Thoughts on the Hobbit (and Time magazine)

I went and saw the Hobbit Saturday afternoon.  I went and saw it with my wife, who's not a gamer by any means, and isn't really a huge fantasy fan.  But I'm lucky--she knew that I wanted to see it and was up for it.

Here's the best part: She LOVED it!  Frankly, I did, too.

I've read a lot of reviews of the movie.  Some positive, many neutral, a lot negative--which I don't really get.  I was going to write a long review myself, explaining why I felt the way I did.  But why should I bother--no one really cares.  THEN I considered linking to EVERY single review that I could find, both in our little corner of the blogosphere, and the wider interwebs--similar to how I used to post Map Roundups (which will return someday).  But again, why bother?

Instead, I'm only going to link to two reviews.  These are the two reviews that I have read thusfar that most closely match my views on the movie.

First, from Ain't It Cool News.

Second, from Original Edition Fantasy.

...

I'm sure that most of you have seen the article in Time magazine from last week about D&D.  The title summarized the article: Will D&D be the next Hobbit?  Pretty good article, fairly insightful, in my opinion.

Here's my thoughts on it:

- WotC and their corporate overlord probably could try to bring D&D more "mainstream" success if they were smart about it.  (Whether this would even be a good thing or not depends on your personal opinion.  I'm just assuming that it would be, because unlike those members of our hobby who enjoy the supposed cachet of being in a very small group of like-minded people, I would have no problem with the entire world becoming D&D fans.)

- I'm going to pretend that the previous D&D movies didn't happen.  Because they were, IMHO, crap.  Besides, the point of a D&D movie shouldn't be to shout, "Look, ma, I'm D&D!  I'm in a movie!!!"  The point should be to tell exciting fantasy stories that employ some of the IP from D&D.  (And don't hate on me, because I used the term IP ("intellectual property")!  The D&D IP is what makes it so cool.)

- What do I mean by the above comment?  This: I don't want to see a movie with "Dungeons and Dragons" in its title.  I want to see a movie with "Baldur's Gate" in its title or "Waterdeep" in its title or, maybe even better, "The Keep on the Borderlands" or "Dwellers of the Forbidden City" in its title.  I want to see a fantasy movie that, to the unlearned, is just another fantasy movie (and let's face it, there's fantasy all over the place right now) that has mind flayers as the big baddies in it.  Or maybe a fantasy movie that takes place in a city where the crime-lord is a beholder.  (Cliched, perhaps.)  Heck, just a movie with a beholder at all would be pretty damn cool.  I know that many of you in the OSR aren't fans of Drizzt, but why not a movie about him in the Forgotten Realms?

So there you go.  I'm curious to know what do you think.