Billy Connolly Comments on "Unreadable" The Hobbit

Sir Billy Connolly, while at a movie premiere, spoke with Vulture about The Hobbit trilogy. The actor plays Dain Ironfoot who will be a major character in the third film, The Hobbit: There and Back Again as part of the Battle of Five Armies and could appear towards the end of the second film depending on how director Peter Jackson breaks up the story. It is possible he will appear in the first film but just going by the novel, he had no role in the story events until after the confrontation with Smaug the Dragon.  Any case, he spoke with the website about how little he knows about JRR Tolkien's books and how he "always found him unreadable."

"Oh yes!" he confirmed. "I have to go back for that. I haven't done [the battle scenes] yet. I have to get battle-ready! I ride into war on a wild pig!" So, how many times has Connolly read The Hobbit? "I've never read The Hobbit. Never." What about Lord of the Rings? "Never read Lord of the Rings," replied the 69-year-old Scottish actor. "I could never read Tolkien. I always found him unreadable … I didn't read [the books], and I normally don't like people who have! The people who love it, they're kind of scary. They talk all this gobbledygook and they think of it as the Holy Grail."

How, then, does Connolly plan to deal with Tolkien fans who will lob at him obscure questions about The Hobbit for the rest of his life?

"Usually I just make stuff up because I don't know what I'm talking about," Connolly admitted. "But invariably, there seems to be a sector of the press that is consumed by The Hobbit, Lord of the Rings, and it's indicative of that notion, that it's the Grail. So whatever I say is rubbish, but then I become answerable for it! People get all upset, they get terribly upset about anything that has to do with it, as if it were real! It's a story! Just relax! It'll go away and you'll be just fine. Don't panic."
"I mean, the scripts are brilliant, very good," Connolly continued, "but I always disagree with people who think the movie should be like the book. A movie's a movie, and the book's a book." And this movie's going to be great, Connolly promised. "Martin Freeman is absolutely brilliant. That was one of the first things I saw. And I'm going to get into trouble again if I say this, but we're filming faster [at 48 frames per second] than we normally would, with special equipment, and in 3D ... Our 3D just makes it glow. It looks like a cartoon, but the people are real. And it's shiny. And it's real."

I have to admit I kind of agree with him on the novels. Reading the Lord of the Rings trilogy was a bit of a chore (especially the first part of Fellowship of the Ring) and by the time I got to the appendix I was just over it and relieved to be done. The Hobbit was a much more enjoyable read as it didn't seem to be stuffed with unnecessary filler and the story flowed smoothly.