"The Hobbit"

[Erick Estrada]

Originally Posted by Teh_Bandwagoner

Man Jackson is such a workhorse, putting in 20 hours a day. And to be thrusted into a movie like that with no real planning, it's nothing short of a miracle that the movie got made.

I mean yeah they're certainly not masterpieces like the LOTR trilogy, and probably not worth a lot of repeat viewings, but FWIW, I enjoyed the movies on first viewings.

Yeah they weren't as good as the LOTR movies but I still enjoyed them for the most part.

[peter12]

Originally Posted by CliffFletcher

Jackson's problem is he doesn't understand that sometimes less is more.

Michael Bay with Puppets.

His splatter phase was fun. LOTR and Hobbit movies were sensationalist and childish garbage.

[Azure]

The length of the movies wasn't the problem. The overwhelming CGI, lame storylines and overwhelming CGI, plus the overwhelming CGI made it all worse.

Did I mention the overwhelming CGI?

I mean he was able to make Legolas look more realistic in 2001.

[darklord700]

I still don't understand at the end why and for what are the five armies fighting for.

[Erick Estrada]

Originally Posted by peter12

Michael Bay with Puppets.

His splatter phase was fun. LOTR and Hobbit movies were sensationalist and childish garbage.

That's your opinion. The LOTR movies IMO were amazing.

[Regulator75]

Originally Posted by peter12

Michael Bay with Puppets.

His splatter phase was fun. LOTR and Hobbit movies were sensationalist and childish garbage.

LOTR was great (IMO), then Jackson turned into Lucas and went crazy with the next trilogy.

[MrMastodonFarm]

LOTR was amazing. Of course not everyone is going to love it but yeah, it's amazing.

The only good parts of The Hobbit trilogy were the ones following the moving parts leading up to Lord of the Rings. That GoPro barrel river scene is so damn bad, so damn bad.

[Wormius]

Originally Posted by darklord700

I still don't understand at the end why and for what are the five armies fighting for.

The unprotected wealth in the mountain.

[CliffFletcher]

Originally Posted by MrMastodonFarm

That GoPro barrel river scene is so damn bad, so damn bad.

I fell asleep. I'm no filmmaker, but I'm pretty sure your action scenes aren't meant to put people to sleep. Jackson just has terrible judgement about tension and action. Look at the brontosaurus scene in King Kong - 4 minutes of dinosaurs tumbling down a ravine. Surely any director with taste would recognize that a scene like that would have more impact if it was 2 minutes. But no, Jackson has a kind of fetish for kinetic overload - must show more stuff flying all over the screen, more stuff, more stuff, more stuff...

[Violator]

Originally Posted by Erick Estrada

That's your opinion. The LOTR movies IMO were amazing.

They haven't aged well visually.

In about ten years Jackson will re release them again in what ever format we will be using.

HOLD ONTO YOUR COPIES DONT LET HIM STARWARS IT.

[Wormius]

Originally Posted by Violator

They haven't aged well visually.

In about ten years Jackson will re release them again in what ever format we will be using.

HOLD ONTO YOUR COPIES DONT LET HIM STARWARS IT.

I did re-watch FOTR a few days ago. The glowy-fuzzy aura around the Elves and the "don't feel like making the Hobbits small for this scene today" was noticeable.

[MrMastodonFarm]

Fellowship of the Ring is 15 years old now, think the entire trilogy holds up pretty well with that length of time passing. That one holds up the best IMO, it has far and away the most actual sets, locations, costumes etc used and still looks great.

The skirmish where Boromir being the best of it.

[Wormius]

Originally Posted by MrMastodonFarm

Fellowship of the Ring is 15 years old now, think the entire trilogy holds up pretty well with that length of time passing. That one holds up the best IMO, it has far and away the most actual sets, locations, costumes etc used and still looks great.

The skirmish where Boromir being the best of it.

The Boromir scene gets a lot of accolades. Was that the first time a realistic "death by arrow" scene appeared in a movie?

I think the scenes preceding and within Moria are textbook on how practical and special effects should be used together.

The richness of the locations was great, and I think he may have gotten carried away with it in later movies. We all know New Zealand is beautiful; not every scene needs to open with a soaring shot over mountains or rolling hills or vast cgi armies. The attempts to show how big everything is seems to be how directors get addicted to cgi.

It's too bad there is no way to show directors how cgi produced now, will look on 5 - 10 years. Maybe take their glasses, get fingerprint smudges all over them and say, "this is what the cgi will look like in the future, are you sure you want to overuse it?".

[GreenLantern]

Originally Posted by MrMastodonFarm

Fellowship of the Ring is 15 years old now, think the entire trilogy holds up pretty well with that length of time passing. That one holds up the best IMO, it has far and away the most actual sets, locations, costumes etc used and still looks great.

The skirmish where Boromir being the best of it.

This. It is like looking at Jurassic Park when it's CGI was still being picked apart 20 years later. For how old those movies are now they still look great and I feel that there needed to be some 'over the topness' to fully immerse ourselves in this fantasy world.

And you want to talk practical effects, you guys should watch the behinds the scene stuff from the extended editions. The lengths that Jackson went to for some of the effects is mind boggling, right down to shining lights into Galadriels eyes to show their reflection which represents the impact of having seen the Two Trees in Tolkien lore. I think some people need to do a bit more home work before they come talking dat trash.

[CliffFletcher]

Originally Posted by Wormius

The Boromir scene gets a lot of accolades. Was that the first time a realistic "death by arrow" scene appeared in a movie?

The Boromir death scene was great in Bakshi's Lord of the Rings too (which is an unfairly neglected movie).

[octothorp]

Fun fact! Boromir's death scene was the first scene that Mortensen and Bean filmed together.

My wife and I rewatched LotR over Christmas, and we found it held up extremely well over the years. Visually it's still fantastic. Some of the plot problems get more and more glaring over repeat viewings over the years (and you can see little writing mistakes that are largely covered over by the rest of the movie, but which are also occur in the Hobbit in a far more glaring way).

The Hobbit was always going to be a problem to film. I read the book to my son recently, and I couldn't help thinking how awful the movie would have been if they had stuck to only the text in the book. There'd be more singing, the elves would be less impressive, the riddle scene would be far longer, and the battle would be much shorter. Emotionally it would be far, far shallower.

Really, the decision to try and tie it together with LotR saved it from being awful. The occasionally hammy writing and the decision to rely so heavily on CGI where practical effects were used the LotR is what prevented it from being great.

[blankall]

Originally Posted by octothorp

Fun fact! Boromir's death scene was the first scene that Mortensen and Bean filmed together.

My wife and I rewatched LotR over Christmas, and we found it held up extremely well over the years. Visually it's still fantastic. Some of the plot problems get more and more glaring over repeat viewings over the years (and you can see little writing mistakes that are largely covered over by the rest of the movie, but which are also occur in the Hobbit in a far more glaring way).

The Hobbit was always going to be a problem to film. I read the book to my son recently, and I couldn't help thinking how awful the movie would have been if they had stuck to only the text in the book. There'd be more singing, the elves would be less impressive, the riddle scene would be far longer, and the battle would be much shorter. Emotionally it would be far, far shallower.

Really, the decision to try and tie it together with LotR saved it from being awful. The occasionally hammy writing and the decision to rely so heavily on CGI where practical effects were used the LotR is what prevented it from being great.

I'd agree that the LOTR, especially the first one, still hold up great.

The Hobbit films, however, are unwatchable. I literally fell asleep the first time I tried watching them. Repeat viewing don't help. They are truly awful. As others have mentioned, they suffer from:

1) Over-reliance on bad CGI.
2) Bad pacing.
3) Bad dialogue.
4) Characters and side-plots that you simply don't care about.

The Hobbit films feel like 9 hours straight of the Lucas edited Jaba's palace scene.

[CliffFletcher]

Originally Posted by octothorp

The Hobbit was always going to be a problem to film. I read the book to my son recently, and I couldn't help thinking how awful the movie would have been if they had stuck to only the text in the book. There'd be more singing, the elves would be less impressive, the riddle scene would be far longer, and the battle would be much shorter. Emotionally it would be far, far shallower.

It would have been a children's movie, based on a children's book. Which I frankly would have preferred to the moronic adult action movies we got. Michael Bay with swords pretty much nails it.

[Cecil Terwilliger]

Add another vote to the LOTR was amazing and Hobbit was awful.

I always thought Jackson did a great job on the LOTR trilogy, the last half of ROTK aside, and never blamed him for some of the changes he made. I thought some were for the best and some were likely because of the studio meddling and him needing to keep the movie marketable.

The Hobbit, like others I've never thought it would make a good movie. I thought Jackson would do it justice and it is very disappointing how it turned out.

[Coach]

Another Boromir fun fact!...

Don't remember this in the books, but after Boromir's death, Aragorn takes his leather bracers and straps them over his own, and wears them for the remainder of the films all the way to his crowning as King. Pretty cool homage to him that is never actually verbalized in the films.

And I agree the Hobbit is no good. I didn't even bother with the 5 Armies, the other two were so terrible.