Waiting for 'The Battle of the Five Armies'...

Pettytyrant101 wrote:the whole second film sucked donkey balls- Sin


Plain spoken, honest and true as always Sin.

Ive rather been put off future adaptation s of Tolkien after this mess.
Perhaps if it was going to be for TV where it might have the actual story from the books, the characters and the dialogue.
But I reckon I'll be dead by then, which will probably be for the best and save me getting crabbit about the new 4D holographic plugged direct into your brain stimulation version of 2120

Probably much sooner than that! Not that I'm looking forward to 4d holographic displays being delivered directly into my brain via-WiFi...

Anyway, Lee Pace looks good, as usual. The megaloceros (we've been over this in detail, it is NOT an elk) is as strange as ever, but I can't find any real fault with it. If the Iron Hills dwarves are going to ride into battle on War-goats, then no-one should complain about Thranduil going about on a mount that actually suits him.

Sinister71 wrote:But instead we get a bunch of made up garbage where Bilbo is a side note in his own story and AGAIN the whole thing is about Sauron and the ring instead of just being an adventure tale set in the same world as LOTR.

Yeah, it's been clear for a long time that PJ's main ambition here was to make the LOTR Prequel Trilogy, and much like the SW Prequel Trilogy, one of its biggest weaknesses is the endless callbacks and references to the originals.

please let the Hobbit be remade sooner than later.

I dunno that I really feel a burning need to see another Hobbit movie. Granted, I was hardly consumed by the desire to see a Hobbit movie before these ones came out, so I'm not necessarily the target audience. But much as I loved the LOTR films, I've never felt that the Hobbit would make any sense as a cinematic follow up. I'm sure that a skilled director could craft a really good fairy tale movie based on The Hobbit, but it would have to be long enough after the LOTR films for them to not be on everyone's minds the moment they hear the phrase "Middle-earth movie" (and naturally it couldn't be made by the same team). It would be a very different kind of film, though, and not necessarily a big money-maker. LOTR lends itself easily to epic scope, visual splendor, and large-scale action, even though it has plenty of other stuff in the book too. But The Hobbit has very little of the ingredients for quality blockbuster filmmaker (or any blockbusters at all).

Cause the version Jackson made really does suck on some big full donkey balls

Ahem. I believe they suck some big pig balls.

It has a dragon, a torched town on a lake, and a big fight and an unassuming hero who develops and grows through his experiences.

Once upon a time that was more than enough for a film.

Well yeah, but the dragon's most memorable scene is purely dialogue, the torched town is shown from the perspective of a character who we know almost nothing about, and the big fight is mostly described to the main character after the fact because he was unconscious during it. The Hobbit makes some fairly unconventional choices in its narrative. I think it succeeds brilliantly at it, but if you're trying to make the film work in an increasingly formula-driven movie market, that can be a problem.

I'd love to see a version of The Hobbit given the budget necessary to realize Middle-earth without it also being an action film, but it's hard to get the necessary budgets without the audience-attracting stuff too. The Hobbit is probably popular enough from the book alone that it could have afforded to buck the trend, but that'd be a gamble. Then again, so were the LOTR movies.

Its about budget.
PJ's version cost a fortune, but its jam packed full of utterly unnecessary expensive scenes.
I think you could make TH for a modest sum based on the book and be in with a very good chance of making a profit.

A smaller budget than PJ used, surely, but there'd still be a lot of effects work, sets, props, extras, etc. Unless you just use generic props from medieval productions (which looks cheesy and awful), you basically have to build everything from scratch, which drives the budget way up.

Nothing like the amount in PJ's.
If you go through his version and count up all the scenes which are effect heavy and not at all necessary there is a hell of a lot of them.

https://imgur.com/gallery/awrpTYy

Whatever else I might think about the comic, I have to admire the eye for absolutely perfect screengrabs in there. The facial expressions are hilarious.

The thing about that is it could be almost exactly like the book with the right artistic vision. Sure it doesn't have to be quite as frivolous and cute as the book was at times, but so long as the fairy tale feel still remained. The Hobbit is so different than LOTR in so many ways I agree that it might be better if it was never made. The consistency with LOTR is minimal, which is why PJ will and did have such a hard time trying to make these films good. This book and story is completely not his style. At. All.

What I find most surprising is the number of Hobbit movie apologists who are completely open about their disdain for the book (as in that comic, for example). In the past, lotr movie defenders tended to praise the books, and if they criticized them it was cautiously and subtly.

I would guess those who praised LotR's as books but go on to deride TH never read TH first and as a young child.

I read The Hobbit aged either 17 or 18 after seeing and reading LOTR, and whilst the tone and writing style came as a shock, I can honestly say now I generally find The Hobbit a more enjoyable read than LOTR-it's defintly not as good either as a work of fantasy writing, or as a part of the wider Middle Earth canon, but I just find it a very fun, easy to read book. LOTR has to be read , The Hobit just needs to be enjoyed.

I find it a little sad and in some ways amusing detractors of the book seem to take any excuse to bash it-Tolkien fans only when it suits them it seems, it was conceived as a stand alone childrens tale to entertain children in the 1930's whatever Tolkien later considered doing and added to the tale, it is primarily a standalone story for Young Adults. I have often seen people using the excuse of Jackson's 'additions from the appendices and notes' and Tolkien's abadoned 1960 rewrite as a reason to defend the films, as if Jackson (a man with some very clear misunderstandings of the books) was somehow finishing the job for Tolkien (more often that not very few of the posters have even read said material...)

The Hobbit is a book standing in many ways apart from his other M.E writings, and whatever he may have felt or tried to do at one point, The Hobbit stands alone between its own covers, people should remember that and either enjoy or disregard it on its own merits i.m.o

Id agree with that Malick. It stands on its own. It is not a prequel to LotR's, and was never written with such an intent, its just a story that happens to take place before it.
But it serves an entirely different purpose and audience.

The Hobbit is undoubtedly a children's book, but I think it's the sort of children's book that can be readily enjoyed by adults as well.  That description is perhaps something of a cliche these days, but I think The Hobbit's appeal is just as broad as something like, say, Harry Potter.  If anything, I'd say that The Hobbit is a more difficult read than HP, if only due to the vocabulary needed.  (HP is undoubtedly darker and more "mature" in the later books, but I'd say the first three are comparable to the latter half of The Hobbit in tone.)  I don't think it's necessary to have read The Hobbit as a child to continue to appreciate it as an adult, any more than that was necessary with HP (Petty notwithstanding).

That said, I can certainly understand how someone who read and loved LOTR might not like The Hobbit, but also how a Hobbit-lover might be lukewarm on LOTR.  I know people who fall into both camps.  All three of Tolkien's major works (LOTR, TH, and The Silmarillion) are very different from each other and there's no guarantee that any one person will enjoy all three just because they enjoyed one.  And of course, if someone is a fan of the movies specifically and has not read the book, then I can see how they wouldn't really mind radical changes to the book.  But in earlier years, I feel that the majority of non-book-readers still respected Tolkien as an author and creator of fictional worlds and gave only limited criticism of the book (a majority of those who cared enough to post on Tolkien forums, anyway).

I've been wondering what changed since The Hobbit came out.  I can think of a few possible explanations.  One is that PJ and crew talk less about Tolkien and how much they've tried to preserve the book (lol), and so there's less of a follow-the-leader effect of praising Tolkien even if you haven't read him.  Relatedly, the movies have enough cultural currency now that it's not necessary to even pretend to pander to book fans, either in official marketing or in online arguments.  (This is probably why PJ and co changed their tune.)  It's possible that The Hobbit is just less respected in general than LOTR, but speaking anecdotally, I don't think that's really the case among those who have read both books, although LOTR is probably more popular overall.  The exception is probably teenagers who are horrified of the idea of liking any "kid stuff", which brings us back to that comic again.

One other reason which is probably limited to a subset of forum denizens rather than popular culture at large is the obsession with finding a "Tolkien canon".  The Hobbit messes up so many theories of canon that I've gotten the sense that it inspires resentment from some corners.  I've had a number of debates with people who try to marginalize the role of The Hobbit because it's not totally compatible with LOTR from an internal consistency perspective.  Of course, the mess that is the textual history of The Silmarillion poses a far greater challenge to any theory of canon, but the people who really care about this sort of thing usually aren't aware of the issues with the 1977 Silm.

Eldorion wrote:

Sinister71 wrote:But instead we get a bunch of made up garbage where Bilbo is a side note in his own story and AGAIN the whole thing is about Sauron and the ring instead of just being an adventure tale set in the same world as LOTR.

Yeah, it's been clear for a long time that PJ's main ambition here was to make the LOTR Prequel Trilogy, and much like the SW Prequel Trilogy, one of its biggest weaknesses is the endless callbacks and references to the originals.

please let the Hobbit be remade sooner than later.

I dunno that I really feel a burning need to see another Hobbit movie.  Granted, I was hardly consumed by the desire to see a Hobbit movie before these ones came out, so I'm not necessarily the target audience.  But much as I loved the LOTR films, I've never felt that the Hobbit would make any sense as a cinematic follow up.  I'm sure that a skilled director could craft a really good fairy tale movie based on The Hobbit, but it would have to be long enough after the LOTR films for them to not be on everyone's minds the moment they hear the phrase "Middle-earth movie" (and naturally it couldn't be made by the same team).  It would be a very different kind of film, though, and not necessarily a big money-maker.  LOTR lends itself easily to epic scope, visual splendor, and large-scale action, even though it has plenty of other stuff in the book too.  But The Hobbit has very little of the ingredients for quality blockbuster filmmaker (or any blockbusters at all).

Cause the version Jackson made really does suck on some big full donkey balls

Ahem.  I believe they suck some big pig balls.

how can any animal have balls bigger than its brain?  .........Petty?

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Discussion continues: http://www.hobbitmovieforum.com/t1069-waiting-for-the-battle-of-the-five-armies-2