The Hobbit films, previously to be directed by Guillermo del Toro and now to be directed by Peter Jackson again.

Tolkien-loving friend from work went today. just as bad as the first one apparently. tho he was watching in 2D tbf so maybe with enough gimmicks in your face it's amazing.

“They were come to the Desolation of the Dragon,” Tolkien writes partway through “The Hobbit,” in a line that conveys the stateliness of purpose of Bilbo’s journey and its foreboding, “and they were come at the waning of the year.” For a few pleasurable moments, Mr. Jackson pauses at the edge of this poetic cliffhanger — and then barrels right over.

Lovely.

saw it at a preview on tuesday at Odeon leicester square with tons of competition winning kids - great atmosphere! it's far more fun than the first, though again too many boring fucking angelic elves. but the wine barrel sequence is just some pure joyous cinematic shit that people could only hate if they hate life.

life-affirming hobbitses

I haven't seen any of the LOTR movies but this one sounds right up my damn alley

Don't do it! This is just like "Star Wars:" first three are good (second is the best, third is the worst), prequels are awful, doing everything the other three did right only wrong.

xp i think as a metal fan you'd like 'the two towers', it's str8 doom

i think what i took away from the first hobbit was that it looks great, ian mckellen is A+ once again, martin freeman is great, but i forget everything else about it.

Oh come now, Unexpected Journey is fucking leagues better than Phantom Menace.

If by that you mean leagues longer ...

All I know is that I never want to see either ever again.

Well I'm a bit of a UJ apologist, for reasons I'm sure I've gone into on this thread.

i think as a metal fan you'd like 'the two towers', it's str8 doom

it was always my favorite book of the series, which was why there was no way I was going to see it - I have no desire at all to see Gollum realized as a CGI character, he was a super-important figure in my imagination as a child

The first LOTR movie gets everything right, particularly the sense of exploration, of seeing sights like the Argonath for the first time. It also perfectly captures my favourite section of the book, the cat-and-mouse game with the Nazgul on the outskirts of the Shire, when the Nazgul are still scary.

Was going to say (and maybe have said?), a couple of years ago I rewatched the LOTR films, and as I commented to a friend, wow, fans really dodged a bullet. They could have been utterly terrible, but instead the acting, effects, direction - everything was absolutely just right. Didn't even need to impose any caveats. "The Hobbit" - everything was terrible, most mysteriously the effects and sets, which you'd think would have been the only thing to improve in the interim, but no, somehow even those aspects were shittier. Same with "Star Wars," once again. Sort of perfected the approach and effects in the first one, but now, years later, we finally have the technology to do it worse, the way we always envisioned it!

i think in 'the hobbit' what i noticed was the action scenes were slicker but also a bit too close to 'yoda bouncing off the walls with a lightsaber' for me.

plus as much as LOTR is an outsized epic, operating on a canvas 10x larger than 'the hobbit', it also has what seems to be a smaller core of characters we're following. we meet a few more along the way and there are background characters we get to know just a bit but not as many as 'the hobbit'. i mean there's what, like 15 dwarves and a wizard and a hobbit and another two wizards and a "necromancer" and elves and shit plus more.

i think in 'the hobbit' what i noticed was the action scenes were slicker but also a bit too close to 'yoda bouncing off the walls with a lightsaber' for me.

Much as I enjoyed the film I have to admit the goblin chase scene was pretty much irredeemable.

The fights in Return of the King were over-slick at times too, e.g. Legolas taking down the olyphaunt and the undead army coming in to effortlessly mop up with no suffering or sacrifice.

The action scenes in Fellowship were tense by comparison, with the physical layout of the terrain and the characters' locations being actually important.

Fellowship is my favourite. The Moria sequence is the most exciting part of all three films.

Gotta say I really enjoyed Bloomps taking down the elephant hardcore though.

Saw this last night. Better than the first Hobbit, but still very long and bloated. Smaug was pretty cool.

"Return of the King," on rewatching, was such a clear precursor of "The Hobbit." Silly focus on head orc villain, inferior action sequences to what came in the other movies, refusal to trim extraneous stuff ...

i think w/ROTK the source material was dope enough so that it didn't get bogged down w/jacksonisms, unlike this trilogy where he's making shit up right? and therefore we're kinda more trapped in his NZ hobbit mind.

Yeah^ there's so much goddamn padding in these movies it's ridiculous

blowing this out into 3 epic movies was never a good idea. I haven't seen the new one yet but I'm still puzzling over what the heck is going to happen in the final installment.

battle of five armies will turn into the war of five armies

Intrigued that the most made up thing in this one, the female elf warrior, is apparently one of the stronger aspects of the film, though the Times review complained she was wasted in a by the books (if not by *the* book) love story.

LOTR has become my go-to pre-Thanksgsiving or pre-noche buena dinner for ears.

I didn't really get what the point of her character was, other than to break up Tolkien's unrelenting sausage fest

These films are all about "what's the point?"

True, true

I'll admit that Smaug was kind of worth it. He looked great.

Intrigued that the most made up thing in this one, the female elf warrior, is apparently one of the stronger aspects of the film, though the Times review complained she was wasted in a by the books (if not by *the* book) love story.

― Josh in Chicago, Friday, December 13, 2013 2:53 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

u do know this whole thing is made up right

I thought it was all based on that Zeppelin song, which I thought was itself ripped off from a 200 year old folk tale?

Tolkien listened to nothing but Zeppelin while writing the Hobbit back in the 30's

the action scenes were slicker but also a bit too close to 'yoda bouncing off the walls with a lightsaber' for me

There's more of this kind of thing in Smaug, like the barrel chase scene which is filled with impossible movement by the characters. I enjoyed wallowing in it though, and, to me, this one looked a lot better than UJ did. Martin Freeman's really good, but not enough of the focus is on him - too many characters, dammit.

I rewatched the LOTR films, and as I commented to a friend, wow, fans really dodged a bullet. They could have been utterly terrible, but instead the acting, effects, direction - everything was absolutely just right. Didn't even need to impose any caveats

Most of the acting is about school-play standard. Bloom, elrond, galadriel appallingly cast/performed, everything after rohan a butchered mess that misses any grace or gravitas from the book but hey! adds werewolves! paths of the dead a disney ride intro. Elves all just camp chancers afaict. Any alteration from story/script from jackson and mrs clangs across the ears and the flow.

And he got it far, far more right than he has even tried to do here.

Imagine if lucas hadnt prequelled his own work, but idk say blade runner or w/e. Jackson is a fraud who should prob be up on charges of some sort.

nah I disagree, and not because Ian McKellen understands how to treat the material. Legolas is a boring role and so is Aragorn; the difference is that Viggo Mortensen makes Aragorn into the only watchable boring superhero in franchise film.

whether you agree with any of it or not, john dolan's epic slam of jackson's LOTR is a pretty entertaining read:

http://www.exile.ru/articles/detail.php?ARTICLE_ID=7168

the real dodged bullet was stuart townsend.

McKellen, Lee predictably great. Frodo, aragorn, sam, theoden all good. Gollum well negotiated. Oy vey the rest.

reading that dolan article is a blast, for sure, but agreeing with his perspective really requires seeing those books as sacrosanct. no way in hell was Lee bad casting for Saruman.

Gollum's definitely gonna show up in the next movie, right? Vengefully emerging from a cave or something. He's too important as a face of the franchise.

Cheers jd that was a v satisfying read (tho yeah i didnt agree with all of it by any means)- the rage/offence taken is about right tho.

i believe gollum narrates the second film to baby frodo (now his godson) and the third one is just three hours of merry and pippin dancing

Gollum leaves the caves, changes his walk, starts talking normally, is faramir, crowds minds blown, gandalf drops pitcher of ale on floor, everyone from new zealand in one last crane shot, fin

whether you agree with any of it or not, john dolan's epic slam of jackson's LOTR is a pretty entertaining read:

http://www.exile.ru/articles/detail.php?ARTICLE_ID=7168

― (The Other) J.D. (J.D.), Friday, December 13, 2013 8:08 PM (12 minutes ago) Bookmark

dolan's cool

Tolkien's generation was so far superior to us that even now we feel it, and hate them for it.

<3

He might be the only person ever to openly, gleefully diss Christopher Lee.

Only to praise "fine actor" Sean Bean a few graphs later.