The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings

I haven't been able to find a good answer to this, but maybe someone here knows? During the movie,

Spoiler:

Minor question, but it bugged me.

I'm still not sure how I feel about the movie. I think I'm kind of meh on it, but I do want to see it again. The scenes with Bilbo and Gollum were by far the best.

Like Gollum, the Orcs can endure daylight (they don't turn to stone like Mountain Trolls), but they really don't like it. I guess Azog's pack are just *really really driven*.

"I'm so handsome about this" - HA! That's brilliant - and true! (*dreamy sigh*)

I saw the movie yesterday, and may or may not have texted another Gen X geek with, "Oh, Kiiiiiiiiiiiili: The greatest adventure/ is here in my pants."

Well that was quite delightful, considering how much set-up they had to do, and how essentially, it is a scaled down version of the LotR where Tolkien was still working the bugs out. I hadn't really considered how many plot and character beats are the same unti watching it, when they used the same music cues as in LotR, etc.

I wasn't quite down with the drama of Thorin's Angst of Dispossessed Handsomeness (I mean, I am down with Armitage being handsome, but it's hard for me to put his quest on the same level as Aragorn's). However, I realize they needed to pump up the drama to meld the dwarf quest with the bigger Who is the Necromance Really? storyline, and it mostly worked for me. It's nice that Thorin is badass, but not quite (realistically) badass enough to vanquish a giant orc.

Martin Freeman is AWESOME casting. My favorite momoments were: the entire Unexpected Party (long, yeah, but I l thought that was hilarious when I was a kid, and it was an exact capture of the book, esp the crockery throwing).

Spoiler:

ETA: I also loved the riddle scene, especially the moment where Gollum gets overly excited and wants to answer his own riddle. LOL.

I was lukewarm about seeing this in the theater, but I'm glad I did, and I'm really looking forward to the next one.

lisa wrote:

"I'm so handsome about this" - HA! That's brilliant - and true! (*dreamy sigh*)

I saw the movie yesterday, and may or may not have texted another Gen X geek with, "Oh, Kiiiiiiiiiiiili: The greatest adventure/ is here in my pants."

I saw it this afternoon, and would periodically take note of how handsome Thorin was being about pretty much everything. Then I would giggle to myself.

Loved it, btw. I wanted it to keep going, which was the same reaction I had to FotR. Which I just might pop into the DVD players this evening.

And...and...OMG, I almost forgot the best part....Sylvester McCoy as Radagast...and I recognized him! HOW DID I NOT KNOW THE SEVENTH DOCTOR WAS IN THIS MOVIE??? This is almost as exciting as when Siegfried Farnon turned up in Chamber of Secrets.

I never saw the Ranking Bass version when I was little because it never seemed to be on TV, at least on the channels we got. I do remember the endless commercials for the videotape, though. ("J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit, available in VHS or Beta!")

Putli Bai wrote:This is almost as exciting as when Siegfried Farnon turned up in Chamber of Secrets.

WAIT WHAT?

Cornelius Fudge, Minister of Magic.

I had me a one-woman fangasm, right there in the theater.

I saw it, and I really enjoyed it--though that was in no small part due to the fact that I saw it with my BFF from middle/high school who spent 8th-10th grades obsessing over the original LotR films with me as much as anything in the film itself. We're going to see it again before she leaves town.

I had low expectations--with all the stuff added in and the slim little novel turned into THREE FUCKING MOVIES, I expected that the quality level of this movie versus the original films would be comparable to the quality level of Phantom Menace versus the original Star Wars trilogy. It was better than Phantom Menace. But much like with Phantom Menace, I'm a sucker fangirl who is happy for any opportunity to spend time in this world and spend time with these characters. Oh, and the Fellowship theme was in the score. I love that theme so much. (Also, Hobbit 2: Electric Elfaloo is so going to better than Attack of the Clones. I can feel it. For starters, Peter Jackson actually seems to have some understanding of how to work with actors.)

The one part that both of us agreed was absolutely ridiculous was

Spoiler:

Though I suppose Benedict Cumberbatch's huge credit

Spoiler:

was even more ridiculous.

I think if the original films were paced like this one, we'd have gotten Tom Bombadil.

I've seen the suggestion around that the Hobbit movies aren't so much an adaptation of that book but prequels to the LotR movies, and I think that argument's fair, and a good way to look at it if you're like me and not sure why you're watching a wizard

Spoiler:

My biggest complaint was the final big fight: with two more movies coming, and having read the book, there were no stakes whatsoever. Of course they're going to make it out alive. I just spent almost all of it

Spoiler:

Also, Elijah Wood has not aged in the past decade. And I may be one of the few, but I was really entertained by the the Goblin King.

Putli Bai wrote:Cornelius Fudge, Minister of Magic.

I had me a one-woman fangasm, right there in the theater.

OMG, the MINUTE you said who it was I could see it.

So I was supposed to go see this movie today and my sister (we are LOTR buddies) canceled on me (she over-scheduled herself, as she does constantly). Now she wants to see it maybe next week. Grump.

I didn't love it. But probably for the same reason so many other people did - it felt like reading a Tolkien novel. And I can't stand reading Tolkien (which is surprising, because it should be right up my ally).

I liked bits of it - and I could have watched the riddle scene with Gollum forever. He was so eerie, yet so cute! The tension felt so high there, and when we switched back to the dwarfs with the goblins, my immediate reaction was, "Oh, this is still going on? I forgot about it."

Did anybody go see it in 48fps? I've heard mixed things, but it's a cool new technology and I'll probably try to catch it before they stop showing that print.

I went in with zero expectations (except that Richard Armitage would be hot even under seventeen pounds of beard and faux fur, and I was not disappointed) and I freaking LOVED it. I also saw it in IMAX, which I totally recommend, because the detail you can see in the sets and costumes is mind-blowing. I don't know, I loved the recycled music and recycled themes and recycled walking-along-a-mountain-ridge-while-New-Zealand-New-Zealands-in-the-background. I really am easily amused.

Please tell me I'm not the only one who though of Rock-Em Sock-Em Robots during the mountain fight scene.

inversed wrote:Please tell me I'm not the only one who though of Rock-Em Sock-Em Robots during the mountain fight scene.

No, you are not. It was all I could do not to laugh out loud.
Over all, I liked it but it was far too long and took way to long to get going. (Hot dwarves or no, I never need to see or hear them singing. Ever.) I suspect Peter Jackson is now the Stephen King of the film world, in that no one can edit his work down any more. I wish they'd cut a good 45 minutes off this and then released this endlessly long version as the director's cut DVD.
I get people's complaints about the high frame rate making it look like a soap opera or PBS show, but once I got used to it I thought it was marvelous. It brought such an immediacy to the scenes. Loved the rabbits and the hedgehogs.

inversed wrote:Please tell me I'm not the only one who though of Rock-Em Sock-Em Robots during the mountain fight scene.

I was thinking Transformers. What, now we are in a Michael Bay movie? Sigh. (Seriously, why was that scene there?)

Oh god. My face hurts from smiling so much. I loved this movie! So excited to spend some more time in Middle-earth. I could have enjoyed like three more hours taking place in Bilbo's house. I covet that house.

Dwarves were awesome. I have kiiiiiiind of a Fili/Kili situation now. And you guys are totally right: Richard Dwarfitage got his handsome all over the (gorgeous) sets.

If the lady next to me hadn't rocked back and forth for all fucking movie, it would have been a perfect movie experience.

The facts were these: Thranduil is a total bitch.

The facts were these: Thranduil is a total bitch.

Hee.

I enjoyed this movie a lot -- moreso than what I expected (admittedly I was worried when I heard it was a trilogy).

And dwarf smoulder was pretty amusing to watch. It's like this competition with the elves -- "YOU WANT SMOULDER? WE GOT SMOULDER!"

laddical wrote:

The facts were these: Thranduil is a total bitch.

Hee.

*laughing* Excellent.

I saw it yesterday and I was a giggling fangirl throughout. Like Unluccubus Bear, I was just so damn happy to be back in Middle-earth. I got teary before the fricking footage even started, when the Shire song played over the opening titles.

I'm going to go ahead and say that this movie (with the caveat of course of not having seen the entire "work") is not as good as original LOTR. It can hardly be helped. When I read the books back in the day, I read The Hobbit and it was fun and there were funny dwarves and they danced and sang and Bilbo was all sputtery and English and there were cockney trolls and treasure and it was magical. Then at the end (as I recall...again it's been a long time) there was this part where Bilbo has this like existential moment of, we just came all this way for a fricking pile of jewels? WHAT DOES LIFE MEAN and I felt this grown-up ennui and then I read the LOTR books and they were SO much deeper and more detailed and less kid-ish (obviously The Hobbit was meant to be a kids' story so that's not a bad thing), and they were so beautiful and the world of the books was so much bigger than a goofy quest story about treasure. Lothlorien, the West, Ithilien, Rohan, all the amazing language stuff, the glimpses of other non-Euro lands, the desperately sad and beautiful ending that I always took as a metaphor for growing up and how much it sucks...it was my jam. The movies, I felt, captured it really really well.

This movie takes the goofy dwarf treasure thing and attempts to pump it up with meatier mythological stuff from the Silmarillion (which I somehow have never actually READ despite having the basic idea of what's in it) and the LOTR appendices (which I like to refer to as Tolkien's show bible and which my friend and I once agreed were perhaps the best part of the books) and the side stuff like Radagast (I always liked crazy old Radagast) that normally wouldn't be in a movie. This is fine. I think they did a good job with it. "The dwarves have no homeland" is a little more existential and worthy of a quest than "The dwarves are the Ferengi of Middle-earth and they really like tray-zher." There's also a little more of a thing about how the dwarves were done wrong by the elves. And of course they're tying it to the stuff that's going to happen in LOTR. So far, to me, it doesn't feel the way I feared -- a random hodgepodge of stuff from the books (or, not objectionably so). So that's good. But it doesn't have the thrust to it that LOTR did, it was never going to, and that's OK. To me it's like an agreement that we all have: "We're going to make some more Middle-earth movies, and it's going to be a bit of a stretch but you're going to have more time in beautiful Middle Zealand with all your faves and we will do an honest job of making it worth your while even if it's not going to be quite the same" and I at least am like "Sounds good, I'm in."

Sorry this is so rambly. There were moments that I didn't feel worked. There was more indulgence for one-liners than there should have been, I felt; humor is one thing but don't make it feel sitcomy. (Example: the Goblin King snarking "That'll do it" as he gets killed by Gandalf.) I also think there was a little struggle to meld the more solemn/epic tone of the earlier films, which they were trying to elevate the material to, with the more charming/goofy/lighthearted mood of the book, which they were also trying to capture. Not perfect but it was all right. I did feel there was a lot of retreading that sometimes felt like a shadow (hurr) of the earlier films: the struggling on the mountain in the storm (although I'm sorry but I LOVED the mountain fight; maybe the 3D made it extra awesome but I was just kind of jawdropped through that whole thing), Thorin apologizing to Bilbo at the end (I was like "DON'T CHEER" and when they did it felt like it was working too hard to be that scene in Gondor when everyone bows in ROTK), the eagles (why, BTW, don't they just ask the eagles to carry them wherever they're going all the time? A LOT faster). I liked the DELIBERATE retreads; I loved that Frodo and Bilbo were getting ready for the party as Bilbo was telling his story. Even within the film some stuff felt repetitive: it felt like Gandalf kept leaving just so he could whoosh in at the last minute and save everyone, and for me it was one too many scenes of all the dwarves being tied up and in certain peril, and a lot of orc-chasing, but that's just me, the action parts of anything almost always feel way too long but that's OK. Although, actually, when they were all running through the mountain fighting goblins and swinging around on various rickety bridges, maybe it was the 3D/HFR, but I sort of GOT for the first time what is fun about action movies. I sort of wanted it to go on forever and that never happens to me. There was one scene -- I KNOW this was the 3D -- where they were all falling down at the end on the platform thing and they're looking over the edge of this abyss and I got this legit fluttering in my stomach like I was falling, which I mean in a good way.

OKAY. Honestly what struck me MOST about the movie was the HFR. It was CRAZY. It was basically like watching the movie being performed in a room in front of me, especially with the 3D. This threw me off like mad, but I kind of loved it. It was endlessly tickling to me how different the look of things being CLEAR was. My brain couldn't handle it. I felt like those people who ran out of the theater when they thought the train was coming at them when movies were first invented. In some ways it made it look LESS impressive to me because it was so matter-of-factly THERE. Like, there would be fire and it wasn't MOVIE FIRE! it was just like, if there was actually a fire there. Hee! I don't know what I thought movie fire looked like before, but apparently not just regular RL fire. Sometimes it did look to me as if the actors were just walking around on a set. A huge, detailed set -- and most of that set probably wasn't there IRL -- but a set. It reminded me of the opening of the London Olympics. Or of watching hours and hours of video footage of LOTR sets/props in the DVD extras. I admit there were moments where it took some of the reality out of it for me. For some reason my brain registered Frodo, for example (maybe because that was the beginning of the movie), as Elijah Wood in hobbit feet walking around on the set of LOTR. I felt in particular like the hobbit feet looked fake where I never felt that in the other movies. Some of the acting started to feel goofy to me in the same way it does when you watch video of a scene being filmed. Even with music it still felt like they needed to add the score or something -- there were just these people there, in these crazy dwarf outfits, acting! I started having thoughts like "Acting is SUCH a silly profession when you really think about it. Look at these adults pretending to be dwarves and making a ton of money doing it." And, I was SUPER CONSCIOUS of the camera at first. Even on reality shows I sometimes forget there's a camera (and a camera guy) there filming them, but maybe because it was so hyperreal, like at the beginning in Erebor it wasn't like I was just seeing Erebor it was like some guy with a camera was running around Erebor. They would do big sweeping shots and it seemed goofy or self-conscious or something.

I'm making it sound like I didn't like it but I did -- I just need to adjust to it. By the end I wasn't really noticing it anymore. Some of the landscapes were AMAZING being so clear; it was like being there. I really feel like it's a huge leap in the technology, and I feel as if it's going to be like color -- at some point every movie will be made in it, and it will be the default, but there will still be some "old-film" movies made that are beautiful in a bit of a nostalgic/alternative way and it will still be a part of the medium, but it will be like record scratches -- to add a retro flavor.

Final thought: I just love Galadriel. She was always my favorite in the books and she's still my favorite. She's so weird and badass and preeeeeetttttyyyyyyyyy. I spent most of those scenes staring at her hair. And her dress but mostly her hair.

Oh, real final thought: Remember in the books (I forget which one) there was a guy named Beorn? Who was sort of a bear but also a dude? I hope he makes it in. Everyone else is making it in. Even Bret. (We have confirmed there's no Colbert in this chapter, right?)

This got really long. Sorry. MORE LOTR I WANT MORE NOW.

I love how fangirly that got, Monkeys. It made me want to see it again in the HFR.

I will champion HFR forever.

And yes, Beorn will be in the next one. The dwarves fall in with him almost immediately after the tree incident. The end scene at Disney's California Adventure was a reference to him with the bear-shaped mountain.

Not directly related to the film as I've been sick over Christmas and haven't managed to see it yet, but I was looking up Beorn to refresh my memory and came across this recipe for Beorn's honey cake and I have to say I'm dying to try it. I always loved the description of the food Bilbo and the dwarves got at his house.

James McAvoy wants to play Gandalf in the Silmarillion. Pretty much just what it says in the title. However, there are a couple of hiccups. Christopher Tolkien is, rightly, never going to give up the rights to that. Also, Gandalf & co arrived in Middle-Earth already as old men. And finally, if anyone should play a young Gandalf, shouldn't it be Michael Fassbender?

Red Wolf wrote:And finally, if anyone should play a young Gandalf, shouldn't it be Michael Fassbender?

Exactly my first thought.