Well I’ve seen it at the cinema, 48fps in 3D.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
…
.
The 3D is nice. 48fps really make me feels like I am watching a giant HDTV. However, it makes the CG looks too clean. You can easily tell what’s CG and what’s not; Textures look too clear and sharp. It doesn’t really have the amateurish look to me, but I really do feel I am watching at home. There seems to be a lack of ‘atmosphere’ though; the mood lighting doesn’t come across as ‘moody’ enough.
There’s one really bad part in the CG - For some reasons, the mass battle scene in the Hobbit looks awful. I will re-watch in normal 24fps without 3D, but it was like everyone was moving in slow-mo.
The 3D part wasn’t too distracting, quite neatly done, though you can see some scenes were scripted with 3D in mind. There were many zoomed out sequences, a couple of first person view but just for a split second, so it’s cringe-worthy like the Doom movie and lots of plunging through pits and mines.
Some people may hate Radagast; The changes made to him feels all right in context of the Hobbit, but since this movie is presented as in the same universe as Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings, it feels too light-hearted and frivolous. The book gets away with that because of the way it is written and it is presented as fairy tale of sorts. The movie tries to combine the fun of the Hobbit and the awe of Lord of the Rings together and it doesn’t really mix well. Take the humor from Fellowship of the Ring and turn it up to 11. It’s something like that.
The pacing is not as good as Fellowship. The prologue is too heavy-handed and there were exposition dumping for the first half of the movie. Thorin is made into a hero figure with all his exploits dumped into the lap of the viewer - it wasn’t necessary for Aragorn but I don’t know why they have to do the same for Thorin. True, Aragorn’s identity and character was established halfway in Fellowship; in the Hobbit, first you have the prologue and very quickly soon after, exposition on Thorin.
The acting is good, and that may be what saves the movie. Action sequences are stretched a little too long, with lot more slashing and hacking than I have remembered in the book. Plot segments lifted from the Appendix are tied in rather okay - they don’t feel draggy. The bulk of the drag seems to come from the prologue. It feels like you are watching the Extended Cut for the first half hour.
All in all, I give it 7 out of 10, if Fellowship was 9.5 out of 10.
Mmm..that was an interesting scene, but I don’t really think so. It reminds me too much of the bridge scene in Moria.
The scene that is worth the price of admission is Bilbo vs. Gollum. The CG doesn’t look that impressive - though I have to see it on a normal cinema screen to be sure. The Goblin Town sequence (which the giant sequence leads up to) is probably second most favourite.
At Dex’s suggestion, I’ve closed the anticipation thread and opened a new thread for people who have seen it, moving over three posts that seem to fit better in this thread.
Flag any posts there that need to be moved here, or vice versa.
I was able to find it due to my Superior Intelligence and Quick Wit, but it would be courteous to give us a link when one does that, oh Twix the Great, Revered and Feared.
Not necessarily in that order, but I digress.
Just got back from the 3D IMAX screening. They gave out a set of four special posters to everyone which was pretty cool!
No spoilers here, I thought it was pretty good! Not as good as Fellowship IMO, but that might just be because at that time the world and effects of Middle Earth were something new, and by now we’ve seen a lot of it before so it didn’t have have that new wow factor. But I could just watch that world for hours. The scenery, the music, it was like I was returning to see some old friends. I didn’t think it dragged, in fact both my friend & I thought it seemed shorter than it really was.
Loved all the actors, especially Martin Freeman & James Nesbitt (Bofur). And Gollum of course, major props to Andy Serkis. I could listen to Hugo Weaving speaking Elvish to me all day long, mmm.
I now want to go again and see how it looks in the HFR version.
It’s sub 70% on Rotten Tomatoes, and solidly rotten when sorted by top critics. In light of the LotR films, this seemed like a sure thing, but it sounds like Jackson’s lost his touch.
I’ve heard mixed reviews from most people I know personally. I think that a lot of people critics included, came in with the expectation that it was going to be God’s gift to cinema while somehow also being incredibly jaded because of the “making it a trilogy” fiasco. I don’t think there was any possible way this movie was going to get an 80% or higher between the hype and the poorly-received trilogy thing.
But I’ll suspend actual judgment for after I see it myself.
My husband loved it, he is a big fan and he also is much more fanatical about all the technical stuff.
Me, I thought it was a very good adaptation of the story. Everybody acts well, sets and special effects are very, very good (the wargs and trolls are typical light-on-their-feet game quality CGI, but who cares).
But it was long, three hours without a break. It was intensely heavy on my eyes, with incredible busy panning screens that go by so quickly that it made my eyes hurt. The movie is shot at 48 frames per second instead of the usual 24, and that also gives added intensity. (That is the kind of tecnical stuff my husband loves).
The audience laughed a lot more then at the LOTR movies.
I loved it. But I am not going to see the other parts in hd in cinema. I’m going to buy them at home and watch and re-watch endlessly, because it is a very rich movie. So much happening, so much to see.
Maastricht is right, the Hobbit has a lot more humor and action in it and it is a whole lot more unsophisticated than Lord of the Rings. Not in a bad way.
Lord of the Rings tends to be what I call “high fantasy”, where wizards are moody and mysterious and everyone is just take everything so seriously. The first half of the Fellowship wasn’t like that, but after Rivendell everything becomes ‘serious’. There’s layers and layers of meaning behind everything. There’s nothing wrong that approach. The Hobbit’s approach is different from Lord of the Rings,
The Hobbit is the first hour of Fellowship stretched into a three hour long movie. It’s campy, fun, humorous and non-serious all the way. You have goofy wizards, singing goblins, riddle cackling gollums and lots of dwarves antics. To me, the times when the movie try to inspire the awe and seriousness so prevalent in high fantasy, it falls rather flat.
There are 3 exposition dump in the movies - those are the low points of the movie, especially the Dwarven battle at the start and the White Council scene.
This is the Hobbit; if you watch it expecting the Lord of the Rings, you’ll be disappointed. But if you watch it as it is - a campy, fun adventure, without the serious trappings of Lord of the Rings, it’ll be fun.
I didn’t really enjoy Fellowship, so personally I have no hesitation in saying that I think this was better. The main problem with this film is that it’s not different enough from the last trilogy (before you say “yeah obviously” I mean in terms of direction). I felt like I had seen it already and was quite bored by the end.
Some more specific stuff:
It’s got more humour than LOTR. I never laughed out loud but it’s a nice break from the looking heroic stuff
Definitely looks the part; the locations are fantastic and gollum’s animated better than ever
Bilbo is less whiny/ghey than frodo
I didn’t find the fight sequences very engaging (more in spoiler)
Other than when thorin was getting his ass handed to him late in the film, all the other fights I didn’t feel any sense of peril. It was just the chore of taking down wave after wave of mooks.
Just like the LOTR films there are some plot points that niggled me (obviously tolkien and not jackson’s fault): e.g. why didn’t bilbo use the ring to help save thorin? Why didn’t gandalf use the eagles/griffins earlier?
I was very disappointed, I just came home from seeing it. I’m a Tolkien fan, having read the books several times. I love his subtle humorous way of writing and this did not come through in the film at all. I was shocked to discover at the movie that this was going to be a THREE PARTER?
They changed several scenes, and added unnecessary drama where there wasn’t any in the book, making the whole thing seem forced. The article is right, and the whole thing looks like a video game. I was particularly reminded of World of Warcraft in the goblin compound.
The “white goblin” (this protagonist and details of his vendetta with Thorin does not even exist in the book) looks exactly like a creature Guillermo del Toro had in one of his movies, down to the swirly skin carvings. I’m sure this creature design is left over from his short stint with the movie. Maybe his influence is the reason the movie deviates from the book and not in a good way. I’m glad he didn’t end up directing, because the movie would have turned out even worse. Del Toro deals with psychological issues and magical realism, which is much different than a straight Tolkien-style fantasy reading. Del Toro’s movies are based on a totally different philosophy than “fantasy”. It seems many people get the two confused.
The encounter with the trolls was ham-handed, and a disappointment, realized especially after I read the section in the book after I returned from the movie. They had it all backwards, and completely skipped the part where Gandalf tricks the trolls into a fight by imitating their voices while Bilbo is hiding. The way the trolls actually caught the dwarves is much funnier in the book than what was depicted in the movie.
Fake drama: I so hate it that the makers decided they had to create false dramas, like the one between Thorin and the elves. It is a matter of tradition that dwarves don’t like elves much, but there was no specific event that made Thorin dislike elves. The group of travellers wasn’t “tricked” into going to Rivendell in the book, it was their destination all along.
The thing with Radagast was ridiculous. Where the heck did all that come from? It was very weird and unsettling. Another del Toro addition, I’m sure.
Oh, and the make-up of the dwarves, too over the top and phony. I thought I was watching the wizard of Oz! One dwarf in particular had a munchkin hairdo.
Thorin didn’t engage in a heroic showdown with the wargs and their riders. The Great Goblin wasn’t there. As usual, this is Peter Jackson’s “turn it up to 11!” style which I sometimes dislike.
What happened was everybody got up on the trees (which wasn’t resting on the edge of the cliff), and Gandalf set pine cones on fire. The goblins then pile up firewood around the trees and while singing a silly song, burn the dwarves and wizard alive. It was Gandalf who wanted to go out heroically; he wanted to jump down while casting a spell, then the eagles came and snatched them out.
Yah, they were the deus ex machina this time. Gandalf didn’t summon them. They just happened to hear all the din and noise, and because they dislike wargs and goblins, came and rescue the dwarves and Gandalf. Essentially, they just want to take part in the fun and taunt the goblins.
Azog. He was the original Orc who was slain by the dwarves during the war at Moria, and his son Bolg was in the Hobbit but he only appeared towards the very end. Azog was supposedly slain at Moria; not so in the movie version.
This is typical of movie making, actually, and I don’t fault PJ. It’s the same problem they had with Sauron. It’s hard to make the audience care about a villain who don’t even show up
As for the other parts, I am actually somewhat relieved that there’s more action in the Hobbit. It’s supposed to be the fairy-tale to Lord of the Ring’s epic myth. God forbids fantasy movies to have some sort of fun, eh? That said, the action sequence are little too drawn out; less is sometimes more I think. The Moria sequence in Fellowship was way better.
Ah, got ya. I thought he had summoned them because of the interaction with the butterfly just before. But I didn’t actually hear what he said to the butterfly so I don’t know what that was about.
Kk, with you now.
So yeah, that’s one difference in the screenplay that has made the story make less sense. So I guess it was jackon’s fault and not tolkien’s
I just saw it as well, rather than vent my disappointment in the other thread, I’ll do it here for your benefit.
Most of the additions that were made don’t enhance the movie or increase the action. Thorin’s new adversary doesn’t fit anywhere other than to give us a chance for more fight scenes. That’d increase the excitement if I thought any member of the party was in any danger. Since I know who makes it to the lonely mountain in the book, I don’t. It’s like watching someone play a video game on god mode. Every scene involving this subplot after the introduction had me glancing at my watch, because I knew I could ignore it. I know it less time than it felt, but it felt like it was a good hour of the movie.
The fight scenes in general have a cartoonish aspect that irritated me. It was like watching an Indiana Jones movie at points. The dwarf using the slingshot as a weapon doesn’t work at all as comic relief.
On the other hand, unlike Rusalka, I didn’t mind the Radagast addition, but it could have been edited down a bit. I actually like how the trolls were depicted, but it was a better scene as it was written in the book. I understand that things have to be changed to adapt a book to a movie. But there are things, like that scene, that didn’t have to be adapted. Some of the additions actually work, for instance the exchange between Gandalf and the Goblin King. Most of them just made an already long movie longer.
In terms of general movie making, it could have been edited down quite a bit. In a movie that’s over two and half hours, any shots inserted by the New Zealand Board of Tourism should be removed. The Indiana Jones scenes are using excessive tracking shots, as well.
I dunno if it’s that bad, but I’ll have to be in a good mood to bother seeing the second instalment in the theater.
This is probably what caused the “Indiana Jones” aspect of the fight scenes. It seems like they felt they just had to out-do LOTR, and in trying made them turn out kind of silly. Really, I don’t mind the “fun” aspects, but after the fifth or six “fun” scene in a row, I was ready for them to move the damn movie along somehow.
