DOS Trailer #2

i know that now....

that still only relates to TH though. He got LOTR perfect which is all the more frustrating and sad. I also hope we get to hear Shores music in all its glory not second hand rifs.

yeah. agree figg. he got it perfect.

Or rather than shit on Tolkien from a great height he just pissed on him from a great height in LotR's.

 na-ah, PJ got it right last time.

I honestly dont understand how anyone can claim dislike for TH whilst simultaneously declaring LotR's perfect.
Apart from the technical differences, cgi sets ect there isnt a single complaint Ive made, or heard others make on here of TH script that is not equally applicable to the LotR's script, and indeed which I have been crabbit about and highlighting long before there even was a Hobbit film.
They share all the same terrible problems.

No they dont. no way, no how, not in any shape or form. I cant understand why you would say they do. LOTR remains some of the best loved films of all time. Thats undeniable. They are some of the most beautiful and stunning films to watch, listen to, and enjoy. There are minor glitches and some understandable changes, some of the changes are there for effect but they dont harm the story in the long run. They are realistically medieval/ancient in feel, and the attention to detail is mind boggling. I also think the dialogue is great too.

We've already covered the ground that Denethor was messed up beyond recognition for no good reason. The green toilet bowl horde cleaning out Minas Tirith, the ridiculously forced "Short cut to.....Mushrooms!" line. Etc. etc.

No LoTR wasn't perfect. It was perhaps as good as we could reasonably hope for, but definitely not perfect.

If we didn't know the Hobbit how much would we hate the movie?

I would never hate it.

Well, how do you guys feel about the Rankin Bass hobbit?

I personally Love it.

Figgy - I was referring to whether or not we would hate the Hobbit movie if we didn't know the book. I think there was a lot of acceptance of LoTR because people just didn't know the books so well. But everyone read the Hobbit in childhood.

I can't stand any of the animated Hobbit movies. They either look like a hallucinogenic dream or they make the hobbits look butt ugly.

Pettytyrant101 wrote:I honestly dont understand how anyone can claim dislike for TH whilst simultaneously declaring LotR's perfect.
Apart from the technical differences, cgi sets ect  there isnt a single complaint Ive made, or heard others make on here of TH script that is not equally applicable to the LotR's script, and indeed which I have been crabbit about and highlighting long before there even was a Hobbit film.
They share all the same terrible problems.

I was with you up until the bolded part. I'll agree that most of the problems of An Unexpected Journey have origins that can be seen in LOTR, at least in the latter two films. But to say that they are equally as bad in LOTR and TH is just disingenuous. It's not hard to trace the declining self-control of Peter Jackson from LOTR, to King Kong, to The Hobbit. I know a lot of people who think that he became unbearable after Fellowship, but in my opinion the entire LOTR trilogy is excellent (though not perfect) and it wasn't until King Kong that he became truly ridiculous. But wherever one personally draws the line, the progression is there.

malickfan wrote:Well, how do you guys feel about the Rankin Bass hobbit?

I personally Love it.

It's the best of the animated movies, IMO, but that's not saying much.

I cant understand why you would say they do.- Mrs Figg

Simple- my main complaints about LotR's from before there was a Hobbit film in production-

rewriting characters and motivations (Aragorn, Faramir, Denethor ect)

out of place modernised dialogue (almost all of it)

out of place story additions and alterations (too many to list but worst offenders, elves at Helms Deep, disposable falsely inflated bad guys like Saruman that are then just forgotten about. Frodo choosing Smeagol over Sam and sending him away, green goo army on Pellanor ect)

spectacle over substance (plenty to pick from, most of RotK for a start)

not making internal sense as a stand alone film (No reason for Frodo to take ship at the end being the worst)

All of which are equally true of TH. Same director, same writers, exact same set of problems.

Eldo I have never said anything other than all these problems are even more blatant in TH than in Lotr's- but all the same problems exist in both sets of films, and they are no better in one than the other, there is just even more of them in TH.

Pettytyrant101 wrote:Eldo I have never said anything other than all these problems are even more blatant in TH than in Lotr's- but all the same problems exist in both sets of films, and they are no better in one than the other, there is just even more of them in TH.

Like I said, I find this to be a rather disingenuous way of looking at the films.  I suppose it might make sense if you are only judging them by their closeness to the book rather than their qualities as cinema, though I'm not sure about that.

Also, you said earlier that there was "not a single complaint" that couldn't be made equally about LOTR, which doesn't seem compatible with the statement that there are "even more [problems]" in TH.

For me LotR's doesnt make sense as a film, the story doesn't make sense, things that happen in it dont make sense. These are film flaws with nothing to do with the book.
I wont enjoy a film that plays fast and lose with ts own internal laws- elves turn up at Helms Deep with no way to have got there in that time frame, as set out within the film itself.
Frodo goes on the ship at the end without any in film reason or explanation- it only happens becuase the book ends that way, but as the reasons for it are not in the film it makes no sense.
Denethor runs half a mile on fire despite the blatant impossibility of someone doing so ect
These are serious flaws in any film.

And all the complaints I list of LotR's are true of TH, yes they are more front and centre in TH but they are not new flaws- they are the same flaws writ even larger.

Without wanting to get bogged down in the nitty gritty of individual complaints (of which I have plenty of my own about LOTR), if the flaws are writ even larger in TH, then it would seem to be that they cannot be made equally about LOTR.

More to the point, however, I think TH introduced a lot of new problems. LOTR's pacing was, for the most part, pretty good and it didn't get bogged down in flashbacks. All of the members of the Fellowship got a reasonable amount of character development. The tone did not shift jarringly between kiddy and violent because PJ was working from source material that was already more serious. (This doesn't necessarily mean that the tone was the same as the book's.) The musical score in LOTR was superb. Etc, etc.

if the flaws are writ even larger in TH, then it would seem to be that they cannot be made equally about LOTR- Eldo

The flaws can indeed be held up equally, as they are exactly the same flaws, its only the quanity and persistence of them that's worse in TH, but the flaws themselves are equal in that they are the exact same flaws.

I disagree about the comparative severity of the flaws that are shared by LOTR and TH, but I would be more interested in reading your response to the (from my perspective) TH-only flaws I listed in my previous post.

On the pacing issue I need to go no further than you own words-

"LOTR's pacing was, for the most part, pretty good"

As my contention is that the same flaws appear in both film, regardless of quantity or amount of times, but both sets of films do have pacing issues- I personally think TT is a terribly paced middle film and RotK is even worse, leading to so many complaining of it having a sense of never ending.

"The tone did not shift jarringly between kiddy and violent"

Again I think there are several points in LotR's where that does indeed happen.
I dont think the Black Rider scene is helped by being immediately preceded by a joke with Pippin nearly ending up with a face full of horse shit.

The Paths of the Dead goes from stupid jokes about Gimli running over bones and pulling comedy faces to the supposedly serious confrontation with the King of Dead.
There are wild missteps in humour at Helms Deep with jokes about standing on boxes and dwarf tossing next to a battle in which limbs are chopped off.

Are there even more poor switches in tone in TH?- yes. But its not a new problem.

Whilst I think the music in LotR's is ok, its not among my favourite soundtracks. I have always said I would have liked much more variety in the styles of music for races and places, I was underwhelmed by it in most places, I couldn't even hum you most of it without having to refresh my memory first. That of course is purely subjective however. I would concede however its more poorly employed in the editing of TH, but the standard seems about the same to me of the actual music itself.

I agree with Eldo on this.

Pettytyrant101 wrote:I cant understand why you would say they do.- Mrs Figg

Simple- my main complaints about LotR's from before there was a Hobbit film in production-

rewriting characters and motivations (Aragorn, Faramir, Denethor ect)

out of place modernised dialogue (almost all of it)

out of place story additions and alterations (too many to list but worst offenders, elves at Helms Deep, disposable falsely inflated bad guys like Saruman that are then just forgotten about. Frodo choosing Smeagol over Sam and sending him away, green goo army on Pellanor ect)

spectacle over substance (plenty to pick from, most of RotK for a start)

not making internal sense as a stand alone film (No reason for Frodo to take ship at the end being the worst)

All of which are equally true of TH. Same director, same writers, exact same set of problems.

Eldo I have never said anything other than all these problems are even more blatant in TH than in Lotr's- but all the same problems exist in both sets of films, and they are no better in one than the other, there is just even more of them in TH.

cri evriteim #amarieco #hashtaggingameriecoevenwhenitsnotreleventto#amarieco

Pettytyrant101 wrote:As my contention is that the same flaws appear in both film, regardless of quantity or amount of times, but both sets of films do have pacing issues- I personally think TT is a terribly paced middle film and RotK is even worse, leading to so many complaining of it having a sense of never ending.

I'm not going to claim that the pacing is perfect, but I don't consider to be a noteworthy flaw of LOTR outside of perhaps TTT.  I've always found the ROTK ending complaints to be ridiculous -- any significant cuts would have made the ending feel far too abbreviated for the conclusions to a 10 (or 12) hour story.  I think I've elaborated on this before and can do so again if you want.

Again I think there are several points in LotR's where that does indeed happen.
I dont think the Black Rider scene is helped by being immediately preceded by a joke with Pippin nearly ending up with a face full of horse shit.
...
Are there even more poor switches in tone in TH?- yes. But its not a new problem.

I disagree that this is the same issue.  PJ's immature sense of humor is definitely out of place and grating at several points throughout LOTR, though my tolerance for it seems to be considerably higher than yours.  And this is definitely an issue in TH, too, no doubt.  The Radagast stoner jokes stand out as examples of PJ's humor that doesn't really fit into Tolkien's work.  But this is very different from the artifacts of TH's origins as a children's story that made it into the film.  Songs about dish-washing, talking trolls, bunny sleds don't fit very well into a movie with dense mythological background and the protagonist brutally stabbing an orc to death.

Lowbrow stoner comic relief isn't in the spirit of Tolkien, but it can work in the context of a more "serious" story aimed at teens and up.  Whether or not PJ did make them work is a subjective question, but they're very different from the children's book elements, which is what I was referring to.

Whilst I think the music in LotR's is ok, its not among my favourite soundtracks. I have always said I would have liked much more variety in the styles of music for races and places, I was underwhelmed by it in most places, I couldn't even hum you most of it without having to refresh my memory first. That of course is purely subjective however. I would concede however its more poorly employed in the editing of TH, but the standard seems about the same to me of the actual music itself.

I agree that this is highly subjective so I don't have anything to say in response.

Wat would Legolas surfing a Mumakil and killing it single handed before sliding down its trunk count as? To me that's childish, its the sort of thing that belongs in a childrens cartoon. And it is just as big a tone mismatch to me with what is supposed to be going on, ie the most nasty brutal, biggest battle of the War of he Ring, as anything in TH.

Its just in reverse- in LotR's Pj had a serious story into which he injected stuff of a childish tone. With TH he had a childish story he has injected with a serious tone. And in both cases where it occurs there is a jarring tonal clash.

I remember when I saw the extended edition of ROTK with the drinking scene, I was shocked at first by the fact that it was there. But having not read the books at this point, I greatly enjoyed seeing a lighter side to such a serious story. Cinematically, those "childish" moments keep the audience from yawning and turning away. I thought they worked quite well in LOTR, some of them did not. In TH, the serious undertones in a strangely dumb comedic story does not work.

I will say that having read the books and then seeing the film is much different than going the other way around. But that being said, I can't understand why people enjoyed the Hobbit as much as they did. I couldn't stand it as a stand alone film! To a less critical and expectant eye, however, it fits the bill as a quality adventure film that you see once because it has a lot of hype surrounding it, like Avatar.