The Hobbit

[Aristus]

42. I love what they've done to give the dwarves some individuality.

Because there were so many of them, and so few have anything more than a sketchy personality profile in the book, the screenwriters had to do some close studying of the book, and the LOTR books, as well in order to develop screen personas for them.

For example, Tolkien mentions that one of the dwarves (I can't remember who right now) is hard of hearing, so Peter Jackson portrays him with an ear trumpet. The dwarf Ori had hardly any description in "The Hobbit". However, in "The Fellowship Of The Ring" novel, he is mentioned as knowing a number of different languages and alphabets. So Peter Jackson gave him a prop book and portrays him as a scholar. That is kind of cool for a Tolkien geek like me.

One thing I initially objected to was the notion of "hot dwarves". Fili and Kili are the youngest dwarves, and are played by young, good-looking actors, probably to bring in more women to the theaters. And that's fine; but Tolkien went out of his way to portray the dwarves as being very coarse-featured, and unattractive by human standards (even dwarf women have beards, etc.)

There will be things that many people find objectionable. Bombur, the fat dwarf, is evidently the comic relief. But I'm looking forward to the films, and, based on my affinity for the LOTR films, I expect to enjoy "The Hobbit".