"The Hobbit"

[Azure]

Originally Posted by jammies

The Hobbit is around 300 pages long. Two movies was really stretching it, so three is ridiculous.

I hope they are good, but LOTR was dragging by the end of the third movie - I can't be the only one who was thinking "Sail away already!" when it was getting into hour four.

I think they're going beyond The Hobbit though.

But I agree, the last LOTR movie was extremely long. The extended version much worse.

But its Peter Jackson, and he knows Tolkien, so this will probably be good.

[Bigtime]

Originally Posted by jammies

That's exactly what concerns me. It sounds like Jackson is going to kludge a trilogy together out of dissimilar elements that were never intended to be presented together as a whole. The tone of "The Hobbit" is completely different than the rest of Tolkien's material, and what we are going to get doesn't sound to be faithful to the original at all.

With Jackson at the helm again did you expect it to match the tone of the book though? I think it was a fair assumption to make that he would project the darker world of LOTR onto The Hobbit.

[KTrain]

The purists are going to get their panties in a bundle over this.

That being said, The Hobbit movies have to be significantly shorter than the LOTR movies or they'll be really stretching it. The trailer from the Dark Knight Rise was pretty boring. Hopefully that doesn't carry over to the film.

[YYC in LAX]

I get what they're doing, but it kind of weakens the integrity of the LoTR movies.

Longer, more in depth books got 1 movie each.
The Hobbit gets 3 movies to itself. I understand that there will be additional material that will bridge the stories together, but it seems kind of odd.

Just hope Tolkein's vision isn't changed.

[jammies]

Originally Posted by Bigtime

With Jackson at the helm again did you expect it to match the tone of the book though? I think it was a fair assumption to make that he would project the darker world of LOTR onto The Hobbit.

Well, this is the same man who made "The Frighteners" and "Meet the Feebles", so he does have some background in less seriously gloomy fare. I did have some hopes, but those are pretty well vanished now.

[Bigtime]

I think he's kept some of the singing though, so you got that.

[nik-]

The singing and the compliment circles were the worst parts of the LotR books. So glad he kept that stuff out.

[Cecil Terwilliger]

I think the Hobbit is going to flop compared to LOTR.

I just don't see it being both a commercial and critical success in the same way LOTR was. I'd be surprised if it got the same kind of mainstream attention or the Academy award noms. And I don't mean any mainstream attention, Hobbit will get its share but I'd be very surprised if it becomes a phenomenon the way LOTR did.

I think the core audience is going to be there and it will be a commercial success but I just don't think you're going to see a ton of non-Tolkien fans become fans like happened with LOTR. I'm basing that mostly on personal opinion of the source material and just the general vibe I get surrounding the Hobbit.

I honestly hardly know anyone who didn't enjoy the LOTR trilogy (the third one being borderline terrible because it was waaay too long notwithstanding). I think the LOTR fanbase and the general appeal of these movies will make it successful but I think it falls well short of expectations and its predecessors.

[troutman]

Originally Posted by Cecil Terwilliger

I think the Hobbit is going to flop compared to LOTR.

I'll take that bet. The LOTR movies built a fanatical world-wide audience. Also, The Hobbit should appeal more to children, further boosting ticket sales.

[nik-]

I don't agree that it's going to flop, but it's definitely not going to be as massive. It's really too bad, because the Hobbit is a great self contained story, stretching it out over three years is really going to affect it negatively.

[Cecil Terwilliger]

Originally Posted by troutman

I'll take that bet. The LOTR movies built a fanatical world-wide audience. Also, The Hobbit should appeal more to children, further boosting ticket sales.

But I don't think it'll be the cultural phenom it was last time. Is it in 3D? That changes everything.

Originally Posted by nik-

I don't agree that it's going to flop, but it's definitely not going to be as massive. It's really too bad, because the Hobbit is a great self contained story, stretching it out over three years is really going to affect it negatively.

I didn't say it would flop, I said it's not going to be as massive. Or in other words, it'll flop compared to LOTR.

[Erick Estrada]

Originally Posted by Cecil Terwilliger

I think the Hobbit is going to flop compared to LOTR.

IMO it has a chance to be even bigger launching just before the Christmas holidays pretty well guarantees a massive box office return. The Hobbit being an older and slightly less dark writing may reach a broader audience than LOTR. Of course the movie itself will have to be very good, well received and marketed properly for this to happen.

On the other side of the coin there is the risk of a portion of the audience reaching their saturation point in the whole Hobbit/LOTR universe. Time will tell.

[Locke]

I dont think it will match up to the LOTR simply because people's expectations of Jackson this time around are absolutely astronomical.

To out-do LOTR hes going to have to come up with something really special.

[octothorp]

My only concern about the decision to do two movies rather than three is the lateness of the decision. 'I have enough footage to do three films' just isn't a good enough justification in my opinion. The question should be 'can I do the story justice in two films, or does it absolutely require three?' I would have preferred the approach of doing two relatively tight cinema releases, and then geeking out with all the extra stuff in the extended editions, similar to LotR.

Personally, I love the decision to go darker. The subject-matter of the books was extremely dark for children's fare, even if the mood was much lighter than LotR. I remember being very affected both by the battle scene, the caverns, and the forest-fire scene when my dad read me these books as a child.

I also think the 'Tolkien's vision' argument tends to miss the fact that Tolkien was, himself, constantly revising and adding to his work. He just wanted to create something as absolutely epic as possible, and later in his career he felt that the Hobbit story would be more epic if it were more closely tied to the LotR story. Which is more important, the vision he had when he was writing the book, or how he saw the story in the context of the larger Middle Earth story later in his life? Maybe we're all guessing when we say what he would have wanted, but my guess is that he would love the approach of using all the Dol Guldur/White Council stuff.

[Locke]

I have to say, just finished watching the clip, and you have to love the amount of detail, craftsmanship, pride and love that goes into these movies.

This isnt your simple; 'show up, shoot, go home' kind of deal. Its amazing to me how much the cast and crew love doing the work despite the details they give you about how hard and grueling it is.

[KTrain]

They'll make more money with 3 films than 2 or 1. That's the only decision they needed to make. The Hobbit/LOTR franchise is a sure-fire money maker and very few franchises can say the same.

[Aegypticus]

Originally Posted by KTrain

They'll make more money with 3 films than 2 or 1. That's the only decision they needed to make. The Hobbit/LOTR franchise is a sure-fire money maker and very few franchises can say the same.

Yeah, I was thinking the same thing. It was probably out of his hands. If you tell a studio after you've finished filming two movies that they can have three instead for a relatively small additional investment I think the execs would wet themselves with excitement.

[Mike F]

It'll open huge, and a huge opening fed by pre-release excitement can carry a film a long way. However, there are three movies that need to be successful, not one. If the huge audiences that walk into the first one walk out thinking 'meh' due to there not being enough compelling story to drive three full movies, combined with the possibility that the visuals turn out disappointing due to the new frame rate it's shot in, you'll have trouble carrying momentum into the 2nd and 3rd installments.

[Ashartus]

I'll reserve judgment until the movies come out. I'm not opposed to 3 movies if it means they'll be shorter - closer to 2 hours rather than over 3 hours. There should be enough natural breaks in the Hobbit story to divide it up, since it's really a fairly episodic story. The other storyline is so condensed in the LotR appendices that it's hard to say how much time they'd need to tell that part. What I wouldn't want to see is the story being dragged out just for the sake of making the extra movie.

[MissTeeks]

The second part of The Hobbit has been re-named The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, the third part takes the original name of the second movie: The Hobbit: There and Back Again and given a release date of July 18, 2014, which is the release date for the new X-Men: First Class movie.

http://insidemovies.ew.com/2012/08/3...-release-date/