A Very Unexpected Curveball

Well, dear fellow Tolkien fans, I have returned from the pinnacle of Orthanc now at the threshold of the release of “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey”.

Some of you are new to the site while some have been stopping by now and again for several years.  But you all must have wondered to yourself why the last entry is dated July 2011.  I am happy to report that I’m not deceased or that any major tragedy has befallen me.

As to what happened over the last year, all I can do is apologize and quote Sir Ian McKellan from The Fellowship of The Ring: “I was…delayed.”  The simple truth is that what happened was, well, life.

When I first embarked on this Hobbit project I thought I had all the time in the world.  Then one thing after another seemed to pull me away from resuming my course.  Before I knew it, barrels of information came bubbling up on the internet over Peter Jackson’s movie project and I began to wonder whether or not it was even worth it to continue.  Then, one day last summer just as I was getting back to the idea or a return it was announced that the two film project had become a three film project.

While this curveball (pardon the baseball reference) originally caused me dismay, I eventually saw a silver lining.  My dismay was driven by the uncertainty of how the material for these three films would be distributed across three movies – would it all be “The Hobbit” or would the first two films be followed by a “bridge” story that would link it with the epic trilogy that followed?  The answer came not long thereafter when the “middle” film was given the title of “The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug”.

Looking through the cast list for the first film I noticed that it had some characters missing that were originally to appear – namely Beorn, Radagast the Brown, Elven King Thranduil, Legolas and the new female Elf, Tauriel.  I interpret this to mean that the newly reconfigured trilogy would spread the novel’s events across all three films and that the chapters I had already covered to date actually went chronologically past where the first film would likely end.  So, I breathed a small sigh of relief that – in reality – I was still on pace to write about the rest of the book’s treatment on film even with the worldwide release of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey this December 14th.

So, for those readers who have still not given up on me I invite you to continue this journey in anticipating Peter Jackson’s translation of The Hobbit, from book to script – to screen.  The first order of business is to do some housekeeping here at the site with perhaps a brief post or two to catch up on where we are in the process.  I look forward to your return over the next few weeks as we all greatly anticipate the release of the first film.

Respectfully,

Gary S. Gray