Friday Mad Science: Super-Geek Edition

First piece of news this week: Peter Jackson has decided to split his movie adaptation of The Hobbit again, making the film into a trilogy.  I trust Jackson as a director, but I gotta say that this decision seems a little weird to me.  I mean, I can see making the book into two movies because the book itself exists in a bunch of distinct pieces which don’t necessarily have all that much to do with each other.  With that in mind, I personally would build the first movie around the beginning of the journey and the encounters with the goblins and use the company’s escape from the goblin kingdom under the mountains as the first movie’s climax.  That would set the stage for a second movie in which the company encounters and escapes from the elves, confronts the dragon, and then fights the Battle of Five Armies, which would, of course, tie back in with the plot of the first movie.  But if that’s the plan, where on earth is the third movie?

or "There and Back Again."

It seems obvious to me that everything from the foot of Smaug’s mountain to the end of the Battle of Five Armies has to be the bulk of the last movie, regardless of how many movies precede it.  Just as obviously, the stuff with the goblins is its own self-contained plot.  That stuff collectively takes up about half of the book, and it’s critical to the way the book’s overarching story resolves itself.  The issue, then, is what else is so important that it needs its own movie.  There’s the opening dinner party, which is overlong in the book and clearly destined to be overlong in the first movie as well.  Then there’s also a bit with trolls, a bit with worgs (before the main bit with the goblins), a bit where the dwarves get attacked by spiders in the forest, and the bit where the dwarves get captured by the elves. 

I suppose you could build a second movie around the forest, with the spiders and the elves as one contiguous plot-point, but that stuff by no means strikes me as worth a whole movie, nor is any of it particularly related to anything else.  It’s useful because it shows off Tolkien’s vision—The Hobbit could easily be considered travel-fiction, if we accept Tolkien’s imagination as an appropriate destination—but beyond that, none of that is particularly germane to the rest of the story.  It shows Bilbo’s growth into a Rogue of some renown, but otherwise it’s filler.  Turning it into the basis of an entire film seems sketchy.  Personally, I’d use it in the films the same way that Tolkien used it in the book—as a chance to develop character in support of the main points of the story.

* * *

The cover for Guardians of the Galaxy #9,
features Star Lord.

I mentioned yesterday that it looks like Brian Bendis is gonna write a new Star Lord comic, presumably as part of the build up to 2014’s Guardian’s of the Galaxy movie.  Well, this week also brought reports of a new Marvel movie-universe TV show set around SHIELD.

Intriguing idea or classic corporate over-reach?  You tell me.

* * *

In Olympic news, the fact is that Michael Phelps is still the best swimmer in the world.  No, he hasn’t been unbeatable this year, but he’s still done better than his mainmost rival, Ryan Lochte, and that’s in the year in which Lochte was finally supposed to get out from under Phelps’ shadow.

Also: the US Men’s Water Polo team is 3-0 right now and looking pretty good.  So far, I’ve managed to catch all of their matches, and I’ve enjoyed every one.  Can’t wait for the medal round.

* * *

Finally, Tim Tebow is at training camp with the New York Jets.  Not surprisingly, this is making a few headlines.  Most recently, he was seen running the Wildcat in the Jets’ goal line offense.

Personally, I’m digging the Olympics, but I’ll be more than happy when they at last give way to football season.