Official Trailer is up as of today - kind of shocked that I’m the first to put it up here.
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Hover-over spoilers having hopefully been averted…
I’m not surprised, but I am sad, that apparently the whole Legolas and Tauriel thing is going to be romance-y. Just do a straight adventure story for the love of goats!
Hmph.
Otherwise, looks like a lot of what we’ve seen before, although I was pleased to hear Smaug’s voice. I do wonder about them revealing so much of him before the movie - I guess they figure things would get leaked anyway, so better to make the trailers into mini-reveals of their own.
It also still really bugs me that Bard looks like the love-child of Inigo Montoya and Legolas. I don’t mind the pretty, but it just weirds me out and takes me out of the narrative.
“Revealing so much of him”? I watched this trailer twice and couldn’t see anything. Didn’t they show quite a bit of Smaug when he originally conquered the Lonely Mountain in part I?
I have to say that I am one of those not thrilled with the expansion of this story into an epic. One of the best memories of my life is my 4th grade teacher reading this to us a little at a time over several weeks. There was just a hint of the dangers and horrors to come in the wider world, but the current dangers were just enough to keep us kids on the edges of our seats (not sending us home with nightmares). This has a distinct smell of exploitation of the success of the LotR trilogy, be it ever so lovingly crafted. I didn’t see the first Hobbit in the theater (I finally saw it on an airplane, in May, heh) and I probably won’t see this one either.
Roddy
Something bothering me: Bilbo says “Truly, details and songs fall short of your enormity.” I’m sure most people will interpret that as him saying “wow you’re huge!!!” But that is the definition of enormousness, enormity means “outrageous or heinous character; atrociousness.” I have no idea if that is intended or in the source material, but it kinda bothers me. Either Bilbo is saying “wow Smaug, I had no idea you were such a big asshole,” or else he is saying “you are so evil it’s awesome,” which makes me think of kids cartoons and other things were the bad guys always revel in evil. Like being called the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants (or DC’s similarly named) when Magneto is one of the more morally gray villains who wouldn’t consider himself evil. I know that it has had both definitions for some time, it just seems like something that would make Tolkien roll over in his grave. I will reserve outrage for actually seeing it in context.
Redhead is gonna die. I can’t get too bothered by Legolas as he probably got swooning women into the theaters. Tacked on love stories are usually bad unless done well.
I didn’t see Bard initially. I’ll look for non-blonde guys with arrows.
I can see your point, but Smaug seems to be the type to enjoy being told he’s an evil asshole.
Bilbo is in “disguise” as a burglar and a pickpocket, after all, so Smaug may feel they’re both on the same team, as it were. And I can’t imagine that he thinks of himself as a good guy.
Also, I never thought about Tauriel kicking it. That makes me feel much better. Maybe she’ll just die.
My first exposure to "The Hobbit " occurred in a similar fashion. I still remember making the eagles with my hands during the escape from the wargs . Thank you Mrs Dobson . You inspired me to read LOTR later.
I have mixed feelings about the way they’ve turned Hobbit into a trilogy. Of course, I’ll see it and I’ll probably enjoy it, but…
I’ve always scratched my head at the complaints some have with the LOTR trilogy. Any adaptation of any literary source is going to have some changes/additions/deletions to make it work onscreen–what plays well on a page isn’t necessarily going to play well on a screen. The only time it really bothers me is if the reasoning behind it is sloppy or arbitrary, or (in the case of deletions) it wouldn’t have used up much time if it was left in. (For example, some of the cuts they made to the songs in the Les Mis movie, or the missing explanation of the Marauders in Prisoner of Azkaban.) When the reasoning behind these changes is conscientious, I’m okay with it.
I may not have agreed with all the decisions Peter Jackson made for the LOTR trilogy, but for the most part I thought it was beautifully done. So it baffles me a bit that some seem to be saying, “Sure, it was a well-thought-out series of movies that the creators put a great deal of care and thought into and was 90-95% true to the books–but Aragorn fell off a cliff, so it sucks!” To me, the additions that were made seem more like embellishments than padding.
But in the case of The Hobbit–I think I agree with Roderick that it seems more like PJ is trying to exploit his past success with the LOTR trilogy rather than making the best Hobbit movie he could. Even if some of the material he adds comes from elsewhere in Tolkien’s writing, it seems to come of more as padding, not embellishment–the opposite of LOTR’s approach. Even a duology might have worked better than trying to stretch a book that was shorter than the first of the LOTR books into three movies.
Still, I can see the corner that PJ was painted into. The tone of The Hobbit was very different indeed to that of the LOTR novels…naturally, because Tolkien’s whole mythos didn’t really start evolving until Fellowship was underway. (As I understand, he didn’t even plan to tie the world of The Hobbit into his Middle Earth legendarium at first–it just sort of developed that way as he was writing his “Hobbit sequel” which evolved into LOTR.) Releasing LOTR first meant that PJ couldn’t be completely true to the tone of the novel The Hobbit–it would have been too jarring. So in some ways he had to make it more LOTR-like. I just question whether this was the proper tack to take.
Agreement. Slavish faithfulness to the original source isn’t always a virtue. One thing for sure: this is the best LOTR and Hobbit we’re going to see in our lifetimes!
Agreed. A lighter-hearted, more faithful, one-movie treatment, with “tra la la lally” elves and cartoony spiders, more suitable for children, could have been an artistically superior approach. Alas, the producers had dollar-ign in their eyes, and demanded a major thrill-packed epic.
And, well, as thrill-packed epics go, this one ain’t so awful bad!
Judging from part 1, it kind of is. I’m really not persuaded from that trailer that I want to see part 2 in the theater. And I was a huge fan of Jackson’s LOTR effort. It’s really agonizing to see this new trilogy head off a cliff as it seems to be going, and I hope I’m wrong in the end.
I’m really not pleased that the escape from the Elvenking’s halls looks as if it’ll be turned into another too-damn-long chase scene. Worse, the elves are shooting bows at them!
The elves treated the dwarves more or less decently in the books. Unless there’s one hell of an addition to the escape, trying to kill them as they go down the river puts the elves pretty firmly in the villain camp.
From what we’ve seen of elvish archery, if the elves are shooting at the dwarves, dwarves should be dying.
Still looking forward to this, but I have reservations.
The Elf King ‘interviewed’ the dwarves, then locked them in the cells for Bilbo to spring. They got sprung and snuck to the kitchens where Bilbo packed each dwarf into a barrel with the top spanged on, they didn’t ride in them like a Disney Teacup ride. Poor Bilbo had to try to ride on the outside of the barrel [like riding a pony or horse. Imagine the splinters:eek:]
I do not really remember at all if the Elves shot at them, you don’t normally use archery inside passages and chambers - the Elf King had a proper castle inside the hill. The only drawn bows I remember was when the Elves rescued them while they were running away from the nasty spiders.
It is had both definitions for centuries, in fact. Either way, a third option is to read it as Bilbo being very, very clever, and saying something intended to sound like a compliment that is in fact an insult of sorts.
The elves didn’t draw bows in Thranduil’s halls because they never knew anything was amiss – in the books, the escape went undiscovered until Bilbo and the dwarves were well away.
Just rubs me the wrong way – they could still do a jolting, down-river journey without making one of the good-aligned factions look worse than they were. One of my worries in this movie is that Thranduil is going to be treated as shallowly as Denethor was in the last trilogy, and this isn’t filling me with confidence.
There also appears to be an Orc attack happening - the trailer clip is too short to know ‘what’ or ‘why’ the elves are doing - they could very well be protecting our dwarven friends.
I try very hard not to read too much into the trailers -
I don’t like that Smaug’s voice is electronically enhanced, seemingly. Benedict Cumberbatch has a perfectly deep, musical, Shakespearean trained voice which needs no enhancement to convey wickedness and seduction.
