On April 24, Variety.com’s deputy editor, Anne Thompson, wrote a short piece entitled “Hobbit Watch: Del Toro’s the Right Guy.” It was a response, of course, to the announcement that Guillermo Del Toro will direct the two Hobbit films. She wrote, “There is rejoicing throughout the land, I suspect. If it wasn’t going to be Peter Jackson (who is exec producing with Fran Walsh), Pan’s Labyrinth helmer Del Toro is just about a perfect match for this J. R. R. Tolkien fantasy. It will be cool.”

(By Denis Gordeev)

My general impression is that the majority of fans of the trilogy feel that way. TheOneRing.net’s current poll is “Guillermo Del Toro has been officially announced as the Director of ‘The Hobbit’ films. How do you feel?” 85% voted in the “Ecstatic!!!!” “Really excited!” “Happy,” and “Pretty Pumped” categories. 10% were unhappy to some degree. (5% were “Overwhelmed,” which I suppose might mean that they haven’t made up their minds.)

Thompson updated her entry to add a link to a dissenting view. On April 25, Andrew O’Hehir posted a piece on Salon.com called “Guillermo del Toro to make ‘Hobbit’ films: Bleah!” The author, a fan of both the novels and PJ’s films, obviously doesn’t like the choice of director. His main claim is that Del Toro doesn’t like the novels:

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.”

Let’s see, he doesn’t like “little guys and dragons” or hairy-footed hobbits, and “The Hobbit” would be a movie about what, exactly? Seriously, I think del Toro was speaking from the heart, and I think he’s right. His aesthetic is darker, more Gothic and more grotesque than the Tolkien-via-Jackson universe; it derives more from the medieval mire of middle-European fairy tale than from the high-toned, pre-modern northern European epics Tolkien was channeling.

O’Hehir also dislikes the project as a whole: “Secondly, there’s a creative arrogant to this whole project that doesn’t feel right. … Peter Jackson is no longer just a film director; he’s an entertainment tycoon stretched thinly around the globe, with his fingers in a million pies. … Anybody but me notice that smell of fried Lucas in the air?”

Actually, people have been comparing Peter to George Lucas since 1996. That year, when The Frighteners was about to come out, Andrew Webster profiled Peter for Premiere magazine: “Whether he likes it or not, Jackson is becoming a power on his home turf. He has built WETA, an effects house that produced the CGIs for The Frighteners and, he hopes, will do so for all his future films. And he’s provided that major studio productions need no longer depend on such CGI behemoths as Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) or Digital Domain …. Though Jackson denies any ambition to be New Zealand’s George Lucas, he admits that ‘in a way, I’m doing what Lucas set out to do with ILM.’” Asked what he would do if The Frighteners failed, Peter added, “We’re not fundamentally changing. I mean, we go back to New Zealand, and the minute you step off the plane, you’re back down to Earth again. You’re out of Gaga Land and into the real world” (Aug 1996 issue, p. 37).

That same year, American Cinematographer commented, “The director opted not to go completely Hollywood and hire an effects house to create his ectoplasmic ensemble. Instead, like George Lucas did to create Star Wars, he decided to build his own effects house by expanding Weta Ltd” (Aug 1996 issue, p. 55).

My file on “PJ’s parallels to George Lucas” has other examples, and I could go on quoting, both from published pieces and from my interviews with people who worked on the trilogy. But the point is, Peter created a filmmaking infrastructure in Wellington in order to make The Lord of the Rings, rather as Lucas had done before him in the San Francisco area. Whether or not Peter is the Kiwi Lucas, the three films he made turned out pretty well.

As to O’Hehir’s other point, does Del Toro dislike the very book he is now committed to adapt? Is he somehow just in it for the money, prestige, and power that comes from being associated with a big Peter Jackson project? I find it difficult to believe, based on the interviews and comments Del Toro has been giving lately. The things he says suggest an understanding of The Hobbit that would be difficult to fake.

In his interview with TheOneRing.net, for example, Del Toro had this to say:

What I’m trying to do is keep the elements in place but allow you to feel a progression from ‘The Hobbit’ until ‘The Return of the King’. I believe ‘The Hobbit’ is a very crucial volume in The Lord of the Rings, it is a narrative that starts out very much in an innocent and golden way. It is permeated from England going through World War One, so there is a loss of innocence and a darker tone as the book and the film progresses. We’ll be doing that in the first film, taking you from a time of more purity to a darker reality throughout the film, but I think that is in the spirit of the book.

The interview concludes:

Another thing people will notice, at the beginning of the film will be the palette, that will be slightly different, the world will be the same but it will be a more ‘golden’ world, a more wide-eyed world. But by no means will we depart from the canon, we will take the three previous films as canon. When I become part of a world that I love, such as this, I really come with a lot of enthusiasm and hard work, and we know we are recreating and creating a world that is part of the mythos of millions of people and we will approach it as passionately and respectfully as it needs to be taken.

All this seems pretty reasonable to me. There’s no doubt that Tolkien’s Hobbit does progress toward a more “grown-up,” dark tone—just as in The Lord of the Rings he revives the jolly tone of the Shire briefly in the first chapter before heading into “The Shadow of the Past.”

On April 27, Del Toro also posted some comments on the Hellboy II site and specifically on the “So is The Hobbit with GDT official?” thread (and given the typos, it looks like something written in the heat of enthusiasm, not crafted by a publicist):

Well, the adventure begins soon and I’m already preparing. My reading habits (no pun will be tried there) have been completely re-directed and the time I usually take to read and stay current is used entirely to “catch up” on sources that may not ultimately be useful to the HOBBITSES films but that can give me context enough to make careful choices. There a wide world out there some of which love sthe films made and there is also many other for whom the daptations are sacrilegous. But there is no choice as a storyteller but that to be true to your heart’s decsisions after you have made your best with your noggin’. With Hellboy I found a kinship with Mignola that made us almost “separated at birth” when tackling the films. I feel the same with Peter. Many of our career and bio landmarks intersect in a curious way. If you can find an article I wrote about DEAD ALIVE in one of the FANGORIA anniversary issues (years before I knew we would meet) you can read my paean of his disturbingly irreverent film. A few years ago I would’ve thought it impossible to think of moving to NZ for nearly half a decade. But as soon as the HOBBIT became a possibility I knew I would do it. My wife, my daugters and I are ready. Think about the joyful cataclysm that such a move means. What we will leave behind…

That’s just the initial measure of commitment. I’ve lived in Budapest, Prague, London, Toronto and Madrid, but always for shorter periods of time (usually under a year) and knowing that my home in America awaited me. This is different. And I have to land on my feet and running… But what an adventure!!!

Yesterday another interview surfaced on MTV’s site, and the question of the Salon quotation came up:

MTV: Just two years ago, you were quoted as saying, “I was never into heroic fantasy.” Did your views change?

Del Toro: I wasn’t. I completely gravitated towards horror. For whatever reason, I never hooked into sword and sorcery. I really rediscovered fantasy through my love of filmmakers as a filmmaker. Something kind of popped and jelled. I now can empathize with one side of the fantasy genre without ever wandering into lubricated musclemen with giant swords. “The Hobbit” occupies a particular seat in fantasy that is irreplaceable. They can dredge up old cadavers in my closet. I’m not running for president. I’m a f—ing filmmaker! I’m just trying to make the movie I want to.

I for one can buy that. I’m not a fan of fantasy in general, and for the most part the works I love (His Dark Materials, Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell) are not of the sword-and-sorcery variety. Tolkien’s novels certainly contain swords and sorcery, but to me they are almost a genre apart, despite all the imitators.

Again, in this interview Del Toro’s enthusiasm seems genuine. Asked which scene in The Hobbit he most looks forward to filming, he replies:

The most beautiful scene in the book, I believe, is “Riddles in the Dark.” I truly love it from a literary point of view and from an atmospheric point of view. It is my hope that when “The Hobbit” gets scary it will get really scary. Peter is a master of the macabre, but I think these scary moments will have a tonal distinction from the original trilogy.

The thing I’ve been most excited about are the spiders in Mirkwood. Smaug is one of my favorite characters in literature. It’s such a beautiful and symbolic creature, totemic in what it represents and the power it has. My favorite creature in all of fantasy would be the dragon because of that book.

On the whole, I’m ready to believe what Del Toro says. Indeed, this last quotation reminds me of some of the things Peter said in interviews back when the trilogy was coming out.

In some ways, Del Toro stands now in the same position that Peter did then—viewed by fans with a mixture of hope and distrust. Yet at that time Peter was little known compared to Del Toro now. Pan’s Labyrinth alone would demonstrate what a fine director he is. Like Peter when he tackled the trilogy, Del Toro is known mostly for horror films and is in his early 40s. He seems to me like a better choice than some younger, merely promising director. He has the strength, experience, and vision to avoid just attempting to make the film just the way Peter would, and he seems to have an excellent relationship with Peter.

So, like Anne Thompson, I am hopeful that “Del Toro is just about a perfect match for this J. R. R. Tolkien fantasy. It will be cool.”

[Added later the same day: Guillermo Del Toro joined the forums on TORN on April 20 and has posted several entries. He introduces himself and talks about his interests in the horror, science fiction, and fantasy genres.]

[Added May 9: Reader Anna Vote has pointed me toward another comment on O'Hehir's piece, this one posted yesterday by John Scalzi on AMC's website. Scalzi makes some good points, though I think he is too dismissive of The Hobbit as a mere bit of fluff.]