There he goes again

BREAKING NEWS: Kate from LOST finds her way into Middle-earth

LINKS: Become a friend of Peter Jackson on Facebook

I know, I know. For someone who devotes an inordinate amount of time to whining about all of the things that are wrong with Peter Jackson's vision of Middle-earth, I certainly seem to keep track of what he's doing with The Hobbit. I care too much about J.R.R. Tolkien's books to just yawn and say nothing. And, for all that I crack wise about Jackson's Lord of the Rings movies, I still own them on DVD, and still have tremendous respect for a lot of what he did with them. I try to cling to that respect, at any rate. Sometimes it's hard. Apologists will give you that line about, "No movie could ever be as good as the book," along with lots of stern finger-wagging about how its improper, or at least inconsiderate, to compare movies to books that they're based on. Bull. If you make the movie, then you're inviting the comparison.

Besides, is it really all that hard to stick to the author's vision? People make excellent movie adaptations out of the novels of Jane Austen on a regular basis. Without making ridiculous changes that reinterpret the source material, or invent characters and events, or greatly dumb down character arcs, motivations and backstory. (Of course, you can sometimes do all of that and still make movie that's at least pleasantly watchable, if not destined for AFI greatness, such as Clueless.) Peter Jackson would have been an ideal director for the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie (although Gore Verbinski did just fine with it). Hey, Pete, here's a broad outline of a cool thing we do at Disneyland. Knock yourself out. Do whatever you want with it. Instead, we get all of his "improvements" to The Lord of the Rings. I mean, how did anybody ever even read the books in the first place? Hey, Fran? Philippa? Am I crazy, or will audiences will respond much better if Merry and Pippin are nitwitted, ill-mannered jackanapes who literally run into Frodo as he's leaving the Shire and sort of just go along with him. Let's write that!

I'm hot beneath the collar at the moment because the latest big news from the set of The Hobbit is that filmmakers have cast former LOST tough gal Evangeline Lilly as Tauriel, an elf of Mirkwood. Which means that it's happening again. Yes, Peter Jackson is MAKING STUFF UP. To make the movie(s) better, of course. I get that Tolkien didn't have, proportionally, a whole lot of truck with female characters in his books. Actually, there are exactly zero female characters in The Hobbit. So I guess merely beefing up the presence of Arwen, or lingering over Eowyn's crush on Aragorn, wasn't really an option. I still don't quite get why that means that BLATANT INVENTION is necessary to make something that anyone's going to watch. All of the women who are going to go see a Hobbit movie in the first place are with you already, Pete. You don't have to keep winning them over.

Jackson offered assurances on Facebook that Tauriel won't be sharing Legolas's treehouse (or his cave chamber, or however it is they roll in Mirkwood), which is great, fine, splendid, thanks a million. At least the made-up characters won't be having fake pretend liaisons with the other characters who aren't technically supposed to be in the movie. WE CAN ALL THANK TOM BOMBADIL FOR THAT. (Legolas's old man, Thranduil, has a small role in the book, and Orlando Bloom wasn't doing anything else anyway, so loophole. I mean, elves live forever, right? So ol' Leggy was for sure hanging out somewhere when Dad locked up Bilbo and the dwarves.) I'm guessing that about two-thirds of the running time of the second Hobbit movie has already been mapped out for the Battle of the Five Armies, and there has to be someone to cut to whenever we need an elf to do some bow-and-arrow whizbangery, right? Welcome aboard, Kate from LOST. Hope your oliphaunt surfing is up to snuff.