didn't. But I totally understand why some people be like, this doesn't matter, or whatever. I totally get that.
• 19:49
  Speaker B: Nathan went on to say, I have been told by many folks that a lot of this stuff is addressed in later books, but that only made me feel like this book couldn't actually be enjoyed absent the context of the series and makes this individual book seem even less complete.
• 20:03
  Speaker A: Again, I disagree with that. I very much enjoy this book on its own, but it definitely doesn't hurt that I know that there's other stuff like, that does help my, it does smooth over some of it of like, oh, I know. Well, you know, some of this stuff gets resolved in future things or whatever gets the storyline gets continued in some way in a future book. I still think the book works perfectly fine on its own, but, you know, I get what you're saying.
• 20:30
  Speaker B: I thought the movie did a wonderful job of weaving a narrative out of the book's meandering mess. I was truly surprised because I found part one to be a really muddling mess, but part two wasn't afraid to prune dead ends or reconnect them to the main narrative. To extend my previous example, bringing Feydratha to Arrakis earlier to lead the attack gives Harkonnen political machinations real impact when he leads the attack on sech Tabor and kills Chani's friend. I did feel some of the cuts because Brian is 1000% correct that this movie needed a precocious murder toddler killing.
• 21:06
  Speaker A: The baron on that.
• 21:08
  Speaker B: It was by far the best thing in the book. I will also second brians praise of the way they used Chani. They really elevated the character from just the main characters lover to, in my perspective, the true voice of reason. In the film, though I think they kind of flattened a more complex character in Jessica to match, which was really regrettable. I truly feel that Chani is set to be the hero of the film series going forward. I think there is a good chance that we'll be mitigated by the source material. But I got pumped watching her ride off in righteous anger. So, yeah, definitely gotta go with the movie, and not just because I seem to be the rare person that Herbert's writing does not do anything for.
• 21:48
  Speaker A: I think you're less alone than maybe you think. I just think that for the people it does connect with, it, like, really works. But I wouldn't be surprised if maybe even. I don't want to say a majority, but I wouldn't be surprised if the majority of people who read Dune, like, didn't like it that much or, like, was, like, kind of got bored with it and gave up, like, halfway through or whatever.
• 22:09
  Speaker B: Oh, I bet this is an oft abandoned book.
• 22:12
  Speaker A: That would not surprise me at all. And so I don't think you're maybe as alone as you think in that regard. Again, I just think it's the people that you hear talk about it or the people that have finished it and, you know, because they liked it and were engaged with the kind of book it was. And thus, you know, like, to talk about it because it's the kind of book you can talk about endlessly because it is so dense and full of, you know, stuff. But I, again, completely agree about the Chani change, and I really am interested to see, again, I have no idea where her story goes in the books in the future, but it feels like it can't possibly go the same way the film is expecting or hoping, planning for her character to go. So I'd be really interesting to see if they. If they commit to the bit and kind of make her the main character, kind of in, like, the third movie or one of the main, you know, make her, like, the lead and ultimately protagonist because she kind of does end this movie. I think it does really end on kind of a transitioning of Paul becomes the antagonist and she becomes the protagonist. Whereas before Paul was the protagonist at the end.
• 23:20
  Speaker B: Definitely sets her up as, like, that foil to him.
• 23:23
  Speaker A: Paul was the protagonist. She was a supporting character. Paul fulfills his, you know, the. The Quizat's Hatteraick prophecy, becomes the God emperor villain of this story, and then she is set up. That's why the last shot of the movie is her. I think it's because she's our. She's our protagonist now, and it's a great juxtaposition, because I don't, I didn't mention this in any of the episodes, and I kept meaning to bring it up because it was something I realized on the rewatch when we watched Dune. Part one again, is, and it's a great little detail in that first movie that I absolutely love that I don't think I noticed the first time, and tells you everything about where the second movie was going and the fact that they were going to do this with Chani and Paul. And you could have known from the very first opening, five minutes of the first movie that Paul was going to end up. The villain of the story, I think, is that we get that prologue in the first movie where it's Chani's voiceover talking about the Fremen living on Arrakis and how they've been oppressed by Harkonnens for hundred, you know, dozens of years or whatever, and they fight. And it's like we see them, like, blowing up spice mining operations or whatever. And her last line during that prologue is, and then one day the Harkonnens left. They just left and disappeared. But we're still here on Arrakis, wondering who our next oppressor will be. And that line ends, and we see a shot of them on Arrakis or whatever. And as soon as she says, wondering who our next oppressors will be, it cuts directly to Paul. The next shot after that line is Paul sleeping in bed, his face, like, filling the entire camera. To Paul, he's like, oh, okay. Well, yeah, no, there we go. Okay. Yeah.
• 25:07
  Speaker B: Our next comment was from Steve from Arizona, who said, I said I would keep it short, so I will stick with the book. Im not really a fan of making sizable changes from text to an adaptation, and I think the film sets an unfortunate precedent. Its clear these adaptations are not made for fans like myself. And I can either yell at the clouds or just stop participating. Other people have largely voiced my opinion in better ways than myself. Like I said before, this is the closest well get in regards to an adaptation. But there was always the naive hope they wouldnt make too many changes. Thanks, as usual, for the episode.
• 25:46
  Speaker A: You know what, as you said, steve, you know, it's clear that sometimes if you don't have anything to say, just don't say anything. Cause I I don't know. I could not disagree more. But what is there to say? Like, yeah, if you don't, if you don't, if you want something that's that close to the book, you know, bit like a spot on. Adaptation of the book, then. Okay.
• 26:09
  Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.
• 26:12
  Speaker A: Not what I care about in an adaptation, but again, people can like different things in adaptation. I will say. I think I'd be interested to know if you want non sizable changes from a text to an adaptation. I wonder if there's an adaptation of something like this that you like. Because I don't. I can't think of anything that doesn't make sizable changes. Like of a similar style.
• 26:38
  Speaker B: Yeah. Not something that is like this scale.
• 26:40
  Speaker A: Yeah. Like a lord of the Rings or, you know, what? Picked whatever, like, big fantasy kind of thing. Or even just a long. Like a big, long book that is then translated to a film. I can't really think of any that, like, are just direct translations.
• 26:55
  Speaker B: We've had some that are, like, very, like, very close, like, very faithful adaptations on this show. But they're not normally properties that are this dense and this layered and this long.
• 27:07
  Speaker A: Yeah. And, like, big. Yeah. Expansive. So. So you kind of have to, in my opinion, make those changes. I just don't know how you make this without making a bunch of changes to it. But that being said, again, I will say this, though. I think you could make the movie basically almost identical to how it was, but make a handful of tweaks, like not giving Chani a more prominent role, making Jessica more similar to the character she was in the book and less of, like, the foil villain, you know, kind of thing and a few other small things like that. You add the Aaliyah character in, you do those, like, three things, and it's all of a sudden way closer to the book because it's already very close to the book, as Steve alludes to. It's probably the closest we'll get in regards to an adaptation. But, yeah. So I guess in that regard, you could make that argument that if they made a few major of those major changes, they had just not made them, you know, fair enough. But to me, that's not interesting. Personally, I'm way more compelled by some, a storyteller taking, even if I were to not agree with it, I guess I would say, like, if I didn't, if I thought the changes they made were, like, terrible, I would say that. But just the art, the fact of making the changes, to me, doesn't matter. And in this instance, I think they're really good changes. So I think it works. But, you know, I get what you're saying, I guess, but just disagree.
• 28:33
  Speaker B: All right. Our final comment from Patreon was from Minty Cell, who said, I think doing the book is an excellent piece of lit, and I'm very glad I read it before I watched the movies. But I still choose the movie s in parentheses for one simple. Simple as in quotes. Reason. Chani, her change in character and what she represents to the narrative in the movie is so good. It gives the story so much depth that sometimes the book lacks because it chooses to focus on other things. She truly becomes a foil for Paul. You don't have to accept your destiny. You can change it. And also from the point of view of how white supremacy, colonialism takes over resistance movements and makes them into things they are not. And she represents a rebellion to that idea. Fremen for Fremen, rather than white savior for Fremen. I think this was the point of the book all along, of course, but having Chani be that character definitely hammers it home for the movie audience.
• 29:36
  Speaker A: So I obviously completely agree with that because it completely echoes what I was saying. But it just made me think of something that I thought was really funny. Is that this movie. From what I remember, this movie actually, there was zero discourse in terms of right wing idiots being like, this movie's woke. Yeah, but they're stupid. Cause this movie.
• 29:57
  Speaker B: This movie's absolutely woke.
• 29:58
  Speaker A: Like, relatively speaking, especially compared to the book. Like, takes one of the most main characters and goes and makes her literally a representative of the indigenous people, saying, hey, we don't need a white savior. It's such a left, like, progressive message. Again, there are other things that muddy that. And obviously, there are leftist critiques of the movies in terms of representatives and stuff like that. But just, like, narratively, the movie, like, absolutely, quote unquote, woke ifies, the Dune story. And I didn't see a single person complaining about that. Probably because they're too stupid to realize it happened.
• 30:38
  Speaker B: If I had to guess, do right wingers like Dune?
• 30:44
  Speaker A: I think everybody likes. I say everybody. I think Dune kind of crosses political spectrums because it is kind of. You can kind of. You can. It's almost like a. What are the inkblot tests called? Where you can. Rorschach test? You can kind of read into it what you want because it's not really. That being said, the book. I think somebody gets to this at some point. The movies. The message the movie translates is the same thing as the book's message. The movie just makes it way more clear and, like, makes it, as I said in the episode, because kind of crystallizes it by giving that narrative, like. Or that thematic message of anti colonialism, anti white savior stuff. Anti religious zealotry and that kind of stuff. A spokesperson in Shani. Whereas the book doesn't really. It just. It's more of like, you just kind of. The book doesn't have a spokesperson for that thematic message. So it's not like it's changing what the book is saying. It's just making it way more clear.
• 31:45
  Speaker B: Giving it a mouthpiece.
• 31:46
  Speaker A: Yeah, giving it a mouthpiece and making it more clear. Which, again, is kind of funny to me that nobody complained about that because it's like, oh, you know, like, it's just. It's. Again, I think that the reason is that the people who complain about that stuff are too stupid to realize. Like, they don't. They're so bad at media analysis that they don't realize that either one, that the book says that or the movie says that. Knowing. Anyways, I truly think the people that say that because it never boils down to actually what the shows and stuff are about. It's always just boils down to like, there's a fucking black person in this or there's a woman in this that I don't like. Whatever. And in this, the casting is, like, identical to what the book describes, which is like the surface level thing all those chuds complain about and stuff like that. That's the kind of things that gets their warning lights going off is like, oh, they recast. Like, if Chani in the book was described as very blonde, described as looking like Florence Pugh, but then they cast Zendaya, they would be freaking out about it. But because she's a Fremen and the Fremen are an indigenous desert people, they don't care. I. And, like, there really isn't the only real, like, casting changes from that that are different from the book to the movie is, as I talked about in the first one, Kynes is a man in the book and is a woman in the movie, but she doesn't really have that prominent a role, so they probably didn't really notice her care. But anyways, it is. It is very funny to me that. Yeah, that chuds don't complain about this because they just are too stupid to realize it's.
• 33:13
  Speaker B: Well, don't tell them. Mintiesel went on to say. Now just some random thoughts I had while listening to you guys during the episode one. I did miss Aaliyah in the movie, but I absolutely think it was the right decision for this particular adaptation. I highly recommend you watch the eighties dune adaptation if you want to see Aaliyah in her crazy, campy glory it's a bad movie in a good way and a lot of fun.
• 33:38
  Speaker A: I do plan to watch it at some point. I want to two.
• 33:41
  Speaker B: To answer Brian's question. When Chani becomes Sayadina.
• 33:49
  Speaker A: I don't know.
• 33:50
  Speaker B: She gains the ability to turn the poison within the water of life into a safe substance that everyone can take to get high.
• 33:57
  Speaker A: Does she get that? Cause Jessica gets that ability in the book. That's what Jessica does when she takes the water of life. She transforms it. Okay. It says, does say, sorry, continue.
• 34:10
  Speaker B: And they do that in the book a few times. The Fremen drink this substance and then have orgies under its influence. That's one of the main purposes of being Sayadina, really. So when Paul drinks the water of life, Chani is able to turn it safe within his system, and that's why he wakes up again. Jessica wasn't from unborn. That's why she didn't know that.
• 34:31
  Speaker A: Okay, I would have to go back. It's very explicit in the book that Jessica is able to do that as well because of her Benny Jesuit training. And my understanding was that in that scene right before they have the orgy, when they take the water of life, my understanding was that Jessica was the one that had transmuted it or whatever and made it safe for everybody to drink. But maybe I misunderstood that. Maybe Chani did it and Jessica simply did it for herself. But there's something special about Chani being a Fremen that allows her to do it for everyone. Freak body. I don't know that. Slightly different than what I thought, but it's at least somewhat of an explanation as to why Chani needs to be there to wake Paul up in the book. I don't know. But again, that's just different than my. What I understood was happening in the book during that scene. But it's very possible I was wrong, because it is confusing. We're spending time again traveling in and out of, like, Jessica's, like, consciousness that is becoming, like, exiting the bounds of her own consciousness. Like, it's one of those sections that's very complicated and confusing to read already. So possible I just misunderstood it.
• 35:38
  Speaker B: Three, I liked fades and Paul's duel in the movie more. I thought it was very homoerotic, which is fun.
• 35:44
  Speaker A: They strip down to their underwear in the book, so I don't know why you wouldn't think that. And he tries to thrust him with a hip needle in the book.
• 35:52
  Speaker B: The book is pretty homoerotic, especially with the context that the book gives that if Paul had been a girl like the Bene Gesserit wanted, he and fade would have been engaged to marry. Yeah.
• 36:04
  Speaker A: That is. I didn't mention that.
• 36:05
  Speaker B: Yeah, I saw a Twitter post after the movie came out about the symbolism of penetration, intercourse being subverted in their duel by it happening with a knife. And I liked that a lot. Yes. Maybe I ship them a bit. Sue me. They can make each other worse.
• 36:20
  Speaker A: That's true. They would make each other worry way worse.
• 36:25
  Speaker B: My biggest gripe with the movie is how much they changed Jessica's character into a boy. Mom. I feel like her egging Paul on like she does takes a little of the responsibility off Paul's shoulders, especially for movie only viewers. And I didn't like that. But I can see Brian's point about her being a foil to Chani, representing the colonial institutions and their oppressiveness. I like that interpretation.
• 36:49
  Speaker A: That is a good point, though, and I agree with that, that it does. The movie's version of Jessica does somewhat pull the guilt away from Paul being the one that's pushing himself, because I talked about the episode that Paul is kind of more of the factor of pushing. Like, he's the one that goes and chooses to do the water of life. It's not because his mom told him to or whatever. So I understand that. And I can, you know, it's tough and. But I do still, like, you know, that change to Jessica overall. But it does. I think it does complicate the messaging with Paul because it makes him a little bit less, gives him a little bit less agency in the path to his that leads to him becoming Paul the destroyer or whatever.
• 37:38
  Speaker B: Five, I think Stilgars character devolving into a religious fanatic is so genius. For me, the most powerful part of the book was how, in Pauls own words, he was losing friends and gaining followers. And Stilgar in the movie was the representation of that.
• 37:54
  Speaker A: Yep.
• 37:55
  Speaker B: Six. Also, did you guys notice the callbacks to Pauls vision from the first movie? In this one, some happen exactly the same, but others are slightly altered, representing the possible futures. For example, he saw Chani joining him against the empire during the war, but in reality, she walks away after they are done fighting. I found these sequences fascinating.
• 38:16
  Speaker A: I did not notice those differences.
• 38:18
  Speaker B: Seven.
• 38:18
  Speaker A: Feyd Rothschild really got them for Feyd Routha. Huh? Interesting choice. Look, we're not here to yuck.
• 38:25
  Speaker B: I want to know if that stems more from the book or from the movie, because I understand, having done the guest section, that there are, that he has hair in the book, but in the movies.
• 38:38
  Speaker A: He's Austin Butler, so he's lizard man Austin Butler. Like he's snake man. He's. He's Voldemort Austin Butler. But. But he is Austin Butler.
• 38:48
  Speaker B: So I'm just curious. I want to know if that stems more from the book or the movie. Let us know.
• 38:55
  Speaker A: Also, Minty, maybe the eighties one, because in the eighties, perhaps. Yes, it stinks, so. And he has hair, so.
• 39:03
  Speaker B: All right. Minty ended by saying, I think that's mostly what I wanted to comment. Isn't really anything you guys didn't talk about. Lol. Sorry about that. Excited for the Hobbit.
• 39:15
  Speaker A: We are too. Thank you. Minty sell.
• 39:18
  Speaker B: Over on Facebook, we had two votes for the book and four for the movie. Andy said one for the film. It's as close to a tie as possible, but I really responded to the film version of Chani, giving us an extra point of view that opened up the fremen and the themes against the masterful visuals. I don't want to underplay the source material, though. Villeneuve's films like Sicario and prisoners can be reactionary or thematically flat. So I feel the book is key in this case. Does that make sense?
• 39:50
  Speaker A: It makes perfect sense, Andy. And I think is a great point because I think your examples at least make sense. I haven't seen prisoners. I have seen Sicario. I will say Villeneuve's arrival, I don't think falls thematically flat or is reactionary. But Sicario, from my memory, I've only seen it once, back near when it came out. It's about crime, drug cartels in Mexico. And it's very crazy movie. But my memory of it is that it's much more. And I could be wrong about this. I've only seen it, like I said, only once. But my memory of Sicario is that as a much more sort of like almost like a. Like a Tarantino style. Like, look at all these fucked up people in this weird fucked up situation, isn't it fucked up? Don't really have anything interesting to say about it, but, like, this is fucked up. You know what I mean? Like, that was my memory. And I think that's what you're getting at in the terms of, like, that movie is, you know, a somewhat reactionary and doesn't really kind of falls thematically flat. Just wanted to add that Denis Villeneuve does not have a writing credit on Sicario, prisoners or arrival, but he does have a writing credit on this movie on Dune, part two. So that may play a role as well. Obviously, you know, it's hard to know how much thematically is the writer versus the director because they can make some changes and stuff, but usually, like, a lot of that stuff comes from the writer. And Taylor Sheridan wrote Sicario and some other person wrote prisoners. So, you know, a lot of the kind of thematic elements of that probably come from those writers, as opposed to Denis Villeneuve himself. Now, as director, he probably at least somewhat co signs some of those thematic messages in those films, but not necessarily, especially early in your career when you're trying to make your way, you may work on films that you're nothing as necessarily thematically, you know, morally in line with as other films later in your career. But who knows? I just thought it was interesting and wanted to add that note that, yeah, Villeneuve did not write Sicario or prisoners or arrival, but is a writer on Dune. And you're right in that. In this instance, the book has the themes, as I alluded to earlier, that the movie uses. It's just the movie takes those themes and, like, dials them up to eleven or some of them. Not all of them, but, like, the main theme, the, you know, the anti colonialism, anti sort of religious idolatry, zealotry kind of thing, all that sort of stuff that the movie really dials up comes from the book. And so I think you're right. I think it makes perfect sense that the source material was crucial because I don't think had Villeneuve just written his own version of Dune, that was like, somehow like, if he. I don't know, Dune didn't exist and Villeneuve had written his own version, you know, years ago or something, I don't know if it would have the same thematic punch that this movie does because of the book. So I completely agree with that.
• 42:53
  Speaker B: Our other comment on Facebook was from Anthony, also, just real quick.
• 42:57
  Speaker A: Sorry. I also wouldn't be surprised. Sicario, I think, was like, ten years ago. If Villeneuve has just changed as a person and has it, like, has more to say about, like, 2015. So, yeah, basically, almost ten years ago, it wouldn't surprise me if, yeah, Villeneuve has just more interesting things to say and is less reactionary than he was ten years ago because I am like, a vastly different person than I was ten years ago.
• 43:23
  Speaker B: When did arrival come out, though?
• 43:25
  Speaker A: That's fair.
• 43:26
  Speaker B: His arrival was.
• 43:27
  Speaker A: Yeah, you're right. That was, like, 2016, I think. Arrival, 2016. So, yeah, I don't know. Fair enough. I have no idea. Um.
• 43:36
  Speaker B: Maybe he did a lot of growing in that one year.
• 43:38
  Speaker A: Could be. And also maybe just something to do well, you know. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know. It is interesting because I. And I would have to rewatch the car, and I do want to watch prisoners. Like I said, I. Every movie of Villeneuves I've ever seen, I love. So I desperately want to watch prisoners. And there's another one that I can't remember. Enemy or something like that, that I haven't seen. I do want to see those, but, yeah, I think there's. It'd be interesting. And I know one of his first films is fairly controversial because I believe, like, one of his first big films is about. Is based on a true story about, like, this shooting at a woman's college that was like. But I don't think it's reactionary. I think. I don't know. There was this fair in Canada like this. There was like a. Like a school shooting at, like, a women's college by, like, an incel, basically. And he made a movie about it. I think that's Villeneuve. I'm pretty sure it might be called Elephant or something like that, that I don't want to watch because I just have no interest in it, honestly, it sounds miserable, but I know there's, you know, I'd be interested to see thematically, like, what that movie's saying and kind of what the arc of his career has been in that regard. But you're right, though, because arrival 2016 is, you know, pretty much right after this, and I find that pretty thematically resonant. So who knows?
• 44:50
  Speaker B: Oh, next comment was from Anthony, as I said, and Anthony said, the movie is so great, and it's hard to think there will ever be a better adaptation. However, I still chose the book. The details and world are a hair more developed. The departure from the multi year timeline to a single year hurts the film for me, Chani having more agency improves the character, but not enough to win out over the book. We didn't have any comments on Twitter, but we did have one vote for the book and three for the movie. On Instagram, we had two votes for the book and seven for the movie. Instagram always comes out for the movie. It's interesting. Anal Fracture 42 said, the audiobook has been a while for me, to be honest, but the cinema experience made the film incredible.
• 45:38
  Speaker A: Okay, not sure what that first sentence means.
• 45:41
  Speaker B: I don't know if it's been a.
• 45:41
  Speaker A: While since you listened to the audiobook or if it was, like, hard to get through, is what you're saying. I don't know.
• 45:46
  Speaker B: Could be either. On threads we didn't have any comments, but we had one vote for the movie, none for the book, and on goodreads we had one vote for the book, zero for the movie, and Miko said, not gonna bury the lead with this one. The book is better. As I said during the first Dune review, while I do not care about ranking favorites, Dune is up there. It's one of maybe three seminal books in my life I can see. Really shaped me. So no matter what the movie did, I'd still vote for the book. That's fair. Yeah. That said, I loved the movie. I liked part one, but I think part two was a true masterpiece. Seeing part two was one of the most captivating theater experiences I can remember. Still, the movie had to carve so many pieces and layers out of the book to even be able to present the story on the big screen. But I have to give a big hand to the scriptwriters because that carving is masterfully done where part one felt like it was only cutting stuff and thus felt somewhat lacking. I am too grumpy about the banquet scene. Yes, part two felt like it's also adding stuff like the new Chani dynamic.
• 46:58
  Speaker A: I would agree with that. That specific note that the first one definitely is like. I think the first one's closer to the book in the sense that there doesn't any really broad changes, but it does remove a lot of stuff, whereas this one also remove stuff but then make some interesting tweaks.
• 47:15
  Speaker B: Actually, yeah. It feels like the scriptwriters studied the previous adaptations and learned from their weak points. Villeneuve streamlined the story while managing to include everything important and still keeps smaller personal things for the book readers, like the uncomfortable hearken and kiss aureliens notes or gurneys baliset. I totally understand the changes. For example, a talking toddler would have felt out of place no matter how it was executed. The movie took a sledgehammer approach to the messiahs aren't good theme. Yeah, not surprising, as Frank Herbert expressed frustration that so many fans didn't understand he wasn't writing Paul as a traditional hero. I feel like this was a good approach. The other themes of the book, colonialism, ecology, human betterment, etcetera, while still present, were pushed to the background by various amounts.
• 48:07
  Speaker A: I will say I don't think the colonialism one was pushed to the background.
• 48:11
  Speaker B: That would probably be closer to the top of the list.
• 48:13
  Speaker A: I think it's with the anti messiah message. I think those are like one a, one b and kind of. You could switch the order of I think honestly, the colonialism message is almost stronger or the anti colonialism message is almost more prevalent, like more thematically repeated and touched on than the anti messiah messages. Both are very much the point of the movie, but yeah, this also gave.
• 48:38
  Speaker B: Part two a much clearer through line than part one. As counterintuitive as it might sound, by changing things they kept the story feeling closer to the book.
• 48:46
  Speaker A: Absolutely agree.
• 48:47
  Speaker B: With meaningful changes. The creators showed they understood the source material and werent cutting stuff just for time. That said, I wish the movie hadnt cut the spacing guild out entirely considering how ridiculously powerful it is.
• 49:00
  Speaker A: Thats a fair point.
• 49:01
  Speaker B: Making the emperor play ball is pretty much inconsequential compared to getting the spacing guild on your side. I'm not the type who rewatches movies and cannot remember the last time I've bought a physical copy, but I made a very rare exception and bought the two film Blu ray pack. I cannot wait for Villeneuve to bring the franchise to a conclusion with Dune Messiah before the series gets too esoteric as he put it.
• 49:24
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 49:26
  Speaker B: Random corrections and comments fantastic. The story takes place in ten 191 Agnorez. After spacenguild, the more familiar year would be closer to 20,000.
• 49:41
  Speaker A: I just remember seeing ten 191 or ten something and thinking it was like 8000 years because I didn't realize it was not our dating system. So okay, fair enough.
• 49:50
  Speaker B: The worm Paul rides is unusually large. I thought I remembered that presently he saw the far away outline of the creature's track against the dawnlight and realized he had never seen a maker this large, never heard of one this size.
• 50:05
  Speaker A: Okay, diggity. I went back and reread it. So I think I just didn't go back far enough in that section to where that line is. I think I was reading like closer to when he actually like gets on it. And that was like, that's like right when he sees it. So I just didn't go far. Far enough back.
• 50:23
  Speaker B: Princess Aurelion is revealed, or at least strongly hinted to be a Bene Gesserit way earlier than Brian remembered. In fact, on the first two lines of the book, a beginning is the time for taking the most delicate care that the balances are correct. This every sister of the Bene Gesserit knows. From Manuel of Madib by Princess Aurelian.
• 50:47
  Speaker A: Okay, yeah, I guess it depends on how you interpret what that. Okay, yeah, so when it says from Manuel of Muadib by the Princess Erulian or Irulan, I had maybe for a while at least I had assumed that some of those sections weren't her writing, but were in fact, her compiling the writings of Paul.
• 51:16
  Speaker B: I mean, I think that makes sense, given how, at least from the way that Miko wrote it down, given how it's attributed.
• 51:23
  Speaker A: Cause it does, say, from Manuel of Muadib by the Princess Arulanhe. Yeah, I wasn't sure that that writing was her writing that or her quoting Paul writing that. So that's fair, though. That's fair.
• 51:40
  Speaker B: On the subject of killing worms, quote, high voltage electrical shock applied separately to each ring segment is the only known way of killing and preserving an entire worm. Kynes said they can be stunned and shattered by explosives, but each ring segment has a life of its own. Barring atomics, I know of no explosive powerful enough to destroy a large worm entirely. They're incredibly tough.
• 52:05
  Speaker A: So atomics would work. Yeah, so that would work. A big enough explosion would work, but it's just. It would have to be like an atomic bomb.
• 52:15
  Speaker B: You can actually see some shield lays gun tactics in the movie, even when their rules aren't explained. During the spice harvester fight, the laze guns come out of and easily finish off the harvester, only after all of the shield carrying thopters are taken out.
• 52:32
  Speaker A: Okay, that may be the case. I could have swore that there are other moments in the movies where we see lays guns kind of just randomly being used without really much thought to whether or not people are wearing shields. Maybe it is, like, narratively consistent that they. Only that it makes sense that the people are using them at certain times. My feeling and interpretation as I was watching the movie is that they kind of just used whatever whenever they wanted. Because I know you see laze guns multiple other times, and one in particular that I remember. And now, this may still work with the rules, but in the first movie, when they're in the. When Kynes takes Jessica and Paul and Duncan to that, like, underground lab area and they're trying to escape, when the Sardaukar show up, Sardaukar are shooting a laser at them, like, through the wall, and they have shields, like, well, I think Paul has a shield, but I don't know if they would know they have shields. Anyways. Point being, there's times where the lase guns are used that I don't know necessarily always lines up with how it works in the book, but in that scene. Fair enough. That scene may play out kind of correctly, rules wise, for the weapons. Again, without going back and watching every single scene where they're used, I felt like there's plenty of times where they use lays guns where they don't, like, care about shields or. Or they don't interact, which I don't know. I don't know. I could be wrong about that. I could be wrong.
• 54:06
  Speaker B: Every time I read dune, I'm more and more impressed by Herbert's take on, quote. Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free, but that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them. This feels so much closer to the current AI conversation than even recent stories about machines gone rogue. Fingers crossed we get more about the butlerian jihad and the Jenny Bezerit prequel series.
• 54:33
  Speaker A: I assume we will. I like Jenny Bezerit. That's a fun. Oh, did I say Jenny Bezerit? Which is. It kind of works. Yeah. No, I do. I do hope that Dune prophecy goes into the butlerian jihad because I think it's really fascinating and that it's not even mentioned in these movies. I don't think it could be wrong. It's mentioned in the book like once or twice. And even then it's not really expanded on much at all. It's really like, I think, from other books and other lore stuff. But the butler in jihad is when they destroyed all the computers. So there was a point where. Because computers became a whole big problem. Yeah, they had a butlerian jihad at one point where they basically destroyed. And like. And there's rule. You can't have computers anymore. This is why there's no computers in the Dune universe. It's why mintats exist. Mintats are human computers because they don't have computers. That's probably a very simplified explanation of the butlerian jihad and stuff. I understand that. But, yeah, I do hope we learn more about that because I do think it's very fascinating.
• 55:37
  Speaker B: The baron. The baron being seemingly aware about his daughter in the movie was one of the few points I wish was executed a bit differently. The implication in the books is that the baron went through a similar experience as fade and Jessica was simply raised as Benny Gesserit from birth. The baron sampled many pleasures in his youth and once permitted himself to be seduced. But it was for the genetic purposes of the Bene Gesseritz by one of you. That said, the extended dune books by Brian Herbert Muddy this. But the canonicity of those is controversial, to say the least.
• 56:13
  Speaker A: Doesn't surprise me.
• 56:16
  Speaker B: And the last thing Miko said here was, I'm glad Katie pointed out how terraforming Arrakis would destroy it since that's a discussion that'll play a part in the later movie, in the later novels.
• 56:27
  Speaker A: Fascinating. Because, yeah, this book makes an explicit point.
• 56:30
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 56:32
  Speaker A: That they will, you know, they're going to terraform it, but that they have a plan for making sure they don't, you know, mess up the deserts and the spice and the worms and all that sort of stuff, but. Huh.
• 56:42
  Speaker B: I mean, the best laid plans.
• 56:45
  Speaker A: Yeah. That's fair. Yes. Very good. Yeah. But, yeah, I didn't know that would become a thing later on. That's interesting.
• 56:51
  Speaker B: All right. And our winner, despite there being quite a bit of dissent within the comments with your verdict, the listener pick was the movie with 14 votes to the books. Eight.
• 57:05
  Speaker A: Yeah, I think. And it's interesting because, like, people voted the other way, but most of the comments agreed with, like, my points. Like, generally speaking, I think. But, like. And it's totally clear because, like, mine wasn't like a 90 ten choice. Like, I wasn't like, well, easily the movie's way better. It was very close, but, you know, I just slightly edged to the book or the movie, but, yeah. And then, yeah, I'm surprised. I am kind of surprised the movie won, honestly. But I guess actually the Instagram swung it almost entirely there.
• 57:37
  Speaker B: Right.
• 57:39
  Speaker A: Interesting. Who knows about Instagram? Well, that is it for our feedback. Thank you all very much for all of your hyper fixated dune feedback.
• 57:50
  Speaker B: Glad you all bunch of nerds.
• 57:51
  Speaker A: Yeah. Could be just as nerdy as me about Dune for that episode. Episode. Had a lot of fun discussing that. We do not have a learning thing this segment this week, primarily because we got so much. Well, yeah, so much long feedback.
• 58:04
  Speaker B: Yes.
• 58:05
  Speaker A: And we have a lot to talk about with the preview of the Hobbit. Plus, we have done a learning thing segment before. We did Lord of the Rings four or five years ago at this point. Or three, four years ago. I don't remember. It's been a while.
• 58:19
  Speaker B: It's been a minute.
• 58:20
  Speaker A: Several summers ago, we did Lord of the Rings, and before we did Lord of the Rings, we did a learning things segment on the Tolkien.
• 58:26
  Speaker B: Yeah, I'm like 99%, like 99%.
• 58:28
  Speaker A: I remember talking about Tolkien's life.
• 58:31
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 58:31
  Speaker A: So I think we did something about. Or maybe it was just part of the book facts or something.
• 58:35
  Speaker B: Might have been.
• 58:36
  Speaker A: We did. We did a fair amount of background on Tolkien before Lord of the Rings. So you can go back and find that prequel episode again, whatever year that was. They all run together years to keep coming, and they don't stop coming as one of our most.
• 58:49
  Speaker B: One of our greatest modern poets.
• 58:51
  Speaker A: Yes, one of our greatest modern poets put it truly. Don't remember what year it was, but we did do Lord of the rings and I think we talked about Tolkien before that, so go check that out. But we are going to preview the book we're talking about for this year's summer series, which is the Hobbit.
• 59:10
  Speaker B: My dear Frodo, you asked me once if I had told you everything there.
• 59:15
  Speaker A: Was to know about my adventures.
• 59:19
  Speaker B: While I can honestly say I have told you the truth, I may not have told you all of it. Gilbert Baggins. I'm looking for someone to share in an adventure.
• 59:30
  Speaker A: I can't just go running off into the blue.
• 59:33
  Speaker B: I am a Baggins. Wait. Of bag end. Bilbo, allow me to introduce Fili Kidi. Oin Loin Darlin, Balin.
• 59:43
  Speaker A: Buffer. Bofer.
• 59:44
  Speaker B: Bonbon. Dory. Dory, Ori. And the leader of our company, Thorin Oakenshield. Published in 1937, the Hobbit, or there and back again, is a children's fantasy novel by english author J. R. R. Tolkien. In a 1955 letter to WH Auden, Tolkien recollects that he began the Hobbit one day in the early 1930s while he was marking student exam papers, he found a blank page. Suddenly inspired, he wrote the words, in a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit, supposedly how this book began.
• 1:00:22
  Speaker A: There you go.
• 1:00:23
  Speaker B: By late 1932, he had finished the story and then lent the manuscript to several friends, including CS Lewis and a student of Tolkien's named Elaine Griffiths. And then in 1936, when Griffiths was visited in Oxford by Susan Dagnall, who was a staff member of the publisher George Allen. And Unwin Elain is reported to have either lent Dagnall the book or suggested that she borrow a copy of it from Tolkien, which. So Susan Dagnall ended up with a copy of the Hobbit somehow and was impressed by it. She showed the book to Stanley Unwinnae, one of the partners in this publishing company, who then asked his ten year old son Rainer to read it. And Rainer really liked it. His favorable comments settled that decision.
• 1:01:21
  Speaker A: Let's go.
• 1:01:22
  Speaker B: Rainer, Allen and Unwins published the Hobbit.
• 1:01:26
  Speaker A: So we all have Rainer to thank.
• 1:01:27
  Speaker B: For Lord of the Rings.
• 1:01:29
  Speaker A: That ten year old's the true hero.
• 1:01:33
  Speaker B: I had to include all of that because the comedy of errors almost to get this book published was so funny to me.
• 1:01:40
  Speaker A: It all rested on a ten year old being like, this is good.
• 1:01:45
  Speaker B: So Tolkien's correspondence as well as publisher records show that he was very involved in the design and illustration of the entire book, which I don't think should be surprising to anyone. All of the different elements were the subject of considerable correspondence and fussing over by Tolkien. In the end, the publisher accepted most of his illustrations and two out of five proposed maps that he wanted. Those maps ended up being the books.
• 1:02:17
  Speaker A: Wonder what the maps.
• 1:02:19
  Speaker B: I'm not sure. I did not dig into that any further.
• 1:02:23
  Speaker A: I'm just kind of intrigued now. I'm sure they ended up in something at some point.
• 1:02:26
  Speaker B: Oh, yeah, I'm sure they're out there.
• 1:02:28
  Speaker A: Somewhere, probably in the Silmarillion or whatever.
• 1:02:32
  Speaker B: The Hobbit takes cues from narrative models of children's literature. This is directly from Wikipedia, because I thought this sentence was really funny, as shown by its omniscient narrator and characters that young children can relate to, such as the small, food obsessed and morally ambiguous bilbo.
• 1:02:51
  Speaker A: Thank God that I thought that said foot obsessed, which kind of works in a way. And I was like, that's a weird ass sentence person on Wikipedia. Food obsessed makes more sense.
• 1:03:02
  Speaker B: Just the small, food obsessed and morally ambiguous bilbo. I love that a lot. Tolkien.
• 1:03:10
  Speaker A: We should all be so lucky to have such a great description. Character or character description of ourselves.
• 1:03:17
  Speaker B: Tolkien intended the Hobbit as a fairy story and wrote it in a tone suited to addressing children, though he said later that the book was not specifically written for children, but had rather been created out of his interest in mythology and legend, the book has also been popularly called and marketed as a fantasy novel.
• 1:03:37
  Speaker A: Okay, I'm glad you said that, because one of the things that has always kind of driven me crazy about the Hobbit, I say driven me crazy, is everybody always is like, look, and I agree with this. It's an easier read than Lord of the Rings. Yeah, but everybody's like, oh, it's a children's book. And I'm like, is it, though? Because to me, it doesn't read like a child. When I hear children's book, it's like 400. It's like 350 pages long. And there's some lore, and I don't know. To me, it's not exactly the kind of book. I guess it depends on what you're saying. A children's book is.
• 1:04:10
  Speaker B: Yes, it is a children's story in the same vein that Alice in Wonderland and Peter Pan and the Princess and the Goblin are children's books.
• 1:04:24
  Speaker A: Okay, they're children's books. I have not read those, so I'll take your word.
• 1:04:28
  Speaker B: But, like, are they?
• 1:04:30
  Speaker A: Yeah, that's like, to me, it's like, and again, you know, you said here that it's been. It was not specifically written for children because that makes sense to me, because it does not read like a book specifically written for children. Because I remember, like, I read it fairly young, but I was not a little kid. I was like eleven or twelve or something. I don't remember.
• 1:04:51
  Speaker B: But I would classify you as a child still.
• 1:04:55
  Speaker A: I guess when I think. When I hear the. And maybe this is just my interpretation of the phrase children's book, when I hear children's book, I think books for, like, five and six year olds, that's what I think of as a children.
• 1:05:07
  Speaker B: You're thinking of an early reader book.
• 1:05:09
  Speaker A: Okay, see, I don't. That's a, that sounds like a marketing nonsense. Just the generic phrase children's book. I don't think.
• 1:05:16
  Speaker B: Well, I think children. Children's book is a far more encompassing term.
• 1:05:22
  Speaker A: Okay.
• 1:05:22
  Speaker B: Than maybe you're thinking of it as.
• 1:05:24
  Speaker A: I think that's fair. Because to me. Yeah, to me, when you say children's book, I'm thinking this is for specifically for people under ten years old.
• 1:05:34
  Speaker B: Right.
• 1:05:34
  Speaker A: Or, like, under twelve years old. And, like, if you're older than that and you read it, you're like, this is for babies. This is for children. Whereas that is not what the hobbit is at all. But, like, sure. Like, I guess a slightly younger person could read it. But again, I don't think there's a lot of six year olds reading the hobbit.
• 1:05:53
  Speaker B: I mean, probably not by themselves, but maybe their parents could read it to them.
• 1:05:58
  Speaker A: Yeah, I don't know. I've just always kind of found that, like, a weird description of the hobbit be like, oh, it's a kid, especially, like, again, it's a much easier, much read than the Lord of the Rings, much less boring read than the Lord of the Rings. So, like, I get it. But at the same time, I think this is mostly a hang up of what I consider, like, a children's book.
• 1:06:16
  Speaker B: But I've always, I think you're correct.
• 1:06:18
  Speaker A: But I think I have the correct interpretation of what a children's book is.
• 1:06:22
  Speaker B: I actually, I believe Min Tissel is a librarian, so if you could go ahead and weigh in on children's literature, that'd be great. Over the years, both Tolkien and numerous literature scholars have cited a lot of different influences on the Hobbit. Some of these include norse and germanic mythology and language, european fairy tales, the Old norse sagas, old english literature, particularly Beowulf, old english linguistics, medieval resources, particularly in the depiction of the dwarves as a people dispossessed of their ancient homeland, which was a common medieval way of depicting jewish people and 19th century fiction, especially Jules Verne's journey to the center of the earth, George Macdonald's the Princess and the Goblin, and the works of poet and artist William Morris. I love the princess and the Goblin. We're going to do that on this show someday.
• 1:07:25
  Speaker A: Sure. I've never heard of it.
• 1:07:28
  Speaker B: Upon publication, the Hobbit was met with almost unanimously favorable reviews. Writing for the Times, Tolkien's friend CS Lewis. I had to throw that in there.
• 1:07:39
  Speaker A: Getting glazed by his buddy in the.
• 1:07:41
  Speaker B: Press, CS Lewis said, the truth is that in this book, a number of good things never before united have come together. A fund of humor, an understanding of children, and a happy fusion of the scholars with the poet's grasp of mythology. He also compared the book to Alices adventures in Wonderland, stating that both adults and children may find different things to enjoy in it.
• 1:08:08
  Speaker A: Yeah, to me, it's much more in the vein of something like. Yeah, like a young adult. Like a. I don't know, like not to be the only.
• 1:08:15
  Speaker B: Are we thinking of middle grade?
• 1:08:17
  Speaker A: Sure, whatever you want to call it. Harry Potter, Percy Jackson, those kind of books. I would not call those children's books books. Cause to me, again, not to get on it, but to me, adults don't read children's books and find them interesting. Generally speaking.
• 1:08:36
  Speaker B: I'm gonna hard disagree with you, but I don't really wanna get into it because I think we're disagreeing on a philosophical.
• 1:08:42
  Speaker A: I think we're disagreeing on like a.
• 1:08:44
  Speaker B: Categorization you're trying to categorize. And I'm. And if I were to come out swinging on a philosophical level, I don't think we'd have a good time.
• 1:08:53
  Speaker A: Well, it would just take too long for sure. I think it would be fun. I just don't think it would take too long. And it's already a long prequel.
• 1:09:00
  Speaker B: All right, continuing then, poet Wh Auden called the Hobbit one of the best children's stories of this century. The Hobbit was nominated for the Carnegie Medal and awarded a prize from the New York Herald Tribune for best juvenile fiction of 1938.
• 1:09:19
  Speaker A: See juvenile fiction. I agree with that description. That makes sense. Anyway.
• 1:09:26
  Speaker B: What is the difference between juvenile fiction and a children's book? There's different ways of saying no.
• 1:09:33
  Speaker A: It's purely just the way my brain categorizes catalogs, whatever the phrase children's book, to me, that is a thing for little, little kids. A children's book is goodnight moon. A children's book is. And that's a picture book, too. But, like. Yes, but even, like, a little bit. The Magic Treehouse series, that's a children's book. This is different than that. And to me, it doesn't feel. To me, it doesn't make sense to categorize the Hobbit and the magic treehouse as, like, the same thing, because to me, they're just not, like, the same thing.
• 1:10:14
  Speaker B: Well, I mean. I mean, that's why there are, like, continuing subgenres within the space of, like, publishing and marketing and librarianship.
• 1:10:24
  Speaker A: Yeah, that's fair. That's fair. Okay. We don't need to. We'll let some of our librarian listeners chime in on this, see what they have to say. Again, I fully admit that it's down to just, like, the way my brain categorizes that term.
• 1:10:38
  Speaker B: The book is also recognized as a classic in children's literature.
• 1:10:42
  Speaker A: You did this on purpose.
• 1:10:45
  Speaker B: I didn't know you had such passionate dogs.
• 1:10:48
  Speaker A: Trigger me.
• 1:10:50
  Speaker B: It is one of the best selling books of all time, with over 100 million copies sold. Obviously, the Hobbit's legacy was changed by the publication and popularity of the Lord of the Rings, including edits to the text of the Hobbit by Tolkien himself. However, since this episode is already pretty long.
• 1:11:08
  Speaker A: Yes.
• 1:11:09
  Speaker B: We're gonna save that conversation to hopefully dig into in a different prequel episode. If we have time for it. Not promising it, but if we have time for it, we will talk about it.
• 1:11:22
  Speaker A: Yes. All right. That's it for learning about the book. Now it's time to learn a little bit about the Hobbit and unexpected journey.
• 1:11:32
  Speaker B: Far over the misty mountains cold to dungeons deep.
• 1:11:45
  Speaker A: And caverns home.
• 1:11:50
  Speaker B: And when Brian says a little bit, that is a lie.
• 1:11:54
  Speaker A: That's a lot, but I'm gonna fly through it, so let's go. The Hobbit and Unexpected Journey is a 2012 film directed by Peter Jackson, known for the Lord of the Rings series Bad Taste, King Kong, the Lovely Bones, the Frighteners, heavenly creatures, among others. It was written by Fran Walsh, who I believe I'm fairly certain is Peter Jackson, Jackson's partner, like wife, I'm fairly certain, who wrote on Lord of the Rings, dead alive, mortal engines, which we've done. King Kong, the lovely bones, heavenly creatures. Again, I'm pretty sure it's like a us kind of thing. Like, he's the director, she's the writer kind of deal. Philippa Boyens who wrote on Lord of the Rings, King Kong, the lovely Bones, immortal engines. Philippa Boyens and Fran Walsh are a writing duo. I don't know if there's like a throuple thing going on here or not. I have no idea. I don't think there is. But Philip Boyens has written on basically every movie. She's like Fran Walsh's writing partner. And Fran Walsh, from my memory or from what I saw, is Peter Jackson's wife. So I don't know. Who knows? I'm not saying there's a no, but.
• 1:12:54
  Speaker B: We could certainly speculate.
• 1:12:55
  Speaker A: Yes. Peter Jackson, also credited as a writer, and Guillermo del Toro, known for Pan's labyrinth, Hellboy, the shape of water, Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio, Crimson Peak, Nightmare Alley, Pacific Rim and others. A lot of those we've covered on this show.
• 1:13:08
  Speaker B: And I assume that he has a writing credit because he was working on it.
• 1:13:11
  Speaker A: Yes, because he was involved, which we'll get into, but yeah, he was involved early on in the process. The film stars Ian McKellen, Martin Freeman, Richard Armitage, James Nesbitt, Ken Stott, Kate Blanchett, Ian Holm, Christopher Lee, Hugo Weaving, Elijah Wood and Andy Serkis, among others. It has a 64% on Rotten Tomatoes, a 58 on Metacritic and a 7.8 out of ten on IMDb, and made $1 billion against a budget of $200 to $315 million.
• 1:13:39
  Speaker B: Not too shabby.
• 1:13:40
  Speaker A: Not bad at all. It was nominated for three oscars, one for best makeup up, best visual effects and best production design did not win any of them. So I am not going to go into a gigantic backstory of the making of the Hobbit here because that story would take literally hours to tell. And fun. It's been done. If you want to know more about the troubled production of these films, we would highly recommend Lindsey Ellis's three part series, which is a spoiler in itself. I forgot about that three part series. The first video of which is titled the a long expected autopsy. Part one of question mark or part one of two? Part one of two. And then there's a part two. And then there was a surprise. Part three, which is the joke because of the movies, blah, blah, blah. Because originally the movies are. We'll get to it. But yeah, Lindsay goes through everything in much better and more thoroughly researched detail. So I will simply point you there and give you a few Cliff notes here. After the success of Lord of the Rings, the Hobbit went into development almost immediately with Peter Jackson attached, attached to right, and produce a two film adaptation that would ultimately be directed by Guillermo del Toro. But del Toro would leave the project in May of 2010, two years into pre production, due to. Due to delays that were related to financial problems at MGM. And more significantly, from everything I've read, labor disputes with industry unions in New Zealand, that was a big thing. Lindsay Ellis talks a lot about it in the video. Again, go check that out. Was a big reason for the delays. In October of 2010, it was announced that Jackson would return to the series as director. When that was not originally planned, the films were shot back to back from March of 2011 to July of 2012, with additional pickups happening in the following years. And the pickups, specifically for an unexpected journey, were shot at the end of filming in July of 2012. So del Toro leaving the project caused a ton of problems, as they apparently were not able to delay production. And I don't remember the exact reason why, because good Lord should they have. But they were not able to delay production to allow Peter Jackson to do all the pre production work that he would have needed to do to direct the film. And he said of this quote, because Guillermo del Toro had to leave and I jumped in and took over, we didn't wind the clock back a year and a half and give me a year and a half prep to design the movie, which was different to what he was doing. It was impossible. And as a result of it being impossible, I just started shooting the movie with most of it not prepped at all. You're going onto a set and you're winging it. You've got these massively complicated scenes, no storyboards, and you're making it up there and then on the spot. I spent most of the Hobbit feeling like I was not on top of it, even from a script point of view. Fran Filippa and I hadn't gotten the entire scripts written to our satisfaction. So that was a very high pressure, pressure situation. So again, for whatever reason, I guess the studio wanted to push him out. I don't know. But they didn't want to give him enough time to actually do the pre production work necessary for these films, which, again, Ellis Lindsay goes into a lot more on that. Howard Shore, though, did return to score the films and reprised many of the themes from Lord of the Rings, including concerning hobbits and all your favorite bits, but also added a bunch of new stuff. Apparently there were some. I had to include this, and I think Lindsay Ellis might mention this, there were significant issues with animals used in the film. According to Wikipedia, 150 animals were housed for the production of the film, and up to 27 of them died, including horses, goats, chickens, and a sheep. According to the American Humane association, those deaths did not happen during filming, but the animals were housed on a farm, and that was. Apparently they were housed on a farm during filming, and apparently that farm had incredibly, like, unsafe topography and land. And, like, they were like, animals were like the horses. A couple horses that died, like, fell, fell in holes or, like, broke leg, you know, that kind of thing. Supposedly, after the death of two horses, the production moved quickly to improve the conditions and fix things. But there were some issues with that. So getting into some IMDb fun facts, and I'm just reading these directly from the IMDb trivia because they're always so interesting. Asked how many wizards there are in the film, Gandalf says there are five, naming Saruman, Radegast and himself and then saying he can't remember the names of the other two. Saying that. Merely saying the two blues. Their names in the universe are Alatar and Pallando. And they appear in the Book of Unfinished Tales, a collection of Tolkien's ideas and manuscripts that were then edited by his son. The filmmakers didn't actually have the rights to use the stuff from that book, so the two blue wizards had to remain unnamed. That's why their names don't make an appearance is because they did not have the rights to all of.
• 1:18:22
  Speaker B: To the entire Tolkien library, which I.
• 1:18:25
  Speaker A: Think is still an issue. I think there's issues with the Rings of Power series related to that. There's still rites issues.
• 1:18:31
  Speaker B: I feel like I remember hearing that.
• 1:18:33
  Speaker A: There'S still rights issues related to what they can and can't use from Lord of the Rings. It's very interesting. Speaking of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, the scenes where they put men or wizards or whatever with hobbits or dwarves was accomplished in those movies by using forced perspective primarily. Among other things. Sometimes they use little people, actors or kids. Sometimes it is cg, but a lot of it in particular, a lot of the scenes in Hobbiton and stuff like that are in bag end are like forced perspective and stuff like that. And we're basically having Ian McKellen sit further away from the camera and vice, blah, blah, blah. But they were still in the same set this time. However, this has become a very famous story a lot of the time, and I don't know if all of it, but a lot of it. They did this by having the actors on completely different sets. And Ian McKellen did all of his stuff alone, like on a green screen set. And he apparently was very depressed about this and found it just miserable. There's clips out there of Ian McKellen, like, sobbing in a green screen set and that sort of thing. Just like, I hate this. And he considered quitting because he just was miserable filming this. But on the plus side, to cheer him up, the cast and crew snuck into the tent that he was staying and where he was while he was filming. And they decorated it with stuff from the Lord of the Rings, films like old props and tapestries and stuff and also sent him, like, fresh fruit and flowers to try to cheer him up. But, yeah. Sad. Apparently Andy Serkis completed his scene, which I think he's only in one scene, the scene during the first week of production, but then stayed on as second unit director.
• 1:20:11
  Speaker B: Interesting.
• 1:20:12
  Speaker A: But yeah, they filmed his scene in the very first week, the. The ring scene, the. The riddle scene. Aiden Turner, who plays Killy Keeley, is the only dwarf in the movie who has his own facial hair. Everybody else has fake beards or fake facial hair.
• 1:20:27
  Speaker B: Like, pretty short beard. Yeah, everybody else has, like, a crazy beard.
• 1:20:32
  Speaker A: Pretty sure. Viggo Mortensen actually declined to reprise his role as Aragorn, citing that Aragorn wasn't.
• 1:20:39
  Speaker B: In the book kingdom.
• 1:20:42
  Speaker A: Aragorn is apparently briefly alluded to in the film the Hobbit and the battle of the five Armies. But, yeah, he does not make an appearance. This is amazing. So Peter Jackson claims that when he called Christopher Lee to invite him to the premiere of the Hobbit and uninspected journey, Lee responded by saying, am I still in the movie? Because Lee had originally been in the return of the king. If you've seen the extended cut, you've seen him. But his scenes were all cut from the theatrical release and apparently this caused a brief falling out between him and Peter Jackson.
• 1:21:14
  Speaker B: And so Christopher Lee is not a person I would want to have a falling out with.
• 1:21:18
  Speaker A: No. So, yeah, apparently he was like, am I still in the movie? As I said, the sequence between Bilbo and Gollum was filmed in the first week, but it was also apparently filmed because it was. It was also filmed in complete takes where they basically did the scene from beginning to end almost like a stage play over the course of the first two weeks of filming. And they wanted to specifically, Peter Jackson wanted Martin Freeman to kind of settle into the role of Bilbo. So they made it more of like, they really let these big long takes play out to kind of let him live in the character form, which, if you don't know is very uncharacteristic of filming. So apparently, at some point in the film, Balin and Dwalin headbutt each other. And this is a reference to a behind the scenes tradition the stuntmen on the Lord of the Rings movies did between themselves. And also Viggo Mortensen is what this note.
• 1:22:08
  Speaker B: I'm not surprised at all.
• 1:22:09
  Speaker A: Yeah, I'm not surprised at all. So this is very fun. Other people that were considered for the role of Bilbo Baggins. Daniel Radcliffe.
• 1:22:18
  Speaker B: That makes sense.
• 1:22:19
  Speaker A: Shia Labeouf.
• 1:22:20
  Speaker B: Okay.
• 1:22:21
  Speaker A: Josh Widdecombe. I don't know who that is. Eddie Redmayne. James McAvoy.
• 1:22:26
  Speaker B: Okay.
• 1:22:26
  Speaker A: Adam Brown, who actually ends up playing Ori in the film, and Aaron Arkin and Toby Maguire. Yeah, I agree that I think none of those I could see. Maybe Daniel Radcliffe, maybe James McAvoy. I don't know. Josh whitacombe. I would have hated Eddie Redmayne.
• 1:22:46
  Speaker B: I think Shia Labeouf would have been unhinged. That would have been nightmare casting.
• 1:22:52
  Speaker A: But Martin Freeman's first choice was always. Or, sorry, Peter Jackson's first choice was always Martin Freeman. And this is very funny. Freeman initially was. Wasn't able to accept the role because of scheduling conflicts filming Sherlock, but Jackson reworked the entire shooting schedule so that they could accommodate him because he just had to have them. He's saying of it, quote, I was having sleepless nights. We were probably six weeks away from the beginning of the shoot and we hadn't settled on anyone else. And I was torturing myself by watching Sherlock on an iPad at four in the morning.
• 1:23:23
  Speaker B: Oh, just like all the Tumblr girlies.
• 1:23:25
  Speaker A: He's just like us. He's just like us. Dwaland uses two battleaxes in the movie, Graham McTavish, who plays him. And Graham McTavish is actually fun note is, oh, I can't remember his character's name. He's in the witcher he plays. Oh, God, what's that guy's name? I can't remember his name. The bald guy with the beard who's like the spy master? Yeah, that guy. He's also in House of the Dragon. But anyways, he plays one of the dwarves in this. And he suggested to Peter Jackson that the axes that he used be named after Emily Bronte's dogs, Grasper and keeper, and Jackson was in for it. So they engraved those names in Dwarvish runes on his. On his axes. This is the first or the first movie, you know, including the Lord of the Rings movie. This is the first movie in the universe that doesn't have a speaking role for a human of middle earth. There's no humans in this movie, or at least not in any way.
• 1:24:24
  Speaker B: Who needs men?
• 1:24:24
  Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah, men, I guess, is the better word for it. Azog was a last minute digital addition to this movie. Azog is the name of the main orc villain in this one. He was originally an actor in prosthetics, but Peter Jackson thought that the effect didn't have the presence that he wanted and had Weta create a digital character motion captured by Manu Bennett. And then they excerpted that character over the previously filmed live action footage. The original Azog apparently does appear in the movie as Yazneg, the ill fated Orc lieutenant. So that was apparently the design for the villain originally. I looked it up, and I agree he doesn't have a lot of aura, as the kids are saying. But that being said, the kids saying that, yeah, that's a new thing if you're exude confidence or have presence or whatever, you have aura. Yeah.
• 1:25:12
  Speaker B: All right.
• 1:25:15
  Speaker A: So I'd agree with him in that regard. But I also think that the digital Azog from my memory was one of my least favorite things about the movie. Just kind of, again, from my memory. Peter Jackson was hospitalized during filming in January of 21, 2011, for a perforated stomach ulcer, which actually was apparently one of the things that contributed to J RR Tolkien's death. Luckily, they caught it in time and the surgery went well, so they just had to pause production for about a month while he recovered. But then he immediately put himself back under three years of stress finishing the movie. Yeah, these movies almost killed Peter Jackson from everything I've ever heard. So getting into some reviews before we wrap up here, Peter Travers for Rolling Stone criticized the film's use of 48 frames per second, which I did not talk about. But this film, when it came out, was released digitally with 40 at 48 FPS. Films traditionally are 24 FPS. They released a high frame rate version at 48 FPS that everybody hated, and they never did anything with it again. It's just. It's very smooth looking motion. It's just people. It's not how we're used to watching movies. So people don't like it anyways, they released that because Peter Jackson loves to push technology into weird ways. But Peter Travers criticized 48 frames per second, saying, quote, couple that with the movie looks so hyper real that you see everything that's fake about it. The 169 minutes of screen time hurts since the first 45 minutes of the film traps us in the Hobbit home of the young Bilbo pit Baggins. But once Bilbo and the dwarf set on their journey, things perk up considerably. Trolls, orcs, wolves and mountainous monsters made of remarkable, pliable stone bring out the best in Jackson and his rings. Co screenwriters Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens. Writing for the Daily Telegraph, Robbie Collins gave the film two out of five stars, saying, quote thank heavens for Andy Serkis, whose riddling return as Gollum steals the entire film. It is the only time the digital effects and smoother visuals underline rather than undermine the mythical drama of Bilbo's adventure. As a lover of cinema, Jackson's film bored me rigid. As a lover of Tolkien, it broke my heart. He thought the film was, quote, so stuffed with extraneous faff and flummery that it often barely feels like Tolkien at all. More a dire, fan written Internet tribute. End quote.
• 1:27:31
  Speaker B: Wow.
• 1:27:32
  Speaker A: Yep. The Guardians Peter Bradshaw commented on the use of the high frame rate and the length of the film, writing, quote, after 170 minutes, I felt that I had had enough of a pretty good thing. The trilogy will test the stamina of the non believers, and many might feel that the traditional filmic look of Lord of the Rings was better. Sure was my experience at the time. Richard Lawson, writing for the Atlantic Wire, said the film's video game like visuals makes for a dismally unattractive movie featuring too many shots that I'm sure were lovely at some point but are now ruined and ruined and chinsified by the terrible technology monster. And quote, everybody hated the 48. Everybody hated the 48 FPS. They like didn't. They showed it for like a week. I could be wrong about that, but they showed it very briefly and then everybody. I didn't see it in 48. I saw it in regular cause I had heard that it was just awful. Matthew Leyland for Total Film gave it a five star rating, saying, quote, it's charming, spectacular, technic, technically audacious. In short, everything you expect from a Peter Jackson movie, a feeling of familiarity does take hold in places, but this is an epically entertaining first course. Ed Gonzalez for Slant magazine said is the first of an arguably gratuitous three part sine extravaganza, giving it a three out of four stars. Todd McCarthy for the Hollywood Reporter said Jackson and his colleagues have created a purist's delight and leads to an undeniably exciting, action packed climax. He did think, though, there are elements in this new film that are as spectacular as much of the Rings trilogy was. There is much that is flat footed and tedious as well, especially in the early going, end quote. And finally, writing for Empire, Dan Jolin gave the film four out of five stars and said the Hobbit plays younger and lighter than fellowship and its follow ups, but does right by the faithful and has a strength in Martin Freemans Bilbo that may yet see the trilogy measure up to the last. There is treasure here. So mixed reviews, which is, you know, reflects the numbers that I cited at the beginning. As always, wanted to remind you, you can head over to Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, goodreads threads, any of those places, follow us, interact with us, drop us reviews on all the places where you listen to us, and head over to patreon.com. thisfilm is lit. Support us there. Get access to bonus content we just did last month, an episode on the land, no, the Rocketeer. And then this month we're doing an episode on ten things I hate about you. So if you would love to hear the let's talk about those things. Patreon.com thisfilmislit Katie where can people watch the hobbit and unexpected journey?
• 1:30:05
  Speaker B: Well, as always, you can check with your local library or a local video rental store if you still have one. Otherwise, you can stream this with a subscription to HBO, Max, TNT, TBS, or truTv. Or you can rent it for around $4 from Amazon, Apple TV, YouTube, Fandango at home or Spectrum.
• 1:30:28
  Speaker A: There you go. I am very excited to return to the world of middle earth. I have restarted or started rereading and only like a chapter or two in. But I'm enjoying myself thoroughly. I do. I always loved the Hobbit. Again, I've said it. I think I said it in Lord of the Rings episode. I've read the Hobbit several times and I've only read Lord of the Rings once for this series. That's not true. Started and stopped it several times over my life, but I've only finished it once for this podcast. Whereas the Hobbit I have read, at least, I think, two or three times over the course of my lifetime and interested to see if my opinion on the movies has changed.
• 1:31:04
  Speaker B: I remember so little about these movies. I remember not particularly liking them. So I'm yeah, interested to give these ago with a more critical and learned eye.
• 1:31:19
  Speaker A: Give them another appraisal. That's what we'll be doing in one week's time. Until that time, guys, gals on banner and pals, and everybody else, keep reading.
• 1:31:27
  Speaker B: Books, keep watching movies, and keep being awesome.