The Hobbit (film series)

[lefty]

Dude, the thing I had in the spoiler?

The first.

lefty

 

[HORNS]

OK, edited now.

 

[Cary Grant]

Well- setting aside all the

Spoiler: Warning: Spoiler!

added bloat of the Tauriel & Legolas and Orc nonsense... I

enjoyed it quite a it due to Bilbo's and Gandalf's roles and acting

 

[why]

I liked the first movie. Actually, quite a lot. The breaks with physics were a bit odd, but the movie was lighthearted enough that they didn't seem totally out of place in terms of tone and such. The script was pretty solid, too.

But this new one has probably the worst script out of any movie I've gone to see in a while. It's Prometheus-level bad. When I can anticipate the next cliché to come out of a character's mouth and give an anticipatory cringe before before their lips even move, the script sucks. And every line -- despite the cartoonish nonsense going on in the action scenes -- is given so much weight that they become indistinguishable, further reducing the script to a series of over-dramatizations that feels like someone beating down the lowest piano key for over two and a half hours. I doubt the fate of Middle Earth will be decided by whether or not the audience gets to see Legolas behead a few more dopey orcs. Martin Freeman aside, there's only a handful of relief moments, once coming as a dwarf dick joke.

Freeman is good as he was in the first, and Ian McKellan is just as good as always. But there's really not enough of them in the movie. They carried the first movie despite the weight of its flaws and they just weren't around to do it this time. Instead there's Richard Armitrage, who sucked in the first one and continues to mis-deliver lines and overact yet again. Unfortunately, there's a lot more of him doing it now.

Regarding the CGI, I also really wish people would understand that virtual effects can be motion-captured and rendered in the highest detail, but it doesn't matter at all if they seem to be operating by different physical laws. The advantage of guys in costumes is that there's no need to accurately estimate their weight and force -- but for some reason, directors keep thinking 'close enough' is fine. It works for Pixar and Marvel, it doesn't work for anything that isn't supposed to have cartoonish physics -- and directors really need to pay more attention to the oddities created when a massive lumbering beast in full stride is stopped behind a few 4-foot guys behind a door, let alone the kicks and punches in fight scenes.

 

[Manton]

OK, it was really bad.

 

[lefty]

^ You didn't believe me?

^^ Weight is very hard to do well in a realistic animated character that moves quickly.

lefty

 

[Manton]

I had to go. And I would have gone in any case. But still.

1) This is supposed to be Bilbo’s story, so where the hell is he?
2) The changes to the story don’t seem to have made it any better. So why make them? I mean, if you want crazy action sequences, fine, put them in (though I could do without) but why change the story otherwise? Why, e.g., do the elves have to save them from the spiders? Why did they take out Thorin shooting the stag, or Bombur falling in the stream and then falling asleep? Could have played that for laughs.
3) Jackson never knows when to linger or to move on. For instance, Shelob. He takes one of the most stirring passages in LoTR, where Frodo faces her down with the phial, and botches it, makes into a flashlight. The whole sequence is too short and misses the significance of that gift. Ditto here, the Mirkwood spiders. That’s a great moment for Bilbo, but Jackson rushes through it and gives Biblo little to do whereas in the book, he really saved everyone’s hide AND defeated the spiders almost by himself, with strategy.
4) Making Bilbo ring-obsessed I suppose is foreshadowing but untrue to Tolkein. Biblo was mostly impervious until the end. He just didn’t care. And he DID tell Gandalf.
5) I didn’t mind Tauriel as much as I thought I would. But “Legolas crooks his finger and 100 orcs die” got old fast.
6) There was no point at all to Gandalf’s meeting with Radagast, nor for his trip to meet him—which was, where, again?
7) Jackson changed the whole Laketown business, pretty much every plot element, for no reason that I can see.
8) So many things are derivative from the other movies. The servant of the Master is Wormtongue. Gandalf’s confrontation with the Necromancer was the same as his with Sauruman (though at least this time Gandalf seems adept at using magic and actually seems powerful, even though he loses). The dwarves giving up and leaving the mountain was like Sam leaving Frodo (both of which are not in the books). Etc.
9) Why did Gandalf go into Dol Gildur? There was no point.
10) The “black arrow” changes were stupid.
11) He REALLY fucked up Bilbo-Smaug. First, B goes in there TWICE. The first time he steals a cup. The second time, they have the conversation. Jackson ruins the conversation. It’s supposed to be very courteous on the surface. And Bilbo NEVER takes off his ring, which would be suicide. Also, Smaug sparing him toward the end was inexplicable.
12) The whole “light the furnaces” thing was there only to provide a massive action sequence. Plot-wise, it was idiotic. Also, amazing that all that machinery still worked after all those years! And that they had a ready-made, still standing gold mold of a giant dwarf.
13) Having effed up the plot, Jackson needs to find a reason for Smaug to want to destroy Laketown so he just tacks it on. “Oh, I bet they were in on this all along.” Sure.

 

[dopey]

I thought I was going to avoid this before, but now I am certain. I am sure I will watch it eventually, though. The one thing That I am really curious about is the details of the Gandalf/necromancer encounter. Can someone put that in a spoilers post or send me a pm? It would be most appreciated.

 

[lefty]

I'm not a LotR expert, but...

Gandalf goes somewhere - not really sure where - to confront the NM. While they battle the NM goes from an amorphous black cloud to the silhouette of Sauron (I guess) to the iris of the giant red eye we see in LotR. Hence my earlier comment about the "birth" of Sauron.

I may have that wrong. It was confusing as hell and really lacked the power that the scene should possess.

lefty

 

[Cary Grant]



I had to go. And I would have gone in any case. But still.

1) This is supposed to be Bilbo’s story, so where the hell is he?
2) The changes to the story don’t seem to have made it any better. So why make them? I mean, if you want crazy action sequences, fine, put them in (though I could do without) but why change the story otherwise? Why, e.g., do the elves have to save them from the spiders? Why did they take out Thorin shooting the stag, or Bombur falling in the stream and then falling asleep? Could have played that for laughs.
3) Jackson never knows when to linger or to move on. For instance, Shelob. He takes one of the most stirring passages in LoTR, where Frodo faces her down with the phial, and botches it, makes into a flashlight. The whole sequence is too short and misses the significance of that gift. Ditto here, the Mirkwood spiders. That’s a great moment for Bilbo, but Jackson rushes through it and gives Biblo little to do whereas in the book, he really saved everyone’s hide AND defeated the spiders almost by himself, with strategy.
4) Making Bilbo ring-obsessed I suppose is foreshadowing but untrue to Tolkein. Biblo was mostly impervious until the end. He just didn’t care. And he DID tell Gandalf.
5) I didn’t mind Tauriel as much as I thought I would. But “Legolas crooks his finger and 100 orcs die” got old fast.
6) There was no point at all to Gandalf’s meeting with Radagast, nor for his trip to meet him—which was, where, again?
7) Jackson changed the whole Laketown business, pretty much every plot element, for no reason that I can see.
8) So many things are derivative from the other movies. The servant of the Master is Wormtongue. Gandalf’s confrontation with the Necromancer was the same as his with Sauruman (though at least this time Gandalf seems adept at using magic and actually seems powerful, even though he loses). The dwarves giving up and leaving the mountain was like Sam leaving Frodo (both of which are not in the books). Etc.
9) Why did Gandalf go into Dol Gildur? There was no point.
10) The “black arrow” changes were stupid.
11) He REALLY fucked up Bilbo-Smaug. First, B goes in there TWICE. The first time he steals a cup. The second time, they have the conversation. Jackson ruins the conversation. It’s supposed to be very courteous on the surface. And Bilbo NEVER takes off his ring, which would be suicide. Also, Smaug sparing him toward the end was inexplicable.
12) The whole “light the furnaces” thing was there only to provide a massive action sequence. Plot-wise, it was idiotic. Also, amazing that all that machinery still worked after all those years! And that they had a ready-made, still standing gold mold of a giant dwarf.
13) Having effed up the plot, Jackson needs to find a reason for Smaug to want to destroy Laketown so he just tacks it on. “Oh, I bet they were in on this all along.” Sure.

It's much of this that makes me question the hour of added new material. There was plenty in the original that could have made for good storytelling.

Still I enjoyed it when completely divorcing my geek-self expectations from the book.

 

[Cary Grant]

Jackson had far less hand in the Hobbit than LOTR- wonder how much of the plot blame lies with Guillermo del Toro

 

[Manton]

Oh, yeah, and the arkenstone is a magic talisman that will unite the dwarves

 

[Gradstudent78]



Jackson had far less hand in the Hobbit than LOTR- wonder how much of the plot blame lies with Guillermo del Toro

Well the decision wasn't made until after he left to turn it into a trilogy (as opposed to two movies), so I'm guessing there were at least significant changes to the story associated with that.

 

[dopey]

Le fael, Lefty

 

[lefty]

Probably. I am small g geek when it comes to this stuff. Had no idea what was going on in that scene or much of the movie. Read the book when I was 11 and never reread or broke the spine of "The Silmarillion."

But that may not be what you're referring to.

lefty