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#1 |
Ghost Prince of Cardolan
Join Date: Aug 2012
Posts: 785
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Dwarf shortage
This may seem like an odd question but... does anyone else think that the Dwarves in the films are too small? Not too short necessarily, but they always seem to me to be rather tetchy when they appear alongside Men and Elves, as opposed to the stout and stocky way they appear in my head. The Professor describes them as being 4.5-5 feet I believe, and while I appreciate that we generally see them around Elves and High Men which might skew the perspective, I can't help but feel that they don't come across as particularly robust or solidly built compared to the other people around them. They just seem rather small, like bearded Hobbits. I didn't notice this as much with Gimli (although I still did to some extent). It might be exacerbated by the fact that some of the 'focus Dwarves' in "An Unexpected Journey", such as Thorin, are kind of slim. It's also possible that the Hobbits are a little taller than in the books (and so is Gandalf, for that matter); Bilbo barely seems smaller than any of the Dwarves.
It particularly struck me during the moon-runes scene, from which there is an excerpt here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1CjA_Pb3bk8 Is it just me, or do the Dwarves seem tiny, and Bilbo really quite large? I realise there's only so much visual trickery that can be done but I rather like to imagine that the Dwarves compensate for their smaller stature with an altogether broader frame (more square than rectangular, if you will). Here they just seem, well, little. I apologise if this comes across as a rather bizarre thread but the notion has been weighing on my mind for some time, which probably suggests that I have too much of it free. And I would be curious to know if there were any other Dwarf proportion enthusiasts out there!
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#2 |
Pilgrim Soul
Join Date: May 2004
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There might be something in that though I am not best placed to judge as I have as yet still only seen stills of the hobbit. However I would say that while John Rhys Davies is tall he also has a large frame (in the Indiana Jones films he appeared substantial compared to the far from short and weedy Harrison Ford) which scaled down fairly well to my mind to a stocky but active dwarf. The actors playing the current dwarves that I know from other things are tallish and lighter built. Lanky even in some cases. Scaled down they seem a bit flimsy.
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#3 |
Woman of Secret Shadow
Join Date: Oct 2006
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I thought so too. The biggest reason, I think, is what Zigūr said - there's only so much you can do with visual manipulation, and the actors already had to wear fatsuits.
However, there's also a risk of making dwarves look too stocky. Last summer at the Return of the Ring, Tolkien artist Jenny Dolfen told an anecdote about somebody suggesting that the width of a dwarf's shoulders should be five times their head (while normally the width is 2-3 times the head), effectively resulting in pictures that look like this: ![]() (Yes I really just made it for you, I'm that bored.)
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#4 |
Regal Dwarven Shade
Join Date: Jan 2002
Location: A Remote Dwarven Hold
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Contrarily, I do think that the dwarves are just a little bit too short and don't have a problem with their stockiness or lack thereof. I wasn't so bothered by their stockiness because I figure even dwarves are going to have different body types.
I was more bothered by a couple of scenes in the film where the techniquies to make the dwarves look dwarf-sized failed utterly, the Battle of Azanulbizar where the dwarves are charging is the worst offender in this regard. The charging dwarves in that scene are so obviously human sized that it renders the scene cover-your-eyes awful. And that really worries me as to what the Battle of Five Armies will look like. There were also a couple of instances where the dwarves would seem to randomly change sizes relative to their surroundings and other people because of the differences in height between the actor and their stand-in. However, these are the perils that come with trying to do a live action film that has a race or two who count short height as one of their defining characteristics.
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#5 | |||
Ghost Prince of Cardolan
Join Date: Aug 2012
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Quote:
Quote:
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#6 |
Pilgrim Soul
Join Date: May 2004
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Tolkien says hobbits coult be up to fourfoot normally a little shorter than dwarves. The Bullroarer was four foot five and only Merry and Pippin were taller. Now Tolkien notes that they were halflings related full Numenorean height which had diminished by the end of the third age though Aragorn was still very talll at about six foot six and Boromir a couple of inches shorter. Now Tolkien tends to make his central charactwers tall for their kind and the higher status characters tend to be literally higher so it would be conitent if Frodo Merry and Pippin as high born hobbits were closer to four foot than three even pre ent draught and so closer to two thirds than half the height of the men and elves.
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#7 |
Ghost Prince of Cardolan
Join Date: Aug 2012
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So they were, the Prologue says two to four feet and not, as I thought, two to three. Evidently my Hobbit-lore is not up to scratch! "An obscure branch of knowledge, but full of surprises" indeed.
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"Since the evening of that day we have journeyed from the shadow of Tol Brandir." "On foot?" cried Éomer. |
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#8 |
Pilgrim Soul
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Verily and there is the comment that they now seldom pass three feet which is misleading unless you keep the translator conceit firmly in mind and remember that he means at the time of Tolkien "translating" the red book rather than when the events recorded took place.
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#9 | |
Regal Dwarven Shade
Join Date: Jan 2002
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This has always kind of bugged me and I've thought from time to time it would be nice to have a story that centers on dwarves, but you can't tell that they are "dwarves" until well into the plot when they meet members of another race for the first time and are shorter than the other race. This issue also calls to mind the Elder Scrolls universe where the (sadly extinct ![]()
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#10 |
Pilgrim Soul
Join Date: May 2004
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Yes. I havev always thought that the Breelanders were probably seldom more than wha we would think of as average height with most on the shorter side of it. Think of Aragorn's Bree nicknames, Strider and Longshanks,. He could have been up to a foot taller than the typical Breelanders which means there was typically a smaller height difference between Breelanders and Dwarves than Breelanders and Rangers. It may have been a factor in their suspicion of the Rangers.
Elrond with lineage featuring Thingol and Tuor as well as a prime Noldorin strain should have been big but Tolkien describes as stocky with hobbits being smaller even when not much shorter. A dwarf should give an impression of great strength and not in a wiry way.
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But Finrod walks with Finarfin his father beneath the trees in Eldamar.
Christopher Tolkien, Requiescat in pace |
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#11 | ||
Ghost Prince of Cardolan
Join Date: May 2007
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Hobbits heights... or some citations I've collected about this
An extract from a letter apparently addressed to Tolkien's American publishers, and probably written in March or April 1938. Houghton Mifflin seem to have asked JRRT to supply drawings of hobbits for use in some future edition of The Hobbit. Quote:
Much later, in one note dated around 1969, as I read the following anyway, JRRT ended up describing full grown males at an average of 3 foot 5 inches. Quote:
That's quoted in The Reader's Guide to The Lord of the Rings, Hammond And Scull. Another contemporary note states that at the time of the story the average height of a male adult hobbit: Harfoots at 3 foot 6, Fallohides slimmer and a little taller, and Stoors broader, stouter, and a little shorter. In The Hobbit it's noted generally that 'hobbits are smaller than the bearded Dwarves'. In one of these late notes JRRT also said that the remarks in the Prologue are unnecessarily vague regarding the height of Hobbits. |
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