YA Guy Previews... THE HOBBIT: THE BATTLE OF THE FIVE ARMIES!

There is no greater lover of the works of J. R. R. Tolkien than YA Guy. I first read 'em at age twelve, and I re-read 'em every few years (most recently, with my children). I've taught classes on Tolkien, collected innumerable items of LOTR merchandise (including a balrog action figure that's as big as a lion cub). I loved Peter Jackson's film adaptations of The Lord of the Rings; heck, I even thought the Ralph Bakshi version wasn't half bad. (Okay, I even liked the Rankin & Bass cartoons!) So it pains me to say what I'm about to say next:

I've decided not to see the final chapter of Jackson's three-part Hobbit series, subtitled "The Battle of the Five Armies."

Why? Well, to begin with, I thought the first two films absolutely sucked. I mean, beyond sucked. They were so bad, I was tempted for the first time in my life to charge the projectionist and stop the picture. If you want to know why I hated them so much, check out my reviews here and here. If you care only about the general idea, it's this: the films were loud, stupid, overblown video games with no apparent relation to Tolkien's story in either style or substance.

But even with all that, I might have taken a chance on the final film; heck, it's only ten bucks and three hours of my life. (By contrast, I devoted much of two months to reading A Game of Thrones, which was pretty darn bad too.) No, the final straw was the film's subtitle. That did it for me.

As you may recall, months prior to its release, this film was billed with the subtitle to Tolkien's book: "There and Back Again." That subtitle gave me some hope for the movie, because it calls attention to what the story of The Hobbit is really about: the adventures of one small individual who ventures out into the big world and, through luck and pluck, manages to return changed but intact. A children's story, in other words, comparable to other great children's stories past and present: From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe, Stuart Little, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, The Night Gardener (the final title being that of fellow Pittsburgh author Jonathan Auxier's wonderful modern fairy tale). "There and Back Again" captures the essence of The Hobbit, and the use of this subtitle gave me reason to believe Jackson might have come to his senses and decided to return to his source material.

But no. It got changed to "The Battle of the Five Armies." The motivation, no doubt, was that the majority of the previous films' viewers--non-readers of Tolkien--wouldn't catch the literary reference and would be baffled by a title that doesn't promise lots of kick-butt special effects and gory battle sequences. They'd stay away in droves if they thought the film wouldn't contain sufficient computer-generated mayhem.

And sadly, that's probably true.

So in tribute to Tolkien's genius, in honor of the true spirit of children's literature, and in protest of Jackson and Company's perversion of all that's wise and good about The Hobbit, I'm staying home. (And I'm writing this blog post, for what that's worth.) It won't amount to much--the movie will make a zillion dollars, Jackson will get a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame (this has already happened), and we as a culture will choose lucre over art yet again.

But at least, I won't have to be there to see it. And one underpaid and overworked projectionist in Pittsburgh will get a little bit of a break.

YA Guy Reveals... Tolkien Was a Pantser!

YA Guy's hard at work on a manuscript tentatively titled Skaldi City, the third book in a series that starts with my debut, Survival Colony Nine. I haven't sold Book Two yet, but so what?

Now, as I've probably announced on this blog before, I'm a classic pantser: I don't plan my novels before I write them. I make my best discoveries when I don't know where I'm going, so generally I just sit down and write. With Book Three, I had a little more of a plan--most of the characters were in place, plus Book Two ends on a cliffhanger that needed to be resolved, plus the whole thing needs to be resolved in a way that I have at least an inkling of--but still, I'm mostly pantsing it, waiting to see what will happen.

And it's a comfort to me in this process to learn that my favorite author of all time, J. R. R. Tolkien, was something of a pantser too.

Here's the story: Tolkien published The Hobbit in 1937. It was moderately successful, and his publisher asked for a sequel. Tolkien sat down to write a follow-up, with the same genial tone, the same whimsical characters, the same children's storybook feel. (Hence the first chapter of what would become The Fellowship of the Ring, which has a much lighter tone than the rest of the novel.) But somewhere during the writing, the book veered into the deeper, darker past, and it became the trilogy we know.

It took nearly twenty years for the book to evolve. Fellowship wasn't published until 1954.

What led this "tale to grow in the telling" (as Tolkien put it), no one is quite sure. Tolkien's son, Christopher, who's performed the invaluable service of publishing and commenting on many of his father's unpublished manuscripts, describes the unfolding of Tolkien's magnum opus in the four-part History of Middle-Earth series beginning with The Return of the Shadow. He traces the evolution of his father's manuscript, the many changes that led to the finished product. But he can't account for the element that shifted the manuscript irrevocably toward its final form: the appearance of a Black Rider on the road to Bree.

At the time Tolkien introduced this character, his son speculates, he likely had no idea what it was and how it related to Sauron and the Second Age. It may only have been a complication Tolkien threw in to make the journey more interesting. But once it appeared, and once Tolkien started to think about its implications, the book would never be the same.

It's funny to note all the changes that took place from early drafts to finished product. Here are only a few:

• Frodo was originally named (ahem) Bingo
• Strider/Aragorn was originally a hobbit, Trotter, who had (??) wooden feet
• Treebeard was originally an evil ogre who captured Gandalf
• Saruman was a late addition to the manuscript
• There was no balrog in Moria
• Gollum was nothing more than the funny little creature he'd been in The Hobbit. In fact, Tolkien had to rewrite the "Riddles in the Dark" chapter (which had originally included Gollum's willingness to give Bilbo the Ring) after Fellowship was published to make it accord with the later book. He did so, ingeniously, by suggesting that the previous version was Bilbo's tale, concocted to justify his possession of the Ring

There's much more to the story--I strongly recommend the History books for those who are diehard Tolkien fans--but you get the picture. One of the greatest works of imaginative literature of all time was written by a guy who was basically winging it.

Of course, it was only a genius like Tolkien, a man who'd immersed himself in invented languages and histories for years, who could wing it so brilliantly. I'm not at all disdaining those writers who plot things out beforehand, nor am I suggesting that pantsers are invariably more successful than planners. I'm simply pointing out how mysterious the writing process is, how unexpected and wonderful.

There are no Black Riders in Skaldi City. But I wonder what will enter without my conscious intention and make the book what it finally turns out to be.

YA Guy Reviews... THE HOBBIT: THE DESOLATION OF SMAUG

YA Guy wouldn't be YA Guy if not for J.R.R. Tolkien.

I read The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings when I was twelve and thirteen, respectively. (It was right around the time Star Wars came out, which created a perfect storm of science fiction and fantasy.) What I loved most about The Hobbit was its essential YA-ness: it's the story of a small, seemingly insignificant person who grows up, finds his courage, and discovers his place in the larger world.

Which is why I so thoroughly despise what Peter Jackson has done to Tolkien's story in his three-part Hobbit extravaganza.

Now, look, I'm not dumb. I know movies are inherently different from the books on which they're based. I've taught both literature and film classes, published a book about film. I loved The Lord of the Rings film trilogy, different though it was from its source material. I thought Jackson and his crew made excellent decisions in those films.

I think they've made horrible decisions in The Hobbit.

I hated the first movie. (If you want to know why, see this post.) I didn't think I could hate the second one any more. But I did.

The reasons are many, but here's a start.

CGI madness. Jackson used to be a director who liked to work with actual actors and physical effects. For all the lavish CGI of The Lord of the Rings, he never forgot the humanity of his story--which started with relying to a great extent on actual people and actual places. But ever since King Kong, he's decided he doesn't want to direct movies anymore; he wants to direct video games. So we get computer-generated orcs, computer-generated actors, computer-generated settings, computer-generated action, computer-generated everything, all of it looking weightless and implausible and unreal (as when the dwarfs' barrels careen upright down raging rapids without tipping over once), all of it making a hash of Tolkien's lovingly crafted fantasy world.

Tone deaf. Jackson used to know his way around a scene. Watch the arming of Theoden in The Two Towers, or Pippin's song in The Return of the King. Both of them contain brilliant combinations of poetry, arresting visuals, cross-cutting, lighting effects, and (yes, indeed) human emotion. But lately, Jackson doesn't seem to know how to film a scene with lyricism, restraint, humanity: all he knows is loud, louder, and louder still. It's less like watching a movie than listening to your next-door neighbor scream at his wife for three straight hours.

Everything but the kitchen sink. I could hardly keep track of all the stuff going on in this unholy mess of a movie. We've got orcs attacking Lake Town! Gandalf storming Dol Guldur! A romance between an elf and a dwarf! Political intrigue between Bard and the Master! A dwarf dying of a poisoned arrow wound! Thorin and company relighting their forges to fight Smaug with a giant golden statue! (Huh?) Orlando Bloom looking old and fat and tired and ticked-off that ten years after his career was supposed to blossom, he's back fighting cartoon ape-orcs while his CGI figure leaps from head to head of barrel-riding dwarfs (who, I hasten to remind, magically remain upright while their barrels fly over waterfalls)! The only thing we didn't see much of--in fact barely saw anything of--was Bilbo's development as unlikely hero. I guess that wasn't exciting enough for Jackson.

In short, everything in The Desecration of Smaug (did I say that?) cuts against what I love about Tolkien's story: its intimate scale, its humanity, its quirkiness, its heart. Jackson decided to tell yet another big, loud, scream-at-the-audience-for-attention amusement park ride of a movie, and in so doing he killed everything that makes his source material great.

God only knows what the final installment will be like. All I know is it won't be anything like The Hobbit.