Lord of the Rings Fans Celebrate The Hobbit's 75th Anniversary at TheOneRing.net's Annual Picnic
The new Hobbit movie trailer
Kosoy, who carries a thick branch as a staff and has yellow braces and overgrown eyebrows, turns to Broadway.
"Will they actually have all the singing?" he asks.
"Unknown," Broadway intones. "We know the dwarves are singing, because we saw that in the trailer. But will the goblins sing?"
"They have like two big songs," Nathan says.
"They do!" Broadway says. "You know, the goblins actually go to have a business meeting with the Wargs. I don't know if that's even going to be in the film or not."
"Well, for special edition they gotta save some stuff," interjects Steven Kosoy, Nathan's father.
The biggest question looming in the minds of LoTR junkies is how Jackson will expand this relatively short book into three movies. The original trilogy compressed over 1200 pages of material into three full-length features, but The Hobbit is only 280 pages, with an additional 130 pages of appendices.
"If you read [The Hobbit] out loud, it only takes eleven hours," explains the bespectacled, professorial Mike Urban, who took medieval Welsh in college to help him better understand Tolkien's language games and whom Broadway describes as "one of the most learned, learned fans in southern California."
So why are they making three movies?
"We cannot speak for the reasons they are doing things," Urban says.
"I can," Broadway retorts.
"Well, okay, Mr. Insider!" Steven Kosoy says.
"A few million dollars [investment from Warner Brothers] equals another billion dollar box office," Broadway says, explaining that with the set already built and the actors already in New Zealand, it made financial sense to expand. "But Peter, when you ask him in an interview, Peter will say, 'I've got so much more story to tell.'"
The bottom line might also explain why heartthrob Orlando Bloom will appear in the films, even though his character, the Elven prince, Legolas, does not have a role in the book.
"[The movies] might actually be really entertaining, but it won't be The Hobbit," Urban says. "I consider it a missed opportunity. [Jackson] had an opportunity to make the definitive Hobbit and didn't."
"For some hard-core purists, it doesn't matter how many Oscars Peter Jackson receives," Broadway says. Already, some are upset that Jackson has added an entirely new character, a military captain played by Evangeline Lilly.
Shelly Malmon, whose husband David sports a t-shirt that says "Affiliated Bladesmiths - Local 1892 - Mordor," rolls her eyes when the subject of discrepancies between the texts and the films arises.
"People need to get over themselves," she says. "I know [Jackson]'s going to try his best. Will things be perfect? Will 100 percent of moviegoers be happy?" She shrugs. "Will they ever? I will definitely see it the first day."
Steven Kosoy thinks most fans would agree with Malmon.
"A lot of people who are upset about the discrepancies are only gonna see it five times instead of ten times," he says.
Follow me on Twitter at @adelaidelaments, and for more arts news follow us at @LAWeeklyArts and like us on Facebook.
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