Just when I thought I was out ....

Initially I was a bit wary of the two part film of 'The Hobbit' that is now in production. I love the book, much preferring it to anything else that Tolkien wrote. I've also got great faith in Peter Jackson after he directed the Lord of the Rings trilogy. However, I always have the niggling feeling that if I go and see a film of a book I really like it will turn out to be crap or (worse) just good enough that it insidiously gnaws away at the mental impressions of characters and locations that I got from the book. Eventually I end up losing my own subjective image and just remembering the cut and dried package the director produced.

Later I found out out that my favourite film director, Guillermo del Toro, was working on it. I dread to think what he would have done with it (the words 'darker', 'weirder' and 'edgier' spring to mind immediately as this is the guy behind 'Pan's Labyrinth', 'The Orphanage' and 'The Devil's Backbone') but it would have been great to find out and gave me a real buzz about the whole thing. This lasted until last year when he quit and I started to lose my enthusiasm for the project again.

Then they pull me back in. Aidan Turner from 'Being Human' as (that well-known character) Kili. I love Aiden Turner's acting and it will be nice to see what he does with a new role as so far he doesn't seem to have done much outside of playing Mitchell. In fact the whole cast list is great (Elijah Woods as a slight exception although since Frodo wasn't actually in the book he shouldn't get much screen time) and I like that they have echoed the LOTR film trilogy by selecting most of them from Britain or the Antipodes.

I'm still curious as to how they will deal with its non-standard structure though. Film producers generally like films with a few main characters who stay involved throughout the whole movie and a larger cast of bit characters who are only present in a few scenes. With 'the Hobbit' they will have the difficult task of making thirteen distinctive dwarf characters memorable, who will be around for most of the movie but by their sheer number will be difficult to fully develop. Possibly this is part of the reason for turning such a short book into a two part movie. It might just let them flesh out the characters adequately.