The best part of that series is in the first 3 minutes.
“Look at all this crap on the ground. That’s a little-known fact about Middle Earth; it’s 50% shit.”
What I find amusing about most non-horsy people when confronted with an area where a fair number of horses have passed recently is the commentary about the amount of horse shit on the ground. That tends to be one of the first things I notice in movies/tv programming in fantasy/historical pieces - the lack of horse shit [or really any shit, animal or human] on the ground. Indoor flushy plumbing is a very small time in history.
I just saw the movie and I was pretty disappointed. I think I liked that cartoon version from the 70’s better.
This movie seemed to miss the general feel of the characters and the story and instead emphasized action and new stuff they added that did nothing to develop the characters. I barely cared about them.
I generally liked LOTR but LOTR is a different story and a different type of story with a different feel. It seems like he just tried to copy his formula for that movie into this one instead of really trying to match the feel of the book.
The fact that in this thread alone so many people have so many varied expectations or ideas of how things should’ve been portrayed tells me that there’s no way PJ could’ve pleased everyone in any way. He had decisions to make, he made them with respect to a general audience as well as to fan expectation, and especially to what the LOTR set up stylistically, so his job was not an easy one. I think he’s done the best as can reasonably be expected.
Even though I thought it felt a little too long (mostly because I was in an uncomfortable chair), each individual sequence was the right length. I think if they had exited the goblin cave and saw the Lonely Mountain and ended it there, without the additional Orc/eagle/tree battle, it would’ve been perfect, but in and of itself I enjoyed that sequence too. And every sequence, if looked at independently.
I cannot imagine how there can be another 25 minutes added in the Extended Editions.
I disagree.
1 - LOTR consistently scored in the 90’s % on rotten tomatoes, Hobbit in the 60’s, so he was able to please most people with those 3 movies but really did not do the same with the Hobbit
2 - If he had stayed more true to the book, you don’t know that people that liked the current version wouldn’t have also liked that version
I’m usually not this critical about movies and sometimes I find critics to be too critical, but this one really stands out for me, I really think he could have done a much better job.
I saw the movie last night and I thought it was better than many of the reviews said it was. However, because I had to break away for about ten minutes, I don’t know what happened between the scene when the group arrives at the abandoned farm and Thorin is complaining to Gandalf about how the elves didn’t help the dwarves when they were under siege and the scene where Radigast shows up and tells how evil forces are building up around them. Can somebody fill me in on what I missed?
You appear to have missed the entire sequence with the stone trolls, and then the finding of the Elven swords (Sting, given to Bilbo, and Glamdring, for Gandalf).
You missed the Elven orgy and car-chase.
This reminds me of a very little thing: Did anybody else notice that Bilbo mentioned “the plumbing” at Bag End (and how the dwarves had done something to it)?
Yep. It was probably Bombur.
I laughed. It was enough of an anachronism to pull me out of the story a wee bit, but in the spirit of the source text I easily forgave it.
Why? Romans had plumbing, why not hobbits? Esp the richest hobbit around?
Three words. Po. Tay. Toes.
But the source material here is very different; I think the assertion is that he probably couldn’t have done that with The Hobbit.
This…sounds like you are agreeing with GuanoLad?
I agree there is room for universal improvements - less bird poop, shorter ridiculous running action sequences, but overall, there’s not actually THAT much that could have been done to make it more universally pleasing.
OMG, now you’ve got me thinking: Is it possible that somebody bet PJ he couldn’t write in a car chase? That would explain a lot. . .
Also, is there anyone who thought the Guano was appropriate? Is there anyone for whom it is NOT one of the primary things that come to mind when you think of the movie?
I think this may be the primary point of agreement across a sea of differing opinions.
Saruman: “Radagast the Brown! […] Radagast the Bird-tamer! Radagast the Simple! Radagast the Fool! “ I think the messy wizard shows why Saruman under-rated Radagast.
Meaning that it’s impossible to create a movie of The Hobbit that has significantly fewer criticisms?
I disagree with that.
No, I was disagreeing.
Using the rotten tomatoes ratings of 90% LOTR vs 60% Hobbit as the illustration of the argument:
GuanoLad seemed to think changes would make one set happy and one set not so happy resulting in the same 60%
I think it’s possible to produce a movie that makes both groups happy resulting in something like 90%.
I don’t remember the book well, but I thought it was fluff when I read it, with a whole bunch of interchangeable dwarfs with goofy names. I think the movie improved on some of that.
I agree with those who say that it would be pretty much impossible to please more people with a movie on this book. For those of us who aren’t really particularly impressed by the book, changes will usually be an improvement. If it weren’t done by Jackson, I probably wouldn’t have gone to see it.
I saw it two days ago in 2D. I didn’t notice anything unusual about the look of the film, so I assume it wasn’t the high frame rate version.
I thought it was entertaining enough, on the whole. I thought the opening could have been compressed a bit (although I’m familiar with the book, so maybe some of the exposition was a bit lost on me) and I could take or leave the bits with Radagast (“I’ll lead the wargs away by running in roughly the same direction at a slightly faster speed!” – um…okay). I liked the “video gamey” bits in Goblin-town, though.
The problem is the tone of the original book, and the tone of the LOTR movies do not match. If PJ had made the Hobbit more like the book, the mismatch would’ve stood out even more starkly and a lot of the mainstream audience, especially those unfamiliar with the book, would have been turned off. He had to make a major compromise, and no matter where that fell, he would’ve had a lot of people turned off by it.
It is also hard for him, as it’s no longer new and amazing. LOTR was an incredible achievement: an unfilmable book, something most audiences had never seen before, on an unfathomable scale. Now it’s nothing special to see legions of forces, epic landscapes, and seamlessly integrated digital characters. Indeed, in many ways it’s almost identical to LOTR, with some of the same characters, same locations, and the same relationship between the Wizard and the lead Halfling, that it’s more easily dismissed by a percentage of the audience. But his hands were tied; that’s what’s in the book, plus familiarity is an ideal way to metaphorically hold the audience’s hand as they re-enter a familiar world. If he hadn’t done that, reviews would’ve suggested doing so as a good idea. As he had done that, reviews say it just seems like we’ve seen it all before.
Basically, no matter what he did, he would’ve had a sizeable backlash.