So I wasn’t the only one to think that! Good to know.
Did anyone else think that the Goblin/Orc King was highly reminiscent of Herod from the movie version of Jesus Christ, Superstar? That little bow …
I was worried that the movie would feel like it was an hour and a half too long. Instead, it only felt about a half hour too long.
The fight in the goblin city was tedious, and reminded me of the sauropod stampede in Jackson’s “King Kong”: As a special effects demo, it was spectacular. As an attempt at excitement, it was over-the-top and much too long. “Temple of Doom” is the perfect description, except that it works in “Temple of Doom”.
About 99% of Radagast’s scenes should have been cut (or never filmed at all). They were embarrassingly bad.
Probably my biggest worry going in to the film was that the dwarves would be completely ridiculous. Luckily their use as comedy wasn’t as bad as I had feared. Also, I think Freeman makes an excellent Bilbo and McKellen is still the perfect Gandalf.
Saw it tonight with my family and we all liked it a lot. I had heard that it dragged but I didn’t see that at all. As a matter of fact, when it ended, I was surprised that much time had already passed. Frankly, I didn’t want it to end.
Saw it last night in 48fps 3D. I went in with guarded expectations, but I was pretty happy with it. I thought a couple of the action scenes went on too long - expecially the Goblin Town fight - but overall I was pleased and did not find the 48fps overly distracting after a while.
I’m sick of going over this but the trilogies are totally different in tone, and TPM especially is excessively childish in design. If you can’t see that I doubt you watched the movies. Please point out what was childish about ANH or ESB?
Once upon a time there lived a peasant boy in a small village who dreamed of being a knight. One day, a herald came to him and told him that the princess had been taken prisoner by a black knight. Taking up his father’s sword, he rode forth to battle…
I saw the movie tonight and was hugely disappointed. I like it up until the trolls. I liked when Smaug attacked. I liked the battle of Moria. I even liked the parts with Radagast. I loved the dwarfs at Bag End.
However, I don’t think the movie I saw was my beloved Hobbit. Not because it was silly in parts. It should be. Its a children’s tale. Also not because were differences. I expected differences. I feel its not the Hobbit I love so much because there were differences for no reason I could see. What was unfilmable about how the book did the Trolls? Why did they need to make the changes about how Bilbo found the ring or how it went down on the mountain or in the mountain? Why change the part in the pine trees so much? Why make Bilbo become so heroic well before he is supposed to be? Whats with the white orc chasing them at all? I hate the ghost army at Gondor in RotK, but I understand why he did it. I don’t get the changes this time around.
Call me a fanboy if you want but this wasn’t Tolken’s hobbit. It was Jackson’s. If you want that I’m sure you will like the movie. My wife did. However, it left me disappointed.
Oh please. Childrens’ books are not necessarily either silly OR childish, unless the author chooses to make it so.
A short list of some of the things that ruined the movie for me:
[ol]
[li]Gimli the Comic Relief Dwarf[/li][li]The Stupendously! Amazing! Exploits! of Legolas[/li][li]The total mischaracterization of Denethor[/li][li]Aragorn’s Stupid Near Death experience[/li][li]Gandalf & Co. charging downhill on horseback into orc pikemen[/li][/ol]
I could go on, but you get the idea.
For me it was because the last two movies weren’t actually movies of LOTR. They were extended trailers for the super extended DVD editions. My theory is that Jackson didn’t know for sure what was going to happen with Fellowship of the Ring so he actually made a movie. Then when that went stratospheric he didn’t feel any such constraints on worrying about them as individual movies. Then he went and did the same thing with King Kong.
I felt that there was some bloat , but not as much as I was expecting reading the reviews. I actually liked the Radaghast sequence (except draining the evil from the very cute hedgehog)
The goblin-town battle was a bit too cartoony.
But otherwise I liked it.
From th eearly trailers (or maybe it was a production video) show Gandalf exploring some ruins - will there be a flashback of him getting the map and key from Thror?
Brian
Er, what’s childish about this? The bare-bones outline of a story in no way indicates whether a story is childish or not. Also, you seem to think that “suitable for children” and “childish” mean the same thing. They don’t. When people say that The Hobbit is a children’s book, that’s completely different from calling it silly or childish.
QFMFT. because that would explain So. Much. of the crazy stuff he threw willy-nilly into the 2nd & 3rd movies.
Good points, Madame.
Saw it in IMAX 3D. I thought it was great and quite enjoyed it. It did feel a little bit long, but it’s not like it dragged in parts - it was just lengthy.
Gollum was excellent as were the rock giants, but the wargs looked pretty fake especially in daylight.
The lack of handrail technology at the Elf town and in the goblin caves was quite distracting.
Thought about this some more. I guess a lot of my dissatisfaction relates to previous characterizations of it as a children’s story. In so many ways it was sweet, about personal interactions. I feel a lot of that was lost in the decision to tart it up as a whizbang action adventure. Think about how many of the action scenes inthe book take place offscreen/page. Or involve running/slinking away after a distraction.
Also, I felt there was little/no exposition of why BB would care so for the Shire. I guess it had been done in PJ’s previous 3 flicks, but here BB didn’t interact w/ another hobbit until he ran past/into a coupke on his way out of town.
Just saw it in 3-D. I know I’ve been a big supporter of 3-D but if I see this again it will be in 2-D. The parts that worked in 3-D were amazing, better than 2-D could possibly be, but most of the time when there was both movement and depth, the 3-D got very blurry and nothing at all was in focus. I might have to see it in 2-D to get enjoyment out of those scenes as well.
But other than that, I don’t see a problem with the movie: even the parts that were made up for the movie were not as bad as they were in LotR. And nearly every scene was around 20% too long (except for the wilderness and Shire shots.) The unexpected party and the fight in Goblin-town, chop 'em both down a bit.
I just finished reading the book to my daughter, and I saw the movie last night.
Liked some parts, disliked others.
Good changes:
-Bilbo’s character arc. In the book, it’s not really until Mirkwood that he starts being useful. I certainly understand why PJ moved that forward, since Mirkwood wasn’t in this book, and it’d be a drag to have Bilbo be useless for an entire movie. I wish he’d found a way to make him useful in a sneaky fashion instead of being able to kill a warg and an orc singlehandedly, but whatever.
-Speaking of which, Bilbo’s trickery of the trolls DID show him useful in a sneaky fashion, and that was great, much better than having Gandalf save them Yet Again.
-The changes in how Bilbo first saw Gollum were great: it avoided a lot of exposition and tightened that arc up. Excellent change.
The bad:
-Constant battles with the same “Oh fuck what’s going on? Oh no we’re falling hundreds of feet to our safety again!” feel. I really thought the need to showcase 3D hurt the movie; too many shots seemed to be done for the sake of 3D, not for the sake of good storytelling (I saw it in 2D, if that matters).
-The change to the trapped-in-trees sequence was really unfortunate. In the book, that sequence is deliciously sadistic and tense and hopeless. The movie reduced it to yet another soaring 3D mess. I hated this change.
Radagast didn’t really move me one way or another (the cutesy hedgehog was a bit much, I’ll say). The long beginning was my favorite part of the movie. Gollum was also my favorite part of the movie.
A lot of it was great, and I’ll definitely see the next one, but I hope PJ will find a way to mix up the battle sequences other than showing yet another way for the characters to fall hundreds of feet and be totally safe.
Edit: as for the charge of childishness, the novel is certainly written for children, but it’s written with a great combination of dry wit and whimsy. The humor here was much broader (thankfully no fart jokes, but an unnecessary belching contest, for example), and the wit generally didn’t work, IMO. One exception: the totally ridiculous musical sequence in which the dwarves hackysacked the dishes into a pile was pretty great.
Wife, daughter, and I saw it Friday night, loved it, will see it again.
Best part of the film was when Sophia and I caught the same Wilhelm scream: we turned to each other and gave a high-five (well, kind of low as to not distract the people behind us.) Over a year ago she asked me “Daddy, why do they use the same guy screaming in movies, the one who goes…” and she gives a dead-on impersonation of the Wilhelm scream… ? Since then, it’s been a thing for us to catch the scream, and there it was in The Hobbit in all its Wilhelmest glory.
My totally highbrow and serious newspaper used these exact words to compare Bilbo to Frodo: “A whole lot less constipated.”
Thought the movie was great fun. Radagast was OK, Gollem was the high point. Loved Erebor’s interior.