There seems to be some confusion. I loved the movie and am watching it again. I just don’t get the birdshit.
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dopealope
I loved it, too. Although I questioned how much I really knew the LOTR canon when the rabbit sled made its appearance.
Rook
It had to be in Tolkien’s notes. I don’t see it otherwise being included.
DPS
I think I would have been happier just watching actual birdshit for three hours, except for “Riddles in the Dark.”
Maude
LOL
Redshirt
Radagast is a god, man. Birdshit don’t touch him.
Just Some Fuckhead
Thanks John. It’s really annoying when the other front pagers keep throwing up important shit.
ArchTeryx
Contrary to some posters’ assertions, birds DO have some control over that bodily function. It’s quite possible to housetrain a parrot, even smaller ones like conures. I’ve seen it done!
However, their digestive systems move quite quickly, so, they can only hold in for a limited amount of time. The trained conure I knew had to be “pooped” every hour or so, or accidents happened. Startling a bird is also a good way to get crapped on – their reflex is to immediately lighten their load, then take off!
Radagast apparently just didn’t feel the need to housetrain the birds he had as “guests.” Kinda goes with his personality!
Lavocat
Birdshit often means good luck in folkloric tales.
That being said, I think Peter Jackson basically debased the whole idea of Radagast, and the rabbit sled made me wince. Really? So Gandalf is a pothead and Radagast is an acidhead?
Still, ya gotta love the camaraderie of the dwarves.
Yet, I can’t escape the feeling that this is yet another brand about to go the way of Indiana Jones, as it gets sillier and sillier.
God
John – the mustard is next to the scoop for Tunch’s litter box. Only certain things should be multitasked.
Love Dad
PaulW
Radagast the Brown was one of several wizards sent to watch for Sauron’s return. Radagast became the wizard obsessed with nature and with animals, and became distracted as a result. The birdshit was emblematic of the fact that Radagast was letting birds nest in his hat… while he wore said hat. We really didn’t need it, but there were few other ways to demonstrate how into left field the guy went.
Especially when you consider Radagast never appeared in the Hobbit tale. He was in LotR, but the film-makers didn’t have a way to include him into the plot for that trilogy. In order to make the Hobbit more aligned with LotR, they needed to boost the Hobbit’s side-story of “the necromancer” (which Tolkien later retconned into Sauron’s return), so they needed a character to investigate and allow them to visualize that plot development. Ergo, they used Radagast.
Keith G
@Just Some Fuckhead: Don’t be impertinent. There was no news made today.
Omnes Omnibus
He had birds. They shat on him. I don’t understand the confusion.
West of the Rockies
@Redshirt: Radagast doesn’t care… Radagast just doesn’t give a shit.
Cliff in NH
@Redshirt:
so, why is it in his beard?
Yutsano
@Omnes Omnibus: Sounds like the ultimate DFH to me.
West of the Rockies
@Just Some Fuckhead: Aren’t you the guy who gets pissed off when in open football threads, someone dares mention anything about a game or player of historical context? If you don’t like the thread, click on a different one. I get it, JSF, that some threads seem a bit pointless. I watched only the first season of Downton Abbey, and wasn’t swept up like so many people were, so I just don’t click on the threads devoted to that show.
Cliff in NH
what kind of wizard can’t make a spell to keep shit off of themselves?
Redshirt
Oh, so this thread is “Ishtari Chat”!
So, those wizards in the East. Mysterious, huh? What’s going on with them?
SatanicPanic
@Omnes Omnibus: Birds will do that.
Omnes Omnibus
@SatanicPanic: And they did.
Gilmore
Still haven’t seen any of the Lord of the Rings movies. . . When the first one came out I said I wasn’t going to see them until they did the Hobbit. . . That wasn’t even a consideration back then. . . Now the fucking movie comes out and it’s a 3 part deal. . . I’ll be dead by the time I can watch it all at once. . . or so old that I won’t be able to remember which disc I watched. . . or what day it is. . . and now there is birdshit to deal with. . .
Suffern ACE
I wish you’d just watch some heist movies. We have lots of good suggestion. Or is the Hobbit just one long caper feature. Boston Blackie meets the Brothers Grimm.
Lavocat
The Lord of the Rings: A Reader’s Companion states as follows, on page 241:
“Jacob Grimm in Teutonic Mythology refers several times to a Slavic deity, variously as Radigast, Radegast, and derives his name from ‘rad glad, radost joy’. Radagast’s affinity for birds is reflected in his name as it was in Valinor, Aiwendil, perhaps from Quenya aiwe ‘a small bird + ndil ‘devoted to.'”
Furthermore, “Gandalf refers to Radagast in The Hobbit, Chapter 7 as ‘my good cousin … who lives near the southern borders of Mirkwood’.
Both are Istari (wizard-gods) of the Maiar – gods basically, but slightly lesser gods than the Valar (supreme beings). Sauron, too, is of the Maiar, though thought to be the most powerful of the Maiar.
Very, very cool book, by the way, and well worth the time and money if you are a Middle Earth Freak, like yours truly.
That said, I wish they had accorded Radagast the same level of dignity and respect that was accorded to Gandalf. Instead, he seems more like a flower child on a serious acid trip.
max
I just don’t get the birdshit.
I’m going to assume you would have been totally down with it if he’s had mustard in his beard instead.
max
[‘Now THAT guy has it together – he knows where his mustard is!’]
SatanicPanic
@Redshirt: It always bugged me that Iluvatar sent 5 wizards to deal with Sauron and only two of them could even be bothered to try. And of those two, only one of them didn’t switch sides. Way to go guys.
Robert
I loved The Hobbit. I think the inclusion of Radagast and The Silmarillion text is great. The whole thing just worked for me better than the Lord of the Rings trilogy. I’m really curious to see what happens in the third film in The Hobbit trilogy which is supposed to bridge the gap between the two stories. I trust Peter Jackson enough at this point to go with his vision.
Omnes Omnibus
@max:
Is that like being a a really hoopy frood and knowing your your towel is?
VFX Lurker
Short version: you would never mistake these three Wizards for each other in a line-up. The birdshit just helps.
Donut
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Can we have the link to your blog, please?
Donut
@VFX Lurker:
Some of my best friends are wizards, but they all look alike to me.
Suffern ACE
@SatanicPanic: I interpret Radagast’s problem as going mad actually trying to hard. He wanted to protect even the little things. Even those things that wouldn’t figure high in the great battles. And he was right, I suppose. Where did Sauron first hide when he started to come back? And have you seen the Mordor he went to after he became corporeal? It didn’t seem to have a lot of green things in it. And Saurumon certainly didn’t have a lot of qualms about making Isengard into a hellhole, either.
lojasmo
Gah. Will someobdy please point me to the mustard thread. Feeling a little lost here.
Redshirt
@SatanicPanic: I attribute it to some latent racism. Of course the Eastern Wizards sucked – Long live the Empire!
Donut
@Lavocat:
You know, I enjoyed the movie a lot, because to me, it was simply an entertaining story, and well-acted and visually very interesting. The art direction alone is worth the full ticket price I paid to see it in the theater.
I am not a devotee of the Tolkein books, though I have read the Hobbit. I actually feel fortunate for this. And I I feel sympathetic to those of you who love the books, because the films will probably always let you down. I read the Hobbit maybe 30 years ago, so if Jackson has murdered the text, I would never know.
Omnes Omnibus
@SatanicPanic: Each of them had different skills. Saruman and Gandalf had skills that apparently mixed best with the story.
Lavocat
@SatanicPanic: Not true. In various texts of Unfinished Tales, Tolkien implies that the two blue istari vanished into the wilds of Harad and Far Harad to either build alliances or cause alliances to falter. Radagast played a key role in turning the tide in the animal kingdom, with the various birds (especially the eagles) and insects (remember the moth in LOTR, when Gandalf is trapped on top of Orthanc?).
Gandalf was the wisest if only because he saw the Fourth Age as The Age of Men whereas Radagast was too taken by the animal world and the blue istari were involved in the affairs of Middle Earth in distant lands which where only peripheral to the main action in LOTR.
The key struggle (obviously) is between Gandalf and Saruman, both of whom correctly guess what the future likely holds.
Only upon reading the various guides does one discover how amazingly Christian and deeply spiritual the Tolkien oeuvre really is. I always sensed this but it always seemed very well hidden.
Frankly, I think Jackson should consider putting The Silmarillion on the screen, as I suspect only he could be truly capable of pulling off such an amazing feat. Dragons and balrogs battling armies of Badass Legolases and tireless Dunedain. THAT would truly kick ass!
SatanicPanic
@Suffern ACE: That’s fair. And I like Radagast. Those other two though? They just split.
lojasmo
@Donut:
i have actually read all of LOTR at least three times, and the hobbit, probably half a dozen.
I liked the LOTR movie franchises better than the books.
Donut
@lojasmo:
Fair enough. I have friends who are major fans of the texts who loathe the various films to varying degrees. I shouldn’t assume major fans all feel the same.
Redshirt
@Lavocat: The Silmarillion needs to be captured in a visual medium, for sure, but I think it’s WAAAAY to broad for a movie, or even a trilogy. A TV show would be incredible, though highly unlikely. Rather, just make a movie from one story in the Sil – the tale of Beren and Luthien would make for a kick ass movie, and I dare say might be the most popular Tolkien movie due to the only successful romance in all his writing.
SatanicPanic
@Lavocat: No fair reaching into Unfinished Tales for explanations!
Omnes Omnibus
@SatanicPanic:
I’d watch it.
Lavocat
@Donut: The only real bitch about Jackson’s treatment of LOTR was the fact that he left out Tom Bombadil – a character that was the most near and dear to Tolkien’s heart. But, given that Bombadil is very likely an intermediate earth god (somewhere between being a Maiar and a Valar), jackson probably figured that introducing him would only make things more difficult for the non-Tolkien audience to understand.
Still, I think Jackson underestimated his audience. Bombadil should have been included to show that The One Ring had no influence over him (as it does even over Gandalf!). I always pictured John Goodman playing the role (perhaps on acid, since Bombadil is, frankly, pretty damned weird).
Lavocat
@Redshirt: Dude, this is just the tip of the iceberg for Jackson (or another of his ilk). Tolkien’s mythology runs mighty deep, since he spent most of the later years of his life creating it.
And another thing: look at Tolkien’s influence on western culture since the publication of these novels. Robert Plant got off on it and created some truly amazing music for the ages (“Ramble On”, “Stairway To heaven”, et al.).
With modern CGI, I am certain that someone of Jackson’s caliber could pull off The Silmarillion. It might need to be in 5 sections (or more), but I think it could be done.
Emma
Bombadil has always looked like Robin Williams to me.
Lavocat
@SatanicPanic: Better yet, grab ANYTHING written about Tolkien by Wayne Hammond and Christina Scull. The level of their scholarship on All Things Tolkien will blow you away.
SatanicPanic
@Lavocat: Silmarillon had some great stories (Beren + Luthien, Hurin + his sister (yikes!), the Fall of Numenor), but isn’t Christopher Tolkein not willing to license that one?
bmoak
Years ago, before the movies came out, a company called Iron Crown Enterprises held the Tolkien license for role-playing and tabletop games. They put out at excellent collectible card game called Middle Earth: The Wizards. You could play any one of the five Istari, as ICE unofficially fleshed out the missing two. Radagast was the bomb in that game.
I see where Jackson was going with Radagast, but I think he went around 10-20% too far with the weirdness, including the birdshit. I also felt that he went 10-20% too long and over the top with the action scenes. He did a good job fleshing out and differentiating the dwarves, most of whom were ciphers in the book.
Spaghetti Lee
I thought it was great. I watched the 2001-03 trilogy recently and it was still great. Not perfect, but consider how bad it could have been if things went wrong.
ETA: That said, like someone said above, I hope we don’t wind up with the LOTR equivalent of Indy 4 or the endless Jaws sequels.
Roger Moore
@Redshirt:
If you want to make a kick ass movie from one of the stories in the Silmarillion, you have to go with Narn i Hîn Húrin. It has the longest, most complete story of any of the tales in the Silmarillion, it has a ton of screen-worthy action, and Túrin is a serious ass kicker.
PIGL
@SatanicPanic: Eru did not send them. Manwe did.
PIGL
@Roger Moore: That would be a great idea.
Odie Hugh Manatee
” I just don’t get the birdshit.”
Plot fertilizer.
Lavocat
@SatanicPanic: Yeah, pretty much. Tolkien’s descendants are going to be well taken care of for years to come.
Lavocat
@bmoak: I agree entirely. There is way too much reliance on overdone action sequences, especially amongst the goblins under the earth.
I was really worried that The Hobbit would suck. I just didn’t think Jackson had it in him to deal with what is a much simpler though far less subtler text. When I heard that he had chopped the book into thirds, I groaned, expecting the worst.
If the next two movies are as good as the first (and I actually expect them to be better), then Jackson outdid himself. Yet again.
The scenes with Gollum were unbelieavably good. And the way Jackson worked Bilbo’s ingratiation into Thorin’s favor was excellent. I also find that I love the actor playing the young Bilbo.
Dad23g
The flaw in the film was the inclusion of the unnecessary extra tension from pursuit by Azog, who is actually dead by the time of the Hobbit. There is tension enough in the story as written. Heck, each chapter has a tense moment – trolls, goblins, wargs, stuck in burning trees, a dragon at the end, and other stuff that I won’t mention to avoid spoiling it for those who have not read the book. Who needs Azog?
dance around in your bones
All I have to say on the subject of birdshit is that I took care of a friend’s parrots and pocket parrots numerous times, and they flung birdshit and their food all around the room.
Sometimes I would remove their cage covers in the early morning and they would start to shriek so much I was tempted to put the covers right back on.
Plus, keeping a bird in a cage just seems cruel to me.
Haven’t seen The Hobbit yet; liked the first LOTR movie, was bored sick by The Two Towers (WAY too much fighting) and barely remember the third one. But I do remember reading the books as I traveled through Asia – I think it was required of us DFH’s.
Lavocat
@Roger Moore: Many people do not realize how incredibly violent The Silmarillion is. Elves are slaughtering elves half the time, and all because of those damned silmarils.
Picture LOTR on steroids or – better yet: LOTR as the compassionate New Testament and The Silmarillion as the blood and guts Old Testament.
Lavocat
Sorry about all of this. Didn’t mean to be a thread-hog.
It’s off to bed for me.
p.a.
Christopher Tolkien has issued the Turin story in book form as “The Children of Hurin”. Would make an excellent movie.
Chris
@Dad23g:
I assume they just felt that they needed a more human-sized nemesis with a personal quarrel with the Aragorn-character and a warrior’s background so he could fight him – which they wouldn’t have had with either Smaug or the Necromancer.
And while I didn’t mind, I find it odd that they chose to do that when LOTR had no such character and did just fine anyway.
lol
Christopher Tolkein actively hates all the adaptations, including the Jackson trilogy. That’s why you’ll never see an adaptation of anything in the Simarillion. The rights to that are separate from the Hobbit and LOTR.
All the extra plots in The Hobbit trilogy are from material related to or implied in the Hobbit or LOTR and not anything from the Simarillion.
Poicephalus
I can’t claim to know anything about Hobbitses.
I’ve never seen the movie.
Read the book a couple dozen times, but that is bye the bye.
I have had pet birds.
I would gladly give the lives of all the Balloon Juice community to have my little girl shit on me again (she is passed). There is your shit, and then there is our shit.
Peace!
C
ruemara
People whine about shit, end of story.
dance around in your bones
@Poicephalus:
I’m sorry about the passing of your birds. We do love the little critters.
I have lived in countries where almost everyone had birds in cages, often hanging off tree branches – they would sing and sing! and entertain us. I used to have a photo of a cat taking a swipe at one of the cages.
I’ve had friends with pet birds who would sit on their shoulders, groom their hair and ears and even eat out of their mouths (eew) but still, to me, it seems slightly cruel to keep an animal caged that is meant to fly.
I feel the same way about fish, so it’s nothing specific to birds. I always said the only animals I wanted to take care of are the ones who hang around willingly. Dogs and cats, pretty much.
That said, I have kept horses, and I had one who used to break out of our flimsy corral and go visit the horse ranch down the hill and flaunt his freedom in front of the other horses. I’d get a call from the owner of said ranch (a friend) who’d say “Biz is out again” and I’d have to hike down there and ride him back up the hill.
I’m rambling on here.
Daulnay
I shared a house with someone who kept a peregrine falcon. In the house, in their bedroom. You think Radagast’s beard was bad? Imagine being awakened by a warm feeling in your ear.
I will never keep birds. Not ever. Ewwwww.
Roger Moore
@Lavocat:
I think some of the violence of the Silmarillion relative to the Lord of the Rings is that the Silmarillion is really a summary of a whole set of longer stories. The full versions of the Lay of Lethian and the Narn i Hîn Húrin are basically novels in their own right, but they get distilled down to 20 or 30 pages in the Silmarillion. Most of the abridgment is from dialog and descriptive writing rather than action, so the level of violence gets ramped up. That’s not to say that the full length version would be peaceful, but the fight scenes would be more in proportion to the rest.
dance around in your bones
The same friend who had the birds (she was quite the pet keeper) also had a pair of iguanas she’d had since they were babies. They’d hang around on the curtain rods in the house (at this point they were about 3-4 feet long) – one got out of the house and went straight up a eucalyptus tree.
I had to climb up the tree (maybe twenty feet up?) and wrestle the damn thing down. Got scratches all over my arms from that old thing.
I was scared shitless that I would be the one to lose one of her iguanas that she’d lovingly taken care of for 20 years.
DaddyJ
Sadly, I doubt we will ever see any of The Silmarillion tales filmed, at least not with the budget Jackson enjoys. They are beautiful stories, but are as dark and depressing as Greek tragedy.
Darkrose
Oh dear god no.
The Silmarillion was never meant to be a complete narrative in the way it was released. Guy Gavriel Kay did what he could, but it’s still a compilation of unfinished material and notes that exists mainly because Christopher realized he could publish his dad’s cocktail napkin scribblings and make money.
Radio One
In trying to get through the first season of Farscape,I stumbled across this speculative version of the opening credits for Game of Thrones if it were done like most hour long dramas in the 1990’s were done:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qaLVo0Rp2Ik
Paulk
@Dad23g:
Well, narratively, the story needs him, for exactly the reason you mention. The book is episodic and without a central antagonist to hold it together. Smaug is primarily a goal and cannot function as a uniting tension.
So, Jackson’s choice to use Azog as the driver of action (as well as a motivational figure for Thorin) solves a good number of problems that the conversion to film creates. (In the book, these problems are more easily rectified. This is essentially a choice of adaptation.)
The better question is not why Jackson uses Azog in this film but rather why he doesn’t die at the end. And I think the answer is that he intends to use him through the whole story, to take the place of Azog’s son, Bolg, who leads the Goblins to attack Thorin at the end of the book. Rather than bring in a whole new character out of the blue, who suddenly decides to attack and start a huge battle, Jackson has already set this up.
I don’t entirely agree with the earlier comment someone made about the subsequent films likely being “better,” but rather that I think the filmmakers are being extremely careful and deliberate and once we see the whole thing, we’ll better appreciate the choices he made in this one. From a strictly narrative perspective, these are very clever choices to very real problems.
Anne Laurie
@Lavocat:
Yep, Goodman as Bombadil and Roseanne as Goldberry. Tolkien’s characters were meant to be old school, hardcore pooka, the powerful & potentially deadly personification of wild nature outside “civilized” order. Think of Pan and the Willendorf Venus — obviously potent (and sexy as hell, to each other) but grotesque & vaguely terrifying to the happy little farmsteading, gossip-mongering hobbits (who prefer civilized ale & pipeweed to Bombadil’s stronger wild smoke & hallucinagenic mushrooms).
Wish I knew how tongue-in-cheek the Urban Dictionary definition of pooka is: A racial slur that can be used to broadly define ethnicities other than yourself. Usually used to describe a fat or slothful peoples lacking modesty and basic hygiene…… because if it’s still being used that way, it’s some kind of folk-memory remarkable!
The Dude Abides
There seems to be a lot of angst here regarding the length of The Hobbit. From what I recall, the running time was about 2:40. Just looked it up on IMDB, and it says 2:49, but that includes the credits.
It was the first novel that I read as a child. I think I was nine or ten, because I read LOTR when I was 11. Loved both novels, loved all four movies in their own right.
Jesterdel
@SatanicPanic: Even Tolkien hadn’t decided what happened to the Blue Wizards. His early notes suggest they also turned aside from their job, setting up as wizard-kings in the East. Later on, he leaned toward the idea that they succeeded turning at least some men away from Sauron – the idea being “You think they were outnumbered in LOTR? Just think of the hordes Sauron COULD have had if the Blue Wizards hadn’t reduced his available troops.”
Kinda gets to your point of “Boy, the Valar picked a bunch of crappy emissaries.” In his later musings, only 2 of the 5 didn’t work out.
/Geekout
Johannes
Re the birdshit: I don’t remember anything like it in LOTR, but Jackson could have been inspired by T.H. White’s Merlyn in Sword in the Stone and The Book of Merlyn, who is so described.
Redshirt
@Roger Moore: I’d love to see a Turin movie, but it truly is depressing material. Not sure it’s “Hollywood” ready.
Beren and Luthien, on the other hand, is more positive and features a genuinely moving romance story. Plus tons of kick ass action – werewolves! Talking dogs! Sauron on his evil island! Morgoth in his mountain fastness! Music! Kings! It’s got everything a sweeping modern action movie needs. It would be a gigantic blockbuster.
Herbal Infusion Bagger
Actually, he’s mentioned in when Gandalf’s introduces himself to Beorn.
But yep, the Valar must have had a hard time finding the staff amongst the Maia. Allando and Pallando fuck off to the East and South never to be heard of, Saruman turns evil, and Radagast turns into James Herriot.
Redshirt
Let’s be clear: The Valar suck. For eons they sat on their Holy Asses doing squat as Morgoth – one of their own – rampaged and destroyed Middle Earth.
I stand with Feanor.
quannlace
I prefer to think of it as tree sap.
I started watching it last nigt and got half-way through. Oh, I’ll finish it, but I gotta say, I’m kind of bored. All these endless battle scenes-cut those out and we could have gone back to one movie.
I wish we could have had two cuts of the movie. ONe , just the story of the Hobbit, There And Back Again. A second, with all the added pre-history Jackson is so keen on.
It’s funny; in the ‘It’s old home week’ scene in Rivendell, where Gandalf, Elrond, Saruman et al are confabbing, I kept thinking, ‘Hey, Galadrial, don’t trip over that dress. Sheesh.’
Jesterdel
@Redshirt: Up until the Kinslaying, he had a point. :)
Jay C
Funny to find this thread today: stuck at home sick, we rented The Hobbit Tuesday nite: Mrs. Jay says she was near-comatose with boredom – I was under-impressed with Part I, myself:
Good bits:
– Radagast as a fleshed-out character.
– Thorin and the Dwarves played as serious characters, not
as semi-comic-relief.
– Azog the Pale Orc (and I agree that his inclusion is a
useful unifying-device for the plot)
– The Riddle Game
Not-so-good bits:
– Radagast turned, after his intro, into a buffoonish old hippie (and that
rabbit sled certainly wasn’t in – or anywhere near –
Tolkien’s canon! And no, the birdshit didn’t help)
– The escape scene from Goblin-town: it looked to me
mainly like a chase-screen from a bad video game.
– Martin Freeman’s playing Bilbo (too much, IMO) as a
snarky wisecracker.
I’ll watch it again, to be sure, and the other two parts, when they’re released, but I can’t characterize The Hobbit as a satisfying epic on the level of LOTR. Jackson really should have stuck to the two-film format: it’s hard to see what he could have really lost/
Redshirt
@Jesterdel: I still blame the Valar. “Oh, let’s let Ultimate Evil walk around unfettered in our Holy Land, mingling with the people. What could go wrong?”
stinger
@Jesterdel: IMO that’s story that could stand telling — what happened to the blue wizards? I’ll bet they had some cool adventures in Haradistan.
Jesterdel
@Redshirt: Agreed. I guess one could give them a little leeway – that they simply could not comprehend the depths of Melkor’s evil, didn’t realize that redemption in his case was a total lost cause.
Still, can’t Mandos see the future? Hmm, I see a flaw in my own half-hearted argument…
McJulie
@Dad23g: My problem with Azog was that the whole time I thought the only reason to include him, was so they could kill an enemy at the end of the first movie to make it seem more like a complete story arc.
Then when they didn’t I was kind of cranky.
I actually enjoyed the whole thing more the second time, when I wasn’t evaluating it against the Hobbit-in-my-head quite so much.
Then again, I originally fell in love with the story as told by Rankin-Bass, and that version now seems deeply flawed to me, mostly by the almost complete absence of the book’s sense of humor.
The Riddles in the Dark sequence was still great. I think that’ll always be great.