AMPAS
Guillermo del Toro (left) and Peter Jackson.
As has been widely reported in the last day or two, "Pan's Labyrinth" director Guillermo del Toro has signed on to move to New Zealand (for four years!) and make a film version of J.R.R. Tolkien's "The Hobbit," as well as a planned sequel, under the aegis of producer Peter Jackson. This has provoked widespread revelry in the overlapping Tolkien, Jackson and del Toro fan-ospheres, but I'm here to tell you something: It's not a good idea.
Let me be clear: I'm a big fan of Tolkien's books, Jackson's film trilogy and most of del Toro's movies. (We can discuss "Mimic," which has its defenders, some other time.) At least on the surface, it's a natural fit, and I hope my premonition is wrong. But this whole project smells to me of hubris, and indeed of something worse: It smells of George Lucas.
First of all, hasn't anybody noticed that del Toro has repeatedly said he doesn't like Tolkien, and that he never finished reading "The Lord of the Rings"? Here's what he told me in Cannes in 2006, when I asked him about the influence of Tolkien and C.S. Lewis on his own work: "I was never into heroic fantasy. At all. I don't like little guys and dragons, hairy feet, hobbits -- I've never been into that at all. I don't like sword and sorcery, I hate all that stuff."