Yesterday I went to see The Hobbit with my daughter. She is a great fan of the Lord of the Rings films and is looking forward to reading the books. She has read The Hobbit though. Firstly, she found that this first part of the trilogy made of the far shorter book than any of the three books that makes up Lord of the Rings has things added that she could not understand why. My analysis is that because they have done it back to front, that to refer back from the last three films to this series of films it was necessary. We have discussed that today and she sees the logic. She thinks Peter Jackson made some basic mistakes though.
She thinks he was not very clever by not starting at the start and having The Hobbit first. If this is in three parts, then the three part Lord of the Rings might well be up to 12 parts. Then came the one that she remarked on during the film and was talking about again today.
Cate Blanchett is the topic. She plays Galadriel, the elf queen. The first three films were made between 2001 and 2003, this newest film was finished in 2012. So, she is in a range of up to 11 years older now. My daughter noticed that. Given that it is a considerable time, one would expect her to be a little older looking. My daughter, despite being a mere nine years old, web searched today and has noted that Cate Blanchett is no longer as slender and her face has definitely aged. The same most certainly goes for other actors, but in her case it is thus far most striking.
For a naive young person this must be a very tricky one to work out. Knowing this is the start of a long story, the end of which she saw some years ago and now the beginning made as an afterthought. I might well have passed it by alone and 'stretched' my imagination to allow for it. She cannot. She is not yet worldly wise to have learned how to do it.
Using her analysis, I find Peter Jackson's choice of making The Hobbit as a follow up to Lord of the Rings a very odd choice. Logically it would have best been left well alone because of the need to recast actors in reprised roles.
Many things in the world are odd when we really think about them. What are yours?