The Hobbit: A Long-Expected Spoiler Movie Thread

[Roose Seal]

This pretty much sums up every critique I have of the movie.

Like Elrond with the map...I wanted to smack everyone because that scene was taking so long. Just hold it up to the moon already!! You're already standing outside. Why go to a completely different room with a fancy table?! I don't have ADD, but this film made me feel like I do.

I cracked up during that scene. It was so out of a bad 80's fantasy movie.

[Maithanet]

This pretty much sums up every critique I have of the movie.

Yeah, the Stone Giants were just the best example of this, but it happened a lot.

Like the Radagast chase scene on the plains of Rohan, why did we need that to be so long? Actually, now that I think about it, why did we need that scene at all? It's not like this movie needed more examples of CGI monsters chasing other CGI characters.

Or the tree + cliffhanging scene before Thorin has his temper-tantrum battle. Are we really supposed to be worried about characters falling while Thorin is simultaneously fighting? Because when we left the dwarves, it looked like they were about to fall...but then we cut away for like two minutes. Really?

This movie is the worst example of needing a real editor since Crossroads of Twilight.

[Spockydog]

Saw this today. My two word review: Arsenumbingly tedious.

On the bright side, I did get to see the Superman trailer in IMAX 3D, along with the first ten minutes of Star Trek 2.

[andrew_]

Saw this today. My two word review: Arsenumbingly tedious.

On the bright side, I did get to see the Superman trailer in IMAX 3D, along with the first ten minutes of Star Trek 2.

How was Star Trek 2? I'm so keen

[Moonlight_Reflections]

I can't decide whether I want to see this again or not. On one hand, I did enjoy it and there was enough I liked for another viewing. On the other hand, it's exhaustingly long. You could probably cut down just about every scene in this film. The more I think on it, the more the amount of filler really resonates. I liked the three trolls, but did we really spend something like 15 minutes on that one scene? It felt like we did. Stone Giants, awesome as they were, could and should have been about a minute maximum. And Radagast should have just been ditched. I watched Deathly Hallows: Part II today and it struck me how, though it may be almost an hour shorter, about ten times as much actually happens.

[Angalin]

I thought the casting was very good, but the stone giants should have been cut, getting out of the goblin mine was way too long and complicated (it wasn't Moria, after all), and for that many action scenes, the characters should have been dropping like flies.

When I think about the White Council scene on its own, it works if Saruman is being a terrible bore of a CEO running a meeting: pompous and arrogant enough not to believe that there might be a problem and that Gandalf, his namby-pamby subordinate, was just stirring up trouble. However, that doesn't really jive with Gandalf's other scenes in the movie, or with the Gandalf we see in LotR. The tone was off, but that's true of a number of scenes.

Kili's feats of archery play well with nine-year-olds, btw.

The riddle scene was the best part.

[Caligula_K2]

I saw it for the second time tonight. I'm revising my opinion from "a good movie with about an hour worth of crap" to "a mediocre movie with about an hour worth of excellence (and then another hour full of crap)." I couldn't actually bear to watch the stone giants scene this time, it is that awful. Are you happy PJ? You finally filmed something worse than Aragorn's horse adventures. Are you happy??????

Other second time observations:

-The cast really is excellent. PJ needs to thank the hell out of McKellen, Armitage, Stott, Nesbitt and especially Freeman, because they save a lot of scenes and are fantastic throughout.

-Radagast is terrible. Terrible terrible terrible. Not as bad as the stone giants, but pretty bad. It's not the actors fault, but I really have no idea how any of these ideas made it past the first draft of the script. This sort of silliness is out of place and reminds us all why it's a good thing Tom Bombadil wasn't in the Lord of the Rings movies.

-The riddles scene is by far the best in the movie.

-After the departure from Hobbiton, it really seems like Peter Jackson can't go five minutes without inserting an action scene or at least the trappings of one. Even at fucking Rivendell we have to spend a minute watching horses ride around the dwarves as the music tenses up, as if anyone in the audience thinks there's going to be a fight here.

-Once the adventure starts, until almost the very end, there are no quiet scenes between Bilbo and the dwarves, with the exception of one that leads into a flashback of a battle scene. So although I love that scene between Bilbo and Bofur in the cave, especially because Freeman and Nesbitt sell it so well, it also feels unearned. PJ, couldn't we have had one less orc chase scene and one more scene in which characters talk and you know, bond?

The fundamental problem with this movie (aside from the aforementioned hour worth of crap, the bad pacing, and every character's tendency to fall off a cliff/tree/rock every five seconds) is that it tries to be two movies in one, and they just do not work together. If this movie was just about the quest of a Hobbit and some dwarves, I think it would succeed fairly well. Even some of the additions work, such as Thorin's nemesis, though I have to say he is slightly goofy and nowhere near as intimidating as the Uruk Hai in LOTR. But as soon as the movie flips to the Necromancer plotline and tries to be a SUPER EPIC PREQUEL to Lord of the Rings, the tone shifts and the movie falls completely flat, whether the scene is bad (as Radagast's are) or just mediocre (as is the white council scene). Tell me again why this couldn't just be the story of the Hobbit? And why we needed three movies?

I don't think I'll be seeing this one again... At least not until all three movies are out and some heroic fan makes a one or two movie cut out of all three.

[eupfhoria]

not going to bother with an in-depth review, as others have said it all already, but the movie was sadly just another example of what I think of as the 'videogame-ization' of modern film making. This is not a good thing, and I really don't see how anyone over the age of 10 could think otherwise.

The performances of the cast really were the only highlights of movie

[andrew_]

Didn't anyone else like the flashback scene to the Battle of Nanduhirion? That scene was pretty spectacular in my opinion, And when Armitage turned around after and saw the dwarves standing before him, that was epic.

[naz]

You know what else bothers me about PJ (in later films)? Ever since LOTR, his filmmaking style tends to be this weird staccato of staging massively epic scenes interspersed with quiet reflective, yet highly emotional moments. The best example is in ROTK during the Pelennor battle when shit is hitting the fan up in Minas Tirith and Gandalf pauses to talk about visions of Tol Eressea with Pippin. It's a beautiful scene for sure, but PJ suddenly wants to fill every movie he makes with this emotional zooming in and out of action and reflection. He did it in King Kong, he did it in Lovely Bones. And now The Hobbit 1 is totally... totally full of it, too. It's like he figured out a formula for tugging at the audience's heartstrings and now he can no longer do anything else. Everything has to swing wildly and abruptly from INSANELY EPIC!!! to INTENSELY PERSONAL.

[Howdyphillip]

This sort of silliness is out of place and reminds us all why it's a good thing Tom Bombadil wasn't in the Lord of the Rings movies.

My head is about to explode. In my opinion, Tom Bombadil was the most crucial character in the books representing the diametric opposite of Sauron. It set the epic level of the story, and established firmly that this was a good vs. evil story. He is also my favorite character in literature. It is a crime that PJ decided not to represent him in the movies.

[Roose Seal]

You know what else bothers me about PJ (in later films)? Ever since LOTR, his filmmaking style tends to be this weird staccato of staging massively epic scenes interspersed with quiet reflective, yet highly emotional moments. The best example is in ROTK during the Pelennor battle when shit is hitting the fan up in Minas Tirith and Gandalf pauses to talk about visions of Tol Eressea with Pippin. It's a beautiful scene for sure, but PJ suddenly wants to fill every movie he makes with this emotional zooming in and out of action and reflection. He did it in King Kong, he did it in Lovely Bones. And now The Hobbit 1 is totally... totally full of it, too. It's like he figured out a formula for tugging at the audience's heartstrings and now he can no longer do anything else. Everything has to swing wildly and abruptly from INSANELY EPIC!!! to INTENSELY PERSONAL.

Thing is, there was no such thing as a personal scene in The Hobbit. You get that one scene between Bifur (?) and Bilbo at the beginning but it's just an excuse for a CGI-fest flashback. And then that's it... The only two other major talking scenes are the riddles scene and the white council scene. Not once do we get to know any of the Dwarves outside of the battles and the Bag's end scene.

By the end of the movie, I felt absolutely no emotional connection with Thorin because the movie tries so hard to make us sympathize with his cause (and why wouldn't we? An evil orc slew his father!) that we don't even get to know him and he's kind of a dick to Bilbo and the final fight scene falls completely flat.

I felt a hundred times more emotional during the Viper vs Mountain fight, even though Oberyn was just introduced to us like three seconds ago.

Think of how intense the final duel between Inigo Montoya and the Six Fingered man is and that's because we all throughout the movie we got to know Inigo as a character and by the end of the movie we just want to root for him. Thorin was just rawr rawr I'm Broody McRevenge rawr Warcraft killed my dad rawr rawr. Zero empathy.

Hell, I felt more emotional fighting the Nemesis in Resident Evil 3. :fencing:

[The Marquis de Leech]

-Radagast is terrible. Terrible terrible terrible. Not as bad as the stone giants, but pretty bad. It's not the actors fault, but I really have no idea how any of these ideas made it past the first draft of the script. This sort of silliness is out of place and reminds us all why it's a good thing Tom Bombadil wasn't in the Lord of the Rings movies.

Radagast didn't bother me. It is established (via the spiders and Dol Guldur) that he's pretty powerful underneath the quirkiness - and we know from the books that the likes of Saruman looked on Radagast with contempt.

[The Marquis de Leech]

In my opinion, Tom Bombadil was the most crucial character in the books

"Tom Bombadil is not an important person — to the narrative. I suppose he has some importance as a 'comment.' I mean, I do not really write like that: he is just an invention (who first appeared in The Oxford Magazine about 1933), and he represents something that I feel important, though I would not be prepared to analyse the feeling precisely. I would not, however, have left him in, if he did not have some kind of function."

- J.R.R. Tolkien.

[Spockydog]

Tell me again why this couldn't just be the story of the Hobbit? And why we needed three movies?

Greed.

After quitting the project, Guilermo del Toro said, "These are very complicated movies, economically and politically."

[niamh]

Greed.

After quitting the project, Guilermo del Toro said, "These are very complicated movies, economically and politically."

So basically they weren't going to let him do his own (talented) thing. Hardly surprising, sadly. I note he didn't say they were complicated to adapt. I really hope Michael Tolkien lives to be 110 and sits on the other rights until this crowd rots.

[Spockydog]

Del Toro is the undisputed master of the the dark fairytale. (His) straight-up adadptation of the book would have been awesome.

Instead, we get a director who has crawled so far up his own bunghole, he's in danger of disappearing entirely.

[andrew_]

Del Toro is the undisputed master of the the dark fairytale. (His) straight-up adadptation of the book would have been awesome.

Instead, we get a director who has crawled so far up his own bunghole, he's in danger of disappearing entirely.

Whoa Whoa Whoa, hang on mister, The Hobbit may not be a masterpiece, but it was still entertaing for what it was. And your insulting the man the brought you imo the greatest movie trilogy of all time and all because he doesn't recapture the success of his undisputed magnus opus?? Dude you need a reality check, it wasn't amazing but it was still good

[naz]

the man the brought you imo the greatest movie trilogy of all time and all because he doesn't recapture the success of his undisputed magnus opus??

Ha ha ha ha ha! "Reality check"! Ha ha ha! That's a good one.

[Caligula_K2]

My head is about to explode. In my opinion, Tom Bombadil was the most crucial character in the books representing the diametric opposite of Sauron. It set the epic level of the story, and established firmly that this was a good vs. evil story. He is also my favorite character in literature. It is a crime that PJ decided not to represent him in the movies.

He also completely undermines the ring's power ("Frodo, this ring is so powerful it will corrupt anyone! Except for this one random dude who lives out in the forest"), does not fit in with any other piece of worldbuilding in the entire trilogy, and slows the pace of the plot down to a snail's. Nearly everyone I know who is trying to read Lord of the Rings for the first time has a lot of trouble getting past the Bombadil chapters, which imo are the worst in the trilogy (though of course your mileage may vary). I'm also not sure Bombadil really raises the epic metre or shows us that this is a story about good vs. evil, in comparison with the rest of the trilogy.

Roose Bolton:

Oh, I know all that. But PJ's interpretation of him is just ridiculously silly and juvenile. CGI rabbit sleds, really?