We all need someone to tell us no.
To be fair, someone did say “no” and Jackson apparently listened. Now, granted, it was only after someone made all the sets, programmed the CGI, had Ian M. do the live-action twitching, colored the whole thing, etc… probably several hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of work. But it wasn’t in the theatrical release and thus didn’t make that release suck more than it already did.
MrTibbs
2025
Surprisingly candid comments from cast and crew about the making of the Hobbit movies.
Razgon
2026
Any transcript anywhere you know of, MrTibbs?
MrTibbs
2027
I don’t have a transcript, Razgon, but the video basically talks about how they only had around two months for pre-production on Jackson’s version of the Hobbit trilogy. Unlike LOTR, props were delivered on the day they were needed. They would give the cast and crew extended lunch-breaks to block scenes. Jackson was working 21 hour days.
They started shooting the third film without any kind of pre-visualization or storyboards, which resulted in Jackson asking the studio to shut down production roughly two months early so they could resume the following year. While the LOTR trilogy was carefully planned, Jackson says of the Hobbit, “I was just making it up then and there on the spot.” At the start of shooting, Jackson had an ulcer which delayed shooting for six weeks. Sounds like an ordeal!
I can’t imagine the pressure of not only delivering a film, but essentially having an entire production company relying on the success of your current efforts.
Razgon
2028
Thanks a lot, MrTibbs - I appriciate the writeup. Thats the next thing Youtube should implement - Automatic transcripting!
It does sound crazy though. I haven’t seen more than 1½ movie, but felt it lacking severely, compared to the previous LOTR movies, but mostly because of the added stuff, and the action focus. I did not see low production values due to rushing, so he appears to be a competent craftsman in that regard.
Yes, even in the extended edition documentary for An Unexpected Journey, it seemed pretty obvious that Jackson very reluctantly took over the project when the Del Toro version was scuttled. I really got the sense that he did these movies because so many people were counting on the work.
I disagree strongly. Some of it can be chalked up to the disastrous decision to shoot at 48fps which made you feel like you were standing on the film set watching events unfold before any post-production has been done so that every prop felt like a prop, every fake rock felt like a fake rock, etc. But I also can’t stop think of one scene that still sticks out in my mind, when Bilbo climbs to the top of Fangorn forest and looks out over a sea of fake oak leaves that appear to have been purchased from Michael’s Crafts the morning they shot.
I’m sure most people were very curious to see Del Toro’s vision of Middle Earth but he dropped out so far before the movies were released it felt abstract until I watched that clip and heard the crew talking about the years they put into preparing his vision only to have it all scuttled at the last moment when Jackson took over.
Granath
2031
I did not see this. I thought the sets looked fine.
The problems with this trilogy is that they are simply too bloated. Much like Jackson’s King Kong (and unlike Lucas’ newer Star Wars series which are un-salvageable), there is a pretty good movie to be found in The Hobbit. It needs a much firmer hand during editing. It is simply too indulgent and Jackson is too eager to get everything into his cuts. I do not care about Azog. I do not care about long, boring dwarf songs. I do not care to about the romance between the elf and the dwarf who looks like an elf. I care about moving the story forward. I tend to also like the Gandalf/Necromancer scenes and think they are fine (after all, anything with Galadriel is great).
I have watched the fan cut of the movies but that versions cuts too much and feels too rushed. The happy medium is somewhere in between.
The theatrical version should have been 2 roughly 2 1/2 hour movies. The extended could have been the 3 we did get.
On the Hobbit Jackson stopped following a core tenet he talked about with the LoTR movies when doing the commentary. Every scene got the question of was it central to the story and even if he liked it the scene would be cut if couldn’t be justified by that criteria. He threw that mantra out the window with the Hobbit movies and we got the bloated mess of movies instead.
I think there was a ton of pressure on him from a lot of sources to stretch this out into three movies: The studio, the folks working on the movies, and himself. I had forgotten about GDT blowing all of the prep time and it certainly shows. In the end, its very much the flawed mirror image of the Prequels. These fail for trying to give everyone too much of what they want.
Sorry, missed out on all this Hobbit stuff. I had a terrible nightmare that they turned one of my favorite little books into a 3-movie monstrosity with endless CGI filler.
So has the Hobbit come out yet? Looking forward to seeing it this Christmas.
The best Hobbit movie is still the one you create in your mind while reading the book. I guess Jackson’s mind kept wandering while he read his copy.
CraigM
2036
I saw a movie that had something about Bilbo and Moria, ending looking out over the lonely mountain in the distance. What it had to do with the Hobbit, I’m not sure. Supposedly there were some sequels? I don’t know, they seem to have skipped the theaters. I don’t watch direct to DVD sequels.
Snark aside, I stopped after the first. I love the LotR trilogy, they would number among my favorite movies ever. However the first Hobbit movie was only ‘meh’. The padding destroyed the pacing, the movie struck the wrong tone, and only occasionally showed glimpses of what it should have been. While I know more than a few people dislike the dwarf singing, that’s what the movie should have been in my opinion. Lighter, fun, with no sense of the darkness lurking in the background. The scene with the trolls, too, was mostly good. But it felt like a forced attempt to try and strike the same tone as the LotR trilogy.
This isn’t from the perspective of a novel purist either. I am acutely aware of how translation of form requires some changes. My issue comes from the fact that the tone of the movie does not match the underlying structure and tone of the story. The heart of the story is one of whimsy, derived in structure and style from fairy tales and children’s stories. The ‘and then they found some trolls’ structure demands a lightness and brightness that was lacking, at least from the first.
I was reading a bit about the production of these movies over breakfast, what’s interesting is that del Toro was initially pushing for The Hobbit to be a single movie (the original plan, before LOTR, was for The Hobbit to be the first movie, LOTR to be the second and possibly third). Then del Toro had agreed that splitting The Hobbit into two movies was a good idea, but that it would mainly contain material from the book, with the second movie containing a darker tone with more material to bridge The Hobbit with Fellowship. It was after del Toro had left the project by at least a year (if not more) that Jackson announced they were going to make three movies. So it’s curious to hear him talk about the limited lead time available, because in context adding that third movie sounds like creating a rod for your own back. Perhaps he simply felt he didn’t have time to get everything done, and adding the third movie was his way of procrastinating? I do remember Jackson making the announcement that they’d need a third movie to fit everything in; NASA recorded a shift in the Earth’s position downwards about 1 inch as everyone in the northern hemisphere raised their eyebrows simultaneously.
It takes less time to read the book, than watch all three movies.
I fell asleep during the last film last night. I mean it was late when I put it on, but it still felt like a slog.
Nesrie
2039
It was a two hour battle scene that felt like three hours. At least with LOTR there were other plots still moving. They had to make shit up to distract form the battle of five armies just being a long battle scene. Where did those goats come from again? I can’t believe they’re doing an extended. They should do director’s cuts instead and well… cut.
So during one of last week’s Qt3 Livestreams, I mentioned that I only watched Battle of the Five Armies up to when the Dragon was killed. After that, it felt complete to me so I stopped watching. Well, Tom said in that stream that I should go back and watch the rest and that it was pretty good.
And so today I spent about 2.5 hours watching this. I don’t know if I was just in the right kind of mood or what, but I agree with Tom. Some of the fights were actually really entertaining. Now, granted some were very boring. Like Gandalf getting rescued by those elves and Sauromon, that fight was completely stupid and boring. But others actually amused me greatly. I was very amused, for example, when the main villain orc, who has been doing so well with a sword and obviously trained in the sword and specialized in the sword and spent all his points when he leveled up into sword combat, when that orc decides to pick up a 2 handed weapon, a chain with a rock on it. He’s obviously never trained with it, he’s very awkward with it, and he got greedy and saw all the hit points that weapon apparently did and decided to give up his sword for it.
I’ll have to track down the Qt3 podcast for this, if there was one.
He should have put more points into intelligence!
There was not a podcast for this one. By that point, we’d given up on the Hobbit movies. Which partly accounts for why I like this one so much. My expectations were rock bottom and I got a cool 3-hour CG orgy of fantasy war and dragon fighting!
-Tom
Another scene that really amused me was when the Dwarven army setup a double story shield wall with spears sticking out, forcing the Orcs to attack right into the spears. But then just as it was about to work, elves climbed the Dwarven wall and jumped off it towards the enemy, so that forced the Dwarves to drop the shield and charge forward as well.
I also enjoyed seeing the various Ogres and Orcs in specialized roles in the Orc army. Like the battering ram.
The rhinocerous Orcs were kind of cool looking, but they got taken out by … I’m assuming Unseen Dwarven Archers since they were attacking the remnants of the Dwarf army when they got taken out, and there were no Elves nearby by that point. That was disappointing. I really wanted to see what the Dwarven Archery unit would look like.
The Legolas fight I found HIGHLY amusing. I love that Peter Jackson realized that here was one of the characters we knew survived this battle, so he had fun putting him in impossible situations that he hilariously found ways out of.
