The Hobbit

[Rocko]

I haven't seen a movie that bad in decades.

 

[PredFan]

Awesome movie. Can't wait for the next one.

 

[Rocko]

Awesome movie. Can't wait for the next one.

You serious? I thought it dragged on and on and on..
Little action, silly plot, retarded acting. I can't think of anything that I thought they did a good job on. To each his own I guess.

 

[g5000]

Computer special effects and explosions are what idiots think make a good movie these days.

The first half-hour of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey – including a battle scene – is painful on the eyeballs. The look on the screen is distracting but familiar – somewhere between a soap opera, a sports-bar football game and a direct-to-video kids program from a bygone era. By doubling the frame rate of traditional 35mm film production and current high-definition video, the new format provides twice the visual information. Instead of being immersed in the action, you find yourself staring at the prosthetics and props.

The repeated iterations of fight, flight and respite here get wearing. Especially perhaps because, with Jackson's fetish for detail, they take more time to watch on screen than to read about.

The Hobbit: An epic adventure that’s hard on the eyes

 

[Lumpy 1]

I saw the movie twice (once in 3D) and really liked it both times..

 

[PredFan]

It did a pretty good job of following the book as well. I've been a fan of the books for decades. I love how Peter Jackson is bringing it to life.

 

[RetiredGySgt]

It did a pretty good job of following the book as well. I've been a fan of the books for decades. I love how Peter Jackson is bringing it to life.

Yup the two haters probably never read the book or if they did didn't like it.

 

[PredFan]

It did a pretty good job of following the book as well. I've been a fan of the books for decades. I love how Peter Jackson is bringing it to life.

Yup the two haters probably never read the book or if they did didn't like it.

Well, Science fiction and Fantasy isn't everyone's cup of tea.

I don't like musicals myself. South Park was the only one I've ever seen that didn't suck ass. Just my opinion though.

 

[Wolfsister77]

I thought it was very good. I am a big fan of the books and it followed them very closely. There was plenty of action. It wasn't non-stop but there was plenty.

 

[RetiredGySgt]

I thought it was very good. I am a big fan of the books and it followed them very closely. There was plenty of action. It wasn't non-stop but there was plenty.

Well consider the source, his avatar is Rocky Balboa.

 

[Weatherman2020]

Awesome movie. Can't wait for the next one.

You serious? I thought it dragged on and on and on..
Little action, silly plot, retarded acting. I can't think of anything that I thought they did a good job on. To each his own I guess.

Like the books, people either love it our hate it. A very interesting point about the stories: they’re universal. Every nation on earth has a following. If you go to the Shire in New Zealand you’re taken by bus to the site. Our one bus had visitors from 15 nations.

 

[OldLady]

I haven't seen a movie that bad in decades.

I wasn't that crazy about the book, either. More for kids. The movie was a long drawn out battle scene.

 

[OldLady]

It did a pretty good job of following the book as well. I've been a fan of the books for decades. I love how Peter Jackson is bringing it to life.

I've read LTR so many times I've pretty much got them memorized. Never liked The Hobbit much, though. It was okay--set the scene for what was to come, but nowhere near as good as the trilogy.

 

[fncceo]

I hear they're making it into a book.

 

[Lumpy 1]

It did a pretty good job of following the book as well. I've been a fan of the books for decades. I love how Peter Jackson is bringing it to life.

I've read LTR so many times I've pretty much got them memorized. Never liked The Hobbit much, though. It was okay--set the scene for what was to come, but nowhere near as good as the trilogy.

I agree .. not much heart or character development in the Hobbit but the trilogy seemed like perfection to me.. An easy read and in each movie of the trilogy seemed complete, although I still wanted more.

 

[OldLady]

I still wanted more.

Yes. The books hold so much more than just the Quest. There is so much sweetness and nobility woven into the books; the hope unlooked for, the intricacy of the Elvish legends, the hobbits who kept us grounded in humanity, the beauty and the loss and the valor against all odds. It would have taken a dozen movies to add it all and I don't suppose it could be done. The movies teased out the action story line. When you are reading the books, the war scenes and battles don't take center stage the way they do in the films. That was only one part.

My favorite scene is when Aaragorn kneels to the ring bearers at the coronation. That was real LTR.

 

[Lumpy 1]

I still wanted more.

Yes. The books hold so much more than just the Quest. There is so much sweetness and nobility woven into the books; the hope unlooked for, the intricacy of the Elvish legends, the hobbits who kept us grounded in humanity, the beauty and the loss and the valor against all odds. It would have taken a dozen movies to add it all and I don't suppose it could be done. The movies teased out the action story line. When you are reading the books, the war scenes and battles don't take center stage the way they do in the films. That was only one part.

My favorite scene is when Aaragorn kneels to the ring bearers at the coronation. That was real LTR.

Yup .. great scene, I'd have quite a list of favorites including this one.. It just gets me every time, I love being a Dad and a husband, although they've all left the nest.


.

 

[Bob Blaylock]

You serious? I thought it dragged on and on and on..
Little action, silly plot, retarded acting. I can't think of anything that I thought they did a good job on. To each his own I guess.

I have yet to see any of The Hobbit movies. I know I'll want to, eventually, but I expect that I will be disappointed.

I expect that they will suffer badly from a condition that I call “Pandorum”, after a movie which I consider to be the model organism for this defect.

The essence of Pandorum is a very good story, but not a very big one, stretched way too far to make a movie, with lots of burdensome, irrelevant crap put into it to pad it out, and a very slow pacing, to stretch it to what is a reasonable length for a movie. The Pandorum story would have made a good basis for a 15-20 minute segment on a The Twilight Zone type of anthology show, but there just was not nearly enough to the story to reasonably stretch it out to a full-length feature film.

What's all this have to do with The Hobbit?

The Lord of the Rings is a very big story. Made into a series of movies, it ended up being more than nine hours total for the theatrical releases, and more than eleven hours for the extended versions, and even to fit it into that longer length, some stuff had to be rather painfully cut out of Tolkien's original version of the story.

I guess the folks who did the Lord of the Rings movies, in following it with The Hobbit, felt that they needed to make the latter as big and grand as Lord of the Rings came out to be. But The Hobbit just is not that big a story.

Consider the box set of books pictured below, this set being published some time after The Lord of the Rings movies, but before The Hobbit movies. Four books total. Three of them comprise Lord of the Rings. Only one of them—the smallest out of the four—is The Hobbit.

The Hobbit is less than 1⁄3 as much story as Lord of the Rings. While eight hours isn't nearly enough time to properly tell the Lord of the Rings story, it's surely just way too much time to take telling The Hobbit.

 

[iamwhatiseem]

I still wanted more.

Yes. The books hold so much more than just the Quest. There is so much sweetness and nobility woven into the books; the hope unlooked for, the intricacy of the Elvish legends, the hobbits who kept us grounded in humanity, the beauty and the loss and the valor against all odds. It would have taken a dozen movies to add it all and I don't suppose it could be done. The movies teased out the action story line. When you are reading the books, the war scenes and battles don't take center stage the way they do in the films. That was only one part.

My favorite scene is when Aaragorn kneels to the ring bearers at the coronation. That was real LTR.

Indeed.
Some books just can't translate to the big screen. The Hobbit is certainly one of them.
I knew for instance the movie a couple years ago, "Enders Game". Extraordinary book, arguably one of the top 5 SciFi books ever written. And the series just might be the number one in SciFi series. The movie was entertaining, but the deep meanings of the book were lost.

 

[OldLady]

The Music of the Ainur in The Silmarillion was so beautiful I cried. Tolkein lived through some tough times but he never lost hope. I only wish more people had his heart.