Re: Who has seen the Hobbit?
Compare the Moria scenes with the Goblin Town sequence, and that should tell you all you ever need to know about the difference in how CGI was used in each set of movies.
Seems pretty much the same to me. Shots of the live actors interspersed with far shots of digital hobbits and men running through caves and down stairways, rock and wooden stairways collapsing and crumbling. CGI orcs and goblins falling to their deaths by the hundreds, etc.
Now, you could argue, and have a point, that the goblin chase was so unrealistic as to be comical. Our heroes falling hundreds of feet, with debris and collapsed structures crushing down on top of them, and none of them get so much as a scratch. And you just don't feel that they're in any peril whatsoever. Not like in Moria.
The underlying problem is, Lord of the Rings was made a semi-serious film considering it's content. The Hobbit has not been given the same care. It's almost as if Peter Jackson took to heart the fact that The Hobbit was considered a children's story when it was written and The Lord of the Rings was certainly not written as a child's tale.
I think it's the opposite. The Hobbit
was a children's book, lighthearted and whimsical, with just enough scary bits to have the kiddies sleeping with the nightlight on. Jackson has taken this Hobbit and turned it into a LOTR prequel, with scary orcs chasing our company, goblins, the eminent presence of Sauron pervading everything, the ring being dangerous, and not just a parlor trick. It's much darker and less playful than it needs to be. In the extended version of An Unexpected Journey, you get a hint of that whimsy in the scenes of Bilbo wandering around Rivendell, in awe of its beauty and magnificence, wowed to be in the company of the Elven folk. Freeman does a great job portraying this without saying a word. That's where you come to see why Bilbo developed such an affection for the place, so much that he had to journey back to it in LOTR. But you don't get that in the theatrical version.
Would have been interesting to see what Guillermo del Toro had done with this if he'd stayed around to direct it.
