Who really owns The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey?

TMC is rebroadcasting this prequel to The Lord of the Rings tonight, released in theaters at the end of 2013.

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journeythe first film in the trilogy adapting the adventures of Bilbo Baggins imagined by JRR Tolkien after the adaptation of the Lord of the Rings by the same Peter Jackson. Exit Frodon, place to his uncle Bilbo played by Martin Freeman. If the recipe changes little, the spirit and the result on the screen, they, are different. What is this due to and above all, is it The Hobbit is only a film by the New Zealand filmmaker?

2012 marked the return of Peter Jackson in Tolkien's fantasy universe, nine years after the apotheosis of Lord of the Rings : The Return of the King and his eleven Oscars won, still a record at present. A highly anticipated return which was going to be oriented towards a short novel, prelude to the Lord of the Rings : Bilbo the Hobbit. A less ambitious, more compact novel, which Tolkien originally wrote simply to entertain his children with the journey of this Hobbit and his company of twelve dwarves.

When it was presented to the press, critics were not all thrilled by this choice and the film received much more lukewarm reviews than those of the trilogy. Lord of the RingsThis was particularly the case for Firstwho even went so far as to wonder if Peter Jackson had not allowed himself to be somewhat dispossessed of his own film: “Where has the adventurous Hobbit I knew gone?”Gandalf asks Bilbo at the beginning of the film. As boredom gets the better of the viewer, the question that arises is rather: where has the Peter Jackson who set out to conquer Middle-earth after having boxed Brain Dead And Heavenly Creatures ?” (the full review is to be read here)

Fortunately, the filmmaker made up for it thanks to the long version of the filmwho takes more time to reconnect with the magic of his elders.

Peter Jackson: “I brought the cameras back to Middle-earth to film a different story”

Where for the trilogy of Lord of the Rings the question did not seem to arise, the case of Hobbit seems more open to discussion. And if in the end, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey was not just a movie Peter Jackson ? It is true that its production was complicated: before Peter Jackson found his scriptwriters Fran Walsh And Philippa Boyens For this project, it should have been designed by Guillermo del Toro, but the director of The Shape of Water could not carry out his vision.

“I looked at his work when I took over the project, and his designs were pure Guillermo. They were very distinctive things, very much in line with the Pan's Labyrinth and of Hellboy. It was his artistic vision, and I couldn't make that specific film. The only one who could make a film in the Guillermo del Toroit's Guillermo”admitted Peter Jackson to the site io9 in August 2012. “So I redesigned almost everything. There's still a bit of his DNA, he did some pretty cool things that we took elements of, but we really changed them. The film was really rethought.”

Major changes within the production also impacted the production of this new trilogy, which was much less successful than the three previous parts released between 2001 and 2003. Some criticism even came from the film's teams, like Viggo Mortensen, who regretted that digital visual effects take precedence over sets and VFX “practicals” and bluffing of the Lord of the Rings.

What would Guillermo del Toro's The Hobbit have looked like?

Movie summary: Bilbo Baggins (Martin Freeman) seeks to retake the lost Dwarven Kingdom of Erebor, conquered by the fearsome dragon Smaug. While he crosses paths by chance with the wizard Gandalf the Grey, Bilbo joins a band of 13 dwarves whose leader is none other than the legendary warrior Thorin Oakenshield (Richard Armitage). Their journey takes them to the heart of the Wild Land, where they will have to face Goblins, Orcs, murderous Wargs, giant Spiders, Metamorphs and Wizards… Although they are destined to head east and the desert lands of the Lonely Mountain, they must first escape the Goblin tunnels, where Bilbo meets the creature who will change the course of his life forever: Gollum. It is there that with Gollum, on the banks of an underground lake, the modest Bilbo Baggins not only surprises himself by showing unexpected courage and intelligence, but manages to get his hands on Gollum's “precious” ring which conceals hidden powers… This simple golden ring is linked to the fate of Middle-earth, without Bilbo yet suspecting it…

Trailer: