THE HOBBIT MOVIE
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December 31, 2014 at 4:30 pm #31915
Haven’t read your comments, Master Gavin, because I’ve not seen the movie yet, but even without seeing it I have to agree with your closing paragraph entirely. Still looking forward to Five Armies as a fun film, however!
January 1, 2015 at 11:45 am #31918Master Gavin is very talkative indeed. I read wise comments, as always.
I watched the extended DOS. Better, but the less better extended movie I feel.January 1, 2015 at 12:43 pm #31920Well, so far I did not comment on this matter very much and I didn’t feel to do so. That is because Master Mornedhel and Master Gavin by now have already found words for my thoughts and I only, but entirely, can support their point of view.
January 21, 2015 at 4:41 pm #32101OK, finally seen it, and have to say that all in all I was disappointed after movies 1 and 2. There are so many places in part 3 where just a nod in the direction of the events in the book, or the introduction of a short passage of Tolkien’s text could have brought it much closer to the original – room could easily have been found for such additions by taking out 10% of the fighting, which gets a bit repetitive after a while. And why did they have to change the battle as described in the book?
OK, there were some nice moments – I particularly liked the fight at Dol Guldur – but there was a plethora of absurd moments too (Giant worms? Suoer-large trolls? Beorn arriving by eagle? Really?).
Of the six LOTR franchise movies this is without doubt the one I enjoyed the least. I confess that I still quite enjoyed it, as a Fantasy (note deliberate use of capital letter…) genre flick, but if JRRT isn’t spinning in his grave I’ll be amazed.
Hopefully the extended edition will improve things!
January 27, 2015 at 5:55 pm #32149Interestingly, this afternoon, I read about this:
January 30, 2015 at 2:24 pm #32160I wonder what kind of film we would have got if GDT had remained at the ‘Helm’ to direct?
August 29, 2016 at 10:30 pm #34945Well, today, I finally watched the Extended Edition of An Unexpected Journey.
What a difference it makes.
The individual extras are nothing terribly exciting. Some of them are extra dumbness. But they are useful extra dumbness. The weirdly stretched and overstuffed first film is now longer, and there’s more time given to scenes where nothing else is going on, but characters are interacting, expressing themselves and given moments of “humanity” (or hobbity, or dwarfity) that were not there before. Thorin, we learn is quite aware of the potential for madness in his family, and aware others around him are equally aware. Bilbo and Elrond actually make friends, the ancient distant immortal recognising, perhaps, a fellow scholar and lover of learning. The Shire sequences are much extended, feel fuller and are as charming as before.
Someone even passes a statue of an elf maid which looks eerily like a Chris Tubb sculpt – something to do with the hair, at any rate.
The big dumb moments are still there. One even gets dumber – one of the goblin songs sneaks back in. There’s a bit of useless pratfalling by the Dwarves when they are guests in Rivendell, a scene which gets a bit tiresome, but it breaks up some maybe slower, but important interactions between the key cast.
One of the key issues, for me, is the design of the orcs. And how they really shouldn’t have made them so front and centre. What makes the Orcs so effective in the older films is that you never really got a good look at them. You got impressions of wild eyes and violence and scars and inhumanity, something about how they were equipped, something about the character of the foe. I have been painting a bunch of the licensed GW orcs recently and they are really quite annoying. The designs are ok, but after a while, something about them becomes just seems wrong. The costume designs tell a story elsewhere, but the story is chaotic here. Contrast with the simplicity of the Mithril designs. The costume designs in The Hobbit are worse, with even less of a story and more stylisation. The film as a whole has some strange weapon designs, but nowhere is this more obvious than with the various Orc tribes. Physically, they are even worse. In the older films, they were clearly people in makeup, but the camera doesn’t dwell on them. In this one, imagining advanced in CGI technology and cinematic blending that clearly don’t exist yet, the director chooses to let the camera linger on different orc designs. They emerge as plasticy, characterless and overdone, as if they have fallen into this often quite charming film from some other genre entirely. The whole Azog plot is defensible as a cinematic change, but the execution is weak indeed.
And, sad to say, they did not take this golden opportunity to cut the “storm giants” sequence.
August 30, 2016 at 7:24 am #34947I rather like the storm giants, so – as usual – everything is really just a matter of personal taste and preference. Funnily enough, Mrs B and I watched al three extended Hobbit movies over the weekend, and as much as they’re fun in parts, they really irritate me in so many ways that I really have’t got the time or patience to write them all down. They’re really just a contest in how many Orc heads can be chopped off in any five minutes of movie-time. And as you say, Master Gavin, silliness abounds throughout. Mrs B, however, loves these movies!
Then, last night, we watched the extended edition Fellowship of the Ring again, and the difference between these and the Hobbit efforts is distinct. Whereas the LOTR trilogy are like finely executed paintings, with a distinct quality of “otherness”, the Hobbit movies are more like industrial-scale digital photographs, with few concessions to atmosphere, wonder or beauty.
August 30, 2016 at 10:17 am #34951Barliman wrote:…./we watched the extended edition Fellowship of the Ring again, and the difference between these and the Hobbit efforts is distinct. Whereas the LOTR trilogy are like finely executed paintings, with a distinct quality of “otherness”, the Hobbit movies are more like industrial-scale digital photographs, with few concessions to atmosphere, wonder or beauty.Completely agreed with these feelings!
August 30, 2016 at 12:46 pm #34952Well, despite the improvements, the thing still cannot see Fellowship with a telescope, in terms of quality. It remains, alas, half a good movie. Just with bit that make it a lot more fluid and natural feeling.
Watching the second extended film now. It’s as dodgy as I remember.
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MMP › Mithril in Middle-Earth › The Prancing Pony › THE HOBBIT MOVIE