THORIN OAKENSHIELD
Hello Mr. Blog! Starting today on a totally unrelated note: bought my stepfather who resides in another country a birthday present, had it digitally gift-wrapped and sent straight to his front door. Because it is quicker than actually buying something and mailing it... I find it totally bizarre that I could be part of giving somebody something without actually touching that thing or talking to them... basically human civilisation never ceases to amaze me! Internet + postal system = awe-inspiring.
Now, on to what I actually want to write about for today - Thorin Oakenshield! As portrayed in the new Hobbit film (which is really, really great. If you haven't seen it, do!). I loved the film overall. I thought they did a fantastic job. Like everybody else, I had major doubts about stretching one, quite short novel into three epic films, but wow. They were not stretched. They were fed and fleshed and basically made magnificent. The sub-plots that were set up - dwarves vs. elves conflict, including Radagast and the plot that goes along with him, and making Bilbo's family history a little blurry-hence-intriguing - were fantastic additions. Including the back story of the Dwarves deal with Smaug was a great move too - it introduces a depth to the dwarves plight that I just didn't feel as clearly at the beginning of the book! Woah, talk about sidetracked! So you get the idea, I loved the film. But, what interested me was the way the dwarves were portrayed.
Why was Thorin made to look so human as compared to the other dwarves? Look at the pictures on this page. I don't know if it's something to do with age, as Fili and Kili are definitely the next most humanised after Thorin, but nothing about Thorin's facial features are dwarf-ish. I understand why in movies and TV things are made to look more human - think about the aliens that are featured in shows like Star Trek and Doctor Who. So many of them are humanoids and when you think about how many other species exist on earth, the likelihood of so many aliens being humanoid is very remote. But we don't design these fantasy races in a realistic way. We design them to fit around human life and expectation - if the alien looks human the audience will be able to relate to the character with ease and may then grow more attached to the characters and the show. So, surely the same logic can be applied to the dwarves in The Hobbit.
Well not really. Why, as a director, would you invest in making the dwarves seem like such an admirable and interesting race, with a rich backstory and such cool leaders, only to disassociate said leader from them by making him seem more human than dwarf? It just doesn't make sense to me. I think it says something interesting about human psychology and I'd be really interested to know if this was a deliberate or subconscious move by the team behind the film.
Now, on to what I actually want to write about for today - Thorin Oakenshield! As portrayed in the new Hobbit film (which is really, really great. If you haven't seen it, do!). I loved the film overall. I thought they did a fantastic job. Like everybody else, I had major doubts about stretching one, quite short novel into three epic films, but wow. They were not stretched. They were fed and fleshed and basically made magnificent. The sub-plots that were set up - dwarves vs. elves conflict, including Radagast and the plot that goes along with him, and making Bilbo's family history a little blurry-hence-intriguing - were fantastic additions. Including the back story of the Dwarves deal with Smaug was a great move too - it introduces a depth to the dwarves plight that I just didn't feel as clearly at the beginning of the book! Woah, talk about sidetracked! So you get the idea, I loved the film. But, what interested me was the way the dwarves were portrayed.
Why was Thorin made to look so human as compared to the other dwarves? Look at the pictures on this page. I don't know if it's something to do with age, as Fili and Kili are definitely the next most humanised after Thorin, but nothing about Thorin's facial features are dwarf-ish. I understand why in movies and TV things are made to look more human - think about the aliens that are featured in shows like Star Trek and Doctor Who. So many of them are humanoids and when you think about how many other species exist on earth, the likelihood of so many aliens being humanoid is very remote. But we don't design these fantasy races in a realistic way. We design them to fit around human life and expectation - if the alien looks human the audience will be able to relate to the character with ease and may then grow more attached to the characters and the show. So, surely the same logic can be applied to the dwarves in The Hobbit.
Well not really. Why, as a director, would you invest in making the dwarves seem like such an admirable and interesting race, with a rich backstory and such cool leaders, only to disassociate said leader from them by making him seem more human than dwarf? It just doesn't make sense to me. I think it says something interesting about human psychology and I'd be really interested to know if this was a deliberate or subconscious move by the team behind the film.
