The Battle of four and something armies from very far away indeed.

[Garbarsardar]

Yes, you get to see nothing. There is an initial clash, a Dwarven shield wall, Elves jumping over it to attack the orcs and then the whole thing happens far away as a backdrop to individual duels. The fifth army gets eviscerated by the Eagles and a nonosecond of Beorn parachuting in their midst. The armies are not arranged in two hills or anything, the 5th army does not come from behind them, there is much fighting in the streets of Dale. One second of the LOTR Prologue was tons more epic than this muddled affair.

Apart from that Galadriel faints the worst faint ever fainted, Saruman kung-fus the Nazgul while Elrond slashes them and Thorin is intermittently, repetitively and obsessively affected with the gold sickness, which you notice because he s p e a k s r e a l l y s l o w and his eyes bulge unnaturally.

What a load of crap.

[Niles Crane]

Are you drunk Garb? It's okay if you are. There is a thread for this, though.

I haven't seen the movie because it isn't out here yet, so I'm not judging you for not liking the movie.

[white-wolf]

That makes two. I do not like the film either. Waste is the money spent to watch this film.

[Garbarsardar]

Are you drunk Garb? It's okay if you are. There is a thread for this, though.

I haven't seen the movie because it isn't out here yet, so I'm not judging you for not liking the movie.

Oh, I wish I was drunk. Which thread?

[MathiasOfAthens]

Is the movie out yet?

[Killerbee]

Yes, you get to see nothing. There is an initial clash, a Dwarven shield wall, Elves jumping over it to attack the orcs and then the whole thing happens far away as a backdrop to individual duels. The fifth army gets eviscerated by the Eagles and a nonosecond of Beorn parachuting in their midst. The armies are not arranged in two hills or anything, the 5th army does not come from behind them, there is much fighting in the streets of Dale. One second of the LOTR Prologue was tons more epic than this muddled affair.

Apart from that Galadriel faints the worst faint ever fainted, Saruman kung-fus the Nazgul while Elrond slashes them and Thorin is intermittently, repetitively and obsessively affected with the gold sickness, which you notice because he s p e a k s r e a l l y s l o w and his eyes bulge unnaturally.

What a load of crap.

I agree with your first paragraph, but the second part is just whining for the sake of whining. Everything you said about Thorin could also be said about Frodo and his obsession with the ring, and I don't really see how Saruman fighting was that much more ridiculous than whatever happened in the LOTR films (Legolas shield surfing, Gandalf fighting, Legolas defying gravity when jumping on horseback during the warg scout attack, ...).

[MathiasOfAthens]

There is ing magic in the show guys.

[Garbarsardar]

I agree with your first paragraph, but the second part is just whining for the sake of whining. Everything you said about Thorin could also be said about Frodo and his obsession with the ring, and I don't really see how Saruman fighting was that much more ridiculous than whatever happened in the LOTR films (Legolas shield surfing, Gandalf fighting, Legolas defying gravity when jumping on horseback during the warg scout attack, ...).

I did not compare LOTR as a whole simply I mentioned the Prologue. And you are right, there was ridiculous fight moments in LOTR aplenty, Saruman vs. Gandalf break dancing counting as the worst for me.

[gastovski]

I will going to see this weekend just for seeing how many CGI scenes out there, i'm super curious really (so i can bash to hell of it).

[conon394]

What a load of crap.

You expected something else?

[GussieFinkNottle]

Yes, you get to see nothing. There is an initial clash, a Dwarven shield wall, Elves jumping over it to attack the orcs and then the whole thing happens far away as a backdrop to individual duels. The fifth army gets eviscerated by the Eagles and a nonosecond of Beorn parachuting in their midst. The armies are not arranged in two hills or anything, the 5th army does not come from behind them, there is much fighting in the streets of Dale. One second of the LOTR Prologue was tons more epic than this muddled affair.

Apart from that Galadriel faints the worst faint ever fainted, Saruman kung-fus the Nazgul while Elrond slashes them and Thorin is intermittently, repetitively and obsessively affected with the gold sickness, which you notice because he s p e a k s r e a l l y s l o w and his eyes bulge unnaturally.

What a load of crap.

Really not worth getting worked up about. The era of the great LOTR movies is over a decade ago, the first Hobbit film was rubbish, the second was just about tolerable, the third was rubbish again, only slighlty lightened by a few fantastic surreal moments of Billy Connolly as a dwarf lord. It seems that all that money couldn't buy the same soul as the original, it didn't feel remotely like they were about the same world. Just don't think of them as being so and it matters less.

I'm going to put aside issues of character (e.g. Tauriel's existence, Legolas' presence, the preposterous Radagast), length (it should have been 1 epic movie, 2 medium length ones max), casting (the ridiculously camp Thranduil, the totally unimposing and un-frightening Beorn), plotlines (adding a huge amount of underdeveloped plotting for Gandalf, the whole Laketown digression with a handful of dwarves), 3-D and all the myriad other objections raised about these films.

I think the chief problem with all 3 Hobbit films came down to its lack of internal plausibility. This is where the 'it's a fantasy movie, so who cares if silly things happen' arguments fall flat. If a movie wants to be worthy of your attention, it should be plausible within whatever fantastical boundaries it creates for its world. LOTR did this brilliantly, living and breathing middle earth both visually (the care lavished on creating the civilisation of Rohan and the Rohirrim in particular is a landmark achievement of cinematic immersion) and thematically; the plot stayed sensible and the worst excesses of Peter Jackson's self indulgence were confined to the extended editions, leaving the cleaner and more 'realistic' (again within the bounds of the created world) cinema versions. On both fronts, visually and theatrically, the Hobbit fails to be convincing.

The former, the fact that the Hobbit actually looks worse, and less 'realistic', than the Lord of the Rings, stems from a multitude of factors. In my opinion, the most egregious of these was opting for amateurish CGI over prosthetics and CGI facial enhancement of normal characters (e.g. Legolas, Galadriel, Saroman) to make them look 'ethereal'. The various creatures and orc characters of the LOTR movies looked totally convincing, since they were actually in the real world, many of the orcs in the Hobbit look, by comparison, absurdly cartoonish, Azog looked like something out of Shrek. It's almost embarrassing to see them share a screen with the human actors. Take a look:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

LOTR mine goblins, with full costumes and armour and detailed prosthetics:

CGI Goblins from the Hobbit, like something out of a very high-end videogame:

I for one cannot imagine that goblin king character standing next to the LOTR characters

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

LOTR Uruk-Hai:
Hobbit Uruk-Hai:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

LOTR wargs:
The Hobbit wargs:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

LOTR orc commander (Gothmog):
The Hobbit orc commander (Azog):

I could go on.
Other visual problems included the 48-fps experiment that actually made everything look fake by making it look hyper-real: you could see that it was a set and the characters were people in makeup and false noses, the high definition was no boon to the film's realism. Even the prosthetics that were used were a flop by comparison to LOTR, while Gimli again was totally convincing and dwarf-like, the dwarves of The Hobbit are a mess, designed to have as many differences as possible rather than to look dwarf-like which left some just looking ridiculous and fake and others just looking like short human guys in big coats e.g. Thorin, Kili
Compare:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Gimli, looking just as real as Aragorn and Theoden
Bombur and others, just not:

And some of them just looking like regular, human guys rather than dwarves:

The latter aspect of believability that failed is internal logical consistency. If this world is to be believable, ludicrous silly things cannot happen or they jar you out of your suspension of disbelief. In this I refer largely to the improbably well-choreographed set-pieces in the Hobbit films that led to it looking videogamey. In the first movie, the repetitive fights and the insane battle in the mine, where at one moment, to quote an earlier post of mine, the dwarves grab a ladder, then use it to sweep lots of goblins off a bridge, then jam it over several orcs' heads, then use it as a battering ram, then drop it across a canyon and use it as a bridge, all in the space of about 8 seconds, seemingly communicating this very complicated plan of attack by telepathy. They then ride a shattered bridge down a crevasse, miraculously staying intact and not tipping over, and none of them sustain any injury.

It's a tone of disregard for an audience's credulity continued into the 2nd film, where the barrel riding fight looked like a fairground ride while the orcs and elves danced and leaped with rehearsed precision while the dwarves fought with ludicrous effectiveness and good fortune. By the third movie, perfectly rearranged army formations at the blink of an eye with no prior battle plan, huge orcs dying from a light tap with a pebble and trolls with masonry on their heads to use as battering rams scarcely made me bat an eyelid. There was something in the soul of Lord of the Rings that made you completely dive into the world that it felt like these characters really lived, that felt so realised and all-encompassing, that the Hobbit just totally lost. It can be dumb entertainment that one can sit back and watch without thinking, but it's not middle-earth.

[Killerbee]

Say what you want to about Azog, but he really was one scary fella. His eyes really shouted cruelty and he was definitely more frightening than elephant man Gothmog

[Knight of Heaven]

Say what you want to about Azog, but he really was one scary fella. His eyes really shouted cruelty and he was definitely more frightening than elephant man Gothmog

Manu beneth can be scary even without a CGI Azog mask anyway. Other characters he plays in other shows, are characters i wouldnt want to cross my path with

[High Fist]

Everything you said about Thorin could also be said about Frodo and his obsession with the ring,

No ones saying they enjoyed the Frodo - ring relationship.

@Roma, defo agree, particularly concerning the CGI.

[Condottiere 40K]

While I wouldn't like insulting anything by comparing it to an Adam Sandler movie, the Hobbit started out as a two movie deal, as the only piece of Tolkien's franchise that was still filmable, and a guaranteed money maker. Then it was stretched to three films and the intended director had to drop the project.

The trilogy guaranteed Jackson's company continued employment while they searched for a new project. Everyone had some form of vested interest. Unlike the Star Wars prequels, everyone knew that in order to create enough footage, you're going to have to add in filler, partially harvested from the LotR appendix, and something to tick the romance and elven boxes, that they pulled out of a hat.

Seen in that light, I would have used the Hobbit as a placeholder while I got the scribes busy trying to find something else from Middle Earth that can be adapted for the screen.

I've never particularly liked the Hobbit, possibly because I read the Lord of the Rings and the Silmarillion first, but the second film is watchable.

[Dr Zoidberg]

I've not seen any of the Hobbit films yet, despite loving the LOTR trilogy. From what I'm reading here, and read elsewhere, would it be accurate to say the Hobbit trilogy essentially suffered a case of 'Lucas' syndrome, ala the Star Wars prequels?

[gastovski]

I've not seen any of the Hobbit films yet, despite loving the LOTR trilogy. From what I'm reading here, and read elsewhere, would it be accurate to say the Hobbit trilogy essentially suffered a case of 'Lucas' syndrome, ala the Star Wars prequels?

It was an experiment with 48fps and failed miserably. I mean i've played alot of videogames and can't tell the difference between them. GussieFinkNottle summarized it perfectly.

[SLN445]

I've not seen any of the Hobbit films yet, despite loving the LOTR trilogy. From what I'm reading here, and read elsewhere, would it be accurate to say the Hobbit trilogy essentially suffered a case of 'Lucas' syndrome, ala the Star Wars prequels?

I found the first two enjoyable enough, though i haven't seen the third yet, not sure its anywhere near as bad as the star war prequels outside of maybe the CGI overuse.

In my opinion i think the trilogy would've fared better had they reduced it to just two movies and streamlined it a bit.

[GussieFinkNottle]

I've not seen any of the Hobbit films yet, despite loving the LOTR trilogy. From what I'm reading here, and read elsewhere, would it be accurate to say the Hobbit trilogy essentially suffered a case of 'Lucas' syndrome, ala the Star Wars prequels?

Yup, in fact I'd say actively say don't go to see the last one or buy the DVDs of the first 2, Jackson doesn't deserve your money for this half-arsed effort. If you have netflix and feel that you must see it, the first 2 are on there.

The best scene out of any of the 3 is basically the LOTR one: the game of riddles where Gollum returns, played by Andy Serkis as before (who, incidentally, must also take some of the blame for the Hobbit shambles since he was additionally employed on it as the 2nd unit director)

[Halie Satanus]

The difficult second album, in this case cobbled together from material written before the first. A compendium of unreleased rehearsal tracks and edits remasterd due to pressure from the record company.

I suspect The Hobbit will make more sense when watched back to back...

Can't wait for Garbs review of 'Exodus. (movement of Jah people)... '