The Final Hobbit Companion

I decided some time ago that I would wait until all three Hobbit movies came out on DVD so I could buy them as a set; it's been a long wait. What's been harder than not watching the movies, though, has been waiting for the behind the scenes. I do love behind the scenes. But I have had all the lovely Chronicles books from Weta to take care of certain aspects of production. For the areas that those books don't cover, the movie guides fill in some more details.

I feel like I've been reading the movie guide for The Battle of the Five Armies for a very long time. Though it isn't long, I've just had to keep pausing in it for many and various reasons. Glad, then, it is that the book is divided into many, many short sections, most of which are only two pages. For being such a brief book, it covers a lot of ground. We hear about so many of the different crew members and what their roles have been, along with stories from the actors. Although there is only so much space for each person or each department, there is a good amount to read for the amount of space that's available. Much of the material comes in direct quotes, which I always appreciate.

Given that so many of the characters and sets are the same for The Battle of the Five Armies, I do begin to wonder how much more they all have to say. (Yes, this book does cover aspects of the first two movies, as well--but there is still plenty of material specific to the last installment.) Apparently there is still more to talk about. There are things I hadn't so much thought about, like the location of Ravenhill and all of the planning and mapping required for a battle. There is also some more discussion about characters and their motives and the fulfillment of their journeys. Brian Sibley has put together some nice settings for the movie material by describing the stories that Tolkien tells and pairing that information alongside the plot and characters of the movie.

This book has really made me excited for those DVD special features. It won't be too much longer now. In the meantime, I have the next Chronicles book waiting for me--after a short break from hobbits, that is. 

The Hobbit's Beautiful Desolation

As I finally move into the movie guide for The Desolation of Smaug, I also move into greater details. While there are many new things that we saw in the second movie that weren't in the first (Beorn, the spiders and elves in Mirkwood, Lake-town, and Smaug), there are certain factors that are the same. It's still the same director, same team, same principal actors--and these already had some page time in the first movie guide. So this time there was the chance to delve into smaller details. 

I love reading about food, so the section on Food Stylist Debbie Logan was one of my favorites: this is an area of movie-making that's intriguing, but that you hear extremely little about. In addition to the sections that cover props making, makeup, and set design, there are also small boxes inserted into other sections; these might describe something like the making of a particular prop. And everywhere, once again, Brian Sibley's text only accents and puts into context quotes from quite a number of the cast and crew. Reading this book ended up similar to watching a series of interviews in a making of video, and that's exactly what I like to have in a movie companion. 

Somehow this one felt longer than the first companion, even though it's about the same length. But I think this was because the sections are longer in this book; instead of many being two pages, most are four pages. That means that the format wasn't as uber-tidy as it was in the first companion--but it's still pretty much average for a companion book. 

One of my other favorite parts was anything to do with Lake-town, including the costumes, props, and set. After watching the movie, I was trying to guess what the cultural inspiration was for Lake-town, but I kept on feeling like I wasn't naming the right thing. And then along comes this book, describing that that's exactly how everyone wanted it to be: they drew from so many sources that they wanted Lake-town to be inspired by those sources but not 100% identifiable with them. So while it will probably be better to watch the DVD material to learn about the making of Smaug, Lake-town really stood out in this book. What an amazing feat that place was. 

The Return to the Hobbit

Click to read my initial thoughts on: An Unexpected Journey and The Desolation of Smaug.

The problem is, when I purchased the movie guide for The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, I was in the middle of my senior year of college and I just couldn't find the time to sit down and read it, page per page. So it sat, sadly, on my shelf (figuratively, since I don't keep my books on shelves) for months. I have since also acquired the companion for The Desolation of Smaug and the three Chronicles books from Weta. I'll be moving into all of those next. 

After flipping through those immensely detailed Chronicles books, the movie guide seemed hardly to have time to go into any detail. It's only regular length at about 170 pages, yet it covers so many different aspects of how the movie was made. The Contents lists about 52 different sections; that means that many of them are only a couple of pages long. And yet Brian Sibley makes it all work so well. 

The short sections make the book easy to read, if you want to sit for a few hours or only read a few pages at a time. As I always hope to find, the pictures flow well with the text so that you don't have to flip back and forth or pause in the middle of a paragraph to look at a picture. But the content itself is also well-organized. There is very little plot summary, very much of quotes from cast and crew, and details on both the more expected aspects (like wardrobe) and the less expected. I really enjoyed, for instance, learning about what Terry Notary does as the movement choreography and about Amy Wright's field as a breakdown artist. Interestingly, the character sections (on Dori or Nori or Radagast, etc.) are interspersed among the other sections. So you don't have to read all of the character material at once, or all the costume material, or all the digital material. It's arranged so that you have a large amount of information in front of you, but it doesn't seem overwhelming. 

And the usual mix of still photos, behind the scenes picture, and concept art are all wonderful to have. I think I'll move on to the Desolation of Smaug companion before I dig into more detail in the Chronicles books.