The Hobbit - Page 27

To this point, I've given this some thought as well. Just to ask the question, shouldn't The Hobbit, especially this first installment, be a little less involving? After all, it's this series of events that lead up to the gravity of the LOTR trilogy. Do you suspect this is why The Hobbit doesn't seem "as strong" a story, because it's just beginning? Or do you think that LOTR took us through so much that we're simply exhausted of the concept and just aren't into it as much? Or....do you think that it's the challenges of effectively illustrating the backstory including establishing suspense for certain Hobbit characters that you know survive because they were in LOTR?

Will you...SIGH...forget about the friggin' BOOK for a second?! Producers stray from a couple syllables of a book all the time to make the movie work at the theater! The Avengers of the movie aren't the total team from the comic its based on! The aliens werent in the comic, however they ARE from the marvel universe so its OKAY to put them in there as a first-movie cannon fodder! Its not ABOUT adhering to every SYLLABLE of the book, its about making this ONE movie work for the 3 hours that you're watching it! They should have put a villain in that is LOOSELY FROM the pages of the book, that can be defeated in this ONE movie, with NO bearing on part 2 OR the three LOTR movies that it comes before! If this is how Jackson does business, I dont wanna see the LOTR movies or anything else he does!

The Hobbit book will be two movies. The third movie spans the 60 year time between the end of the Hobbit and beginning of fotr.


That is a very good idea.

No, you are the one who should "forget the friggin' book" by saying you prefer a movie called 'Little People vs. the Goblin King" instead of the one we have which (like it or not) is based on one of the most firmly established fictional stories in the English language. It is ridiculous to suggest that "The Hobbit" movie should be anything other than a close parallel of "The Hobbit" book.

You are describing a DIFFERENT story, so go all the way and say you wish it were not based on the book at all and then we can agree that the film makers could then do anything they wanted with it. Back to reality, it is a movie derived from the book, so your opinions of drastically changing the plot lines of a story loved by millions makes it far worse, not better.

BTW, if you are so hung up on having the group defeat a boss character like in a video game...

Warning: Spoiler! (Click to show)
No one expects everything to be perfectly in sync with the book, but as long as it genrrally follows what the author created it is acceptable to most.
Edited by joeblow - 12/18/12 at 4:50pm

I'm tired of arguing ...I'll just get responses by fanboys of the book NOT paying attention to what I'm saying, and taking it personally as an attack on the BOOK. Its not an attack on the book or its aurthor! I'm not saying Jackson isnt god ! Its SIMPLY, how did this movie make you feel when it ended? Did you feel you got an ending to story that was being laid out over the 3 hours?! That made you satisfied with THAT movie regardless of the next two!We all know theres 2 more installments! You still deserved a payoff to that 3 hours! EVERY movie does this, its not a videogame game thing! Matrix, every other episodic trilogy! Regardless of the sequels coming, they made sure you were fulfilled with the movie you were sitting watching right NOW ! Also...

Warning: Spoiler! (Click to show)
Lastly, Jackson is a good, director, but he ISN'T Zeus !! I recall King Kong having plenty of critics, and District 9 was OKAY...bottom line is, I could have chosen Red Dawn or something, but I chose this, and it was a huge mistake! I've been to some movies that were disappointing, like Dredd, but this was the MOST disappointing movie I've seen in a while! I wasted 3 hours, fine, and I'm moving on...Django Unchained probably, Quinten knows how to end a 3 hour movie ! Later, I'll just be talking to a brick wall with fanboys of either the book or Jackson!
Edited by AndreHD - 12/18/12 at 11:44pm

Saw it this afternoon with full expectations to really dislike it, only to find I sort of liked it...

But it seemed Jackson was expected to deliver as many movies out of the materal as possible, as the trilogy and the last Harry Potter and the Twilight series proved people will come out. It's the McMansion theory of moviemaking: just so it doesn't cost a whole lot more to build a monster structure than to build a reasonable sized one, filming a trilogy using the same sets and actors will make you more money than just one regular movie, making you X3 profits for something maybe costing you X2 to produce. Providing your franchise has a proven track record, that is.

So we get something that looks and behaves like The Lord of the Rings: loveable knockabout comedy with dwarfs and hobbits but just about everything else deadly serious. Everyone speaks slowly and deeply. The Wagneresque music points out when heroic doings are happening. Helicopter flybys. Scenes that could advance the story much better if they were cut by a third or a half, or simply sped up a bit. Endless endings. You know the drill.
Edited by Shaded Dogfood - 12/19/12 at 6:35am

It was inevitable.
PJ made a very deliberate choice to milk The Hobbit for every last $$$ it could give and ALOT of people have noticed this (I guess I am more prescient than I think ).
If I was a fan of the book (and I am not), I would really be pi$$ed.

Anyway, I'll be going to an HFR presentation in Portland in the next day or 2.
I gotta see this tech in action....

LOL, by coincidence tonight I started watching my Xmas present to myself of Wagner's Ring on BD by the MET and Levine.
Tolkein lifted quite a bit of LOTR from Wagner.

It might not even have been totally Jackson's fault. The money men and women may have insisted the book be split up in such a manner. But they could have made three two-hour movies and done it quite nicely. I guess GoCaboNow's explanation of what they are up to, with part three filling in the gaps between The Hobbit and The Ring, makes sense, but from where are they getting the source material? The Silmarillion ?

Allegedly, they're getting it from the comprehensive appendices to LOTR - and there's plenty of material there. It remains to be seen whether or not they also grab material from The Silmarillion.

Unless they make a deal with Tolkien's estate for use of the Silmarillion, PJ would not be allowed to weave its plot details into the existing movies.

The entire point of adapting a book like this is to present the story that made the book so popular. Overhauling it means that another movie should be made instead using the newly invented plot points. Nothing wrong with staying true to the essence of the material.

With that said, no one hear claimed that PJ could do no wrong or that the film as is is perfect. I myself said above it doesn't live up to the original trilogy, which I'll expand on in a bit. But whatever problems it has, "fixing" it, does not involve coming up with some random alternative storyline.

Lastly, I can't let this quote of yours go unanswered:

"Quinten knows how to end a 3 hour movie..."

After the complaints about The Hobbit not having some epic big boss fight, you seriously said this?

Warning: Spoiler! (Click to show)
Edited by joeblow - 12/19/12 at 8:31am

These are all great questions, and the possible answers are pretty complex IMHO.

"Gravity" was a good word to use when referencing the original trilogy of films, which did a good job of representing the "gravity" created in the LotR books. You could feel the weight of the fate of the world resting on the shoulders of the heroes, races and nations involved in the story. Actions and discussions added purpose to the overall goal of defeating a great evil and, by extension, saving Middle Earth. This is further enhanced by well developed, individual characters that have distinct and important roles to play in the story.

We do get hints of the upcoming, world-wide epic struggle, particularly with the meeting of the White Council which had Saruoman, Gandalf, Galendriel, and Elrond talking about the Necromancer and other growing problems in Middle Earth at Rivendell. But I don't know if the casual film goer who has not seen the LotR movies (or read the books) fully understand the importance that these wise leaders have in the overall structure of things.

Taken on its own, the whole point of the quest in The Hobbit is less epic than LotR - the dwarves want their home and treasure back. At one point the movie does a fantastic job at explaining the importance of this quest from a personal standpoint, but it still has less weight than LotR. Not only that, the personalities of in this one are not as fully developed at this point in the story, nor do we bond to them as well as we do to many of the ones in the other films.

Also, the main action sections of the story aren't pushing forward a progressive narrative this time around (i.e., the battle at the front gates of Mordor in RotK was an important distraction of Sauron and his minions so that Frodo and Samwise could approach the volcano undetected).

Instead, the scenes of conflict this ttime around are mere hurdles for the group to jump over, and are mostly unrelated to the main goal whatsoever. This lessens the "gravity" of each one by comparison, making it more similar to the disconnected episodes of the old Dungeons & Dragons cartoon than one, fully cohesive story. They are just jumping from one random peril to the next.

What also lessens the weight of the action somewhat is when comedy is injected into it as the fighting is going on. For instance, Warning: Spoiler! (Click to show)

So did Peter Jackson and company mess things up with the story? Generally speaking, I'm not so sure. It gets complex because a lot of these issues exist in The Hobbit novel as well. We have to keep in mind that thiswas the first story published in the series, and that it was originally written for kids.

This explains why, at least initially, the story of The Hobbit and its plot elements are much simpler and straight forward, and why it has a more light hearted feel than LotR. Only after he got halfway through The Hobbit did Tolkien start to add more "adult" plot points, which becomes much more intricately involved when he worked on The Silmarillion and the LotR.

Another twist in all of this is that Tolkien himself later changed his feelings about the less-weighty tale of The Hobbit and set out to make a lot of changes to make it more serious. As far as I know, only one significant scene rewrite was edited into the book after its initial publication...
Warning: Spoiler! (Click to show)

Tolkien made the Silmarillion after The Hobbit's success, but the draft of it was deemed to be too serious with not enough about hobbits by his publishers so he dove into years of working on LotR and the rest is history.

So back to this film, it is difficult to say how they could have tweaked it to make it feel as strong as the first three movies when the story itself is different in so many ways. I mean, half of the dwarves are never fully developed into distinct personalities in the novel, so PJ and the screen writers did a decent job of fleshing them out a bit more in this film. When you factor in the fact that Tolkien himself wanted additional changes that were never realized and you can somewhat forgive the film makers for some of the rough edges here and there.

With all of that said, having re-read The Hobbit over a year ago with my youngest daughter, I am generally pleased with the film. She's too young to see the intense fights at this time, so I watched it with my eldest. I look forward to the next one for many reasons that I won't spoil for those who have not read the book, but I believe that the second half of the story has a good opportunity to establish more "gravity" that we have been discussing since even the book makes some significant adjustments in this area.
Edited by joeblow - 12/19/12 at 9:48am

Putting on my Tolkien geek hat here, this is incorrect. The Silmarillion was actually the very first thing that Tolkien started writing after World War I. He created two languages based on Finnish and Welsh while deployed for the War, and as a linguist he wanted to figure out what kind of culture would create these kinds of languages? That's how the idea of the Elves came about (called Gnomes for many years in his writing). Many of the stories in The Silmarillion were written in the '20s and early '30s.

He wrote The Hobbit for his children, and it wasn't intended to become part of his "high mythology," as he thought of it. But he was so drenched in his own work that bits and pieces of the larger world of The Silmarillion crept in around the edges. When his publisher wanted a sequel to The Hobbit, he went full-bore into making all of the stories one massive mythology. Around 1950 he demanded that Allen & Unwin, his publisher, could only have the rights to The Lord of the Rings if they also agreed to publish The Silmarillion (it was his way of either forcing them to publish both or release him from his contract so he could attempt to publish both elsewhere). They passed. He tried to get it published with another firm, but when that deal collapsed he went back to A&U and agreed to publish The Lord of the Rings only. He tinkered with The Silmarillion for the rest of his life but never completed it before his death, and the published version has a great deal of curation by his son to make it "consistent" with the previously published works.

Oh snap somebody said Jackson isn't Zeus....

Terrible, ain't it?

If Jackson wanted to make an episodic thing with NO payoff (NONE?!) in the first two installments? Just do a network TV series or three-part miniseries on sci-fi channel !! There's a huge difference between network TV and the movie theater, and Jackson clearly doesnt get it! In one medium, okay you can cheat the audience out of a payoff because its FREE, and you can always do something next week or a couple months later at the end of the season! You CANNOT do this in a movie you're releasing in a theater! First of call its NOT free, and the next installment can be YEARS away! So you are OBLIGATED to give that paying audience a payoff to SOMETHING by the conclusion of that 90-180 minutes they put aside! Its the difference between a 500 issue marvel comics series and a ONE issue graphic novel!
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This is BASIC, BASIC, THEATER movie storytelling, and just BASIC BUSINESS!! I don't know if he just doesn't respect the audience to insult them like that, but I cannot trust him now! The blu ray will be avoided unless I know he put in the RIGHT ending, and I won't bother with part 2 or 3!

As for the Kill Bill comment? Since I'm having such a hard time getting THIS point through your skulls, I'm going to wiki to read the plot of those movies, and I can tell you if Quin ten insulted your intelligence as badly as this guy plans on doing!

I reiterate my point on The Empire Strikes Back...no villain was defeated at the end of that movie. It is widely considered the best of the Star Wars movies. And people had to wait three years to see how it was resolved!

I can tell you if Quin ten insulted your intelligence as badly as this guy plans on doing!

Other than Jackie Brown, I feel Quentin insults my intelligence with each and every movie he makes. But that's just me.

As someone else mentioned earlier (and again four minutes ago), you must have problems with The Empire Strikes Back, too. And the first film in the Children of Paradise duo. And the first film of Red Cliffs. I try to think of others, but I can't come up with any more right now. Possibly the first two parts of The Human Condition.

Might have a point with Star Wars, but the others you mentioned weren't exactly billion sellers ?

Now, you said Kill Bill, because you didn't think I would actually go back and find the script to that movie, so you started adding other names . Let's talk about Kill Bill, Volume 1!

May I ask you who "O-Ren" (Lucy Liu) is ? BILL is the ultimate villain of the trilogy! Well O-Ren isn't BILL! Who's O-Ren? O-Ren belonged to the same gang as the protagonist, but is now leader of the Yakuza, and an ally of the ultimate villain! I'll tell you who O-Ren is in smart movie-making terms: a SECONDARY badass Quinten wrote in, so you still leave the theater satisfied! Even though BILL wasn't touched, this is Quinten knowing he still has to sell THIS movie and blu ray as its OWN entity!

I knew before even reading it that Quin ten can't be as clueless as this guy ! Never mind these book adaptations: bozo the clown could sell them to an established fan base! How about King Kong and District 9!

Back in a little with Kill Bill Volume 2!

Well, in part 2 Bill dies, because Quinten had no intentions of a third movie. But whats important is how he STRUCTURED part 1! This very BASIC storytelling and good business, how sell THAT movie as its own entity, even though its merely the first episode! I'd buy them as separate blu rays! I now know I can only buy The Hobbit as a 3-disc collection, because it would make no sense buy the blu ray of this movie as a stand alone disc!
Edited by AndreHD - 12/19/12 at 2:13pm

Might have a point with Star Wars, but the others you mentioned weren't exactly billion sellers ?

I suspect Red Cliffs made money in China. The other two are just a hair shy of being great art, and many would say they go all the way in the art department.

When something is a multi-volume episode of a larger whole, all the big story arcs simply can't be resolved within the parts. Period.

Warning: Spoiler! (Click to show)
Untagged spoiler... there is a third movie in development, and Quinten even shot footage for it while making KB vII.

Okay...Star Wars....BOTH Darth Vader and the Death Star are "defeated" at the end! You can make a case that the SECONDARY antagonist is the DEATH STAR planetoid! Lucas, Quinten...these guys aren't idiots ! He left a question mark about VADER, but the Death Star is destroyed WITHOUT question, sending you out of that theater with some kind of closure to THAT movie, even though you know there's more to come!

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Edited by AndreHD - 12/19/12 at 5:42pm

Yikes, someone hide the women and children.

All I knew about Peter Jackson was that he made the LOTR movies, which I never saw! King Kong, which I did see, but I thought was a bore, and District 9 which the sci-fi fan in me liked, but it had critics! I paid to see his new movie a couple days ago! I have absolutely ZERO reason to care WHO he is or have any reason to dislike him or LOTR! I JUST came on here to give an HONEST OPINION about the Hobbit movie! Slow build up, great action and effects, the ending SUCKS! Has nothing to do with some conspiracy against the book or Jackson! For that I get childish fanboyish responses, from some that apparently haven't even SEEN the movie, as if they're "defending the honor" of the book and Jackson! Lets try to sell to this man that a comic relief character that appears briefly at the end is the MAIN villain so we'll be right and he's wrong! Jackson could give two...about you defending his honor! The Mighty Thor is a childhood hero! So of course I liked the movie! I'll go on IMDB right now and read HUNDREDS of user reviews with complaints like Thor not wearing the helmet or too much time as the human, or that the movie flat out SUCKS! First of all its their opinion, and most importantly a lot of the complaints are CORRECT!! Blind fanboys are the WORST thing for a movie because they'll defend even the flaws, to the death!!

Your problem is that you you criticise the movie based on premises that wasn't intended.

The Hobbit part 1 is not a standalone film like the super hero films that is made based on the "Hollywood Formula" of film making. It is not a film that is made to stand alone and where they might make sequels if the film make good box office.
The Hobbit part 1&2&3 is the complete film.
The only reason it is done in parts is because it is such a large story that it could not be contained in one movie if the director wanted to tell the whole story.

The Hobbit part 1 is the introduction to the happenings in Middle Earth in a specific given timespace, 60 years before LOTR starts.
The Hobbit part 1 is the introduction to the next two parts. The story and the implications of the happenings in part 1 isn't the end of a story.
It is the start of a story that starts the motions of happenings that doesn't end in a real conclusion before the very end of the last LOTR movie.

Hollywood film making is full of the type of "Hollywood Formula" made films you are asking for.
Happily we have here a film maker that dare to break the "Hollywood Formula" and rather telling the story in the way it enfolds, rather than doing some cheap tricks to satisfy clueless people that wants cheap instant gratification.
The way you criticise The Hobbit just show that you are clueless of what type of movie The Hobbit is.

The LOTR and The Hobbit movies might be the largest movie "franchise" in the world, but you can not compare it to the other movie franchises where they endlessly add sequels and prequels.
The closest you come to the LOTR/Hobbit franchise is the Harry Potter franchise because there the stories development also was known beforehand.

You can not compare The Hobbit to the cartoon franchises that you are familiar with because The Hobbit is based on very different premises.
To try to base your critics on that people are fanboys just show that you have totally missed the mark based on your totally lack of knowledge of the Tolkien universe.

One day you will understand all this when you have seen the tree Hobbit movies and seen the tree LOTR movies.

Until then your criticism is just ridiculous.

PS; Peter Jackson didn't direct District 9, he produced.

The real reason is always money.

Why did the last Potter Movie end up in two parts, why did Breaking Dawn end up in two parts. Why do we get extended editions of almost every movie now days. Why do they convert old 2D Movies into 3D. Its always Money.


Jackson made Fellowship of the Ring into a masterpiece, without splitting up the book into 3 Movies. Why cant the same director do the same thing with the Hobbit?

All I know is I left the theater not feeling cheated, but turning to my brother and saying "I can't wait for the next one!"

um... nothing wrong with making money.

You can't claim that as the one and only rule.
It always becomes a compromise which is as much a budgetary compromise as a question of what to keep of a book and what to cut.
You forget that longer movies cost more money to make too. So the producers calculate how big is the risk of spending more on a films budget compared to what they will earn on a longer version.
Up to a couple of years ago the producers and to some extent the cinema owners didn't want movies to be longer than 130 minutes and before that movies seldom ran over 90 minutes.
This was for two reasons:
Producers didn't think that the public would sit through more than 2 hours movies.
Cinema owners wanted to be able to have a maximum numbers of shows every night.

This changed after some movies had success with longer running time. And cinema owners could charge more for 3D, offsetting some of the reduced number of screenings every night.

Of course there is money involved when a successful franchise extend the last part into two movies. But this is only when the sucess is already secured and the risk is thereby greatly reduced. At the same it is also a possibility to tell a better more extensive story for the film makers because the possibility of a more "generous" budget without risk is there.

I think it is wrong to always say that the only reason is greed. For some producers greed is the only aim, but movies are made by artists that try to make a compromise between their artistic intent and budget restrains.

If you ask any Twilight fan I bet they would wish the movies to go on for ever. For one; The certainty of success of earning back the budget was not there yet when they started shooting.
The LOTR movies was originally a theatrical release that was shorter then the extended edition later released on DVD and now have been playing in cinemas. A lot of the material used in the extended editions was shot after financial success was secured.

To shoot a trilogy like LOTR is a massive undertaking for a director. It becomes a matter of where does "director fatigue" starts. When is he so fed up of being involved in story world for so many years that his work starts to suffer?
Peter Jackson was still so fed up by the LOTR undertaking ten years later that he really didn't want to direct. Happily he was forced to change his mind.

I wouldn't have minded LOTR a six part series of three hours for each part. But when I see the unevenness of the Harry Potter series because the directors seldom lasted more than one movie, I am happy that the Middle Earth series will have one director throughout.
If Peter Jackson was a enthusiastic about LOTR now as he was when he started, I would applaud him if he shot more addition material for LOTR. But in recent interviews he has said he is so fed up with Middle Earth that he don't want to see another Hobbit ever more in his life. So that won't happen.

In addition; You can't really compare The Fellowship book and The Hobbit Book by counting pages. The Hobbit is much simpler written but tells a story almost as big as the LOTR books.
If Tolkien had lived longer and followed up his late intention of fleshing out The Hobbit story in the same "more adult" darker version as the LOTR we would have been able to compare the length of the books.
Luckily for us Tolkien (or someone else) added much of his ideas for a more fleshed out longer Hobbit story to the appendixes of LOTR which makes it possible for Peter Jackson to tell a fuller story of the happenings in Middle Earth during The Hobbit.

There are also a lot of small stories in the LOTR books that tell about happenings during The Hobbit times. Even a story that could put Aragon and Arwen into The Hobbit movie. Wonder if that will happen in part 3?

What I don't understand is all the people that ask for a shorter version of The Hobbit. Isn't there enough snappy fast-cut action movies out there to enjoy for those that doesn't have the required attention-span?
Why not enjoy the very seldom opportunity to experience truly epic storytelling on film.
Edited by coolscan - 12/20/12 at 6:20am