Annual Hobbit Discussion

TheBitPriest · Sun 04/01/2015 00:06:48

So, I finally saw the final installment of the Hobbit. I didn't hate it. Any other fans?

Cassiebsg · Sun 04/01/2015 08:28:52

Only movies (triology) I've seen in the past 3 years at the cinema... Either I'm a fan or there's too few quality movies I want to watch at the cinema.

I enjoyed that they finally killed some main characters, as in the past 2 they were a bit too "lucky" for my taste.
3D was "meehhh"... I miss the out effects. Without out effects, it's pointless, since you miss the depth concentration after 5-10 minutes, and then it's like watching a normal 2D movie.

Did found the ending a bit "too easy"... but don't know if the movie is at fault or the book, since I have not read them.

Babar · Sun 04/01/2015 09:24:14

I guess I'll have to wait a couple years for the reboot, after the whole "dark gritty reboot" phase is over, so that I can get the movie that was sort of promised by the first part, with a lighter tone, lots more sing-song and "adventure", and a lot less SERIOUS WAR STUFF.

Andail · Sun 04/01/2015 10:06:55

I'm waiting for movie makers to wake up from the current cgi hysteria, where everything has to be over the top, over spectacular and just over-epic.

Game of Thrones is the only fantasy I can watch these days, because it looks and feels authentic, and it's not about super hero ninja elves flying around being awesome or a million computer generated monsters, oh and remember when you played with transformers and it had like ten moving parts and could turn into a truck? Well in the movies every robot has 250000 moving parts, to the point where it's nothing less than a giant organic metal alien god, even though it can STILL ONLY TURN INTO A FREAKING TRUCK.

Too. Much. Of. Everything.

Mandle · Sun 04/01/2015 17:53:16

Quote from: Andail on Sun 04/01/2015 10:06:55
I'm waiting for movie makers to wake up from the current cgi hysteria, where everything has to be over the top, over spectacular and just over-epic.

Game of Thrones is the only fantasy I can watch these days, because it looks and feels authentic, and it's not about super hero ninja elves flying around being awesome or a million computer generated monsters, oh and remember when you played with transformers and it had like ten moving parts and could turn into a truck? Well in the movies every robot has 250000 moving parts, to the point where it's nothing less than a giant organic metal alien god, even though it can STILL ONLY TURN INTO A FREAKING TRUCK.

Too. Much. Of. Everything.

EXACTLY!!!!

I was just talking with my wife today about how the movie Avatar finally and thankfully KILLED OFF the IMPRESSIVE SPECTACLE SF CGI movie genre!!! By just being the biggest and most expensive CGI 3D in YOUR FACE movie of all time, without actually having any kind of story

And about how the new SF had to be all about story and characters for a while after the massacre of Avatar on the genre...Just like it used to be...

Just after Avatar came out and I was already predicting the demise of big budget SF movies as we know them...A little indie SF film called "Moon" came out: It was low budget (it used models instead of CGI for the "effects" scenes) it was actually intelligent plot-wise, and it had a thought-provoking message to tell along the way in that...

SPOILERS:

Spoiler

Human beings are really just spare parts in the eyes of powerful corporations, and are as easily replaceable as any other broken bit of machinery.

[close]

And I thought: THANK GOD FOR AVATAR!!! It's killed off every chance that another CGI blockbuster can satisfy audiences with their over-the-top effects (and rehashed plots) and now we get to go back to some actual growth and good story-telling from Hollywood...

RIGHT?!...

AWWWWWW CRAP!!!

TheBitPriest · Sun 04/01/2015 22:09:37

I. Loved. Moon.

My expectations were dashed from the other Hobbit movies, and I went into this one, weeks late, with such low expectations, really only seeing it on the big-screen, because -- come on -- there wasn't going to be a story... and... I didn't hate it...

Rather than the ending given (I can't see how this is a spoiler, but just in case):

Spoiler

I think Bilbo should have been talking to Frodo again making some mention of how his version, the one he was writing, was so much more merry than what actually happened. "A story more fitting for a Hobbit" ...or some such explanation. But that's the geek in me. I just wanted a wink from the writers acknowledging the... ahem... many changes.

[close]

Mandle · Mon 05/01/2015 03:17:23

One thing I really, really hate about these Hobbit films is Legolas and his uberness!!!

I mean he wasn't even supposed to be in the story and they make him the most powerful character in the whole thing?! What is he supposed to be: the Superman of elves?!

He's pretty uber in LOTR as well but in The Hobbit he is just...freaking...unstoppable! WHY is he so uber? None of the other elves are as good at stuff as him. Jesus, if all elves were like Legolas they could have just done a frontal assault on Mordor in LOTR and won hands down! Does he eat Super Mario powerups for breakfast or something???

It's never explained.

It's stupid adding in Legolas also because there is zero suspense for his well-being as we KNOW he survives. Sure, this is true of Bilbo's character as well but that is unavoidable. It's totally avoidable with Legolas by just not having him in the movie!!! What...did Orlando Bloom have pictures of Peter Jackson's furry fetish to blackmail his way into the movie with?!

It's basically just really bad fan-fiction.

Darth Mandarb · Mon 05/01/2015 13:29:32

I enjoyed the first two films a lot (even given all the [unneeded] additions).

The third film felt like filler/fluff to me. It just felt ... aimless.

The first few moments were pretty good:

Spoiler

Smaug laying waste to Lake Town and then being brought down (though I felt how Bard took him down was kind of stupid).

[close]

After that it just fell flat for me. I hate saying it, but it's how I feel.

Quote from: Mandle on Mon 05/01/2015 03:17:23One thing I really, really hate about these Hobbit films is Legolas and his uberness!!!

This was the point I made in our last discussion on the Hobbit.

Legolas (who shouldn't have been in the films at all) was just WAY too over the top.

It was cool (at first) but by the end of the second film I was sick of it and the third film just piled it on more and more.

The Hobbit should have been one movie (two, if they were shorter films). Stretching it out was nothing more than a money grab and the third film really suffered because of that. Now it could be that I'm comparing it to the Return of the King and there's really no comparison. The entirety of the LotR trilogy culminated perfectly in RotK where-as the entirety of the Hobbit culminated in the first 15 minutes of tBotFA and then we had 3 more hours of filler to sit through.

My final conclusion is that PJ pushed too far with his "milking" of the franchise and the over-all quality took a hit because of it.

Cassiebsg · Mon 05/01/2015 15:45:45

Quote from: Darth Mandarb on Mon 05/01/2015 13:29:32
The first few moments were pretty good:
Spoiler
Smaug laying waste to Lake Town and then being brought down (though I felt how Bard took him down was kind of stupid).
[close]

Ah, ah aha...

Spoiler

I was "when did he had the time to set that rig up?" and "as soon as he releases the rope, he's going to fire the arrow and take his son's head with it"...

[close]

After that it just fell flat for me. I hate saying it, but it's how I feel.

Quote from: Mandle on Mon 05/01/2015 03:17:23One thing I really, really hate about these Hobbit films is Legolas and his uberness!!!

Okay, since I haven't read the book, I did not know he was not in it... great... major role for one that did not even take part in any of it...

Spoiler

And I could not let my imagination believe that that tower would actually hold there for them to fight/dance and crumble little by little...
Sorry, but these structures are bearing and counting on their weight to hold in place, as soon as you lay them down they won't hold and would have crumbled right away.
When I saw what he was going to do I just thought "great, drop a tower on the troll... your flaaaaaat.... whaaaat? noooooo!"

[close]

The point WAS to milk the franchise from the start. It was never about the story. Since we already knew that the story was not big enough to fill 3 full length movies.

On the positive note, I loved watching the end credits and all that fantastics art!

Baron · Wed 14/01/2015 00:07:49

I didn't like the unbelievable "tower bridge": the masonry would have clearly fallen apart when no longer under compression.

And the demise of Smaug was pretty bad, especially the you-could-see-it-from-a-mile-away demise of the Master. And what ever happened to his lickspittle (Alfrid)? And where was the wrap up of what happened to the Dwarvish kingdom of Erebor (Didn't Dain succeed Thorin?)? How can Saruman et al. magically appear when needed, but Gandalf has to hoof it around Middle Earth? Why didn't Sauron's armies use sandworms from Arrakis (or whatever they were called) to attack Minas Tirith directly in LOtR, instead of committing the strategic blunder of being held up at Osgiliath by Faramir (thus allowing his opponent's armies to converge)? Pretty weak, story wise, in my opinion, and the over-the-top battle scenes were too fancy-pants to be at all believable.

On a plus note: BATTLE PIG!!

So I guess it all roughly balances out.

Mati256 · Wed 14/01/2015 00:41:09

Quote from: Baron on Wed 14/01/2015 00:07:49
I didn't like the unbelievable "tower bridge": the masonry would have clearly fallen apart when no longer under compression. And the demise of Smaug was pretty bad, especially the you-could-see-it-from-a-mile-away demise of the Master. And what ever happened to his lickspittle (Alfrid)? And where was the wrap up of what happened to the Dwarvish kingdom of Erebor (Didn't Dain succeed Thorin?)? How can Saruman et al. magically appear when needed, but Gandalf has to hoof it around Middle Earth? Why didn't Sauron's armies use sandworms from Arrakis (or whatever they were called) to attack Minas Tirith directly in LOtR, instead of committing the strategic blunder of being held up at Osgiliath by Faramir (thus allowing his opponent's armies to converge)? Pretty weak, story wise, in my opinion, and the over-the-top battle scenes were too fancy-pants to be at all believable.

A wizard did it!

Babar · Wed 14/01/2015 13:00:16

That always seems to be a problem with doing a technologically superior prequel (like what also happened to the Star Wars prequels).
They wanted to top all the bombasticky stuff they did in LotR over 10 years ago, and they had technology and funding and such to do it.
Unfortunately, the story they were trying to fit it all into didn't really have place for it, and it all seems very out of place when LotR is taken into consideration.

So you had hilarious stuff like Battle Pigs (although I thought the Battle Goats were way more hilarious), and Legolas dancing about falling masonry, defying gravity, and digger worms and such.

miguel · Tue 20/01/2015 14:33:45

All has been said but I want to contribute to this topic as well. We all can agree that part3 was really a weak movie, certainly the worse of all Peter Jackson's Tolkien based movies.

While the LOTR trilogy has enough substance to endure celluloid history, the Hobbit trilogy only manages to reach some kind of quality on the first 40 minutes of partI. The rest is volatile crap. And those never-ending fighting sequences that are most of the time unreal, (even if we're dealing with orcs and elves), are plain crap thrown at us. Tolkien was never about the physical act of fighting but the spiritual battle of the common beings.

I once wrote on this same forums that even if Jackson's was doing bad Tolkien movies it was still better than none. With this last and hopefully final film I am not so sure.

Babar · Tue 20/01/2015 16:00:15

Four hours is still a bit long, especially for a single movie, but there's this interesting thing:
https://tolkieneditor.wordpress.com/

This guy edited down the 3 movies into a single 4 hour one

Mandle · Tue 20/01/2015 16:16:42

Quote from: miguel on Tue 20/01/2015 14:33:45
I once wrote on this same forums that even if Jackson's was doing bad Tolkien movies it was still better than none. With this last and hopefully final film I am not so sure.

Oh, I'm sure he can squeeze at least 16 hours out of The Silmarillion...AND manage to write all his stock actors into it again...

Andail · Tue 20/01/2015 16:41:19

Quote from: Babar on Tue 20/01/2015 16:00:15
Four hours is still a bit long, especially for a single movie, but there's this interesting thing:
https://tolkieneditor.wordpress.com/

This guy edited down the 3 movies into a single 4 hour one

Awesome. Still failing to click on the 25th period though...

Cassiebsg · Tue 20/01/2015 16:50:37

Quote from: Andail on Tue 20/01/2015 16:41:19
Awesome. Still failing to click on the 25th period though...

Here:

Spoiler

straight back into another chase sequence.

[close]

And thanks Babar!

Jay Tholen · Mon 02/02/2015 19:07:39

I enjoyed each film better than the last. I felt that the first was the weakest, second was better, and third was best. In the first film I hated the goblin town action sequences, in the second I didn't like the barrel chase scene, and in the last I didn't like the tower-bridge-thing that Legolas spent 3 years doing acrobatics on. They all felt like some kind of theme park ride and took me out of the experience.

My biggest qualm is the lack of character development. There wasn't enough quiet time with the characters in The Hobbit, and I wouldn't have cared if any of them died. The Lord of the Rings trilogy was amazing in that it introduced ~12 important characters and made you care something for nearly all of them.

johanvepa · Sat 07/03/2015 23:36:18

Quote from: Baron on Wed 14/01/2015 00:07:49
On a plus note: BATTLE PIG!! So I guess it all roughly balances out.

I agree. While much of the added elements were plain tiresome, on the other side little gems such as the battlepig, and Dain's speech, certainly lights up

.
One could have wished for Jackson to concentrate more of his efforts to bring such charming and light-hearted elements into the movie.

Oh, and the point of Bard knowing of Smaug's weak spot because of the bird telling him. I really missed that.