2018 Geek-A-Long: The Hobbit Pt. 2

…or, There and Back Again. Actually, it seems like we’re never going to get there. Are we there yet, Mr. Bilbo?

2 weeks ago we released our Geek-A-Long square honoring The Hobbit. BookWyrm had nominated it to the 2018 blanket on the Ravelry Fight For Your Fandoms Thread, and we rightly assumed that she meant the book, not the movies. I told you then that my feelings about the movies were a post for another day, and that day is this day!

“But guys, you’ve never done a two-part square like this before. Why now?”

Two reasons: The first is that a million years ago when Jac first made a chart for Smaug, it was really long. Neither of us can remember what she had planned to put it on, but it didn’t get used and sat in the L&L vault for ages. When the Hobbit made the leaderboards for this year’s blanket we knew we had to use the Smaug chart, and it’s just so cool all laid out that we had a long talk about if it would be OK to double down on a fandom and give it two spots to fit the whole thing. Which led to Jac’s wise proclamation,

“The movies went on forever, so why shouldn’t the square?”

https://www.instagram.com/p/Bk-nm8un30W/?taken-by=doctor_llama

For this second installment of Geek-A-Long Hobbiting, let’s talk about the movies.

I’ll be honest, I haven’t even seen all three. I actually only watched the first one, and I was powerfully unimpressed. It didn’t capture any of the charming-satire or endearing characters that the book had. It was poorly executed slapstick and moved so very, very slowly. One of my favorite quotes about the first Hobbit movie when it was in theaters was that an adult with an average reading speed could sit in the theater lobby and start reading The Hobbit at the same time their friend started watching the movie. A few hours later, when the friend comes out of the theater, the reader would be further along in the plot than the movie watcher.

This. Should. Not. Be. The. Case.

The audio book for the first Harry Potter book is 8 hours and 34 minutes long. The movie, which was an objectively great book-to-movie adaptation is 2 hours and 39 minutes. In contrast, the Hobbit audio book is 11 hours and 8 minutes. The movies are 3 hours 2 minutes, 3 hours 9 minutes, and 2 hours 24 minutes respectively. That’s a grand total of 8 hours 35 minutes to watch the full hobbit trilogy. If you are a fast reader, you can probably read the book from cover to cover in less time than it takes to watch the trilogy.

There is little to no disagreement among Tolkien fans that the third movie was 100% unnecessary. I’m a knit-wear designer. I get the inclination to look at something and say, “That was a great piece. That made me money. People want more of it, so lets make another version.”

A little of that is good business and keeps your core audience well stocked with things they can get from you that they know makes them happy. On Friday we announced Camp Wannaknit. We’ve got a bunch of patterns scheduled to release for that. I made a Jughead hat that is magnificent. Just a really great piece. So I designed some fingerless mitts to go with it. But like, no matter how great that hat is, you don’t need 10 accompanying patterns, you know? We’ve all found our fades, and then freed them, and then got so faded, and fading socks, and I’m sure there will be even more “fades.” If it’s working, keep going, but when it stops working, Andrea Mowry is going to stop doing it. But the studios in charge of the Hobbit didn’t get that memo. More isn’t always more.

So, this week isn’t just about giving you Smaug’s butt. We are self aware that maybe this is a little too much Hobbit square. But, we can’t talk about the Hobbit without talking about the movies, and I feel like Smaug’s butt really represents the movies well. The movies had a huge impact. I’ve got a little more to say on this, but before I do, please watch Lindsay Ellis’s break down of why the Hobbit movies got to the point they did. Just so you know going into it, this is a 1.5 hour video, in 3 parts. It’s basically a documentary. And you should watch it.

It’s hard to go behind the curtain on things like the Hobbit, mostly because it’s difficult, maybe even impossible to fully extract if from The Lord of the Rings movies, which are so good. Maybe we expected too much from The Hobbit. You can’t strike LotR gold twice. Still, the more I learned about how much The Hobbit movies screwed over New Zealand actors, and how clearly disengaged Peter Jackson was, the angrier I got. The Hobbit is my least favorite of the Middle Earth books, in the same way that Season 4 is my least favorite season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Because Adam is dumb. But, I still love it. So, I love The Hobbit, and Tolkien is sacred text. Either do it justice or don’t do it.

And just like I understand that it’s hard to know when to stop while you’re ahead if your audience has been buying something, I also understand the notion of location incentives in film. Lots of things are filmed in Philadelphia because we have financial incentives set up to entice productions. When they come, they hire local talent and eat local food and stay in local hotels. Makes sense. But The Hobbit production really boned the local talent. They threatened to leave because New Zealanders wanted fair treatment, wages, and work conditions (how dare they!) and New Zealand responded by cracking down on fledgling unions and guilds to protect the studio and keep them there. The local talent got screwed, but hey, at least we got three crappy movies out of it! They nicknamed the act “The Hobbit Act”, and my understanding is that it’s still in place.

It hasn’t even been that long since the movies came out, but it feels like it was a really long time ago. I had sort of forgotten about them altogether until it was time to do the Hobbit squares. I don’t know if Peter Jackson is proud of them, but I’m gonna guess he’d rather we all forget about it. I hate to end a GAL post on a downer though, so let me just leave it with this:

Whether you’re knitting, crocheting, or cross stitching this square, you can download The Hobbit – Smaug Pt. 2 pattern here. Instructions and charts for both knit and crochet are listed in the pattern. When you’re finished making it, don’t forget to Instagram your squares at us @lattesandllamasyarn with the hashtag #geekalong!

If you’re having trouble with double-sided knitting, we have a how-to video here and a tutorial on crochet here. Want to hang out with other people making the blanket? You can find moral support in the Geek-A-Long group on Ravelry here.

~ Megan-Anne

“It was impossible, and as a result of it being impossible, I just started shooting the movie with most of it not prepped at all.”-Peter Jackson 

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