The Hobbit...will you see it?

Someone has strung together all of the trailers into a 7-minute mini movie. I enjoyed LotR and has reservations about The Hobbit until watching the remixed trailer. Who will rise to be the new Prancing Ponies. With the movie now in three parts and scenes added from the LotR appendices, what scenes are you hoping make it into The Hobbit. For me, I'm hoping that Gandalf's cleansing of the Necomancer of Dol Guldor, a newly risen Sauron, (which happens off camera in the book) is shown.

http://www.ign.com/articles/2012/11/23/watch-the-hobbit-an-unexpected-journey-in-7-minutes



• NO x 1000. Tolkien was a shitty writer, and I can't bear the twee, smug adaptations.

• Gawd no.

• This thread should have a poll.

• I've read that the first one is going to be 2h40m... and that it's going to be shortest of the trilogy. Fuck that. The book's only like 300 pages. How much filler can they add?

• That depends on the actors who play the new hobbits. It will do very well commercially. The Franchise Brand is too big to fail.

• The film will be 4 hours long, according to Peter Jackson.

• It looks boring. And I say that as someone who very much enjoyed the Rings Trilogy.

• It sounds excruciatingly dull. Peter Jackson substituted his eating disorder with binging on film. Couldn't he have gotten the book together in one 2 1/2 hour movie? It's all about fooling the basement dwelling geeks into paying for three movies/dvds/multiple viewings.

• I'll wait and buy the 48hr version on DVD... I got pummelled into submission with LotR...

• If he got three movies out of the Hobbit then Jackson should have gotten nine movies out of the Lord of the Rings trilogy. He was lazy.

• Yeah, I'll see it.

• Aren't there any nerds up yet? Hell yeah I'll see it! Fuckin' A I'll see it! It will be prime and totally cool!

  Anon

• [quote]Peter Jackson substituted his eating disorder with binging on film. He's gained weight again.

• I hope it's a bunch of scenes of them just walking in pretty places out of a Thomas Kinkaide painting. Then, maybe a couple of battles where the characters are on the ground with a sword to their neck and their attacker is shot, just in the nick of time, by someone off screen. Man, I can't get enough of that.

• Yeah whatever. These fills will make millions and millions despite your bitchy crap.

  Yeah I'm a nerd, but you know it's true.

• fills= films. And I hope the cast of this film escapes the crazies that the LOTR cast had to deal with. Color coded shoutouts indeed. :p I guess the EVAL PR is still keeping Elijah locked up in that closet eh?*puts on tinhat* They must have known he'd be in the Hobbit too.

• I will see nothing that stars Martin Freeman!

  social%20justice%20warrior

• I'll see it because I'm an old Tolkien Geek, but my hopes aren't high. Smaug the 3D dragon should be worth watching, at least. PJ could have made one fast-paced film out of the story, but he's expanded a simple episodic story into a three-film epic. Instead of letting the charming Bilbo carry a film, he's adding filler, subplots, new characters, etc. I hope it all works, but I've always thought that PJ does his best work when he has to strip a story down to its essentials, not add a lot of crap to it.

  Old Tolkien Geek

• Hell yes. But I won't be able to see it in the high projection rate 3D... no theater in my city is showing that.

• I agree R18. I'm certainly going to see it but I am worried they allowed Peter Jackson too much free reign to do whatever he wants. You can add in details from the appendices and such but those stories aren't at all flushed out so that is a lot of new creating and storytelling Jackson is doing to add in enough shit to stretch it out into three super long movies LOTR style. Not sure how that is going to work or if it is even a good idea.

• I'll go - if only for the nine minutes of the new Star Trek film that they're promising.

  The%20Gorn

• Tell me, Peter Jackson, when did you abandon reason for madness?

• What the hell... There's a new behind-the-scenes video blog out. Have at it, bitches.

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=E8WT_5Nt5dI

  I just stare at code all day

• Yes, although only because if you see it in an IMAX theater, they're showing the first nine minutes of Star Trek Into Darkness.

  The Voice of the Night

• No, it looks boring.

• No, it'll be a flop. Nobody is interested in this crap anymore, as evidenced by people who will only see it to see a trailer for another movie.

• THE HOBBIT will be the biggest hit of the season. Only delusional queens will think otherwise.

• R26, That has to be one of the most ignorant predictions since "Romney will win in a landslide"

• Well well well, there seems to be trouble in Hobbit Valley....

  http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/11/25/stormclouds-gather-over-the-hobbit-premiere-amid-animal-care-row/

• It's just nasty to stretch that charming little book into three bloated over-the-top film extravaganzas. A more simple approach, meeting the style of the book, would have been so much better. It's an act of literary betrayal, not that that matters to the moviegoers or, of course, the moviemakers who just want their shot at another billion.

• Did Jaymes say "Good job Baby, good job Buddy"?

• I can't wait.

• Sorry R31 is missposted....carry on.

• I will see it opening weekend.

• In a word, no.

• Good heavens. Already the ponies on this thread are all upset at the thought that someone else might nit like it

• .

  http://lilithlotr.ejwsites.net/TorontoTTT/groupshot.jpg

• I haven't read any of the books, but I'll see it. I enjoyed the LOTR films. I had no idea this was being made into a trilogy though.

• I am a gay man trapped in the body of a straight fat ugly woman. I will definitely see it and come back here to talk about it. Anyone who doesn't love the movie as much as I do is a republican, btw.

  NaT

• That's The Shire to you, [29] !

  Anon

• Late is the hour in which this film chooses to appear. "Lathspell" I name it; ill news is an ill guest.

  Grima%20Cocktongue

• I won't see it. I am bored of The Rings

• "Tolkien was a shitty writer" Oh, fuck you. You may not like him, but he's pretty much the gold standard.

• I think Dom Monahagn is totally straight. I think he he used the whole Domlijah thing to get noticed. It worked(for awhile). Elijah may be gay, but I really don't see why the hell he'd be closeted at this point. And I don't see him as the type to flat out lie about it.

• Of course I will see it as will most other people on the planet. Even though Elijah Wood is going to start up the bearding routine again and that is annoying.

• Could Jackson please just shoot the Scouring of the Shire and release a new version of RotK.

• Best description I've read of the film so far was something along the lines of; Imagine Jackson expanded his already bloated KING KONG remake further and split it into three movies. This is essentially a two hour and forty-five minutes version of that boat ride to Skull Island.

• Wow listening to those two geeks analyze the trailers for twenty minutes is frightening. I loved the Hobbit and LOTR, but these folks are a whole different level.

• I really enjoyed the LOTR trilogy but this just seems like a blatant cash grab to me. I remember reading The Hobbit and enjoying the quick pace. I'll have to wait for the reviews on this one. I know this industry is about making money but I'm sensitive to corporate greed. I mean THREE MORE 3 hour movies? And then I BET they will rerelease the original trilogy in some shitty converted 3D. Then do marathon viewings of the whole series, then release the whole shebang on BluRay. I can't believe some of the geeks fall for this shit.

• This is only part 1, you do realize?

• Not seeing it. Not really into the whole fantasy genre. No way can I maintain the required level of suspension of disbelief. Frankly I'm amazed that so many adults enjoy this kind of story.

• No, Smog won't show up until II or III. My problem is that the movie was heavily subsidized by NZ. All of these mega-franchise movies force major concessions out of their host nations and return very little in return. The films may bring in low-wage jobs, but everything else is going into the producers' pocketses. It's like Donald Trump or The Cubs came into your peaceful area, made a behind-the-scenes deal with the mayor, fucked up traffic and your landscape for three years, and then left with a hefty chunk of your school budget.

• I'm guessing [R-51] didn't have a lot of friends as a child. Random kid: "Let's pretend.." [R-51]: "Sorry. Can't." Probably did poorly in English class too: Teacher: "Class, did you read the assignment?" [R-51]: "No. I just can't suspend my disbelief long enough to read fantasy." Teacher: "Fail."

• [quote]No, Smog won't show up until II or III. Oh, [italic]dear.[/italic]

• R53, don't put the hyphen in there. Don't type the square brackets yourself. You fail at posting references to previous replies. All your bitchiness is hereby null and void for being such a clueless noob.

• I have tickets to the first midnight screening this week, in 48 fps 3D. Jealous, bitches? I'm skeptical of there being enough book material for three films, but OTOH I do implicitly trust Peter Jackson's filmcraft. Also agreed that anyone who doesn't think this will be one of the biggest hits of the December film season is a fucktard idiot.

• [quote]"Tolkien was a shitty writer" Oh, fuck you. You may not like him, but he's pretty much the gold standard. Oh yes. Jane Austen, Gustave Flaubert, Leo Tolstoy, Miguel de Cervantes, Virginia Woolf... they're all just brass next to Tolkien's gold.

• No. I might have gone to see it if nothing else were on, but the animals killed in the making of it taints it for me. And I'm surprised the ponies are still prancing for this, considering 2 of their own died.

• The film is being savaged in the UK. The 48fps apparently makes the film look like it was shot with the same cameras used for The Golden Girls. 170 minutes, and you get up to page 120 in the book. Who the fuck thought it was a good idea to break this into 3 movies?

• I'll probably see it in the theatre 5-6 times.

• Nope, OP.

• [quote]but he's pretty much the gold standard. You probably didn't even know who the fuck he was until the "Rings" movies. Get bent.

• [italic]THE HOBBIT will be the biggest hit of the season. Only delusional queens will think otherwise.[/italic] The critics say otherwise. Sorry, hon.

• [quote]Who the fuck thought it was a good idea to break this into 3 movies? Peter Jackson's accountants. Especially the ones in charge of merchandising. And not for nothing, New Line has been looking for a new fantasy series since they took a bath on His Dark Materials. People should have seen THAT was a bad idea too.

  The Voice of the Night

• The awesome thing for those of you trashing the film (without viewing it, of course), is that you don't have to go see it.

• Just wait until he starts on his 25-part adaptation of The Silmarillion. Just for the record, I'm going to see the movie, I'm hoping it will be good, but I'm mostly excited about the preview of Star Trek Into Darkness. I would probably be more enthusiastic about it if Jackson hadn't made the bone-headed decision to add a third movie. The story doesn't need a trilogy. It barely needs a duology. What I don't understand is what caused him to feel this needed more story. He understood the realities of filmmaking enough that when he and Fran Walsh first pitched LOTR to New Line, they compressed the story into two movies. I didn't mind him releasing all those extended edition DVDs (hell, I own all three of them) because in a lot of cases it added richness to the story. But releasing them that way at least gave the audience the ability to opt out. You could have just seen the three films in the theaters and had a perfectly complete experience. Doing it this way, not so much.

  The Voice of the Night

• He's already said that there'll be extended additions also, with 20-30 extra minutes for the first film. To be very simplistic about it, The Hobbit is about 500 pages long. With 3 extended edition movies there's going to be about 600 minutes of this story...more than 1 min a page. I don't think it's about merchandise, it's about not knowing when to pull back. There's a 200 minute cut of King Kong!

• [quote]I don't think it's about merchandise, it's about not knowing when to pull back. There's a 200 minute cut of King Kong! Maybe it's a little from column A and a little from column B. But I've also already seen the massive offerings from the Noble Collection. I know that's different than the stuff that flies off the shelves of the toy aisle in Wal-Mart nor is it having Christian Bale as Batman scowling at you from the Cheerios box, but the Noble stuff is expensive and people buy it.

  The Voice of the Night

• [quote]And not for nothing, New Line has been looking for a new fantasy series since they took a bath on His Dark Materials. People should have seen THAT was a bad idea too. The "His Dark Materials" books were awesome (though the ending of the third book was kind of a let-down, given all that came before). There's no reason that shouldn't have made a great trilogy... though I'm not sure how they could have filmed all of it. The source material was good, but the film ultimately didn't do it justice. As for The Hobbit, they're not splitting the book into three movies. From what I understand, much of the third movie is new material that serves as a "bridge" between The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings books... fleshing out notes from The Silmarillion, other writings, and dropped hints (much like the LOTR movies fleshed out the romance aspect and female characters).

• [quote]The "His Dark Materials" books were awesome (though the ending of the third book was kind of a let-down, given all that came before). There's no reason that shouldn't have made a great trilogy... though I'm not sure how they could have filmed all of it. The source material was good, but the film ultimately didn't do it justice. It's not so much that they couldn't have been good films, it's just that an allegorical story about sexual awakening, atheism, and particle physics could never have been a family film. Just because the story has a child protagonist, it is not a children's story. To say nothing of the two gay angels in The Amber Spyglass. [quote]As for The Hobbit, they're not splitting the book into three movies. From what I understand, much of the third movie is new material that serves as a "bridge" between The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings books... fleshing out notes from The Silmarillion, other writings, and dropped hints (much like the LOTR movies fleshed out the romance aspect and female characters). Okay, but why make that a theatrical release at all? Why not do it the same way they did with the extended editions? Hell, they basically added another movie on top of Return of the King for the extended editions. I know it's greed, and while I'm sure the stories will be done lovingly and with care (and maybe they'll work in Tom Bombadil so the really hardcore will stop complaining), but it bothers me that a guy who is supposed to have so much love and respect for the source material feels the need to go back to the teat again. Maybe he just doesn't know when to stop, but that's usually why movies have editors.

  The Voice of the Night

• Well, he's ALWAYS talked about a movie to "fill the gap" between the Hobbit, and the Fellowship of the Ring. Way before the he got any opportunity to do The Hobbit. His original plan was two movies (one for the book, one for this "filler"). So three movies just means he's expanding on the book. I dunno, we'll see if it's a good decision or not.

• We shall see. I just kind of dread dragging in too many extra bits. For all of his exquisite talents as a world-builder, Tolkien was never the best plotter. Hell, if they hadn't reordered some things, Return of the King would have been nothing but Sam, Frodo, and Gollom slogging through Mordor. And to paraphrase Gandalf, it was fun watching Frodo carry the ring, which means it will probably be fun watching Bilbo find it. And that is an encouraging thought.

  The Voice of the Night

• First review I've seen and it's a terrible one.

  http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/movies/2012/12/the_hobbit_reviewed_peter_jackson_s_new_tolkien_movie_is_too_long_and_looks.html

• Bored of the Rings was the name of the Mad Magazine parody back in the day.

• From the slate.com review: [quote]More time in Middle Earth is exactly what The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey provides—so much more that the movie starts to feel like some Buddhist exercise in deliberately inflicted tedium. Ok, this made me laugh out loud. I'll probably still go to see it but the "Buddhist exercise" line cracked me up.

• The Hobbit is quite a small book compared to the huge Lord of the Rings, which took months to read, back when I read such stuff, so how on earth can they make 3 movies out of it, just like LOTR ? - smacks of sheer greed, creating another franchise ... but the actors will be delighted.

• My understanding is "The Hobbit" is split into 2 parts. The third part bridges the end of "The Hobbit" to LOTR, getting the source material from LOTR and other books.

• I'm not sure how delighted the actors are, R77. I assume the deals were structured so that the actors didn't earn as much as they would for three entirely separate films. Jackson and WB got a bargain on the actors.

• If PJ thinks he can make a "bridge" film that appeals to the mainstream, he's dumber than I thought. There's nothing in the "bridge" years that'll work for a movie plot, indeed, all the important issues between the Battle of Five Armies and the Unexpected Party stay unresolved until "LOTR" gets going. Nobody does anything with the ring. Gandalf woders about Sauron and the ring, but doesn't find out anything until the "FOTR" years. Aragorn mopes around, doesn't get the girl or the kingdom until "ROTK". Saruman remains undiscovered. Bilbo gets older, Frodo grows up. Where's the movie plot in there? I suspect he's just extended the "Hobbit" material into three films, which is a very bad idea. PJ does his best work when he's refining stuff, not adding to it.

• I think it would just suck for them to have contracted for a certain amount of work, and then ended up stuck in New Zealand for months on end because Jackson came up with more material. I'd love to visit New Zealand, but I don't know that I'd want to be working there on a never-ending movie shoot which is presumably holding my passport hostage.

  The Voice of the Night

• In a fitting convergence of form and content, Jackson’s Hobbit also vastly overestimates the amount of visual information the viewer needs crammed into her optic cavities. Many screenings of The Hobbit around the country will be shown not only in 3-D, but in a new super-high-definition format called 48fps, which unrolls at a frame rate double that of the average movie: Rather than seeing 24 frames of film each second, you’re seeing 48. It’s fully possible that this technology will one day develop into a tool that enriches our experience of movies. If so, I suspect The Hobbit will be remembered as an early, failed experiment in the medium. The best way I can think to describe the quality of the 48fps image in The Hobbit is this: It looks like an ’80s-era home video shot by someone who happened to be standing around on set while The Hobbit was being filmed. (Other visual analogues scribbled down in my screening notes include Teletubbies and daytime soap operas.) The effect is curiously washed out and flat, yet unforgiving in its hyper-realism: Any imperfection or note of artifice in the costumes or sets stands out as if illuminated with a bank of fluorescent bulbs. This wildly expensive visual technology paradoxically conspires to make everything else in the film look cheap. I found myself fixating, for example, on Gandalf’s staff, an elegant Art Nouveau-esque creation that, in the earlier Lord of the Rings films, would have blended in as another part of the richly detailed ambient whimsy. Seen at 48fps, the staff looked like a cast-resin prop you might order online from a Wiccan supply house. -Slate

• 48 FPS is a problem. When I first got my big new TV it had a setting in it called "AMP". Usually it's only suited for live sports or talk shows, or soaps. Until I was able to disable it with a tech savvy friend's help, it absolutely fucked with my viewing of any films. Any rudimentary zoom, pan or camera movement was hyper-actualized, sped up, including the background action. I don't mind 3-D, I love it when it's done well, I'm all for experimenting, but this was just wrong. Particularly with older films, or anything Robert Altman (king of the pan and zoom), it mangled the movement and background action into a plasticine, accelerated frenzy. As a film fan this was unacceptable. I'm told 48 FPS is very similar to the AMP look. I'm concerned about it.

• r83, there's something called smooth transition that does that. Some theaters have the film in 48 FPS, others have it 24 FPS.

• [quote]48 FPS is a problem. No, it's not. The problem's you're describing come from "processing" the image. If it's natively filmed and projected like that, then you won't see that funky artifacting and weird visual result you describe.

• Biggest bomb of the season. Entertainment Weekly only gave it a B+ I love PJ, but three movies? Bitch, please!

  Viggo

• I saw "Dark Shadows" last summer. Haven't I suffered enough for one year?

• [bold]'The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey' is a middling return to Middle-earth [/bold] A decade ago, Peter Jackson pulled off what many thought was impossible: adapting J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings into an epic big-screen trilogy. The movies debuted to critical and commercial acclaim, moving far beyond the boundaries of the fantasy genre, and earning 17 Oscars along the way. The filmmaker has now returned to Middle-earth with a new trilogy based upon The Hobbit. Buttressed by 3D and the somewhat controversial choice of high frame rate photography, An Unexpected Journey joins Bilbo Baggins 60 years before Frodo began his trip to Mordor — but the whimsical fun of Tolkien's novel is bogged down by the movie's excessive length and the conspicuous absence of many elements that made The Lord of the Rings such a pleasure to watch in the first place. ... Should you go see it? With films of this caliber that question is almost moot. It's Peter Jackson and it's The Hobbit; of course you should see it. It's best to walk in with tempered expectations, however; this is more Transformers than The Two Towers. As for 48fps, it's a matter of whether you want to see the movie as the director intended with the latest innovation to hit the silver screen — for better or worse.

  http://www.theverge.com/2012/12/12/3760130/the-hobbit-an-unexpected-journey-review

• This film is getting unanimously trashed. The studio must want to kill themselves now that they've commissioned three installments of this crap.

• Transformers was unanimously trashed. It still made buckets of money. And they're working on a fourth one. The studio doesn't care as long as they keep making money. I have my IMAX tickets, which worked out to be $2.56 per minute of Star Trek Into Darkness. I can live with that.

  The Voice of the Night

• r90, the Hobbit junkies are a serious bunch. The studio doesn't want to put up with them. They will make or break this film. It's the Komic Konze!

• BTW, it's getting trashed by the public, not just the critics. The critics have been nicer than the public.

• The Ring movies were bloated, but at times great. Who can forget Golum? I might have seen The Hobbit if it was on the level of the Ring movies, but of course not now that it's getting panned.

• There's a line of nerds around the block right now, waiting for the midnight show in spite of the cold. No costumes, but they were passing around a big prop "ring" and taking pictures.

• [quote](much like the LOTR movies fleshed out the romance aspect and female characters). Which everyone knows made for the best parts!!!

  Liv%20%22Cross%20Eyes%22%20Tyler

• It will have a giant opening weekend no matter what. But word will get around after that one way.

• Just got back from seeing it. I enjoyed it, but it was indeed too long.