Watching King Kong made me realize that the Hobbit would not be good once Peter Jackson took over. It was just so, so over the top, and you could see that also in LoTR, but there he almost managed to keep it under control. King Kong was PJ with no restraints, and no limits on the money available to him… and as with many authors, success is an artistic poison pill.
Edit: Oh wait, I think I said something similar before. Carry on.
My suspicion is that a lot of structural / story directing on this sprawling shoot was actually done by the second unit directors (according to Wikipedia: Alun Bollinger, John Mahaffie, Geoff Murphy, Fran Walsh, Barrie Osborne and Rick Porras. Though there were probably more uncredited…) and that actually reduced PJ’s tendency of going “too big” with things.
Normally the second unit only does “lesser material” (ie action / background stuff that doesnt include the main cast), but due to the logistics of distances and time pressure, took on bigger roles than that…
I mean, they hired the guy who made “Meet the Feebles” to do Lord of the Rings. It seemed like a long shot to me at the time.
Having watched all of the bonus material on the DVDs at the time I can attest that this appears to have been the case. Second unit did far more than just shoot some inserts or filler material, simply due to the logistical challenge of the project they would sometime shoot important scenes with major cast members in their entirety.
The FotR scene that always gets me is Gimli runs towards Balin’s tomb. All of Moria is damn near perfect.
Fixed that for you. :-)
I realize that Amazon Prime has all six Peter Jackson films - probably to stir up interest in Rings of Power. I loved the LoTR trilogy (saw it all in theaters, purchased the DVDs) and am likely to rewatch it. Probably my favorite fantasy films of all time.
I have never seen the three Hobbit films. But they’re here, on Prime, for no extra charge. So… I’m tempted. But on the other hand, I fear the disappointment will somehow mar my memories of the first three. Sigh. Decisions!
They’re bad. Avoid them.
The good doesn’t overcome the bad sadly. If you wanted a movie loyal to the book, this isn’t it.
I watched Hobbit recently and it’s probably the best of the three. I would say that my opinion of the trilogy has softened over time. They’re bad but not terribad.
I concur with this. I guess it depends on your own judgement, but…I don’t regret watching them. They’re not awesome, but any means, but they’re…movies I’ve seen. And I’ve watched them all at least twice.
The problem with the Hobbit movies is they are unmitigated Peter Jackson. After the success of LOTR (where the worst of these tendencies were mostly kept in check), there is no one left who dares rein him in so we get over the top lengthy action sequence after over the top, length action sequence after … for scenes that should have been one third the length, with the final film being the worst (it’s basically just one continuous long action sequence).
I haven’t watched any of the fan edits, but I actually suspect this is one trilogy that could have been edited into a better movie. There are some excellent scenes in the films and the actors are mostly good (Freeman is a great Bilbo); they’re worth watching even if you have to struggle through Benny Hill action sequences.
On the whole I’m inclined to agree with the above that the movies aren’t great, especially if you’re a stickler for novel accuracy.
There are however several fan edits that cut all of the Peter Jackson garbage out of the films and cut the entire trilogy down to a svelte 4~ hours. The M4 edit is one such cut which I like a lot:
For the most part everything works very well together, which is impressive considering the 4~ hours worth of material that was cut.
Is that Peter Jackson unbound, or “Here, turn this small novel into a couple movies. Oh, actually, there must be three, three films to tell this epic tale…”, and Peter had to spread the story too thin, to actually fill 9 hours of film.
WhyNotBoth.gif
But seriously, King Kong is what leads me to the issue being Jackson with too much rope. That was an overly indulgent mess, and direct on the heels. of LotR success. It shows he is someone who needs an advisor with the power to say no, much like with George Lucas.
Personally, I think it’s Peter Jackson unbound, because his dream project King Kong shows the same overindulgent excessive tendencies.
Edit: Ninja’d by CraigM.
Sure. But in this case, why would anyone tell him no, he had 3 movies to make, and enough material for 2? And not 2 LotR length movies, but smaller ones.
So, pack it in. Go crazy. Yeah, more dumb chases and let’s add an Elf / Dwarven relationship, sure, also, even more “gravity doesn’t work that way”, anything that gets mentioned in the book, etc.
He’d probably love to have someone telling him no, tell him no enough times that the 3 bloated movies turned into a lean 2 movies.
I agree with that. He badly needs an editor. There really is a lot of great stuff in King Kong, as well as The Hobbit trilogy. It’s just surrounded by a ton of unnecessary shit.
I’d like to see what he would come up with if the studio gave him a 4 or 5 hour budget for The Hobbit instead of an 8 hour budget. Would he have kept all the Tauriel and Azog garbage and CGI chase sequences and cut more from the book, or would he have stayed true to the source material?
The Hobbit is pretty bad, but Smaug is probably the best CGI dragon ever created.
My view is don’t bother watching The Hobbit trilogy. Even though I have seen them twice I have forgotten most of each movie. LOTR is too good for a trilogy like this to spoil the universe, in fact it is so different in tone and quality it might as well be set in a completely different universe and your brain will be able to make sense of it better. Life is too short, rewatch the LOTR trilogy instead and I guarantee it will be a better use of your time.