I don’t even agree on all three points. (I much prefer the movie version of Faramir though.) I just meant some people prefer certain aspects of the movie. It’s an arguable point in that case, whereas it isn’t even a question for The Hobbit.
kedaha
1884
LotR stayed ‘true’ to the source material, despite Peter Jackson following his own vision. The Hobbit has very little to do with the source material, and was just Peter Jackon’s excuse to do a slaveringly masturbatory LotR Mk2.
Bittuva difference.
I don’t think Jackson was using this as an “excuse” or opportunity at all. The Del Toro deal fell through and it kind of left Jackson holding the bag. I think he was really okay with just executive producing and maybe helping from a WETA/technical standpoint. From watching the various behind-the-scenes vids, I got the impression that he didn’t really want to direct these at all and had to be sort of cajoled into it by the studio and the fact that he didn’t want to let his people down. I’m sure the fat paycheck helped make his decision, but we’re getting a Jackson that’s more concerned with keeping his people employed than we are the Jackson that was excited by bringing LotR to the big screen.
That doesn’t explain why the scripts are such overblown messes, though, unless New Line somehow forced Jackson to make another “epic” trilogy. I think he had enough good material to make a pair of tightly-paced 2-hr films; then had to ask himself, “Well, shit, now what do I film to fill another 4 or 5 hours?”
Sarkus
1887
Lets not put the blame for this entirely on Jackson. Not only do you have two other people who had significant input on the script (Bowens and Walsh, who also collaborated with him on LOTR), you also have whatever influence the studio financing the thing had on where the script went.
Having not yet seen the third film, my suspicion from the beginning was that this was going to suffer from being stretched from two films to three. That all would have depended on the edit, but I suspect that constrained to telling the story in two films that Jackson and his collaborators would have fallen back on favoring stuff from the book and cut the made-up filler.
Telefrog
1888
Plus, I’ve always said the adaptation of The Hobbit was always going to be problematic if you’re trying to directly tie it to the LotR movies. They take place in the same world and have some of the same characters, but the tone difference between the two is a real issue.
Very true, Mr. Frog. The tone in The Hobbit does evolve over the course of the work, becoming more serious and adult in the later chapters, but it never reaches the level of LoTR in either category, and deliberately so.
Sure, I’ve got no real problem with another ‘take’ on the books down the road (though I question the necessity of that- there’s plenty of new stories to be told). But for me, why are you even bothering to adapt a book if you’re going to deviate so heavily from the source material? I’m one of the few that actually likes the book Hobbit more than the LotR trilogy- I’ve actually never even been able to get through the latter, and I’ve read the former a dozen or more times since I was ten years old. It’s a small story, a simple one. The quest isn’t epic. The fate of the world doesn’t hang in the balance. It would be just fine as even a long (2.5-3 hour) movie. But the bloated, ten-hour mess that this trilogy is kind of destroys all that. I don’t need another 20+ minute-long action setpiece every ten minutes to ‘hold my interest’, thanks.
newbrof
1891
agreed, after watching the third part… it is just too much for my taste. But I love every scene with Thranduil in it (Lee Pace). And Thorin by Armitage was perfect… and loved the fight on the ice. So, it is a mixed bag as a whole… a 3 hours edit would be nice… I can live without that Gold-Dragon-Action-stuff from the second movie…
Anyone else watching Hobbit 1 and 2 tonight, before going to see part 3 tomorrow?
The benefit of doing such a refresher is I can fast forwards the parts I dislike in the first 2 movies.
The original plan was to make a two parter. He talks a lot about having to come up with additional material for the middle film after the studio decided it should be a trilogy in the Desolation of Smaug commentary.
It would be interesting to see a Director’s Cut that is shorter than the theatrical release. I wonder if I’d like it more.
The Director’s Cut of Blade Runner is shorter than the 1982 theatrical release, so there’s a precedent.
So is the Director’s Cut of Alien, although I prefer the original; Scott said in the director’s commentary of the original Alien DVD release that he felt the tracking scenes in particular went on too long, and that modern editing would cut them earlier… and so he did. But it loses something by doing so, the sense of place is slightly diminished, and those longer, lingering shots create a greater sense of paranoia meaning the Director’s Version is quite a bit less frightening. Just an example of Ridley losing sight of what made the original so great.
[edit] Sorry, got carried away there! This doesn’t mean that Jackson’s Hobbit is better for being longer! He just crams more crap in.
JonRowe
1897
And dear god is it so much better.
Granath
1898
I started reading reviews of this. The first one I picked said that “five armies are too many”.
Nesrie
1899
Even though I enjoyed the movie, three are too many. It should have been a two parter at most. Three can’t stand on it’s own, kind of drags the other two down actually. But again, I was still enjoyable for someone who likes the visuals, and just wants more tolkien.
marquac
1900
The movie has it’s moments.
Warning. Spoilers here.
[spoiler] There is quite a lot of fighting and not a huge amount of story to get in the way of things. Smaug is taken care of in the first 15 minutes of the movie so I cannot understand why they couldn’t have just tacked on another 15 minutes of cg fire to the second movie to give it some sense of closure rather than prolong it to the third movie.
Again in this movie I find that Jackson straddles violence with decapitations (beheadings happening quite frequently)and total silliness (Billy Connolly as Dáin) which was so annoying. I wish he would just choose serious or silliness and go with it. Now granted that is just my opinion on that.
If you don’t like when characters get redeemed then there will be a couple of annoying moments near the end of the movie.
Also, if you dislike long death scenes then you are going to have several very, very annoying moments.
They had a clip of Jackson before the showing giving a quick talk about the movie and saying that the third one was his favorite.
And remember this line “It hurts because it was real.”[/spoiler]
Nesrie
1901
Oh they went silly pretty often, although maybe not always purposeful. I was fine with a few of the unbelievable acrobatic kind of movements in some of the earlier movies, but the battle moves in this one seemed over the top most of the time… not an occasional thing but so frequent I think I started sighing because it was so over the top and completely unnecessary.
newbrof
1902
nsfw
my butt hurts because it was so real
in reply to that love-scene. Sorry, had to write that down. Evil-newbrof forced me to do it —
