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spawn_of_kong
2013-01-04 01:43 am UTC (link)

TBF, after my dad read The Hobbit to me and my older sister, I forgot a lot of it for a while -- though the stuff I did remember included Smaug, the Dwarves, Gollum, the Goblins, the Trolls, the Giant Spiders, and Beorn.

Somehow, however, I completely forgot about all the other stuff, including the Ring*, the Elves, and the Battle of Five Armies.

*Though granted, the Ring isn't particularly important in The Hobbit.

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	tofuknight 2013-01-04 02:07 am UTC (link)
	Perhaps I just read it more times, and so remember better. I also now recall that I tended to read it and then all the way through the LotR frequently, so the connections were inescapable to me. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	cmdr_zoom 2013-01-04 02:33 am UTC (link)
	"Oh, Bilbo Baggins. If you really understood that ring - as someday, members of your family not yet born will - then you'd realize that this story has not ended, but is only beginning!" yeah, I can still hear John Huston saying it. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	singe 2013-01-04 05:20 am UTC (link)
	"Thanks for the warnin,' Gandalf." (Reply to this)(Parent)

rosehiptea
2013-01-04 03:16 am UTC (link)

I've forgotten a lot of The Hobbit. Don't kill me but right now I'm still trying to remember the Battle of Five Armies to be quite honest.

To be fair to myself, I haven't read it since I was a kid or at least fairly young.

(I also read LOTR in high school and barely remember that at all. Not because it was bad or anything, just because there was so much stuff in it.)

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	redcoast 2013-01-04 05:03 pm UTC (link)
	For some reason, the Battle of Five Armies disturbed me so much that I deliberately repressed any memory of it. I can't remember why, so it was a successful repression. (It seemed really different in tone from the rest of the book is all I rememeber.) (Reply to this)(Parent)

sgaana
2013-01-04 05:34 pm UTC (link)

Honestly? Especially for folks who read it as a kid, I can much more easily see forgetting the Battle of the Five Armies. It's complicated, messy, and involves kind of adult issues, and Tolkien doesn't actually write it in loving detailed description (in fact Bilbo is knocked on the head and spends most of it unconscious and invisible, and is only told what happened later, which IMO makes it more likely to be unmemorable).

I just would think that if a kid is going to remember anything from The Hobbit, it'd be the Riddles in the Dark, and the big honkin' dragon. But I could be wrong!

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	lady_ganesh 2013-01-04 11:56 pm UTC (link)
	Yeah, I remembered the dragon, the little detail that got the dragon killed (though I didn't remember how!), and that Gandalf was impossibly cool. Rereading I was amused at what an anticlimax the Battle was. (Reply to this)(Parent)

puipui
2013-01-05 05:41 am UTC (link)

Don't kill me but right now I'm still trying to remember the Battle of Five Armies to be quite honest.

I didn't remember it until you mentioned it. But, then, I haven't read The Hobbit all the way through in almost 30 years; I tried to read it to my daughter when she was younger, but it turned out to be the only book I ever read to her that she actually asked that we stop reading, just because she found it so boring.

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	seraangelus 2013-01-04 03:48 am UTC (link)
	The thing I remember best from the Hobbit were the eagles. Which is why I was sad that they don't talk in the movie, but then Shelob didn't either, so I'm pretty okay with that, if sad. I'm really looking forward to Beorn and Mirkwood though. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

spawn_of_kong
2013-01-04 04:00 am UTC (link)

Shelob doesn't talk in the books either, though her children in Mirkwood do.

Frankly, I'm glad that the trolls in the first Hobbit movie talk, since the trolls in the LotR movies didn't. I'm also glad that Benedict Cumberbatch is confirmed for Smaug, including his voice. Of course, as the guide on one of the LotR tours I went on in NZ remarked, it's going to be pretty difficult to get a reptilian character like Smaug to talk convincingly.

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	singe 2013-01-04 05:06 am UTC (link)
	Eh, if a parrot can talk a magical dragon sure as shit can. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	iczer6 2013-01-04 07:05 am UTC (link)
	He's a dragon. He can do what he wants. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	singe 2013-01-04 04:57 pm UTC (link)
	Damn straight. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	sgaana 2013-01-04 05:30 pm UTC (link)
	See, I can totally see forgetting about the Ring. I could see forgetting Beorn, the Battle of the Five Armies, etc. It just felt to me like the dragon was kind of the big showpiece of the book, not to mention, featured in a lot of art. (I could swear that Tolkien's painting of Smaug was on my edition's cover back-when.) (Reply to this)(Parent)

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