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Lord of the Rings Movies

Ars: Final Hobbit Movie Is 'Soulless End' To 'Flawed' Trilogy 351

Posted by Soulskill from the things-you'll-pay-for-even-though-you-know-you'll-hate dept.
An anonymous reader writes: The final chapter to Peter Jackson's series of films based on The Hobbit debuted last week, and the reviews haven't been kind. Ars Technica just posted theirs, and it highlights all the problems with Battle of the Five Armies, a two-hour and twenty-four minute film based on only 72 pages of the book. Quoting: "The battles in Battle of the Five Armies are deadly boring, bereft of suspense, excessively padded, and predictable to the point of being contemptuous of the audience. Suspense is attempted mostly by a series of last-minute saves and switches. ... There are other problems. Everyone in this movie takes themselves way too seriously, which makes them even harder to sympathize with. Peter Jackson leans way too hard on voice modulation to make characters seem menacing or powerful. The movie's tone is still way out of step with the book's tone. ... There's one big thing that doomed these movies from the outset — the fiscally smart but artistically bankrupt decision to make a single, shortish children's novel into three feature-length prequel films." Other review titles: "Peter Jackson Must Be Stopped," "The Phantom Menace of Middle Earth," and "Lots of Fighting, Not Much Hobbit."
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Ars: Final Hobbit Movie Is 'Soulless End' To 'Flawed' Trilogy More

Ars: Final Hobbit Movie Is 'Soulless End' To 'Flawed' Trilogy

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  • *sips pabst* (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 23, 2014 @05:20PM (#48663353)

    I disliked hobbit movies before it was cool.

    I'm not going to see Age of Ultron either.

    • Re:*sips pabst* (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 23, 2014 @08:08PM (#48664435)
      The stories that age of ultron is based on are super hero comic books, so I go to the marvel movies expecting comic book over the top deus ex machina and soap opera love stories. With the Hobbit, I expect a low-key adventure with short periods of action, both serving as a pretext to just artistically show a world (Middle Earth). I expect a barrel-riding scene that exemplifies the resourcefulness of Bilbo and rewards him with what he desires: relaxation. I don't expect an action-packed run for dear life where serendipity is the hero. I also don't expect Legolas, since he isn't even mentioned in the Hobbit. As a friend said to me "if Legolas did half of the things he did in the movie version of the Battle of Five Armies, all of Middle Earth would have suggested he walk into Mordor with a retinue of quiver carrying hirelings and clean the place out before Sauron even reformed.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by Rakarra ( 112805 )

        I expect a barrel-riding scene that exemplifies the resourcefulness of Bilbo and rewards him with what he desires: relaxation.

        Well he certainly didn't get it in the book. The barrel-riding scene was thoroughly miserable, and it's a misery that is just exceeded by the dwarves packed in the barrels. Bilbo doesn't get much relaxation in Lake Town (he's the only unhappy one, seemingly), and of course we know he doesn't have the grandest time in the mountain. I don't think it's until after the Battle of the Five Armies that Bilbo finally relaxes.

        I also don't expect Legolas, since he isn't even mentioned in the Hobbit.

        The appearance of Legolas is not unreasonable as he was around the area at the time. Tolkie

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Jeremiah Cornelius ( 137 )

      It's actually a tragedy and missed opportunity, that Jackson has so little talent as a director, and so little discipline in telling a story.

      I was appalled by how little he regarded the audience - and proportionally insulted his actors - in "Desolation". Huge musical cues 'instructing' the audience of the drama or character development that was supposed to be on screen, at all times. This seems to be because he cannot elicit real performances from his actors.

      I might muse that this is because to Jackson, the

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward

        Whatever self-important drugs you're on, I'd like some please. Jackson had already shown quite a lot of restraint and faithfulness in his acclaimed LotR adaptation, and it's painfully clear that he has plenty of directorial talent. Crucifying him over the Hobbit, of all things, is just as inane as all the claims you're making. If you want the source text, then read the source text. Adaptations are not about being utterly true to the source,they are about ADAPTING it to another medium. And he was adapting a

        • Jackson had already shown quite a lot of restraint and faithfulness in his acclaimed LotR adaptation

          Really? Because the review comments in TFS pretty much sum up how I felt about his LotR. The second part was the only film where I have ever fallen asleep in the cinema: During one of the big battles, where he was once again showing off what the Massive Engine can do, and not bothering to tell a story. After that, his complete recharacterisation of Farimir as being just like Boromir (rather than as the person that Boromir should have been) meant that I didn't even bother watching the third part. He coul

          • Re:*sips pabst* (Score:4, Insightful)

            by cheesybagel ( 670288 ) on Wednesday December 24, 2014 @09:37AM (#48666551)

            I disagree. Tom Bombadil was rightly cut as it served no practical purpose. I do agree that the second movie was kind of weirdly constructed, and in the last movie the ending seemed to drag on forever and ever. But the ending also drags on forever in the actual book so I cannot fault Jackson for that.

            I think the LotR movies were well done. But he just did not have the material to turn the Hobbit from one book to three movies. That was an insane thing to do. He just watered down the plot too much and then had to change the story in stupid was to drag it on more.

            If there is ONE book which I think could be done in two or three movies its Dune. The Hobbit? Not really.

          • kept Tom Bombodil in the first one

            What crucial plot point did Tom Bombodil advance, especially in a two hour movie adaptation? One could argue (and Peter Jackson in fact did argue) that if he adapted the books precisely, much of the dramatic tension of the movie would have been dissipated for no good reason. For instance, Frodo actually waited around for many months after getting the ring before starting out on his journey. Read the description of what Tom Bombodil looked like again, if you haven't recently, and think about how ridiculou

      • Re:*sips pabst* (Score:5, Interesting)

        by electrosoccertux ( 874415 ) on Wednesday December 24, 2014 @01:36AM (#48665435)

        It's actually a tragedy and missed opportunity, that Jackson has so little talent as a director, and so little discipline in telling a story.

        I was appalled by how little he regarded the audience - and proportionally insulted his actors - in "Desolation". Huge musical cues 'instructing' the audience of the drama or character development that was supposed to be on screen, at all times. This seems to be because he cannot elicit real performances from his actors.

        I might muse that this is because to Jackson, they are not actors - but merely the armatures on which he templates his green-screen composited glory... But to assume that this is the root of his deficiency, rather than another symptom of of his artlessness, would be to succumb to curmudgeonly urges.

        The lesson to be taken away is that Jackson should be designing games, not ruining popular cinema.

        It appears that - despite the contempt it provoked in my teenaged self - Rankin and Bass actually produced the best ever adaptation [wikipedia.org] of Tolkien, with the greatest respect and truth towards the source text in feel and substance. Perhaps, when we have destroyed the concept of copyright as a tool of corporate greed, another - more thoughtful - filmmaker might use this as a point of departure for a loving and well-crafted "Hobbit".

        apparently you missed the memo where he was dragged kicking and screaming into directing it, having been assured during sign on he was simply there for consulting; after Guillermo del Toro left. After LOTR he said he was done. No more movies. Ever. And certainly not another Tolkien. Took too much out of him. You can blame the media companies, but honestly I'm not going to hate PJ for it. When you burn out in life, you'll understand.

        • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

          by Anonymous Coward

          To be fair: LOTR and The Hobbit are the best movie-adaptions of Tolkien to date. Nobody here and no-one else has topped that. Anyone saying differently are not fair: just cold-hearted, miserable cynics who have never achieved anything worthwhile in their own lives and need to degrade other people's achievements to feel better about themselves.

          LOTR 1-3 was great. It had soul and managed to tell the story mostly truthfully without sacrificing too much in the all too necessary conversions from dusty books to t

  • i'm not going to see this (Score:4, Insightful)

    by unami ( 1042872 ) on Tuesday December 23, 2014 @05:28PM (#48663429)
    part 1 was pretty bad and part 2 even worse. i feel pretty ashamed for having paid money for those two - and having encouraged bad, soulless, moneygrabbing filmmaking by that. sorry.
    • I thought one was bad, comparatively to LOTR, but was sort of won over with the extended cut. At least by then my expectations had fallen enough to admit that at least it is better than the rest of the crap Hollywood is shoveling. It is getting so bad you pretty much have to watch foreign films if you want a film with some class and sophistication; At least a lot of the really good stuff is either dubbed or done in English.

  • It looks like a friggin video game. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Rinikusu ( 28164 ) on Tuesday December 23, 2014 @05:28PM (#48663437)

    I hate the way my friends' HDTVs make movies look like soap operas. I hated the last Hobbit which I saw in HFR/HD and the "look" completely ruined the film for me. The lighting used stood out like a sore thumb from the live action characters vs. the CG, the movement of the CG itself was horrible in many scenes.

    And this film was no different. Ugh.

    • HFR did not make a difference to me, but if they are spending so much money on the films why do the CG physics still look like the thing was shot on the moon. And of course Legolas was the worst physics modeling yet again. Everyone in the theater burst out laughing at a certain part of the movie due to it.

    • Re:It looks like a friggin video game. (Score:5, Informative)

      by JaredOfEuropa ( 526365 ) on Tuesday December 23, 2014 @05:50PM (#48663655) Journal
      You'll get used to it, it's just cultural bias. HFR movies and other content viewed on HDTVs that do motion interpolation look like soap operas because for a long time, soap operas were shot with video cameras with a higher framerate, whereas any serious production was shot on film stock (and most such productions are still shot at 24fps). The result is the "soap opera effect", in that we still associate the technically superior framerate with cheap-ass productions.

      With that said, the CGI was pretty pad in "the Hobbit" at times, and some scenes got padded to incredible length ("when is that barrel riding scene going to end?!"). One movie wouldn't have done justice to the story, but 3 was too much.

    • You can turn that off, I havent seen a tv yet that didnt have interpolation as an option the user could turn off. Sometimes they give it some gimmicky name though

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by PCM2 ( 4486 )

        You can turn that off, I havent seen a tv yet that didnt have interpolation as an option the user could turn off. Sometimes they give it some gimmicky name though

        Yeah, on my set there are two settings that combine to create the effect and I have each set to "most of the way off" because that's the way I like it.

    • Re:It looks like a friggin video game. (Score:5, Informative)

      by Goetterdaemmerung ( 140496 ) on Tuesday December 23, 2014 @10:37PM (#48665005)

      I hate the way my friends' HDTVs make movies look like soap operas. I hated the last Hobbit which I saw in HFR/HD and the "look" completely ruined the film for me. The lighting used stood out like a sore thumb from the live action characters vs. the CG, the movement of the CG itself was horrible in many scenes.

      And this film was no different. Ugh.

      Your experience is due to the TV settings. Most TV's out of the box have the "soap opera effect" set to maximum and the sharpness set to maximum. Brightness adjusts the black level and contrast adjusts the white level. These are all set to make it look good in the bright store but are generally not desirable for home movie viewing to a discerning viewer. Perhaps your friend is open to adjusting his picture - however be aware that a lot of people believe they like the super sharp picture because they are used to it and might dislike the softer, more natural picture. Ask him to try it for a couple of weeks before making a decision to go back.

      This is the first thing I did on my Panasonic plasma TV (after the burn-in) was to turn that shit off and calibrate the display. The picture is incredible.

  • Huh, I'll be damned... (Score:3)

    by Shoten ( 260439 ) on Tuesday December 23, 2014 @05:29PM (#48663443)

    Seems Gollum was right... [youtube.com]

  • Not all bad, some middling to good-ish reviews (Score:4, Informative)

    by Sesostris III ( 730910 ) on Tuesday December 23, 2014 @05:29PM (#48663447)
    Three stars in the Observer [theguardian.com] and four stars in the Guardian [theguardian.com].

    I'll still be going to watch it with friends between Christmas and the New Year.

  • It was dry, but not BAD like Phantom Menace (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Saysys ( 976276 ) on Tuesday December 23, 2014 @05:30PM (#48663451)
    It was dry, but not BAD like Phantom Menace. Phantom Menace was horrendous on numerous levels and, if taken seriously, reduces the quality of the previous movies. This LOTR prequel finally was dry, unless you have some reason to be emotionally invested in the characters because of the book. But it was not a BAD movie, it was not poorly acted, it was not poorly written, and while it could have done with more meaning when it came to the acton (and I personally hate action) every last bit of the film-shooting and editing was done as spectacularly as can be done in a film.

    This was not a BAD movie; it just wasn't the movie it could have been. And honestly, you'll never please the fan-boys anyway.

    • This was not a BAD movie; it just wasn't the movie it could have been. And honestly, you'll never please the fan-boys anyway.

      I thought PJ hit it out of the park with the LotR trilogy for fans and uninitiated alike.

    • Ars Technica's review was summed up after some negative points with "So, why do I think this movie rocked? Well, first of all, there's the simple continuation of the mythology. I don't think it would have taken too much for this movie to be cool. If it had done nothing but explain the back-story, without adding anything of substance, I probably still would have loved it. Luckily that wasn't all I had to work with." Yeah, I rely on Ars Technica for movie reviews just like I rely on Jar-Jar not to vote with
    • I'm a Tolkien fanboy, and I was pleasantly surprised at PJ's LOTR films.
      Especially ROTK, which was incredible.

      However, The Hobbit films are really forgettable, except for a few great scenes here and there, which are about %20 of the total.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Mitreya ( 579078 )

        I'm a Tolkien fanboy, and I was pleasantly surprised at PJ's LOTR films.

        There were some very odd decisions, but all in all the LOTR movies were surprisingly good.

        The Hobbit films are really forgettable, except for a few great scenes here and there, which are about %20 of the total.

        Where? I am hard pressed to think of something for the 1st movie and I haven't seen a single good scene anywhere in the 2nd Hobbit movie. Maybe I missed something?

  • Honestly the size of the book means nothing. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by gurps_npc ( 621217 ) on Tuesday December 23, 2014 @05:32PM (#48663465) Homepage
    Book length does not translate into Movie length.

    Movies are about the visuals. That's why a good director means more than a good screen writer. The better the visual, the more time on screen. All movies need an inciting incident, an escalation, then a crisis and resolution. You can easily do a fantastic movie without much dialogue or voiceovers. In fact, the best way to do dialogue and voice overs is to let a good actor improvise. Works better than having the screenwriter do it - who should be creating potentially amazing scenes.

    Books are about the dialogue and thoughts of the character. You can delve deep into their motivations and what they say. But book visuals are all in the mind of the reader. If a book has really good descriptions, it doesn't matter that much. But good words - said and thought by the characters, that makes the book.

  • My take on this final installment (Spoilers) (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 23, 2014 @05:34PM (#48663491)

    Dear Peter Jackson,

    You and I have journeyed far together. You brought Frodo's task to destroy the One Ring to life a mere decade ago, and with such verve and respect that myself and the world over could not turn a blind eye and fail to hail such an inspiring, thrilling, and (mostly) faithful adaptation. In those days it was clear your appreciation and understanding of Tolkien's most beloved work was paramount, and although some liberties were taken to accommodate the film medium, those liberties could be mostly forgiven in the wake of such illuminating entertainment.

    Today is a far different day, and the lens I view your Middle Earth through now is not the same as when all was good and new. Time appears to have jaded your approach to the wonders of Middle Earth.

    While some berated An Unexpected Journey for being slow, plodding, and somewhat uneventful, it still held much of the magic of yesteryear. Many great moments were found, and liberties, though present, were for the most part welcomed. Perhaps some moments in this first leg of the journey were a portent of what was to come, with Dwarves and Hobbit alike being immune to falling rocks, and Goblin Kings being so inept and vulnerable to attack by an aging wizard that one slice of a sword offers a silly comedic moment and death with little true peril. I held out hope here, however, as Thorin truly suffers in the mouth of Azog's Albino Warg.

    Desolation of Smaug, in its extended cut, also held moments of magic, though it fell victim to much of the same shortcomings, peril-wise, as An Unexpected Journey. While there were some true moments of dread, found in Mirkwood and Smaug's Lair, there were moments of silly nonsense, particularly in the Forge of Erebor with an ineffectual dragon, but also with liberties taken by unnecessary fabricated characters such as Tauriel, cheapening elvish magic and Arwen's importance in the Lord of the Rings trilogy. I still held out hope, even in this, because in the extended cut you brought us a better sense of pacing, more interactions with actual book characters such as Beorn and Thrain, and I couldn't help but hope you would do the rest of the book justice with proper emotional heft to go along with the bloody conflict that was soon to shake Middle Earth after its long peace.

    After such a long journey, traveling through mountain, forest, valley, river, lake, and town, there were but some small matters to wrap up. A dragon threatened a town on the water. Armies of all manner awaited the opportunity to strike at Erebor should the threat of the dragon be eliminated. The characters we have traveled with required proper sendoff and emotional moments.

    Certainly, the dragon threatens Laketown, burning and pillaging at whim. However, the witty, sadistic dragon I had hoped for instead functioned more as a flamethrower than a character. To this end, could Smaug not have tormented the denizens of Laketown a bit before reducing it to cinders and ash? A simple "Flee, flee for your lives! I will find you no matter where you hide and devour you as sheep." would have been very effective.

    Certainly, the hero destroys the dragon, though in perhaps the most ridiculous way possible and within just a few moments. Smaug is further cheapened as a complete imbecile, ignoring the fact that the one weapon that CAN pierce his hide is pointed at him (and don't say he doesn't know what it is, because he had many of them fired at him the last time men had strength).

    Certainly, Dol Goldur falls, but why does Galadriel appear so weak at particular moments throughout? It feels rather convenient that she falls to the ground weakened while the men (including the aged Saruman) fight it out amongst the Nazgul. While she may cast out Sauron from Dol Goldur, her appearance here felt very highly inconsistent, cycling between frail elf maiden and "beautiful and terrible as the dawn" elf queen.

    A few more scenes before Kili and co. arrive from Laketown's ruins would have been nice, showing Thorin beginning the descent into

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by zlives ( 2009072 )

      "Where is Thorin's funeral? Where is the peace made with Thranduil as he lays the Arkenstone and Orcrist to rest with the King Under The Mountain? "

      wait for the Hobbit: the never ending story

  • Second hand view from a teacher (Score:5, Interesting)

    by RogueyWon ( 735973 ) on Tuesday December 23, 2014 @05:34PM (#48663497) Journal

    Before anybody points it out - all of the post below is anecdote - usual caveats apply.

    A friend of mine is a teacher - he generally works with the 10-11 age-range (which in the UK at least, is unusual for a male teacher). This is, as is documented in any number of official and unofficial studies, a particularly critical year in the education of boys; it's when many of them start to fall behind the girls in their year group in academic terms (not catching up until the 18-21 age range). The individuals who start falling behind at this point generally never catch up.

    Now, just a few weeks ago, and spurred by the impending release of this movie, I had a long conversation with said friend about childhood literacy, academic achievement and the Hobbit.

    See, his view is that the big problem with the UK education system and boys is that they lose all interest in reading for pleasure right around that 10-11 age range. This is, in part, because the generally approved reading materials in schools have a heavy female tilt (lots of teddy bears and thinking about feelings, not so much on the swords, dragons and robots), but there's not actually a mandatory reading list at this age and teachers (if they're willing to stand up to the senior management in their school if needed) have quite a lot of leeway.

    And his big antidote to "losing" boys at this age has, for close to a decade now, been "The Hobbit". Indeed, he's of the view that it's one of the finest children's books ever written; short enough not to be off-putting, gripping pretty much from the first page and written with an authorial voice that strikes a good balance between not being condescending and not being too advanced for the age-range in question. It is also a damned exciting story, with wizards, dragons, goblins and magic rings. The girls don't hate it and the boys absolutely lap it up.

    So from his point of view, the movies have been a bit of a disaster. He'd been hoping for something he could take classes along to. Instead, the movies, are dark, brooding, serious, dark and extremely violent in places. They're absolutely not suitable for the age range the book is pitched at and, in any case, they miss the fundamental quality of what makes the book so great.

    It's not a disaster for him - the book is still there and always will be there. But his view was that it was a missed opportunity to give the "best children's book ever written" a proper adaptation.

    I've not read The Hobbit for many years myself, but this does chime with my own memory of it.

    • Remembering back to the dim and distant past, yes us boys read the Hobbit (and the Lord of the Rings itself) when that age. Also, as I remember, reading interest was kept alive by the works of such authors as Sven Hassel and Ian Fleming. Just about readable with just enough sex and violence to keep us interested!

      Of course, we got to know of these latter authors from older boys, not from teachers!

    • Re:Second hand view from a teacher (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Sir_Eptishous ( 873977 ) on Tuesday December 23, 2014 @06:19PM (#48663875)
      That is the truth.

      I read The Hobbit when I was about 8-9, and LOTR when I was about 12-13.
      It is one of the things that got me into reading for sure.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by TheCarp ( 96830 )

      See, his view is that the big problem with the UK education system and boys is that they lose all interest in reading for pleasure right around that 10-11 age range. This is, in part, because the generally approved reading materials in schools have a heavy female tilt (lots of teddy bears and thinking about feelings, not so much on the swords, dragons and robots), but there's not actually a mandatory reading list at this age and teachers (if they're willing to stand up to the senior management in their scho

    • > So from his point of view, the movies have been a bit of a disaster. He'd been hoping for something he could take classes along to. Instead, the movies, are dark, brooding, serious, dark and extremely violent in places.

      Dark too.

      I see what you're saying, but to those of us who did grow up with the book, seeing a darker, more violent, age appropriate (for the age we are now) is a good thing. For the students, why doesn't the teacher rent the Rankin Bass version from 1977. I didn't think it was very goo

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Kjella ( 173770 )

      So from his point of view, the movies have been a bit of a disaster. He'd been hoping for something he could take classes along to. Instead, the movies, are dark, brooding, serious, dark and extremely violent in places. They're absolutely not suitable for the age range the book is pitched at and, in any case, they miss the fundamental quality of what makes the book so great. It's not a disaster for him - the book is still there and always will be there. But his view was that it was a missed opportunity to give the "best children's book ever written" a proper adaptation.

      It wouldn't work. And I'm not saying that to be cruel, but a major part of the viewing audience would have seen LotR first and quite frankly hate the Hobbit done according to the book. And all that negativity would surely rub off on the movie, even if it was perfectly suited for boys age 12. Most people wanted LotR: The prequel and that's what they got. I'll go out on a limb here and say they actually made it a decent character drama with Thorin Oakenshield losing himself and finding himself again. Bilbo to

  • in the battle of five armies. WOW what a BORING movie! This is the first and LAST of the Hobit movies we will go see. Good thing we saw it on $5 Tuesdays, I would have hated to have wasted full price on this movie.

  • ...is that enough people will pay to see them to make them look like a good idea. CGI shiny all over, not a hint of story.

  • From the summary: "The battles in Battle of the Five Armies are deadly boring, bereft of suspense, excessively padded, and predictable to the point of being contemptuous of the audience."

    That pretty much describes all 3 movies to a Tee.

  • The original story was a books for childs that started with "In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit" and kept being childish most of the way. This movie? "Die Hard: Dwarfs edition", deserving a PG-13 or R rating for violence and mass slaughtering. It was like watching the porn version of Cindirella. The basic elements were there, but is not the same.

    Anyway, may worth to see the CGI work.

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Zebai ( 979227 )

      I don't see how you can claim the Lotro movie was faithful. I love the movies but is missing far to much to be faithful. They failed to mention there was a 20-30 year gap between Gandalf telling Frodo to keep the ring secret and his return during which he searched for gollum and he had people protecting the shire and that Frodo was ~60 yrs old when he left the shire. They skipped the entire section of the book for when they left the shire and went into the forest/graveyard. They changed the story o

  • If you're even a mild Tolkien fan it is worth seeing.
    Visually it is quite stunning.

    However, with that being said, can the three PJ Hobbit films, taken as a whole, be considered absolute and unadulterated crap?
    Well of course.

    The first one was just lame and way too long.
    The second one sucked bigtime and was way too long.
    The third one isn't bad, and was way too long.

    At the beginning of the third one is a scene where the members of the White Council show up to find out why Gandalf has been at D

  • Let the Hobbit hacking begin (Score:4, Interesting)

    by fma ( 71738 ) on Tuesday December 23, 2014 @06:31PM (#48663943) Homepage

    If history doth repeat itself, then we will see a tightly cut single movie version of Jackson's Hobbit as soon as amateur film makers can get a good digital copy of all three films. Anyone who saw the Star War's prequels refactored into well paced and well cut movies knows that compressing three Hobbits back into the original book will be a treat. There is plenty to take out, good acting, and with skill the story can be made right again.

  • Like butter spread over too much bread (Score:4, Insightful)

    by DrXym ( 126579 ) on Tuesday December 23, 2014 @06:39PM (#48663987)
    The Hobbit moves weren't bad - indeed some of sections were expertly done. But god were they padded out. The entire story could have been told competently in 2 movies without missing out anything of significance. I expect there will be an even more extended edition in time but really there should also be a reduced edition. But that would be admission that commercial interests outweighed artistic ones.

    But Phantom Menace bad? Nowhere close.

  • No soul (Score:3)

    by JeffElkins ( 977243 ) on Tuesday December 23, 2014 @06:40PM (#48663999)

    The Rankin & Bass animated Hobbit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T... [wikipedia.org] is truer to the source material than this bloated mess.

    Peter Jackson ripped the soul out of Lord of the Rings when he neglected to film The Scouring of the Shire. No one who loves Tolkien expected anything better this go-around.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by PCM2 ( 4486 )

      Peter Jackson ripped the soul out of Lord of the Rings when he neglected to film The Scouring of the Shire.

      But he did film it, kinda. He just didn't put it into the story. It shows up a little bit in the Mirror of Galadriel sequence.

      One could argue that that was the correct way to play it, too. I know people who claim to have "walked out of the theater after the first ending and skipped all of the other ones," as it is.

      • Except he killed off Saruman at Orthanc, which pretty much excludes an actual Scouring of the Shire, which happened in fact in the book, but due to Sharkey's death at Orthanc, eliminates even an extended version addition. What Frodo saw in the Mirror was no the Scouring of the Shire, but the enslavement of the Shire by Sauron.

        Two differnt things. Galadriel, "This is what will come to pass if you should fail."

        A pretty accurate scene taken from the book.

  • print fans (Score:4, Insightful)

    by roc97007 ( 608802 ) on Tuesday December 23, 2014 @06:43PM (#48664015) Journal

    Rabid fans of the movies, vs "Peter Jackson is satan incarnate and must be stopped". The latter is left over from print-fan memes during the original run of LotR, who would hate the movie no matter what he did, not because it's a movie, but because it's not the book. Print fans come in all shapes and sizes, and have all sorts of justifications for their views. I find it interesting that, back in the day, of the print fans that believed Lord of the Rings should be made into a movie, it was generally believed that only a 20 hour miniseries would be enough, in order to capture every scene and every song and poem, and the elves should be CGI because people weren't beautiful enough, and today we have print fans that are saying that three movies was too long. What the hell make up your mind.

    Then there are the print fans who would be absolutely against any film, generally justified as "it substitutes Jackson's imagery for the reader's own" or somesuch, and from there leads to a place of madness, where calendars, posters and even cover art are forbidden, and the only way to read the stories should be on loose leaf paper from Tolkien's own typewriter.

    I digress. Anyway, for those who need a more faithful light hearted Hobbit, there's still the Rankin-Bass film from 1977. They even set some of Tolkien's poems to whiney music sung by people with terrible singing voices, so, like, cool. It made me want to gouge my eyeballs out and use them to plug my ears, but your mileage may vary.

    As to whether any or all of the Hobbit films are the best films ever or a travesty that requires that the director be tarred and feathered and ridden out on a Grond, the actual truth is somewhere in the middle. Yes, three movies were probably excessive. No, one movie would not have done it. This is because it's not a matter of just telling the story in The Hobbit's measly 300 pages, but also giving the backstory that was in the appendicies to LotR (to which Jackson had the rights) and maybe approaching what might be a full telling of The Quest of Erebor, the story Tolkien later started to write, essentially re-writing The Hobbit to better fit into the tone and pagentry of Lord of the Rings. (Published posthumously by his son Christopher in Unfinished Tales.) Unfortunately, Jackson did not have access to Tolkien's writings other than what was in the appendicies and The Hobbit, and Christopher Tolkien absolutely refused Jackson the rights to Tolkien's other notes. So in order to make it fit with Lord of the Rings, Jackson had to make some of it up in order to not be sued by the Tolkien estate.

    So, did he make stuff up that Tolkien didn't write? Of course he did. Did he make up *too much* stuff? Maybe. Did he put in too much filler? Yeah, probably. Should he have kept it to one movie and only filmed what was in The Hobbit? Absolutely not. There is more story there, (Specifically, why Gandalf felt Erebor was so important to the coming war) and Jackson told as much of it as he was allowed to. Three films *was* excessive, but to say it shouldn't be filmed because it wasn't in The Hobbit is to show ignorance about all the backstory and detail surrounding the Quest of Erebor that wasn't in what was essentially a children's book. And besides, The Hobbit was already filmed, in 1977. (I didn't like it much. It made my teeth hurt.)

    Footnote, after all these years, having read the novels multiple times, once to my daughter before the films first came out, I just recently had an in-story epiphany. It always seemed curious and whimsical that Gandalf was so adamant about Bilbo being included in the quest. But think -- that simple decision set in motion a chain of events that after many years leads to the destruction of the One Ring -- something that probably could not have happened otherwise. How did Gandalf know?

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by RDW ( 41497 )

      Speaking as a 'print fan', I don't have a problem with adaptations in general, just adaptations done 'badly'. The BBC Radio version of LOTR from the 80s was excellent, but their attempt to do The Hobbit back in the 60s wasn't much good. There's much to enjoy in the Jackson films of LOTR, but the type of flaw that has blighted his version of The Hobbit was already there to a lesser extent in the previous trilogy - good actors saddled with a clunky script, silly additions to the plot, over-emphasised battles,

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Opyros ( 1153335 )

      How did Gandalf know?

      In a section of Unfinished Tales called "The Quest of Erebor", Gimli asks Gandalf this very question. Here is the response he gets:

      Gandalf did not answer at once. He stood up, and looked out of the window, west, seawards; and the sun was then setting, and a glow was in his face. He stood so a long while silent. But at last he turned to Gimli and said: 'I do not know the answer. For I have changed since those days, and I am no longer trammelled by the burden of Middle-earth as I was the

  • The original idea for The Hobbit was to make two movies. Then Hollywood executives got involved and the third movie was invented. With it came the need to invent new stuff to fill all the extra time, and most of it is garbage.

    If you trim it back down to two movies, there is enough content to make a good pair of movies. Instead, what we got was Peter Jackson's attempt to make The Lord Of The Rings II, occasionally featuring a hobbit.

  • ...but I can't recall for sure whether or not I even saw the second one. I think from that you can estimate my level of enthusiasm for seeing the third one.

  • Three movie review stories on the front page.

    Plenty of other techy stuff that could be advert^W^Wtalked about.

  • miscreation (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Tom ( 822 ) on Wednesday December 24, 2014 @06:29AM (#48665989) Homepage Journal

    I've seen the first two so far and they didn't convince me for the 3rd. I'll probably go because my GF wants to.

    The problem is that The Hobbit is an entirely different book compared to LOTR. It's a childrens book, a soft introduction to Middle Earth, not an epic fantasy tale. It should've been dealt with in a different way, not as a "we made a shitload of money, so let's make more LOTR movies" prequel. It basically fell into the same trap as the Star Wars prequels - the attempt to replicate a success by doing more of the same, completely missing the idea that maybe the first was a success exactly because it was not more of the same, but stood out from what else was on offer at the time.

    And omg were they filled with crap that had nothing to do with story or book and was only added to complete some Hollywood recipe.

    They should've made it one move, for a younger audience, made by a different director, without trying to make it a prequel and "foreshadowing" everything we've already seen.

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