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Who has seen the Hobbit?

Re: Who has seen the Hobbit?

Saw it last night. It won't hold up as well as the trilogy, but I think the professional critics were being a bit harsh. I'm guessing the trek through Mirkwood will eat up quite a bit of time in the 2nd movie. I figure it'll be like the Two Towers and come out as the most plodding and worst of the three.
 
Re: Who has seen the Hobbit?

FadeToBlack&Gold said:
Saw it last night. It won't hold up as well as the trilogy, but I think the professional critics were being a bit harsh. I'm guessing the trek through Mirkwood will eat up quite a bit of time in the 2nd movie. I figure it'll be like the Two Towers and come out as the most plodding and worst of the three.
Click to expand...

I'm hoping the first was just that.
 
Re: Who has seen the Hobbit?

Finally got around to it.

Most of the changes were in the execution of the plot points (I'm trying to think of a change for the better, but I can't), and the unwelcome addition of the Moria orcs that don't mind daylight.

The stuff I liked was really, really good. The Riddles In The Dark scene in particular (although they really didn't bother to sell the darkness aspect, did they?).
 
Re: Who has seen the Hobbit?

This movie does not carry the same weight as the LOTR movies, nor should it. The reliance on CG compared to the LOTR trilogy was disappointing, and yes, the time was long considering the source material being split into three movies.

All that said I was pleasantly surprised how much I enjoyed the movie. I rarely felt myself wondering how close it was getting to the end and the cut off at the end was a good bookend for Bilbo going from a Hobbit wanting nothing to do with adventure to being fully vested in the group's outing well beyond what he or the dwarves could have imagined.
 
Re: Who has seen the Hobbit?

Saw it tonight, and I thought it was pretty good flick. Bear in mind that I've never actually read the Hobbit, and I would think that some of you might want to realize that they probably did do this film this way mostly for those who haven't read the book. Just looking at it from a movie, it was pretty good, although I did think that them going from scrambling to get away from the Goblins to being hunted down and cornered by the Orcs was a bit ridiculous there. but that's just me.
 
Re: Who has seen the Hobbit?

I think reading this thread enhanced my enjoyment of this movie because I went in expecting "Manos: the Hands of Fate". And it wasn't. Hooray!
 
Re: Who has seen the Hobbit?

Does Beorn appear in this film? I would think it would end at his house.
 
Re: Who has seen the Hobbit?

geezer said:
Does Beorn appear in this film? I would think it would end at his house.
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No. He will be in the second film (and the third, presumably)
In The Desolation of Smaug (scheduled for release on 13 December 2013), having successfully crossed over (and under) the Misty Mountains, Thorin and Company must seek aid from a powerful stranger, Beorn, before taking on the dangers of Mirkwood Forest—without their Wizard. The film will likely follow the group through Mirkwood, their arrival in Lake-town, and their exploration of the Lonely Mountain, culminating in the desperate fight against the ancient dragon Smaug.
There and Back Again (scheduled for release on 18 July 2014) will likely begin with the Battle of the Five Armies, which occurs near the end of The Hobbit, and may then explore the adventures Bilbo had in returning home, events which were not covered in the book The Hobbit, and will perhaps reveal some of Gandalf's investigation of and conflict with the Necromancer in southern Mirkwood, serving as bridge between the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings film trilogies.
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Do they explain in the book why Gandalf doesn't go with the company into Mirkwood? I'm guessing he heads to Dol Guldur to confirm the necromancer is Sauron. According to the books, he did this before (9 decades before) and the White Council was aware that Sauron was indeed at Dol Guldur. According to the books, this is the year Saruman agreed to attack Dol Guldur to stop Sauron (but really to prevent Sauron from finding the ring so Saruman could first).
 
Re: Who has seen the Hobbit?

I think I need to go see it again in the standard version. Ralph mentioned that he liked seeing it in 3D after seeing it in standard definition and going back to reread the book. I've read the four books and watched the LOTR movies. I saw the Hobbit in 3D and found myself pulled into the scenery so much that I didn't pay enough attention to the characters, perhaps because I already knew the story. At any rate I found myself gripping the sides of the movie theater chair as the two mountains were fighting each other. I saw it on a Saturday night but at 14 bucks a ticket for 3d, the movie was sparsely attended.
 
Re: Who has seen the Hobbit?

Saw it last night with a friend. Meh. The book could have made at most two movies. It felt like things were way too stretched out and yet, at the end of an almost three hour movie I heard more than one person say, "that's it?"

I cannot believe this is going to be three movies, and personally I felt like they made it so obvious that Saruman had already gone evil that Gandalf, Galadriel and Elrond must have been complete morons to not have figured it out, making the whole scene with Gandalf telling Saruman about the ring in Fellowship seem borderline insane.
 
Re: Who has seen the Hobbit?

I saw the Desolation of Smaug yesterday. I enjoyed it but The Hobbit really can only support two movies. I thought that Peter Jackson did a very good job with Smaug, but there were some things that seemed quite hard to comprehend. For example, a female elf Tauriel was added. That in itself wasn't bad, but her interaction with one of the dwarfs (Kili?) was weird.

BTW, I went to an early showing because I had to get back for a 4 PM RPI hockey game. Attendance at the showing was quite poor. (So was attendance at the hockey game by the way.)

Has anyone else seen the movie?
 
Re: Who has seen the Hobbit?

I saw it yesterday.


Any hope(s) I had for the trilogy are ended.

Hopefully the extended edition will rescue it to the degree that they did (for me) the first movie, but this one goes way more off course than the first movie.


I realize that they are "pulling info from the appendices" to flesh out the side stories that would be going on concurrently to the Hobbit main story, but much of this side story is patently NOT from the appendices and is rather Peter Jackson fan fiction. He's just making **** up or changing what was actually written to "make a better movie."

I tried to go in with the mindset of... Forget the book and look at this as a movie. A fantasy epic standing on its own merits. It's not good even in that light.

Once again, the fight scenes are something out of a video game or a Speilberg movie or worse, Jackson's version of King Kong. One thing that made the first trilogy great was that the fighting was based - as much as a movie will be - on the real world and real world physics. The only exception that I can think of is Legolas taking down the Oliphant.

What happens in these movies is just eye candy for 15 year olds or stoners. Completely over the top to the point where it takes the viewer out of the movie. Never once did I feel tension for any of the good guys in the movie where I did almost every time in the first trilogy and other good movies of this ilk.

Rubbish.


I will say that Smaug was great - until the ridiculous Smaug v. dwarves half-hour sequence where he's made to look like a half-wit and then suddenly decides to leave his mountain with the dwarves still there and the Arkenstone waiting to be taken. It's clear he knows about the significance of the stone and why would he let the dwarves prepare a better ambush? Also - surfing on molten gold? :rolleyes:
 
Re: Who has seen the Hobbit?

Haven't seen Smaug yet, I'm just mentally preparing myself for the awful by coming here and having my suspicions confirmed.

Gurtholfin said:
Once again, the fight scenes are something out of a video game or a Speilberg movie or worse, Jackson's version of King Kong.
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"Out of curiosity, what's your point of reference for Spielberg here?"

That was going to be the question I asked you before I remembered that Temple of Doom, Kingdom of the Crystal Skulls, The Adventures of Tintin and Hook all exist. I'll defend the over-the-top cartoon-y nature of Hook and Tintin, but man oh man the two bad Indy movies really do have the same problem as An Unexpected Journey, don't they?

Gurtholfin said:
The only exception that I can think of is Legolas taking down the Oliphant.
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Ugh. I keep trying to forget about that. To a lesser extent, there was the shield-surfing thing at Helm's Deep.

My biggest nerd-rage objections to the LOTR trilogy were the Olyphaunt (or however you spell that **** thing), the deus-ex-machina nature of Aragorn's ghost army (granted, that one's all on Tolkien) and the tendency to turn Gimli into little more than a funny sidekick.
 
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Re: Who has seen the Hobbit?

The Speilberg reference is more in regards to the bending of physics in escape scenes - the same bending of physics is incorporated into much of the battle scenes in these movies. After enough of these, you become desensitized to them (like explosions and car chases in other movies) and the sense of tension that should be present becomes replaced with boredom.
 
Re: Who has seen the Hobbit?

Gurtholfin said:
I saw it yesterday.


Any hope(s) I had for the trilogy are ended.

Hopefully the extended edition will rescue it to the degree that they did (for me) the first movie, but this one goes way more off course than the first movie.


I realize that they are "pulling info from the appendices" to flesh out the side stories that would be going on concurrently to the Hobbit main story, but much of this side story is patently NOT from the appendices and is rather Peter Jackson fan fiction. He's just making **** up or changing what was actually written to "make a better movie."

I tried to go in with the mindset of... Forget the book and look at this as a movie. A fantasy epic standing on its own merits. It's not good even in that light.

Once again, the fight scenes are something out of a video game or a Speilberg movie or worse, Jackson's version of King Kong. One thing that made the first trilogy great was that the fighting was based - as much as a movie will be - on the real world and real world physics. The only exception that I can think of is Legolas taking down the Oliphant.

What happens in these movies is just eye candy for 15 year olds or stoners. Completely over the top to the point where it takes the viewer out of the movie. Never once did I feel tension for any of the good guys in the movie where I did almost every time in the first trilogy and other good movies of this ilk.

Rubbish.


I will say that Smaug was great - until the ridiculous Smaug v. dwarves half-hour sequence where he's made to look like a half-wit and then suddenly decides to leave his mountain with the dwarves still there and the Arkenstone waiting to be taken. It's clear he knows about the significance of the stone and why would he let the dwarves prepare a better ambush? Also - surfing on molten gold? :rolleyes:
Click to expand...

Unfortunately for you and me they don't make movies like that anymore. I'm 100% onboard with your first review and your second review. I would have liked the movie you wanted much better than the movie that was made. That being said I knew that wasn't what I was going to get before I even left the house. I guess I can compartmentalize things better than most. Maybe that's my Superpower.

We're incredibly lucky that The Lord of the Rings films turned out as well as they did. Even so the vast majority of Tolkien purists hated the films. I wonder if in some ways their hatred gave Jackson the leeway to crank up the derp on The Hobbit?
 
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