AtomikaLive fast and get fucked or whateverRegistered Userregular
- Spoiler notes -
- It's a shame that the theatrical cuts of these films have left out the scene from the EE where Thror is a total dick to Thranduil, causing the rift between Elves and Dwarves in the first place, as it really paints Thranduil much more of a jerk than he is by taking away his motivation. Instead of a king unjustly slighted by another, he comes off as a greedy prick looking for jewelry. There are so many little things like this in these films, where Jackson seems to have little interest in digging into the context of the various conflicts. Probably because it takes time away from all video game-like set pieces.
- I had really been looking forward to Billy Connolly's Dain Ironfoot, so I was fairly disappointed when he got about three minutes of screentime. Great beard, though. Sad about how comical he gets played during the battle scenes. Some of Jackson's worst impulses run rampant in these films, and inserting slapstick into grim scenes of devastation seems to be something he can't pass up. The Battle for Erebor should have been more like Helm's Deep, with the entrenched dwarves staving off waves of Orcs, but instead it's more Pellinor Fields, with the eagles instead of the ghost army. How was Erebor the "center of the dwarf kingdoms" if it didn't have defense countermeasures? It seems like that would be something the dwarves would be all over.
- Gandalf kept referring to Erebor's "strategic position" as the reason for Sauron wanting it, but he never explained what that exactly meant. Erebor is long fucking way from anything, other than maybe Mirkwood, with Gondor and Rohan being thousands of miles away and Rivendell being several hundred. Also, Sauron already had control of Angmar and Gundabad, which were already in the north and closer to Rivendell than Erebor, so I really have no idea what Gandalf was talking about. Again, endemic of this trilogy, lots of people are doing things but no one is really explaining why.
- Legolas spends much of this movie just dicking about and pining over Tauriel, who just isn't into him like that. Though he may have a chance now that Kili is dead.
- Tauriel's feelings for Kili are probably the most underdeveloped thing in this trilogy stuffed full of underdeveloped things. They have maybe a combined three minutes of screentime together across all three films. Yet another of the myriad plot points that needs either a lot more time or to be wholly excised.
- The Aragorn mention at the end is really, really clunky and very winky-winky. Blah.
- Everyone cheered in the theater when Thorin sunk Azog into the ice, it was a very cool(!) moment; too bad the rest of that fight after that was really dumb.
- I was a little surprised that the bookend with Old Bilbo at the end here actually overlapped Fellowship, occurring about five minutes after that film started. A weird choice, as it seems like it breaks the continuity a little, but not a huge deal.
- The weird lighting in so many of the exteriors has bothered me throughout all three movies. It seems like so many scenes take place precisely at sunrise or sunset, and everything is washed out in a pale blue and orange bloom. It's weird to me that these films in so many ways look worse than the LOTR movies.
- Thinking back on it, it seems like an obvious choice to better characterize the dwarves would have been to give them a tactical specialization for the group. Like, Dori would be a healer, Bombur would do demolitions, Dwalin would be battlemaster, Balin would be the tactician, Ori would be a spy . . . so on and so on.
- Thinking back on it, it seems like an obvious choice to better characterize the dwarves would have been to give them a tactical specialization for the group. Like, Dori would be a healer, Bombur would do demolitions, Dwalin would be battlemaster, Balin would be the tactician, Ori would be a spy . . . so on and so on.[/spoiler]
I now want to see Steven Soderbergh's Thorin's 11 and/or Quentin Tarantino's Dwarf Force Thirteen. Possibly Robert Aldrich's The Dirty Dozen-plus-one.
Atomika, how would you rank the three films, if you even can? I haven't yet seen The Battle of the Five Armies, but whereas with The Lord of the Rings I can easily rank the films for myself, I felt that the first two Hobbit movies were more equal in their flaws. I wonder how you see this, especially after having seen all three of the films.
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
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AtomikaLive fast and get fucked or whateverRegistered Userregular
- Thinking back on it, it seems like an obvious choice to better characterize the dwarves would have been to give them a tactical specialization for the group. Like, Dori would be a healer, Bombur would do demolitions, Dwalin would be battlemaster, Balin would be the tactician, Ori would be a spy . . . so on and so on.[/spoiler]
I now want to see Steven Soderbergh's Thorin's 11 and/or Quentin Tarantino's Dwarf Force Thirteen. Possibly Robert Aldrich's The Dirty Dozen-plus-one.
Atomika, how would you rank the three films, if you even can? I haven't yet seen The Battle of the Five Armies, but whereas with The Lord of the Rings I can easily rank the films for myself, I felt that the first two Hobbit movies were more equal in their flaws. I wonder how you see this, especially after having seen all three of the films.
This latest one would be the best, so:
1. BOTFA
2. AUJ
3. DOS
I really am not fond of DOS simply because it doesn't tell a story. If you call a "movie" a thing with a story that has a beginning, a middle, and an end, that film is woefully incomplete. Things simply happen, sometimes randomly, until the screen goes dark and the credits roll.
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AtomikaLive fast and get fucked or whateverRegistered Userregular
I also agree that seeing a more militarized dwarf force would have been the way I would have gone.
As it stands, the dwarves are just kinda bumbling, greedy fools wearing plot armor.
The ending of Desolation of Smaug actually worked pretty well for me as a cliffhanger. There was a lot before it that I didn't care about at all, but there and then it made me go "Ohhh fuck...". There was a rhythm to those last minute or two that engaged me, not least because it had been missing beforehand.
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
As it stands, the dwarves are just kinda bumbling, greedy fools wearing plot armor.
That is why I like Balin in the book and movies (and in some extent Bofur in AUJ) in that he ends up befriending, or at least being a hell of a lot nicer to Bilbo. Of course that is pretty easy to do when the rest of the dwarves run the spectrum from uncaring to selfish jerks. Given he doesn't exactly do much more than talk kindly and the like but moral support is better than none at all.
TavIrish Minister for DefenceRegistered Userregular
edited December 2014
I loved the movie because it was big and dumb and stupid.
It was a Middle Earth Pacific Rim
My one problem
at the start when taking down Smaug and using the kid as a bow, why did the fletching on the giant arrow not totally fuck up the kid's face/shoulder. That was dumb.
I thought this was coming out on Thursday here in Denver, but apparently there are already showings tonight! I don't think I've ever seen a Tuesday theater release before, how weird.
Edit: Oh hey, maybe more relevant here, LOTR: Fellowship is free on Google Play at the moment.
Saw Bot5A as part of a showing of the Hobbit Trilogy last night.
I agree with the reviews here. There was just not much story, just a whole bunch of set-pieces.
I also thought I spotted some technical flaws and other errors which pulled me out of the movie.
The whole White Council fight with the specters of the Nine at Dol Guldur, the spectors are blinking in and out like they are some graphic from the Matrix, they even seem to have some sort of rasterizing effect rather than fading away into smoke or something naturalistic. They look like 2D images inserted into the scenes, especially when they are arrayed before Sauron who raises them after the Council destroys them (before they get banished to the East).
In a scene where Bilbo and company are on the wall they rebuilt at the entrance of Erebor, I think it was just before Thorin threatens to throw Bilbo off the wall, there's a shot of Bilbo standing in some snow and it looks like Biblo is wearing grey fur boots. Maybe it's just the lighting, but it sort of looked like they gave the actor boots to mitigate the cold.
When humans militia are rushing to the square to save Bard's family, there's this - I can only describe it as - nerdy-guy face complete with eyeglasses camera right. Did someone win a contest and that's where they put them?
You got your Dune in my Lord of the Rings
Teleporting sheep
Luigoles jumping on blocks
In general, the 3D really isn't adding much and can really detract in areas. In one case there was this persistent spot in somebodies armor that looked like they were trying to do bump-mapping, but it just came out like some sort of rendering error.
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AtomikaLive fast and get fucked or whateverRegistered Userregular
Just got back from seeing it, and I found it to be the least interesting movie of the trilogy. The riddle game and Bilbo smooth talking Smaug were always the best parts of The Hobbit, and there just wasn't much left for this one.
I also found the lack of emotion and care with the ending a little off putting, given that this was their big last chance to send off the six movie, multiple decade sprawling epic of a project. The last bits just felt like perfunctory check box marking, and in general just shoving things out the door because they were all sick to death of the project. Maybe they were self consious about going overboard with the RotK ending, but this time around I wanted way more there.
It gets a big old "meh" from me, but even so, there are worse ways to spend a few hours than seeing the last Middle Earth movie we'll get in the theatre for a good long time, even if it isn't particularly good.
Does anyone know to what extent they still worked with miniatures (or 'bigatures', as they called them for Lord of the Rings) in these films? I don't remember anything much being said in the appendices, though I haven't yet watched the ones for Desolation of Smaug. In general, while I'm sure the VFX in these films are technically advanced over the ones used for the LotR trilogy, and there are effects shots in the earlier films that look pretty bad, the overall look has felt so much less real (for want of a better word) to me, and I wonder whether that's in part because of a greater or even exclusive reliance on CGI rather than the mix they used before.
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
I'm not sure about miniatures, but they do replace actors with bad CGI a lot more often in this one--like "Gandalf gets up off of a sled and walls a few feet" and "Bilbo climbs down a rope ladder", they replace with painfully fake looking CGI. I know they're expensive actors, and Ian is getting up there in years, but what's wrong with a body double or something?
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jungleroomxIt's never too many graves, it's always not enough shovelsRegistered Userregular
As someone who loves the Tolkienverse but cannot stand his instruction manual writing style, these films were a blessing. That being said, the Hobbit trilogy really pales in comparison to the LOTR (I haven't seen the EE for FA, but I doubt its that good) EE trilogy. Its also a bit odd the way the timelines clash, though I do appreciate giving Gandalf a reason for disappearing.
Still a better prequel trilogy than Star Wars.
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jungleroomxIt's never too many graves, it's always not enough shovelsRegistered Userregular
I'm not sure about miniatures, but they do replace actors with bad CGI a lot more often in this one--like "Gandalf gets up off of a sled and walls a few feet" and "Bilbo climbs down a rope ladder", they replace with painfully fake looking CGI. I know they're expensive actors, and Ian is getting up there in years, but what's wrong with a body double or something?
During the barrel scene from DOS, there was a single orc running on the river bank that was so horribly animated it took me out of the movie for a good 20 minutes. The shadows didn't match. It was so very bad.
But then we get Smaug who is all BAM. It's jarring.
As it stands, the dwarves are just kinda bumbling, greedy fools wearing plot armor.
That is why I like Balin in the book and movies (and in some extent Bofur in AUJ) in that he ends up befriending, or at least being a hell of a lot nicer to Bilbo. Of course that is pretty easy to do when the rest of the dwarves run the spectrum from uncaring to selfish jerks. Given he doesn't exactly do much more than talk kindly and the like but moral support is better than none at all.
I'm not sure about miniatures, but they do replace actors with bad CGI a lot more often in this one--like "Gandalf gets up off of a sled and walls a few feet" and "Bilbo climbs down a rope ladder", they replace with painfully fake looking CGI. I know they're expensive actors, and Ian is getting up there in years, but what's wrong with a body double or something?
During the barrel scene from DOS, there was a single orc running on the river bank that was so horribly animated it took me out of the movie for a good 20 minutes. The shadows didn't match. It was so very bad.
But then we get Smaug who is all BAM. It's jarring.
I'm not sure about miniatures, but they do replace actors with bad CGI a lot more often in this one--like "Gandalf gets up off of a sled and walls a few feet" and "Bilbo climbs down a rope ladder", they replace with painfully fake looking CGI. I know they're expensive actors, and Ian is getting up there in years, but what's wrong with a body double or something?
During the barrel scene from DOS, there was a single orc running on the river bank that was so horribly animated it took me out of the movie for a good 20 minutes. The shadows didn't match. It was so very bad.
But then we get Smaug who is all BAM. It's jarring.
I'm shocked that one orc didn't get fixed in the extended edition. Ah well.
Also, to anyone who saw the movie -- is it just me or is Dain CG? I mean, he looks good, but still just sliiiiiiightly off to make me wonder why the hell they didn't just stick Billy Connelly in heavy makeup.
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AtomikaLive fast and get fucked or whateverRegistered Userregular
Haven't seen the last one yet, but the first two are messy and unfocused and the tone and pacing is all over the fucking place.
The tone of the Hobbit films often sinks them, because Jackson somehow has developed this Lucas-esque notion that "comedy" is the same as slapstick, which is weird because LOTR didn't have any of that. I think he wanted to ensure the Hobbit films were lighter and more kid-friendly, but I was thinking the other day how many great "kids" films from the eighties weren't funny hardly at all. E.T. and The Neverending Story are probably the two most seminal childrens' films of my generation, and there's not a funny bit to be found in either; in fact, both can be outright grim at times. But they're beloved and they endure.
Jackson too many times in the Hobbit movies will place his characters in the most dire of circumstances only to jam in handfuls of pratfalls and goofiness just when things are getting heavy.
I loved the movie because it was big and dumb and stupid.
It was a Middle Earth Pacific Rim
My one problem
at the start when taking down Smaug and using the kid as a bow, why did the fletching on the giant arrow not totally fuck up the kid's face/shoulder. That was dumb.
Pacific rim had excellent CGI, and characters that I kind of cared about, a bit at least. They had motivations that made sense, and an arc, and behaved like the world was in a bad place.
This movie... had neither. The CGI in the opening scene utterly destroyed it, the backgrounds were incredibly... off. It just looked incredibly artificial, which made the scene even more boring, apart from it just being a cgifest with people we barely know running around. That sentence describes most of the movie though. While the first and second hobbit films had some enjoyment to be had, this one just takes the worst parts of both (badly animated setpieces, badly placed slapstick) and shoves them in your face repeatedly. The combination of less practical effects, and less time spent hurts the movie immensely. Spectacle is all it has, and it utterly fails due to looking off constantly.
And well, having no sense of consistency. People literally teleport where they need to be, and they open the console to hack in mountain goats when they need them. I guess the awful fanfic scene with galadriel panting on the floor while Elrond saves her with saruman doing somersaults in the background was supposed to be epic? It failed on pretty much every level possible. I also noticed Bolg had a skull as codpiece in the scene Kili died, and almost started laughing. Luckily I did manage to stop myself, since some people apparently cared.
I'm just sad the Hobbit movies ended up this way. With some focus, and some work they could have been great, just give the dwarfs any character at all apart from "the more human they look the more you are supposed to care since they are prettier". And I did enjoy the first two somewhat, this last one just ended up being terrible due to requiring me to care about the characters, and apart from Bilbo I really didn't. At all.
Man I am so happy I do not typically notice the things mentioned in this thread. Movie is top tier in my opinion. Better than 99% of the fantasy epics we are given by the hollywood world. And I thank my lucky stars that Peter Jackson got finish it.
Man I am so happy I do not typically notice the things mentioned in this thread. Movie is top tier in my opinion. Better than 99% of the fantasy epics we are given by the hollywood world. And I thank my lucky stars that Peter Jackson got finish it.
I like the Hobbit movies because it gives me more of Middle Earth without having to slog through Tolkien's writing. The man was uttery brilliant when it came to setting, characters, and world building... but his authoring was as dry as MRE crackers.
Man I am so happy I do not typically notice the things mentioned in this thread. Movie is top tier in my opinion. Better than 99% of the fantasy epics we are given by the hollywood world. And I thank my lucky stars that Peter Jackson got finish it.
I like the Hobbit movies because it gives me more of Middle Earth without having to slog through Tolkien's writing. The man was uttery brilliant when it came to setting, characters, and world building... but his authoring was as dry as MRE crackers.
Those are very dry, by the way.
Agreed. Also, the Hobbit was more basic in its implementation of those devices. At least IMHO. I knew even before I saw the first movie there would be a ton of embellishment. There had to be for it to be a trilogy. Especially when we get to the end. It happens so quick in the book. Smaug is there and then he dies. The battle starts and then bilbo gets knocked out. The two major end points are over in a matter of two and a half chapters.
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jungleroomxIt's never too many graves, it's always not enough shovelsRegistered Userregular
If I remember correctly the Hobbit was the catalyst for the entire Tolkien universe, so much that the original book was retconned as he continues to grow his Middle Earth creation.
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AtomikaLive fast and get fucked or whateverRegistered Userregular
There is an unreasonable number of times in the Hobbit trilogy that someone yells, "NOOOOOOOO!!!" in slow motion.
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syndalisGetting ClassyOn the WallRegistered User, Loves Apple Productsregular
Just saw it. Everything was CGI'd to death and it has never been so clear that this story should not have been 3 films. Atomika is spot on that LOTR looks better, the overuse of CGI and ridiculous washed out filter makes no sense. The only justification I can think of is Jackson intentionally made these movies look completely fake because The Hobbit is a children's story, and LOTR has the authentic medieval epic feel because that's what it was written as.
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jungleroomxIt's never too many graves, it's always not enough shovelsRegistered Userregular
There is an unreasonable number of times in the Hobbit trilogy that someone yells, "NOOOOOOOO!!!" in slow motion.
This happened a lot in LOTR as well.
Peter Jackson loves him some slow motion Nooo! Action
Did it? I'm blanking those instances.
There's a lot of Bayisms in the Hobbit Trilogy.
They should have had a pair of 2 hour movies. It could have been told in a compact nature, but I have a feeling a mix of Jacksons dreams of grandeur along with the current pop culture hard-on for multi-part epics kind of doomed this story from ever being compact.
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JohnnyCacheStarting DefensePlace at the tableRegistered Userregular
You guys are nuts. I liked it a lot. But then I like seeing dwarves on unconventional mounts.
If I remember correctly the Hobbit was the catalyst for the entire Tolkien universe, so much that the original book was retconned as he continues to grow his Middle Earth creation.
There's one major retcon in The Hobbit as originally published.
In the first edition of The Hobbit, Gollum promises to give Bilbo a "present" if Bilbo wins the riddle game. After the "what have I got in my pocket?" question stumps Gollum, he goes to look for the ring. When he can't find it, he apologizes to Bilbo and swears he's not trying to welch out on the bet. As an alternative prize, Bilbo tells Gollum to show him the way out of the mountain instead, which Gollum happily does. There's no rage over losing the ring, no murderous intent on Gollum's part, no need for Bilbo to decide whether to kill Gollum or leap past him instead.
The Lord of the Rings has several mentions of the "false account" that Bilbo wrote in his diary, chalking it up to the effect the ring immediately had on Bilbo. A few years after LotR was published, Tolkien revised the "Riddles in the Dark" chapter for the second edition of The Hobbit, "correcting" it to the true version of events as recorded by Frodo; the prologue to LotR claims that there's a discrepancy amongst the manuscripts that Tolkien was "translating", with some of them recording Bilbo's version of the story and other copies emended with Frodo's notes.
Edit: But it's false to say that The Hobbit was the catalyst for Middle Earth. Tolkien was working on his mythology for nearly twenty years before the publication of The Hobbit; the genius of LotR was bringing The Hobbit into the mythology he had already been crafting. Making the Hobbit's Necromancer to be the chief servant of Morgoth, making the elves of Mirkwood the descendants of the elves who never traveled to Valinor, etc. -- the idea to make those connections only came to Tolkien once he was well into writing The Lord of the Rings.
There is an unreasonable number of times in the Hobbit trilogy that someone yells, "NOOOOOOOO!!!" in slow motion.
This happened a lot in LOTR as well.
Peter Jackson loves him some slow motion Nooo! Action
Did it? I'm blanking those instances.
All the damn time.
I firmly believe one can track the descent in quality of the LOTR (and then the Hobbit) trilogy based on the number of slow-mo-no! faces per unit hour.
Haven't seen the last one yet, but the first two are messy and unfocused and the tone and pacing is all over the fucking place.
The tone of the Hobbit films often sinks them, because Jackson somehow has developed this Lucas-esque notion that "comedy" is the same as slapstick, which is weird because LOTR didn't have any of that. I think he wanted to ensure the Hobbit films were lighter and more kid-friendly, but I was thinking the other day how many great "kids" films from the eighties weren't funny hardly at all. E.T. and The Neverending Story are probably the two most seminal childrens' films of my generation, and there's not a funny bit to be found in either; in fact, both can be outright grim at times. But they're beloved and they endure.
Jackson too many times in the Hobbit movies will place his characters in the most dire of circumstances only to jam in handfuls of pratfalls and goofiness just when things are getting heavy.
Hollywood has really forgotten how to make kid's movies. They are afraid to scare kids or creepy kids out or present them with complex concepts.
I feel like it's a combination of the PG-13 rating and the "Won't someone please think of the children?" shtick that sustains it. Kids movies can't be challenging or scary because kids need to be coddled and the movies need to be made for only really young kids who only like simplistic things because older kids are just watching PG-13 blockbusters where their heroes rip someone's face off while screaming "Give me your face!".
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jungleroomxIt's never too many graves, it's always not enough shovelsRegistered Userregular
Haven't seen the last one yet, but the first two are messy and unfocused and the tone and pacing is all over the fucking place.
The tone of the Hobbit films often sinks them, because Jackson somehow has developed this Lucas-esque notion that "comedy" is the same as slapstick, which is weird because LOTR didn't have any of that. I think he wanted to ensure the Hobbit films were lighter and more kid-friendly, but I was thinking the other day how many great "kids" films from the eighties weren't funny hardly at all. E.T. and The Neverending Story are probably the two most seminal childrens' films of my generation, and there's not a funny bit to be found in either; in fact, both can be outright grim at times. But they're beloved and they endure.
Jackson too many times in the Hobbit movies will place his characters in the most dire of circumstances only to jam in handfuls of pratfalls and goofiness just when things are getting heavy.
Hollywood has really forgotten how to make kid's movies. They are afraid to scare kids or creepy kids out or present them with complex concepts.
I feel like it's a combination of the PG-13 rating and the "Won't someone please think of the children?" shtick that sustains it. Kids movies can't be challenging or scary because kids need to be coddled and the movies need to be made for only really young kids who only like simplistic things because older kids are just watching PG-13 blockbusters where their heroes rip someone's face off while screaming "Give me your face!".
I thought Super 8 did a respectable job, but that's a single instance.
Edit: And Monster House! Man, that movie was great. All in the spirit of the 1980's "kid saves the world/neighborhood/something" movies without the schlock.
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Sir FabulousMalevolent Squid GodRegistered Userregular
So, my friends are pushing for a movie for the gang to watch together.
The Hobbit has been suggested a few times, but honestly I didn't like the last couple ones very much, and I think that what really burned me out were the very long, protracted action scenes that seemed to drag on forever.
And I thought to myself "If there's one fantasy set piece that really lends itself to long, protracted action scenes, it's the battle of five armies."
So tell me people who have seen the movie, am I correct in my thinking? Is the movie just a big long fight scene?
I can't really see it being much else, because there's not a whole ton of the book left to cover, but perhaps I am mistaken?
Haven't seen the last one yet, but the first two are messy and unfocused and the tone and pacing is all over the fucking place.
The tone of the Hobbit films often sinks them, because Jackson somehow has developed this Lucas-esque notion that "comedy" is the same as slapstick, which is weird because LOTR didn't have any of that. I think he wanted to ensure the Hobbit films were lighter and more kid-friendly, but I was thinking the other day how many great "kids" films from the eighties weren't funny hardly at all. E.T. and The Neverending Story are probably the two most seminal childrens' films of my generation, and there's not a funny bit to be found in either; in fact, both can be outright grim at times. But they're beloved and they endure.
Jackson too many times in the Hobbit movies will place his characters in the most dire of circumstances only to jam in handfuls of pratfalls and goofiness just when things are getting heavy.
Hollywood has really forgotten how to make kid's movies. They are afraid to scare kids or creepy kids out or present them with complex concepts.
I feel like it's a combination of the PG-13 rating and the "Won't someone please think of the children?" shtick that sustains it. Kids movies can't be challenging or scary because kids need to be coddled and the movies need to be made for only really young kids who only like simplistic things because older kids are just watching PG-13 blockbusters where their heroes rip someone's face off while screaming "Give me your face!".
I thought Super 8 did a respectable job, but that's a single instance.
Edit: And Monster House! Man, that movie was great. All in the spirit of the 1980's "kid saves the world/neighborhood/something" movies without the schlock.
Oh there's still some that can pull it off, (Pixar manages well sometimes) but it's mostly shit of the same kind.
So, my friends are pushing for a movie for the gang to watch together.
The Hobbit has been suggested a few times, but honestly I didn't like the last couple ones very much, and I think that what really burned me out were the very long, protracted action scenes that seemed to drag on forever.
And I thought to myself "If there's one fantasy set piece that really lends itself to long, protracted action scenes, it's the battle of five armies."
So tell me people who have seen the movie, am I correct in my thinking? Is the movie just a big long fight scene?
I can't really see it being much else, because there's not a whole ton of the book left to cover, but perhaps I am mistaken?
The movie is basically one long (poorly shot, cut and choreographed, personally) fight scene, yeah.
I think Middle Earth Pacific Rim is an apt description. I mean, the movie was fun but it's worse than 2 and isn't even close to the main 3 movies.
I kinda figured this would be all action given what's left in the book and some of the fight scenes were genuinely great.
Legolas is still a dipshit though.
I wonder if Peter Jackson never played Mario and that's why he thought jumping up 4 sets of falling bricks would be cool. That was 10x worse than the shield surfing.
I'm pretty sure that's happened in Fast & the Furious series or some random Rock movies and even there they didn't make it 4 separate leaps.
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- I had really been looking forward to Billy Connolly's Dain Ironfoot, so I was fairly disappointed when he got about three minutes of screentime. Great beard, though. Sad about how comical he gets played during the battle scenes. Some of Jackson's worst impulses run rampant in these films, and inserting slapstick into grim scenes of devastation seems to be something he can't pass up. The Battle for Erebor should have been more like Helm's Deep, with the entrenched dwarves staving off waves of Orcs, but instead it's more Pellinor Fields, with the eagles instead of the ghost army. How was Erebor the "center of the dwarf kingdoms" if it didn't have defense countermeasures? It seems like that would be something the dwarves would be all over.
- Gandalf kept referring to Erebor's "strategic position" as the reason for Sauron wanting it, but he never explained what that exactly meant. Erebor is long fucking way from anything, other than maybe Mirkwood, with Gondor and Rohan being thousands of miles away and Rivendell being several hundred. Also, Sauron already had control of Angmar and Gundabad, which were already in the north and closer to Rivendell than Erebor, so I really have no idea what Gandalf was talking about. Again, endemic of this trilogy, lots of people are doing things but no one is really explaining why.
- Legolas spends much of this movie just dicking about and pining over Tauriel, who just isn't into him like that. Though he may have a chance now that Kili is dead.
- Tauriel's feelings for Kili are probably the most underdeveloped thing in this trilogy stuffed full of underdeveloped things. They have maybe a combined three minutes of screentime together across all three films. Yet another of the myriad plot points that needs either a lot more time or to be wholly excised.
- The Aragorn mention at the end is really, really clunky and very winky-winky. Blah.
- Everyone cheered in the theater when Thorin sunk Azog into the ice, it was a very cool(!) moment; too bad the rest of that fight after that was really dumb.
- I was a little surprised that the bookend with Old Bilbo at the end here actually overlapped Fellowship, occurring about five minutes after that film started. A weird choice, as it seems like it breaks the continuity a little, but not a huge deal.
- The weird lighting in so many of the exteriors has bothered me throughout all three movies. It seems like so many scenes take place precisely at sunrise or sunset, and everything is washed out in a pale blue and orange bloom. It's weird to me that these films in so many ways look worse than the LOTR movies.
- Thinking back on it, it seems like an obvious choice to better characterize the dwarves would have been to give them a tactical specialization for the group. Like, Dori would be a healer, Bombur would do demolitions, Dwalin would be battlemaster, Balin would be the tactician, Ori would be a spy . . . so on and so on.
Atomika, how would you rank the three films, if you even can? I haven't yet seen The Battle of the Five Armies, but whereas with The Lord of the Rings I can easily rank the films for myself, I felt that the first two Hobbit movies were more equal in their flaws. I wonder how you see this, especially after having seen all three of the films.
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
This latest one would be the best, so:
1. BOTFA
2. AUJ
3. DOS
I really am not fond of DOS simply because it doesn't tell a story. If you call a "movie" a thing with a story that has a beginning, a middle, and an end, that film is woefully incomplete. Things simply happen, sometimes randomly, until the screen goes dark and the credits roll.
As it stands, the dwarves are just kinda bumbling, greedy fools wearing plot armor.
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
That is why I like Balin in the book and movies (and in some extent Bofur in AUJ) in that he ends up befriending, or at least being a hell of a lot nicer to Bilbo. Of course that is pretty easy to do when the rest of the dwarves run the spectrum from uncaring to selfish jerks. Given he doesn't exactly do much more than talk kindly and the like but moral support is better than none at all.
It was a Middle Earth Pacific Rim
My one problem
Edit: Oh hey, maybe more relevant here, LOTR: Fellowship is free on Google Play at the moment.
I agree with the reviews here. There was just not much story, just a whole bunch of set-pieces.
I also thought I spotted some technical flaws and other errors which pulled me out of the movie.
Yeah, that really pulled me out, too, simply because how much it would have helped Sauron in LOTR, where it never gets mentioned at all.
I also found the lack of emotion and care with the ending a little off putting, given that this was their big last chance to send off the six movie, multiple decade sprawling epic of a project. The last bits just felt like perfunctory check box marking, and in general just shoving things out the door because they were all sick to death of the project. Maybe they were self consious about going overboard with the RotK ending, but this time around I wanted way more there.
It gets a big old "meh" from me, but even so, there are worse ways to spend a few hours than seeing the last Middle Earth movie we'll get in the theatre for a good long time, even if it isn't particularly good.
Does anyone know to what extent they still worked with miniatures (or 'bigatures', as they called them for Lord of the Rings) in these films? I don't remember anything much being said in the appendices, though I haven't yet watched the ones for Desolation of Smaug. In general, while I'm sure the VFX in these films are technically advanced over the ones used for the LotR trilogy, and there are effects shots in the earlier films that look pretty bad, the overall look has felt so much less real (for want of a better word) to me, and I wonder whether that's in part because of a greater or even exclusive reliance on CGI rather than the mix they used before.
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
Still a better prequel trilogy than Star Wars.
During the barrel scene from DOS, there was a single orc running on the river bank that was so horribly animated it took me out of the movie for a good 20 minutes. The shadows didn't match. It was so very bad.
But then we get Smaug who is all BAM. It's jarring.
But yeah, The Hobbit looks way worse then LOTR. Alot faker and the scenery is alot more jarringly off in many cases.
If nothing else it's at
I'm shocked that one orc didn't get fixed in the extended edition. Ah well.
Also, to anyone who saw the movie -- is it just me or is Dain CG? I mean, he looks good, but still just sliiiiiiightly off to make me wonder why the hell they didn't just stick Billy Connelly in heavy makeup.
The tone of the Hobbit films often sinks them, because Jackson somehow has developed this Lucas-esque notion that "comedy" is the same as slapstick, which is weird because LOTR didn't have any of that. I think he wanted to ensure the Hobbit films were lighter and more kid-friendly, but I was thinking the other day how many great "kids" films from the eighties weren't funny hardly at all. E.T. and The Neverending Story are probably the two most seminal childrens' films of my generation, and there's not a funny bit to be found in either; in fact, both can be outright grim at times. But they're beloved and they endure.
Jackson too many times in the Hobbit movies will place his characters in the most dire of circumstances only to jam in handfuls of pratfalls and goofiness just when things are getting heavy.
Pacific rim had excellent CGI, and characters that I kind of cared about, a bit at least. They had motivations that made sense, and an arc, and behaved like the world was in a bad place.
This movie... had neither. The CGI in the opening scene utterly destroyed it, the backgrounds were incredibly... off. It just looked incredibly artificial, which made the scene even more boring, apart from it just being a cgifest with people we barely know running around. That sentence describes most of the movie though. While the first and second hobbit films had some enjoyment to be had, this one just takes the worst parts of both (badly animated setpieces, badly placed slapstick) and shoves them in your face repeatedly. The combination of less practical effects, and less time spent hurts the movie immensely. Spectacle is all it has, and it utterly fails due to looking off constantly.
I'm just sad the Hobbit movies ended up this way. With some focus, and some work they could have been great, just give the dwarfs any character at all apart from "the more human they look the more you are supposed to care since they are prettier". And I did enjoy the first two somewhat, this last one just ended up being terrible due to requiring me to care about the characters, and apart from Bilbo I really didn't. At all.
Ok now I HAVE to see the movie. Happy now?
I like the Hobbit movies because it gives me more of Middle Earth without having to slog through Tolkien's writing. The man was uttery brilliant when it came to setting, characters, and world building... but his authoring was as dry as MRE crackers.
Those are very dry, by the way.
Agreed. Also, the Hobbit was more basic in its implementation of those devices. At least IMHO. I knew even before I saw the first movie there would be a ton of embellishment. There had to be for it to be a trilogy. Especially when we get to the end. It happens so quick in the book. Smaug is there and then he dies. The battle starts and then bilbo gets knocked out. The two major end points are over in a matter of two and a half chapters.
This happened a lot in LOTR as well.
Peter Jackson loves him some slow motion Nooo! Action
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
Did it? I'm blanking those instances.
There's a lot of Bayisms in the Hobbit Trilogy.
They should have had a pair of 2 hour movies. It could have been told in a compact nature, but I have a feeling a mix of Jacksons dreams of grandeur along with the current pop culture hard-on for multi-part epics kind of doomed this story from ever being compact.
I host a podcast about movies.
There's one major retcon in The Hobbit as originally published.
In the first edition of The Hobbit, Gollum promises to give Bilbo a "present" if Bilbo wins the riddle game. After the "what have I got in my pocket?" question stumps Gollum, he goes to look for the ring. When he can't find it, he apologizes to Bilbo and swears he's not trying to welch out on the bet. As an alternative prize, Bilbo tells Gollum to show him the way out of the mountain instead, which Gollum happily does. There's no rage over losing the ring, no murderous intent on Gollum's part, no need for Bilbo to decide whether to kill Gollum or leap past him instead.
The Lord of the Rings has several mentions of the "false account" that Bilbo wrote in his diary, chalking it up to the effect the ring immediately had on Bilbo. A few years after LotR was published, Tolkien revised the "Riddles in the Dark" chapter for the second edition of The Hobbit, "correcting" it to the true version of events as recorded by Frodo; the prologue to LotR claims that there's a discrepancy amongst the manuscripts that Tolkien was "translating", with some of them recording Bilbo's version of the story and other copies emended with Frodo's notes.
Edit: But it's false to say that The Hobbit was the catalyst for Middle Earth. Tolkien was working on his mythology for nearly twenty years before the publication of The Hobbit; the genius of LotR was bringing The Hobbit into the mythology he had already been crafting. Making the Hobbit's Necromancer to be the chief servant of Morgoth, making the elves of Mirkwood the descendants of the elves who never traveled to Valinor, etc. -- the idea to make those connections only came to Tolkien once he was well into writing The Lord of the Rings.
All the damn time.
I firmly believe one can track the descent in quality of the LOTR (and then the Hobbit) trilogy based on the number of slow-mo-no! faces per unit hour.
Hollywood has really forgotten how to make kid's movies. They are afraid to scare kids or creepy kids out or present them with complex concepts.
I feel like it's a combination of the PG-13 rating and the "Won't someone please think of the children?" shtick that sustains it. Kids movies can't be challenging or scary because kids need to be coddled and the movies need to be made for only really young kids who only like simplistic things because older kids are just watching PG-13 blockbusters where their heroes rip someone's face off while screaming "Give me your face!".
I thought Super 8 did a respectable job, but that's a single instance.
Edit: And Monster House! Man, that movie was great. All in the spirit of the 1980's "kid saves the world/neighborhood/something" movies without the schlock.
The Hobbit has been suggested a few times, but honestly I didn't like the last couple ones very much, and I think that what really burned me out were the very long, protracted action scenes that seemed to drag on forever.
And I thought to myself "If there's one fantasy set piece that really lends itself to long, protracted action scenes, it's the battle of five armies."
So tell me people who have seen the movie, am I correct in my thinking? Is the movie just a big long fight scene?
I can't really see it being much else, because there's not a whole ton of the book left to cover, but perhaps I am mistaken?
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Oh there's still some that can pull it off, (Pixar manages well sometimes) but it's mostly shit of the same kind.
The movie is basically one long (poorly shot, cut and choreographed, personally) fight scene, yeah.
I kinda figured this would be all action given what's left in the book and some of the fight scenes were genuinely great.
Legolas is still a dipshit though.
I'm pretty sure that's happened in Fast & the Furious series or some random Rock movies and even there they didn't make it 4 separate leaps.