The Hobbit movies

[RuRoRul]

I'm interested in seeing how PJ takes 3-1/2 hours to cover the final 60 pages of the book finishes the story

Of course there are actually more chapters left to cover in the third film than were covered in either the first or second.

Not to mention actually showing the battle that in the book, happens while Bilbo is knocked out and is just summarised after it.

The films are no Lord Of The Rings, they have more flaws which are well documented everywhere (and even exaggerated imo), but if the standard I held all films to was to be as good as Lord Of The Rings, then I wouldn't enjoy many films. The Hobbit films still turned out better than I expected an adaptation of The Hobbit could.

Some excellent news is that Billy Boyd is doing the song for the final credits of the last movie. The song that he came up with and sang in Return Of The King is amazing, one of the best bits of music in a film series absolutely filled with great music.

[orcus116]

Having only seen the first movie and an hour into the second one (was late so I turned it off) the biggest downer for me was that while there are threats to the main group of characters there is really no sense of danger. Run into a band of orcs? They're going to escape with little to no damage. Get trapped by giant spiders? The deus ex machina elves swoop in and save the day. At least half of that damn group should be dead right now.

[BlackInk]

Just finished the appendices-documentaries on The Desolation of Smaug. Really interesting and cool stuff as always. I found myself smiling much of the time just watching the cast and crew have as much fun as they do.

And I must admit I teared up when they explained the elvish-drawfish lyrics of the Kili/Tauriel theme. I'm usually not that type of guy, but something about that detail just hit me.

[rumborak]

I saw the trailer for the new movie the other day, and I feel I must lament that Jackson made The Hobbit into a LOTR Part 2. The book had a much lighter feel than LOTR, but the movies have the same "epic gloom" that the LOTR movies have.

[Fiery Winds]

I saw the trailer for the new movie the other day, and I feel I must lament that Jackson made The Hobbit into a LOTR Part 2. The book had a much lighter feel than LOTR, but the movies have the same "epic gloom" that the LOTR movies have.

Well Tolkien tied The Hobbit into LOTR after the fact, so I actually like that Jackson is using as much side material as possible to bridge the two together. Sometimes the tone clashes throughout the films, but overall, I'm glad we get to explore more of Middle Earth before the Fellowship.

In other news, Billy Boyd co-wrote and performed the End Credits song, and it's such a fitting closer to an epic saga: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q8ir8rVl2Z4

[bosk1]

I saw the trailer for the new movie the other day, and I feel I must lament that Jackson made The Hobbit into a LOTR Part 2. The book had a much lighter feel than LOTR, but the movies have the same "epic gloom" that the LOTR movies have.

Well Tolkien tied The Hobbit into LOTR after the fact, so I actually like that Jackson is using as much side material as possible to bridge the two together. Sometimes the tone clashes throughout the films, but overall, I'm glad we get to explore more of Middle Earth before the Fellowship.

I really like that too, and I think it is appropriate.  It's just that, as I mentioned earlier in the thread, I just feel Jackson took a lot of things a bit too far and made things a bit too over-the-top.

[Orbert]

Tolkien tied The Hobbit into LOTR after the fact

In a sense, but The Hobbit came first and was a standalone story, written for his son.  As such, it was a much lighter story.  Technically, The Lord of the Rings is the sequel.

[Fiery Winds]

Tolkien tied The Hobbit into LOTR after the fact

In a sense, but The Hobbit came first and was a standalone story, written for his son.  As such, it was a much lighter story.  Technically, The Lord of the Rings is the sequel.

I worded that poorly, that's what I meant. Tolkien made several revisions to The Hobbit while writing LOTR, and desired more changes before others told him to let it be. For instance, the original version of The Hobbit had Gollum offering Bilbo the ring as a prize for winning the game of riddles, which completely goes against his character in LOTR, so it was changed. I see Jackson as doing the same to add more continuity to his films. I don't agree with everything he's done, but I'm still happy with it.

[Orbert]

Ah yes, I'd forgotten about that.  That Tolkien had "revised" The Hobbit a bit to improve the continuity with The Lord of the Rings.  So it was really a bit of both.

[BlackInk]

Saw this one yesterday, and really liked it. It has some issues, mainly comedy-related, or attempt-at-comedy-related. The Master of Laketown's assistant or whatever is given even more focus than the last movie, and instead of just being a dick in this one, they try waay too hard to make him the comic relief character among the humans. And it's just not funny at all. That among other things.

But then, what I thought would be my biggest problem with it I didn't even remember to think about during the movie. I was afraid that the titular battle of five armies would just be one big emotionless CGI fest. And while there is definetely a lot of CGI, they did a good job of inserting character driven moments and emotional archs. I thought the battle was a success, which I suppose is the most important thing in this movie.

It gets quite emotional by the end too. More so than expected.

I look forward to watching all six movies in a row sometime. Should be a fun, but long, day. Or maybe two.

[Kotowboy]

All six extended movies would be 24 hours

[jammindude]

All six extended movies would be 24 hours

My annual 1 day marathon is going to turn into 2 days. 

[JayOctavarium]

I hope to go see it on Thursday. I plan to watch the first two tomorrow and Tues / Wednesday. /excite

[Kotowboy]

All six extended movies would be 24 hours

My annual 1 day marathon is going to turn into 2 days.

I remember my bro getting The Two Towers on DVD and watching it with friends - and thinking it was pure tedium. I guess i'm not into those types of films.

[rumborak]

I will watch the movie, but really mostly for completion sake, and because I stumbled onto one of the movie sets when I visited NZ a few years back. Didn't particularly like the 2nd movie, too gimmicky for my tastes.

[lonestar]

Just got back, had some issues storywise, but that's the Tolkien nerd in me, it still had the epic feel and a more than grand finish. I will say though that 3D was a mistake, it's almost too clean and perfect, and lost some appeal for me. I'll wait for others to see it before digging into spoiler talk.

[cramx3]

I will say though that 3D was a mistake, it's almost too clean and perfect, and lost some appeal for me.

What do you mean?  Sounds contradictory with that wording.  I dont plan on seeing it in 3D, just curious.

[lonestar]

It just had an animated look to it, and a lot of the sets seemed almost fake.

[Kotowboy]

I've heard that said about the High Frame rate but I saw the first two in HFR 3D and after a while you get used to it.

I was a bit worried that it would look like a soap opera but it didn't really. To me it still looked like a movie but hyper realistic like you were there with them.


I think HFR has potential whilst 3D is just a gimmick that should go away.

I'm interested in what Avatar 2 will look like mainly because Jim Cameron pushes the envelope when it comes to new tech.

You know anything JC is directing will *at least* LOOK spectacular and not phoned in on any level.

[BlackInk]

Yeah, more than a few things look fake in this movie. There's one scene that just made me feel like I was watching a video game cut scene. It was a cool scene, but it didn't look real. Maybe those who've seen it knows which one I'm talking about.

[Lynxo]

Two particular scenes made me think that Jackson was intentionally trolling with us. 

1. The Legolas fighting on a collapsing bridge scene (which reminded me of the Legolas rolling on a shield while shooting down his enemies scene).
2. And, off course, the fucking eagles. AGAIN?! THEY WEREN'T EVEN IN THE BOOK THIS TIME! 

But yeah, despite that, I really enjoyed the movie.

[BlackInk]

2. And, off course, the fucking eagles. AGAIN?! THEY WEREN'T EVEN IN THE BOOK THIS TIME! 

They weren't? I haven't read the book, but I knew that the eagles were coming, since I thought that's what happened in the book.

[lucky7]

Lucky Bugs...It doesn't release in Australia until December 26...(at least it is not 15 years ago where it would have been months) 

[jammindude]

2. And, off course, the fucking eagles. AGAIN?! THEY WEREN'T EVEN IN THE BOOK THIS TIME! 

They weren't? I haven't read the book, but I knew that the eagles were coming, since I thought that's what happened in the book.

  Ummmm...ya dude.   Where did you get the idea they weren't in the book?   Who do you think the 5th army was???   Dwarves, men, elfs, orcs, and the eagles. 

[Lynxo]

2. And, off course, the fucking eagles. AGAIN?! THEY WEREN'T EVEN IN THE BOOK THIS TIME! 

They weren't? I haven't read the book, but I knew that the eagles were coming, since I thought that's what happened in the book.

  Ummmm...ya dude.   Where did you get the idea they weren't in the book?   Who do you think the 5th army was???   Dwarves, men, elfs, orcs, and the eagles. 

Oh, is that so? My bad then, I guess I remembered it wrong. But my point still stands, but extends to mr Tolkien himself instead. (No, I never counted.  )

[bosk1]

But...since it turns out that you were completely mistaken, how can your point still stand?

[RuRoRul]

SPOILERS: "The eagles are coming!" at the end of Return of the King (or halfway through it in the book) I think was meant to be a reference to the Hobbit, where (I think) it's the last thing both Bilbo says before he is knocked out and the last thing Pippin says at the end of the chapter for the battle at the black gate. /SPOILERS

Anyway I saw it in 3D HFR (not actually a big fan of 3D, but I think that the HFR makes it better), looking forward to seeing it again in 2D at some point. As you might know from me posting in this thread I'm more than willing to take the films as they are and think there's no reason why they are inherently bad just because they are "3 films out of 300 pages!", but I think there are a few things in this film that could have been done a bit better. I actually found myself wondering if the extended edition might be a big improvement this time (I know, heresy to all the people that think being long is the problem) for a couple of specific issues:

SPOILERS
1. I try not to go out of my way to seek out info or overanalyse trailers for films, but in this case I had seen an advertising image of dwarves cavalry charging down the hill on mountain goats, which I thought was a really cool idea. I don't remember seeing that in the film (you might be able to spot some mounted dwarves in the army), which was a little disappointing but not a big deal. But then when Thorin, Fili, Kili and Dwalin want to travel up the hill, Throin suddenly grabs one of those mountain goats from the battle and the next shot all four of them are riding them. Would have made a lot more sense to make sure we had seen these goats before that, and I'm hoping that will be in the extended...

2. So little was seen of Beorn. The fact that he came in on an eagle in human form and jumped off, changing into bear form, was pretty cool, but I was very disappointed that that was the last you see of him in the battle. I don't mind all the stuff in the battle that isn't strictly mentioned in the text (since not much is really described at all), but the basic story beats of the battle in the book are "Elf / human armies besiege the mountain, dwarf army arrives and they face off for a bit, army of orgs and wargs arrive so dwarves / elves / men team up to fight them with Thorin and the rest leaving the mountain to help, it looks bad but then eagles and Beorn arrive and turn the tide. Beorn even charges in and kills Bolg (who's the leader of the goblin army in the book) and carries off injured Thorin to safety (he was injured fighting "Bolg's guards"). I don't think it was necessary that Beorn kill the leader of the army (or even Bolg, who was more of a second in command here), but I think it should have been made much more to leave the impression that Beorn had a big impact on the battle and helped turn the tide. Plus seeing a giant bear fighting is always good and he was underused. I think I saw somewhere that Beorn's role is shown more in the extended so hopefully that does something to improve that.

[Lynxo]

But...since it turns out that you were completely mistaken, how can your point still stand?

Well, I was somewhat joking. But if we're going to talk about it seriously: wether it was in the book or not, it is still incredibly silly and one of the biggest complaints of the LOTR movies. To have the exact same deus ex machina ending seemed to us at least to be like trolling the audience.
Also, given that they've changed so much in both movie series, would it really be such a huge deal to leave them out at least this time around?

But really, I don't wanna pressure this issue any more, I though the movie, and the entire trilogy was enjoyable and I didn't leave the movie theater disappointed.

[MoraWintersoul]

Well, I was somewhat joking. But if we're going to talk about it seriously: wether it was in the book or not, it is still incredibly silly and one of the biggest complaints of the LOTR movies. To have the exact same deus ex machina ending seemed to us at least to be like trolling the audience.

Yeah, but if you're talking about what I think you're talking about, the mention of it in LotR was just a faint echo and a throwback to the original scene in The Hobbit

[Tom Bombadil]

Saw this last night and my god it was bad. Don't want to get specific until more people have seen it, but there were so many things I couldn't stand about it.

[Lucien]

Well, given your name I'm going to assume for the most part you couldn't stand how inaccurate it probably was (I haven't seen it) 

[bosk1]

Don't want to get specific until more people have seen it...

  Why not?  The specific reason we have a thread is to discuss it.  If people who have not seen it do not want to see discussion, they will (or at least should have the common sense to) stay out of the thread.

[JayOctavarium]

DUMBLEDORE DIES

[bosk1]

DUMBLEDORE DIES

[Tom Bombadil]

Very well then Bosk, I shall list my grievances.

**SPOILERS**

1. The "Dragon Sickness". This really pissed me off. One of the, if not the biggest themes of the Hobbit was the effect greed has in corrupting people, but in the movie they played it off as like "oh the gold is cursed because of the dragon so like if you want to get some other gold you'll be fine but the dragon touched this gold." It pretty much defeats the whole purpose.

2. The random creatures that kept showing up. The "Earth-Diggers" or whatever show up for like 5 seconds and they don't even attempt to explain what they are or where they came from. And the big-horned sheep just show up out of nowhere with no explanation.

3. Why am I supposed to feel sorry for an elf I don't care about when her dwarf lover (who I also don't care about) dies?

4. Thranduil telling Legolas to find Aragorn was so cringe-worthy.

5. Angmar is nowhere near Erebor.

6. Why does Azog look so cute when he's dying? That was weird.

7. The Elrond+Saruman vs. wraiths felt like it was straight out of a video game, in fact so did most of the movie with the High Frame Rate. If it was a good movie I could have easily looked past it, but since it was a bad movie it just made it worse.

8. I don't even remember that idiot from LakeTown's name. Every scene he was in was awful.

9. Despite a huge battle and thousands of deaths,  there was pretty much no blood at all, even when orcs would get beheaded.

10. Radagast is not part of the White Council.  Not sure why he was in the series to begin with. Peter Jackson equivalent of Jar Jar.

11. Legolas.

The first two movies had obvious flaws, but were at least enjoyable to watch. This one I was just wishing it would end.