Hobbit Movie -- I've seen it! [open spoilers]

Cafe Society
101

I loved that! I like how they added the songs and tunes, I remember all the songs from the Rankin/Bass version.

I just saw the film again today, this time in the 48fps version, and I was completely blown away by how much better it was! I liked it in IMAX, but 48fps was just amazing. For the first few minutes, when old Bilbo is walking through his home, there is that weird sense like the film is being sped up, even though he’s not moving faster, but after 10 minutes or so I didn’t notice that any more and could see how clear and smooth it made the rest of the movie look. Panning shots or battle scenes with lots of movement looked the best I’ve ever seen them. When I saw the film in IMAX on Thursday, I was annoyed by the constant motion blur everytime there would be a sweeping aerial shot, that’s gone in the 48fps. Everything is clear and you can actually watch and follow characters during fight scenes.

There were things I didn’t like, yes, probably because I love the animated version and used to watch it many times as a child, so that was how I pictured many of those scenes. The goblins were much scarier in the cartoon than here. And moving the fir trees to the edge of a cliff made me :rolleyes:. But I liked it much more the 2nd time and definitely will say to see it in 48fps!

102

Watched this on Friday night. Like some of you all, I’m pretty intimate with Middle Earth and things Tolkien. The Lord of the Rings films fell very flat for me, so I went into this expecting to be equally underwhelmed and pissed off, and I loved it. A lot.

Particular highlights:

[ul]
[li]Martin Freeman was fabulous. I haven’t watched Sherlock, or seen him in anything before, and I found his Bilbo to be well-balanced and nuanced; both excited and drawn to adventure, and put out and scared at the same time.[/li][li]The art direction was beautiful. Hobbiton looks great, Erebor was spectacular, the goblin town . . . all the settings fit very well to my eye.[/li][li]Back-story cut scenes were done very well, and added a lot of appropriate context to the characters and story. [/li][/ul]

My biggest complaint about the movie was the ridiculous battle/chase scenes. Somehow, I have no problem believing, in the world of Middle Earth, that the Heroes can fight off scores of orcs, but I get taken right out of it when they fall hundreds of feet to no ill effect, or manage to run a ridiculous gauntlet through Goblin Town, jumping and falling at exactly the right moments, or riding on the knees of stone giants and surviving. Some might say that those are just as believable as Thorin taking blows to the arm and not having it be shattered by the force of it, but to me, that’s the sort of thing that Heroes can do, but super-human jumping/falling (or riding on shields, for example) are extra-worldly, and rip me out of the tale.

Also, I have to say that after a few seconds of brain short-circuiting, I liked Radagast. I like the concept that his obsessive and overly-compassionate concern with the individual lives in the forest holds just as much power as the broader, meta-issues that Gandalf concerns himself with. As Gandalf (cheesily) says in the movie, " I found it is the small things, everyday deeds of ordinary folk, that keeps the darkness at bay. Simple acts of kindness and love."

Radagast’s magic that saves the hedgehog also drives the spiders away; I thought that was a very elegant way of demonstrating the theme of “small acts of kindness have great power for good.”
At any rate, I could nit-pick little things and changes that I didn’t love, or that aren’t totally “true” to the book and source material, but frankly, I thought Jackson did a wonderful job of telling the story, while bringing some of the characters alive in a way that they are not in the book. Yes, having the company stuck up in the trees, and also on the edge of a cliff! Double danger oh nooeessss!!, and some other things were very action-movie-esque, and didn’t help the storytelling, IMHO, but nothing was changed beyond recognition, and no characters were ruined (as they were in LoTR).

103

Is she old enough to date? Because my 11 y/o son and I had the exact same moment of glee, and I’d love for him to take up with a gal like that.

104

Rock 'em Sock 'em Mountainsides!

Other random thoughts: Okay, I know they had to show Smaug stick his head out of the gold at the end menacingly. But wouldn’t it have been cool to show, instead, Scrooge McDuck! (You know how he loved to “bathe” in his gold.)

When that one drawf was swinging the long pole back and forth in the Troll King fight, was I the only person who thought, “It’s like the flyswatter from the original Land of the Lost”?

In the credits, there were people with the last names “Swords King” and “Love Greed”. Either eerily appropriate, or somebody’s kidding. (Sorry, I don’t remember the first names or what their function was.)

And my favorite “action scene”, although of course not a battle, was the dishes being juggled among the dwarves at the beginning.

105

I saw it today and I have to say…it was really good.

Not as good as any individual Lord of the Rings movie, but I definitely would give this a very positive review. There were a few draggy parts, but it moved well for the most part and I really liked it.

I thought Thorin was going to kill the pale orc when they showed him get up near the end to attack him.

I thought Radagast was approaching too silly, but that is the director and the script, not McCoy.

The escape fro the goblin underground was great.

I’d rank them like this(note: I am using extended LOTR movies):

  1. Fellowship: 9/10
  2. Two Towers: 10/10
  3. Return of the King: 9.5/10
  4. Hobbit: 8/10
106

I had mixed feelings about this, over all I liked it a lot, however the part that bugs me took a while to pin down.
its a 3 HOUR LONG childrens movie…no gore to speak of, dwarves beating on trolls with swords and no wounds, the goblin king was great until he got gutted and nothing came out, now I get it, it was a kids book and a kids movie, but who the hell thinks 3 hours is a good idea for kids to have to sit through?

other than that I liked it a lot.

107

There was also an FX technician named “Thrain Sharbolt”.

108

I liked the movie. But the 3-D 48 fpm thing was totally weird looking. I kept thinking that they’d got the lighting all wrong or something because it looked so… cheap. It looked like someone snuck into the LOTR prop lot, stole the beautiful props, then made a cheap home movie with a cell phone camera. It totally lacked the atmosphere of LOTR, just the scenery looked fake and plastic.

So I enjoyed the movie, but I’d definitely go with the old fashioned 2-D 24 fpm.

109

Does the movie have the songs?

110

She’s 11 herself, and no, she’s not dating yet. :wink:

She’s also a big Doctor Who fan.

111

Some of them. It has Far Over the Misty Mountains Cold and the Dwarves song about breaking the plates, and the Goblin King sings a couple lines, but that’s it.

112

Big Tolkien fan here. I liked it a lot… for me, it didn’t drag at all. One big plus was that I found all of the three main characters in this installment (Bilbo, Gandalf, and Thorin) to be really good. My main criticism was that I felt that Jackson just messed with the story too much… I can handle a certain amount of that, but it seemed like he took it too far. I can probably adjust to it, though.

I also thought the fight scene in Moria was too long and too over the top… and none of the songs really worked.

The one moment that just completely took me out of the movie was the Great Goblin’s last words. Cheap laugh, does not belong at all.

113

Yeah the slideshow version’s great.

114

Actually, both of those ARE Jackson’s fault, because neither of those scenes happened like that in the book.

115

Went last night.

Enjoyed it, but definitely had a few bits that dragged- Radagast was awful and way over the top, and the bit with the stone giants started, in my view, as a thing of awesome, but then went on too long, and dialled the peril up to 11 for no good reason- plus some of them appeared to be standing on thin air. The goblin bit was also fun, but then went too far, then a bit further.

Incidently, is it just me that’s getting rather annoyed by ‘cities’ that don’t appear to have any actual living spaces in- just vast caverns criss-crossed with more bridges than you can shake a stick at? Where do all the goblins sleep? Eat? Store their food and spare manky loincloths? Same goes for the dwarf city- without the loincloth bit, obviously.

Plus… um… the moth and the thrush both flew wrong, and the hedgehogs moved weirdly. I know that sounds utterly petty, but it really bugged me.

Other than that, I liked it :wink:

116

Saw it last night, and loved it. I was afraid it would be a long sit, but it wasn’t. In fact, it was probably the fastest 2 hour and 46 minute movie I’ve seen in a very long time.

Things I liked:

  • Bilbo. Martin Freeman was great. I’m not a big hobbit fan in general, but he made me like them. Much less whiny and big-doe-eyed than Frodo.
  • Thorin. Very noble, and…well…okay…kind of a hottie. :slight_smile: He was very good at being expressive with nothing more than his eyes.
  • The meeting between the Elves and Gandalf.
  • The interior of the Dwarves’ mountain. Reminded me a bit of Grim Batol in WoW, only more impressive.
  • Gandalf. I always like Gandalf.
  • Gollum. Very well done. It was nice to see Dobby getting work. :slight_smile:
  • The Dwarves’ song about their homeland. Beautiful and chilling. The version sung by them, not the one done by the pretty-boy pop singer at the end. I need to hunt that up.

Things I didn’t like:

  • 48 fps. I’m remembering the first scene in FotR, when I thought it looked out of place and weirdly filmed, like a TV movie in the middle of a film. I got that impression from the whole Hobbit movie. Things just looked… off. No motion sickness issues at all, though.
  • Radagast. He was just too batshit crazy and silly for me.
  • The unbelievable action sequences. People in Middle Earth must be indestructible, because some of those falls would have killed any normal person.
  • The storm giant fight. It felt tacked on. Visually impressive, but it felt like Rock 'em Sock 'em Mountains.

Comment: The White Orc looked like a buffed-up version of Voldemort.

I’m looking forward to the next one. I was a little dubious about the stretched out running time, but the first one felt like a lovely visit back to Middle-Earth. If the other two give me that same feeling, I’ll gladly give them my money. I’ll probably skip the 48 fps for the next ones, though.

117

The goblin wasn’t gutted that I saw. It looked like a relatively shallow cut into blubber with the tip of the blade.

My eight-year-old’s first reaction at the end: “is it over already?”

118

-48 fps was was horrible and almost made me walk out :frowning:
-Most edits from the book were unnecessary and added nothing :frowning:
-Radagast was Jar Jar in a robe :frowning:

On the plus side, the CGI was really good and the last haf of the movie flowed well. All-in, it has potential in the future movies, but is still not yet beating the original animated film (which had better songs and dialogue even if it did leave out a lot).

119

Looked gutted to me, but since nothing, not even blood, came out, I assume he was just startled by a papercut on his stomach.

The lack of gore was noticable at several points. Such as pulling a blade out of a warg head and it is perfectly clean. Nobody bleeds and only bad guys die.

120

The “pretty-boy pop singer” was Neil Finn, a New Zealander, who, despite being relatively obscure on this side of the pond, has been hugely successful in that corner of the world for 30 years. He was front man for Crowded House, if that rings any bells.