A Long-Expected Hobbit Movie Thread

[Magus]

Saw it 2D. I'd say the only "visual problem" that popped up was that some landscape scenes panned so quickly it seriously just looked like a blur to my eyes and I could feel a "strain" on them. For the most part though it was pretty glorious to look at.

I feel the added parts/elements were fairly good, although even with bloating up the plot and altering some of Bilbo's actions, they still failed to make him a compelling lead and not just look like a guy along for the ride. It's not as bad as in the original story I suppose but the two or three things he does to help the party in the movie (changes from the book) still didn't really give me the same feeling I got watching Frodo and Sam in LOTR. I would think in a three hour movie this wouldn't have been a problem but nowhere in the added scenes did they sit back and say, "Let's explore the character of Bilbo to the same extent we did Frodo" and I'd say that's the biggest failure of the film--to expand it so greatly and yet miss the point.

[Lumenskir]

Saw it in 3D/HFR. At the very beginning it looked janky as hell, to the point where I honestly thought it was just being played at 1.5 speed. I guess I adjusted somewhat because the talky scenes weren't too bad by the end, but any motion more extreme than walking slowly or talking still looked janky as hell, like a sputtering computer game.

As someone who isn't invested at all in the books, I was mostly impressed by how overstuffed and yet underwhelming it all was. Like, after the interminably long pre-leaving preamble it was basically just "Dwarves* sit around, make fun of Bilbo, run into baddies they all whack at, then run away until they find a place to rest, make fun of Bilbo, run into baddies they all whack at, then run away until they find a place to rest, etc." Sprinkle in some intentionally undeveloped musing on necromancers** and such for extra puffery.

*The Dwarves = Jews thing isn't something me and my friends imagined, right?

**I mean, I get the need to set up things for the other movies, but having to sit through a 20 minute scene of people talking about a problem that intentionally can't be solved (or even confronted) in the movie you actually paid money to watch now is just an abhorrent instance of Jackson & Co. slapping the audience in the face with a continuity dick.

I've been recommending to friends to just wait for it to come out on cable. I mean, I realize that this forum being what it is most of you have already seen it twice thrice, but for the non-steeped it's not really mandatory to see in the theater.

Also, I get that the Taxi-Eagles couldn't just drop the ring into Mordor because something something corrupting influence...but what's their excuse for dropping the gang so far away from their actual destination?

[Professor Smarmiarty]

I haven't seen it but its too long and nothing happens and its boring. 0.

[Magus]

The Eagles thing is a really old complaint about these things. Maybe they just hate carrying people hundreds of miles or whatever.

It's easier to explain in LOTR though since people who are like "WHY DON'T THEY JUST FLY FRODO FROM RIVENDELL TO MT. DOOM?" are intentionally ignoring the existence of thousands of orcs with bows and arrows and catapults and ballistas, etc., and 9 sorcerer ring-wraiths flying wyverns between point A and point B, besides the whole corrupting influence thing. It's a plot hole that only occurs with selective application of external logical reasoning, and can also be done to almost literally every movie ever made, as well.

[Geminex]

Originally Posted by Magus

The Eagles thing is a really old complaint about these things. Maybe they just hate carrying people hundreds of miles or whatever.

It's easier to explain in LOTR though since people who are like "WHY DON'T THEY JUST FLY FRODO FROM RIVENDELL TO MT. DOOM?" are intentionally ignoring the existence of thousands of orcs with bows and arrows and catapults and ballistas, etc., and 9 sorcerer ring-wraiths flying wyverns between point A and point B, besides the whole corrupting influence thing. It's a plot hole that only occurs with selective application of external logical reasoning, and can also be done to almost literally every movie ever made, as well.

Wasn't the explanation to the eagles thing that Gandalf didn't want to risk the eagles getting too close to the ring? Because their pride would have made them super susceptible to its corruption?

[Lumenskir]

Just to be clear, I can understand that in LoTR factors exist which would prevent the Eagle-Taxis from making it a two minute movie.

However, in the Hobbit the biggest thing that stuck with me was that the film basically ends with the Eagle-Taxis dropping the dwarf gang on a huge rock with their ultimate destination waaaaaay off in the distance.* You can tell it it's their ultimate destination because it is a crystal clear day and there's nothing but open fields ahead of them. So, one is left with the distinct impression that the Eagle-Taxis are just dicks.

*Seriously, what the fuck is the third movie going to be? I mean, for all I joke about how dickish the Eagle-Taxis are, the group is basically a stroll away from taking back their homeland. Is the third movie literally just going to be "The Hobbit: Completely Unrelated Tales From the Appendix"?

[Magus]

Originally Posted by Lumenskir

Just to be clear, I can understand that in LoTR factors exist which would prevent the Eagle-Taxis from making it a two minute movie.

However, in the Hobbit the biggest thing that stuck with me was that the film basically ends with the Eagle-Taxis dropping the dwarf gang on a huge rock with their ultimate destination waaaaaay off in the distance.* You can tell it it's their ultimate destination because it is a crystal clear day and there's nothing but open fields ahead of them. So, one is left with the distinct impression that the Eagle-Taxis are just dicks.

*Seriously, what the fuck is the third movie going to be? I mean, for all I joke about how dickish the Eagle-Taxis are, the group is basically a stroll away from taking back their homeland. Is the third movie literally just going to be "The Hobbit: Completely Unrelated Tales From the Appendix"?

I don't think you actually want spoilers so suffice it to say there are significant obstacles between them and the Lonely Mountain, which is super-big so it's farther away than you think. This movie really did just get through maybe a third of the book so they definitely added in enough stuff to pad it out properly.

I mean at best I would have said it should have been two movies at most but anyway, add in some more shenanigans like this movie had and I can see the three-part story structure fairly well, though the third movie will HAVE to involve significant Helm's Deep/Pelennor Field-esque extrapolation.

Originally Posted by Geminex

Wasn't the explanation to the eagles thing that Gandalf didn't want to risk the eagles getting too close to the ring? Because their pride would have made them super susceptible to its corruption?

Yeah I think that was the official Tolkein explanation, I just felt that besides that there are more than significant physical obstacles to the fulfillment of any kind of suicide-run on Mount Doom by a bunch of eagles.

[RickZarber]

Originally Posted by Lumenskir

You can tell it it's their ultimate destination because it is a crystal clear day and there's nothing but open fields ahead of them.

And, you know, Mirkwood. Plus, distances looking compressed (or mountains looking impossibly huge) seems to be a thing with Jackson's Middle-Earth. Take how high and near the mountains of Mordor looked from Minas Tirith, where in the book they were only just visable on the horizon.

Originally Posted by Lumenskir

*Seriously, what the fuck is the third movie going to be? I mean, for all I joke about how dickish the Eagle-Taxis are, the group is basically a stroll away from taking back their homeland. Is the third movie literally just going to be "The Hobbit: Completely Unrelated Tales From the Appendix"?

Second movie will likely take us from Beorn to the death of Smaug. Movie three will be the Battle of Five Armies, plus possibly the White Council driving off the Necromancer (they may even combine these, who knows; I wouldn't put it past them to have the Necromancer show up at the Battle). If they could stretch the first six chapters to 3 hours, I'm sure they can make a whole movie out of the last five. (Which, if you're curious, would leave 8 chapters for movie two.)


Honestly, the thing that bugs me most about the eagles not talking is that it is a missed opportunity to put this argument to rest. In LOTR, when Gwaihir rescues Gandalf from Orthanc, Gandalf asks, "How far can you bear me?" To which he responds, "Many leagues, but not to the ends of the earth!" And even in the Hobbit, he refuses to take them near to the Old Forest Road through Mirkwood, for men lived there and, "They would shoot at us with their great bows of yew, for they would think we were after their sheep. And at other times they would be right. No! we are glad to cheat the goblins of their sport, and glad to repay our thanks to you, but we will not risk ourselves for dwarves in the southward plains."

I wish the second movie would open with Bilbo asking why they couldn't just keep riding the eagles all the way. It would be a nice way to simultaneously lampshade and address this "plot hole".

[Lumenskir]

I mean at best I would have said it should have been two movies at most but anyway, add in some more shenanigans like this movie had and I can see the three-part story structure fairly well.

I think my main problem with the movie is that it's basically a road-trip movie, but instead of having a connected series of wacky hijinks it's basically just the dwarves fighting monsters (or, in a huge changeup, watching monsters fight themselves). Which isn't an inherently bad thing and all, but they all have basically the same fighting style of "Whack it with a blade to commit bloodless carnage, causing the enemy to either cry out in pain and continue fighting or keel over dead."

I personally think I was happier with the Gollum scene mostly because it was an engaging break from the tedium of the cluttered action.

[Magus]

The Gollum scene was my favorite so you're onto something there.

The scenes that were totally manufactured were the ones involving Azog (except the climactic scene on the cliff, which did occur, although not in that particular fashion), and since his orcs just pop up randomly several times for the dwarves to run from/battle it does indeed amount to a lot of repetitiveness. The only actual battle in this entire thing would have been the escape from the goblins if they had stuck with the book, so I guess they felt they had to manufacture more action scenes.

I think part of it is an implied expectation that this movie be almost three hours long like the old LOTR ones. I'm not sure why Jackson felt he had to hold himself to this "standard"--the movie would still make just as much box office bucks at two hours and not need so much manufacturing. It would also cost less. And best of all, it would be justifiable.