How they can call it “The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies” when all that’ll happen is Bilbo will take a nap and then wake up after the battle is over?
the plot thickens!
fade to black 10 minutes in and then 2 hrs 40 minutes of snoring.
Its a horrible title, I can’t believe someone agreed with Jackson that its the best choice.
I can see how the studio would go for it. “The Battle of Five Armies” sounds a lot more marketable than “There and Back Again” if you’re trying to appeal to the general audience.
This is Jackson we’re talking about here. Bilbo is certain to use his invisibility to assassinate all the top generals of the goblin army with the exception of Bolg, who will manage to avoid him. Then, when the Eagles arrive, Bilbo will grab a lance and leap upon an Eagle’s back. During Beorn’s climactic struggle with Bolg, the courageous hobbit will skewer the goblin from behind, thus saving the day! Hooray!
It would take some amazing feat of negotiation to convince a studio that you can make a great movie battle climax in which the main character gets knocked out and wakes up afterwards.
You forgot to mention Legolas’s completely improbable wire-fu archery antics. :)
Considering that 90% of the Desolation of Smaug was made up for the movie, I think they’ll figure out some way to fill in the gaps in Bilbo’s memory.
The knockout will just come much later. There will, however, be much wire/CGI-fu. I will be glad to see it but after DofS not chomping at the bit. At least there will hopefully be less bad-Jackson filler in this one (crosses fingers).
Viggo Mortensen drops some truth bombs.
Mortensen thinks – rightly – that The Fellowship of the Ring turned out the best of the three, perhaps largely because it was shot in one go. “It was very confusing, we were going at such a pace, and they had so many units shooting, it was really insane. But it’s true that the first script was better organised,” he says. “Also, Peter was always a geek in terms of technology but, once he had the means to do it, and the evolution of the technology really took off, he never looked back. In the first movie, yes, there’s Rivendell, and Mordor, but there’s sort of an organic quality to it, actors acting with each other, and real landscapes; it’s grittier. The second movie already started ballooning, for my taste, and then by the third one, there were a lot of special effects. It was grandiose, and all that, but whatever was subtle, in the first movie, gradually got lost in the second and third. Now with The Hobbit, one and two, it’s like that to the power of 10.
“I guess Peter became like Ridley Scott – this one-man industry now, with all these people depending on him,” Mortensen adds. “But you can make a choice, I think. I asked Ridley when I worked with him (on 1997’s GI Jane), 'Why don’t you do another film like The Duellists [Scott’s 1977 debut, from a Joseph Conrad short story]?’ And Peter, I was sure he would do another intimately scaled film like Heavenly Creatures, maybe with this project about New Zealanders in the First World War he wanted to make. But then he did King Kong. And then he did The Lovely Bones – and I thought that would be his smaller movie. But the problem is, he did it on a $90 million budget. That should have been a $15 million movie. The special effects thing, the genie, was out of the bottle, and it has him. And he’s happy, I think…”
I’m amazed that Viggo was so open and honest, but everything in that quote is accurate. As I’ve said before, Fellowship’s easily my favorite of the original trilogy because it’s truest to the books and Jackson’s self-indulgences haven’t taken center stage yet. By contrast, The Hobbit is unwatchable for me–I saw the first but am skipping the second and third. Those who know what a huge Tolkien fan I am will see this for the damning criticism it is.
Scuzz
1731
I would agree with you but I will still see the final movie if for no other reason than for the things Jackson does well. But you do have to sit through a good deal of dreck to get to what the story is really all about. However, unlike with the LOTR movies I don’t think these movies will get watched again, which is too bad as these should have been he more intimate re-watchable movies.
You’re probably both better off waiting for the inevitable fan edit which distills all 374 hours of The Hobbit down into, like, 20 minutes of pure awesome. :)
Scuzz
1733
The Hobbit should be the first movie released with a directors cut that is shorter than the theatrical release.
Murph
1735
Same here…I think he’s spot-on with his statements RE: why the first movie was the best (which is absolutely was.) I like hearing him being so direct.
I did like Desolation quite a bit compared to Unexpected Journey, but it definitely had to be viewed as a sequel to Jackson’s movie, rather than a recreation of the middle portion of the book. It was a much more entertaining movie for me, though.
Viggo really hit the nail on the head didn’t he? The LOTR and Hobbit movies are an excellent case-study in bloat. Desolation is a better movie than the first Hobbit though (and not just because it has Smaug in it) but he’s gone a long way from what he achieved with Fellowship.
About 30 pages back I hoped there’d be a more concise edit of The Hobbit boiled down to a single movie. If it has to be a fan-edit then so be it. It should, as the title of the book implies, be about Bilbo’s journey.
You’re not missing a thing.
I also completely agree. I also think the Director’s Cut version of the original film is actually worse.
I’ve avoided both of them. OTOH, have you seen the Lego Hobbit game? That actually looks kind of cool.
In addition to echoing the chorus of people saying that Dave’s comments are spot on, I strongly agree with this statement as well. The theatrical cut of Fellowship is the only one of the movies that holds up as a movie. The next two LOTR movies were fun from a fan service perspective but flawed in comparison with the first, great movie. The Hobbit movies are pure rubbish.
Tangent: it wouldn’t be the first - the director’s cut of “The Great Raid” is slightly shorter than the theatrical version.
I disagree: some of the additions are extraneous, but in general I prefer the extended version of FotR, particularly the extra bits with Aragorn or Boromir.
