The Desolation of Jackson

My decision to boycott the remaining two Peter Jackson Hobbit movies has caused a predictable stir among some of my friends. Here are a half-dozen reasons for my decision –

(1) Peter Jackson is tone-deaf regarding the source material. No, make that completely deaf. He sees all the shiny trinkets, yet has no clue for the vast underlying ethos / telos / logos that is Middle-earth. (Note: look them words up; I couldn’t find anything better in English.)

(2) I think one reviewer nailed it best when he said that Jackson’s Hobbit is not Tolkien’s The Hobbit brought to the big screen, but some sort of fan-fiction version of The Hobbit brought to the big screen. I’d sandwich “fan-fiction” with the phrases “amateurish” and “backed by oodles of free-flowing cash” for greater accuracy.

(3) The Lord of the Rings is around 1,100 pages divided into three roughly equal length books. A movie was devoted appropriately enough to each (though the final film installment, The Return of the King, was insufferably too long). The Hobbit is a book basically equal in length to one of the Lord of the Rings books. So why is Jackson further subdividing The Hobbit into three movies???

(4) Every single character, save for Gandalf dispensing grave wisdom, speaks in breathy over-enunciated English-accented whisper-shouts.

(5) Radagast the Brown’s bunny wagon from the first Hobbit cinematic installment. My eyes – no, my brain – will not accept any further blasphemies.

(6) There are no Xena: Warrior Princesses in Tolkien.