I was a very serious child, and I loved mysteries, and I really could not understand why Velma and Daphne and Fred hung

Shaggy was their dealer?

But Frank, that sounds like you want him to do short movies, not that doing a short movie right afterwards would cure him of the Oscar infection. After seeing LotR, I don't think that has anything to do with awards--after the box office and general reaction, I bet he could do anything he wanted, especially in genre. And he likes big fancy effect-laden movies. A lot.

I just skimmed the IGN review, and I think this is pretty much 100% Jackson and what I was expecting:

Once the quest proper begins, though, The Hobbit, like the book, becomes a relentless series of chase scenes and action episodes

So far it feels like the extended Fellowship pacing, and I'm good with that. I get that he errs on the side of shoving more material in, but based on the Ring movies I don't think he'll drag it out thinly--just that he's likely to stuff in a lot of stuff that's not exciting before we get to where he starts stuffing in the fun bits,

See I'd love him to do another Forgotten Silver or Heavenly Creatures as well as the big effects movies. Not that I won't see the Hobbit films - I can't wait until Smaug turns up (though I wish it wasn't all the way until the third movie, which I'm guessing is how it will go). I'd just like to him to get back to his roots occasionally.

I don't know if they're roots so much as all he could get away with at the time.

Is there a pattern of that?

Like Frank said: King Kong, which was IMO self-indulgent and bloated. Some narratives are not well-served by lingering shots of carefully-crafted CGI. Or even action-packed sequences of carefully-crafted CGI, if they don't serve plot, character, or theme.

I'm a big LotR fan (books and movies), but there was some bloat even in the studio releases, and news of the 3-movie adaptation of The Hobbit made me nervous.

I'm going anyway, mind you. But I see Jackson as suffering a bit from what I like to call "Stephen King Syndrome" (or J.K. Rowling syndrome): the failure of the editorial process to serve the story rather than the storyteller. If everyone is going to buy the last Harry Potter book regardless of its content or flaws, there's no benefit to the publisher in doing anything but a most cursory proof-reading.

And if you're an author (or auteur) who's been given a free hand in anything you want to do for the last decade, you're unlikely to listen to any editorial comments noting that perhaps turning a relatively lightweight piece of children's adventure into a nine-hour epic isn't the best way to address the project.

That's my take, anyway. I'm still going, but I'm more wary of Jackson than I was in 2001.

Point at 'suela and nods in agreement.

Is the Raskin-Bass adaptation readily available? I remember seeing it when it originally aired.

Like Frank said

No, I mean a pattern of directors being reined in by doing a smaller post Oscar movie.

I don't even know what difference that would make. Jackson seems to like massive intricate movies where everyone's underwear is in character and the impact of their grandparents and grandchildren is equally conveyed. There is a point at which he had the leeway to do so--it seems to me like once he got budget and influence, he's gone wild.

I don't know what one small movie would have meant, or changed.

I imagine that he'll go OTT this time on something I really like, so I'll have a similar experience to LOTR, but more muted because more is being taken for granted on both sides, plus the question of what to include and exclude gets more complex when you're using other texts as well.

Is the Raskin-Bass adaptation readily available?

You can get it used on Amazon for about $23.

Sophia,

I think we are like spirits. I'm of the school that Scrappy Doo ruined Scooby forever. Sometimes Scooby-Doo had a decent balance between funny and investigation, but it got goofier over time and then fucking Scrappy.