Frenetic Pony

The Hobbit...

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Is vastly overly bloated with brilliance shining through the cracks: http://www.aintitcool.com/node/59869

So does agree most of the reviews. Which is exactly what I was afraid of. Jackson is horrible, terrible, at cutting a film. He was brilliant back when Fellowship came out, and just got worse and worse. He's no sense of pacing or any idea that you can just toss out entire scenes without harm.

The 3 movies are going to run 450 minutes or more together. Yet I write movie scripts, I've adapted a book before, I know how long a movie should translate from a book. The Hobbit, tied for my favorite book ever, is a 4 hour film. 240 minutes. Maybe give an hour the extra stuff filmed and what Gandalf was doing the entire time.

Which means the runtime is 1/3 entirely unnecessary bloat. Sad. Still going to see it... but yeesh. Someone needs to forcibly remove Jackson from the cutting room.

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The Hobbit is going to be three films?! I had already heard it was going to be two and had kind of gone "urgh" - but three? God, I don't know that I want to watch another three Middle-earth films.

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I'm really looking forward to this! One problem I'm having is finding HFR screenings, though.

Jackson can be incredibly self-indulgent, it's true. KING KONG was waaaaaay too long. I was kind of hoping he would have reeled himself in a bit by now. He can't really afford another disappointment -- King Kong and Lovely Bones barely broke even, as I understand it.

I hear that HEAVENLY CREATURES is a brilliant film, though... but then he also made MEET THE FEEBLES :-/ Man, he's uneven.

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I'm trying to keep my expectations in check considering how incredibly awesome I consider the Lord of the Ring films to be, and the chances of The Hobbit equalling it — especially considering that's it's also contending with my nostalgia and utter surprise at how good LotR was in the first place — are slim.

That said, I can't imagine it not being a great experience for anyone into Tolkien's lore, and I've enjoyed every Jackson film I've seen thus far including King Kong and The Lovely Bones. As I understand it the reason it's become three films is because it actually steps considerably beyond the scope of the book, swallowing up all the other Middle Earth lore Tolkien wrote and building additional sub-stories around it. So in a way this is less 'The Hobbit', and more a last chance to incorporate all the cool shit Tolkien wrote outside of LotR into one last series, including epic battles and shit never really depicted in the namesake book.

Assuming they can pull it off, I'm totally happy with that. I'm not letting the reviews influence me because critics can be dicks, plus many people watching The Hobbit will likely be existing LotR fans so there's going to be more fan service and inaccessibility that probably wasn't there in LotR, something critics often whinge about.

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Huh, I've always thought it was pretty nifty that Peter Jackson could pull off making crazy long movies like that. It's a unique film experience. We generally accept two hour films or full series' with dozens of hour long episodes, it hardly seems like bloat to put something in the middle.

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Why is this not in the film thread? Not a direct complaint, just wondering.

So, yes, my jaw dropped when I heard The Hobbit was going to be two movies. Then it dropped even further, it dropped through the wooden floor, my jaw literally hit the floor and went through it, when I heard it would be three films. I saw one of the trailers earlier, and tonally it is so way off what The Hobbit is. It's LotR all the way. Look, here's the story of The Hobbit:

A funny little guy living in a hole under the ground has a quaint, quiet life. Then all of a sudden a cranky wizard comes along with thirteen hilarious dwarves, and they pull him along on an absurd quest. Dangerous things happen that force them to climb into trees or hide in barrels. Bilbo finds a cool magical ring that makes him go invisible. They find the dragon just at the point where there's a big battle between three human kingdoms. Bilbo returns to his home, an adventure richer. The end.

In the trailer already, you can see how they're stretching to make it exciting. Gandalf is whispering how dangerous the journey could be, the dwarves are singing solemnly. It's goddamn portentous. That fit LotR, but The Hobbit? They'll probably push the political context to the foreground, and Gandalfs early dealings with Sauron. The beauty of the book was that all that stuff happened in the back, it was unimportant. Odds are they'll focus on it this time around.

The crazy thing is, I don't even mind. Let them tinker with the story. Better that than 3 hours of just the things happening in the books. Three films! How do you even fill those 7,5 hours? Here's my prediction: film one ends at the point where they make the first step out of Bilbo's home. The whole film will just be them gearing up for the journey, singing dwarves, whispered warnings. All very portentous.

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Why is this not in the film thread? Not a direct complaint, just wondering.

One good reason is that I never check that thread and wouldn't have ever seen this discussion. Not a fan of megathreads.

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Anything that isn't exactly as the book depicts is bloat!

Tolkein "fans" are absolute nutters about the movies, so I'm just going to watch and enjoy them.

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The Hobbit doesn't need four hours. Maybe two and a half, presuming someone actually spent some time figuring out how to best adapt it into a movie. Peter Jackson is completely incapable of doing any actual adaptation, which is why the LotR movies are so pedestrian. Unfortunately, it seems that the idea of quantity over quality from gaming culture has infected cinema and now people think they are getting more for their money if they have to sit in the theater for longer.

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As I'm sure everyone already knows, there's a whole sub-plot involving Gandalf and Sauron in The Hobbit that was skipped over. Tolkien added it to the Lord of the Rings appendix's and the Book of Unfinished Tales (IIRC). I'm happy that it's being included because The Hobbit is such a non-book, really.

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The Hobbit doesn't need four hours. Maybe two and a half, presuming someone actually spent some time figuring out how to best adapt it into a movie. Peter Jackson is completely incapable of doing any actual adaptation, which is why the LotR movies are so pedestrian. Unfortunately, it seems that the idea of quantity over quality from gaming culture has infected cinema and now people think they are getting more for their money if they have to sit in the theater for longer.

So pedestrian in what sense? That they're absolutely awesome and garnered acclaim throughout the world from both critics and casual viewers alike — including me who was decidedly not a Tolkien or even a fantasy fan — while netting eleven Oscars in the process? That's a kind of pedestrian I can get behind. :tup:

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Poorly paced, too long, overly focused on huge battle scenes and bombast. Gimli. Kung fu fighting wizards. Surfing down stairs on a shield. Some characters lose a lot of what dimensionality they might have had (did I mention Gimli?). There's no sense of mystery to anything. For example, in Fellowship of the Ring it actually takes some time before it's clear that Strider is a Good Guy, but the movie is directed in such a straight way that there's never any question about it. All the towns and such are CGI'd to look pretty, but don't feel like places.

There are many side plots that are so poorly integrated they should have been cut from the production at an early stage. Aragorn's romance, for instance.

Some stuff works well, like Frodo & Sam's relationship, Gandalf and a few of the other characters.

In Hobbit, we really don't need to be shown what Gandalf is doing when he's away. We only need some hint that there are bigger, mysterious things at work than Bilbo or even the dwarves can suspect. It's a lot simpler tale of adventure and should be easier to adapt. I was really hopeful when Guillermo Del Toro was attached to the project, as he has more vision and imagination than Peter Jackson. I doubt he would have seen the need to film every word Tolkien ever wrote and force it into a linear narrative.

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Whoa whoa whoa! There are some serious armchair director opinions going on here!

The LotR films were brilliant and could have been longer - no Tom Bombadil or Grimald taking over the shire - I would have liked to have seen that too, no matter how long that made the film.

Take that armchair people.

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My official position is that of guarded optimism, but I can't help feeling it's a mistake to adapt two works the same way just because they're written by the same author. The Hobbit is not an epic. Bolting on a bunch from Tolkien's appendices and practicing inclusive editing won't change that. It just feels like a misunderstanding of Tolkien's story, which is weird to say because I felt like Jackson knew exactly what was important to the Lord of the Rings movies and how to best showcase them.

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The only thing that intrigues me about The Hobbit movie is the slight changes in the art direction that I noticed from the one trailer I saw: the movie looked slightly more cartoony, with a more contrasted lighting and coarser textures and details on the props, costumes and make up. Everything looked a bit 'fatter'.

I'm interested in checking if the tone of the movie follow a similar trend: The Hobbit book is, after all, a simpler story, clearly aimed at a younger audience that LotR - and it doesn't really feel like serious business.

I'm also interested in seeing how Jackson/DelToro dealt with integrating the cross-over characters - if there is indeed a significant difference of tone from LotR.

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I'm in the "LotR films weren't that good" camp, and that's after enjoying the heck out of them when they came out. (The opening to The Two Towers was the Favorite Thing Ever for years, for example.)

The cinematography and digital grading has not aged well at all, for example, and Jackson's directorial skills leave a lot to be desired. For example, don't drink every time he shoves the camera too far into an actor's face. You will die.

I'm sure part of it is just being burnt out on all the tropes that have been strip-mined from the book for almost 60 years now, but the films seem almost a parody these days—and I don't think The Hobbit films will improve on that mark.

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Grimald taking over the shire - I would have liked to have seen that too, no matter how long that made the film.

Yes. The ending of The Return of the King felt rushed and abrupt as it was.

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Which one? :P

In all seriousness though, I absolutely loved the LotR films and can't even begin to agree with anything brkl is saying really. I suspect he's coming from the perspective of a fan of the books though, and I think most of us should know by now that devoted fans of something are statistically more likely* to not be too fond of other adaptations, regardless of quality. Even if they did the most perfect Metal Gear Solid movie imaginable I'd still be sat there like a big, fat nerd criticising it because it doesn't stick to the game which is in my mind the perfect rendition of that work.

Try as they might, someone who was a LotR book fan will never convince me they're giving a fair and unbiased review of the work based on its own merits. I base my judgement of the films purely on the films, so any comparisons to how they miss the point of the books, etc just doesn't wash with me. Who even cares if The Hobbit as a film series is different in tone to the book if it's awesome as tits?

Of course it might be brkl isn't a fan of the books at all and my entire last paragraph should be omitted from the record. Also I just watched all the LotR movies' Blu-Ray extended releases and they're as awesome as I remembered. Noticed they've changed the colour grading too, seeing as someone mentioned that aspect (greeted with even more fan whinging, naturally). In fact I honestly think it still looks better than most films made before and after.

* Based on my arse

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I suspect that bkrl missed the build up and excitement, and only heard the hype. As a result he watched them with huge expectations, and only saw the flaws. I see the flaws, too, but I also see the good stuff.

Which is it bkrl?

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