Peter Jackson's Hobbit Trilogy - Your thoughts now that it's over

[Zontar]

Why did it need to be 3 movies? I know it's for money reasons, but still, it could have been done in less then three and a half hours, let alone ten hours.

Also, where where the five armies in the last one? All I saw was an army of Orcs, a small army of elves, a glorified platoon or dwarves and a dozen humans. That's not even three armies.

 

[kasperbbs]

Meh.. Lets just say that i'm not a fan. The last one just bored me to sleep.

 

[Hero in a half shell]

I felt disappointed.

I think they just jumped the shark with the Hobbit movies - Too much CGI that it became noticeably distracting, the action set pieces went on for too long and each scene seemed like it was trying to 1-up the previous scene until it all just became too unbelievable (the seemingly indestructible barrels in the river escape in the 1st movie, Legolas' overly long fighting on the tower in the 3rd)

While I definitely enjoyed a lot of it (especially the bits with Smaug) the extra added fluff bits just weren't up to scratch and they kind of spoiled the movies in my opinion.

 

[Fox12]

I think a major part as to why it failed is that with the original trilogy Peter Jackson was a no-name who really had to work at it and prove himself as a director who could handle a movie of this size.

Because each movie having a majority of positive reviews, a cinemascore of A- or better, and making a HUGE profit is a failure. Right.

Monetary success means nothing. Twilight was a massive success. 50 shades of grey is evidently the fastest selling book ever. The hobbit trilogy wasn't just bad, it was atrocious. FAR worse then the Star Wars prequels. As someone whose studied Tolkien on scholarly level, I don't think the films could be much worse. They're more like Jackson's bad fan fiction. They were boorish, stupid, filled with plot holes, and wors of all, completely tone deaf. It's clear that Jackson didn't understand the source material. It's sad that the public is okay with mediocrity, especially after Tolkien poured himself into his work. He deserved better. At least Lucas had the decency to butcher his own work, and not someone else's. Tolkiens work was far more sophisticated then Lucas's, so seeing mangled in such a way was far more painful.

I wouldn't hesitate to consider the Hobbit trilogy one of the worst films ever made, both as an adaptation and as a standalone work.

 

[rasta111]

I didn't mind it being so long, I never read any of the books so I was new to this part of the story, but all in all it was nowhere near as good as the first trilogy.

I really enjoyed the first two movies up until the Matrix Reloaded style cliffhanger at the end of the second one, kind of unsatisfying, set the third film up for some level of inevitable disappoint which ended up making it fairly anti-climatic and the third film was shorter than the first two.

Far more disappointing to me than I found the third Matrix anyway for comparison, with that it was about the preceding film lacking a bit more so. I liked the way it began and throughout the first two films there was lots of exposition about the background to the story about the ring and Sauron, along with a lot of other smaller things, the focus on dwarfs was kind of interesting which lasted all the way till the end of the second film.

Once you get to the third film everything has pretty much been said and it's just going through the motions, big battles with lots of CGI with just a little madness thrown in for colour. A bit predictable, nothing special at all really and it ended up being kind of boring.

 

[Muspelheim]

Great promise, fantastic start and then it bloated up and got stuck.

I rather liked the emphasis on making it feel fun and adventurous, but the sheer mass of dashing, swashbuckling action just made it way too heavy.

It's like that King Kong film ol' Jackson made. It'd be fantastic if it weren't so bloody much of it.

 

[Vlado]

I'm still bitter that they made 3 films out of this tiny book... Totally milking the cash-cow. Making as many films on it as Lord of the Rings, a ten times bigger book, got was insulting. I haven't seen any of the films yet, maybe one day, when I get over this, I will.

 

[Laughing Man]

The problem with the Hobbit Trilogy was Lord Of The Rings itself.

I watched these movie sets as someone who has never read the books, so I had no idea what was going to happen to what characters. Now if the Hobbit trilogy had come first then all the fore shadowing about the ring and the fate of those involved with it as well as the fate of the characters, well it would have had some suspense and greater meaning. Because the movie was released after the LOTR trilogy you already knew what was going to happen and you already knew that the big main characters would survive, it removed the sense of suspense for those characters whilst also rendering the entire fate of the Dwarves Home land as being less than important, let's face it we already knew that Sauron was going to rise again and build his armies and bring war to Middle Earth, it kind of made everything happening in the Hobbit seem pretty pointless.

The other issue though was that the main story felt some what less important than the ground setting and extras that were jammed in trying to build up the rise of Sauron and the One Ring.

Other issues

It became a trilogy when it should have been two movies max. Smuag should have been introduced, developed and then killed in the second movie. Spreading his final attack and death over to the start of the third movie just felt poorly paced. Legolas the Elf that ages backwards, yes he may be immortal but the guy that plays him isn't and you could easily tell he looked older in this movie, plus he was in the movie at all, the entire sub plot could have still been in the movie but their was no reason at all for Legolas to be there. That entire sub plot, yes I said it could still have been in the movie with another character instead of Legolas but lets face it we didn't really need that entire love triangle non sense now did we? The speed with which the Dwarf King (yeah that was another one utterly forgettable characters) went mad with power, in the space of one movie he went from reasonable, to mad with power right back to reasonable and they all occurred at finger snapping speed. Finally was it me or did the last movie of the trilogy (remember the hobbit trilogy) feel less about the hobbit and more about everything else, I am actually having difficulty remembering what Bilbo did in the last movie.

 

[Roboshi]

I enjoyed them and feel that the parts people complained about would also be the parts people would complain about if they were missing it's not lucas syndrome, it's just a case of a prequel always being a handicap.

And while I'm not the biggest fan of moviebob, I agree with him that making 1 movie would be too cluttered and making 2 would have the cuttoff point in a really weird place.

That said, these movies felt like the "extended" cuts, ie the ones LotR got and if you didn't like the extended lotr movies you would get a little agitated here.

 

[William Ossiss]

When an intellectual property that is supposed to be a, basically, stand alone book turns into a 3 movie long fan-fiction with references to that OTHER series Peter Jackson did....
You get a steaming pile of.... garbage.

The added characters, the added "lore".

~The female elf should have never set foot in the trilogy. This character was a creation of Jackson's own moronic fan-fiction.
~Legolas should have had, at best, a small cameo.
~They shouldn't have spent 40 damn minutes inside of the Dwarven fortress fighting a wyvern just to have it, at the end, spin in the air rendering all of those minutes as a complete waste of time.
~The focus should have been more on the main character of the story. Not the Dwarves. I mean, it IS called The Hobbit
~A Dwarf would never waste time pining after a freaking elf. For one, they don't have beards.
~Smaug should have had 4 legs, just like he does in the books. 4 legs = a Dragon. 2 legs and bat hands = wyvern. Learn the difference, hollywood. But this one is just my own preference.


I greatly prefer the Tolkien fan edit. The one that cuts all three movies together in an attempt at making it 10x better. Which it accomplished. By cutting out most of the fluff. Like the she elf. one scene with legolas. Making the story about Bilbo. Cutting out 90% of the fight with Smaug in the Dwarven fortress. Kili doesn't get stabbed by a Morgul blade, a weapon that was so evil it ONLY existed in the hands of one of the ringwraiths. No she elf, no dwarf elf elf love triangle. It cut out the Gandalf scenes, but that is in line with the book.

 

[halisme]

First film: Subpar
Second film: Three hours of my life I'll never get back.
Third film: Meh

 

[Kolby Jack]

I think a major part as to why it failed is that with the original trilogy Peter Jackson was a no-name who really had to work at it and prove himself as a director who could handle a movie of this size.

Because each movie having a majority of positive reviews, a cinemascore of A- or better, and making a HUGE profit is a failure. Right.

Monetary success means nothing. Twilight was a massive success. 50 shades of grey is evidently the fastest selling book ever. The hobbit trilogy wasn't just bad, it was atrocious. FAR worse then the Star Wars prequels. As someone whose studied Tolkien on scholarly level, I don't think the films could be much worse. They're more like Jackson's bad fan fiction. They were boorish, stupid, filled with plot holes, and wors of all, completely tone deaf. It's clear that Jackson didn't understand the source material. It's sad that the public is okay with mediocrity, especially after Tolkien poured himself into his work. He deserved better. At least Lucas had the decency to butcher his own work, and not someone else's. Tolkiens work was far more sophisticated then Lucas's, so seeing mangled in such a way was far more painful.

I wouldn't hesitate to consider the Hobbit trilogy one of the worst films ever made, both as an adaptation and as a standalone work.

I can't really argue with that, because it's painfully obvious there'd be no point. Suffice it to say that most people would disagree with you, myself included.

I think a major part as to why it failed is that with the original trilogy Peter Jackson was a no-name who really had to work at it and prove himself as a director who could handle a movie of this size.

Because each movie having a majority of positive reviews, a cinemascore of A- or better, and making a HUGE profit is a failure. Right.

People really need to stop bringing in positive review scores and profit to counter claims of a movie/game being bad. I'm not speaking for the whole world, just for myself, so this argument really isn't going to suddenly make me change my stance on the matter.

Failure is a pretty broad term, and the way you used it suggested to me that you thought of the trilogy as a failure not just in your eyes, but overall. If you consider it a failure, that's fine, more power to you. It just read like you thought it failed in any way that matters to the creators, which it didn't. That was my only point.

 

[Casual Shinji]

Failure is a pretty broad term, and the way you used it suggested to me that you thought of the trilogy as a failure not just in your eyes, but overall. If you consider it a failure, that's fine, more power to you. It just read like you thought it failed in any way that matters to the creators, which it didn't. That was my only point.

Well, this is a thread about our personal thoughts on the trilogy not on it's commercial succes, so I figured my saying that it failed would be taken at face value as personal. Since I doubt discussing a movie's commercial succes or succes in the eyes of its creators would be all that facinating anyway.

 

[Fox12]

Failure is a pretty broad term, and the way you used it suggested to me that you thought of the trilogy as a failure not just in your eyes, but overall. If you consider it a failure, that's fine, more power to you. It just read like you thought it failed in any way that matters to the creators, which it didn't. That was my only point.

I think that's a little sad, though. It made a lot of money, it's true, but there are other measures of success, surely? The last film currently has an aggregate score of 60% on rotten tomatoes, and was a major critical let down, especially given the pedigree of the source materials, and of the older films. They messed up the themes and lore that mattered most to Tolkien. The fact that they succeeded in the only way that mattered to Hollywood, the bottom line, is the entire problem. Their priorities are all wrong. They shouldn't be trying to make the most money for the least amount of effort, they should be trying to create a quality piece of art. Sure, it wasn't unsuccessful, but in 10 years no one will even remember the work. To people who respect Tolkien, and who have studied his work in earnest, it feels like this series made a mockery of what he stood for. It would be like if someone made an adaptation of King Leer, and inserted fart jokes everywhere. It's just a little sad, is all.

 

[Guffe]

Should've been 2 movies.
A lot less action, more adventure...
Enjoyable movies to watch but not as good as the Lotr trilogy (in my opinion). Especially the last one was waaay too much action.

 

[Hades]

Looking back I find it far easier to list the flaws then the great parts but overall I rather enjoyed the flawed trilogy.

The first Hobbit was my favorite because it was the most like the Hobbit. For the most part the movie was very fateful to the book and I can understand the changes they made. I'm not a big fan of Azog but I understand why they wanted a personal villain driving the plot rather then a dragon barely interested in the lot and half the world away from the Dwarves.
I rather liked Radagast and Sauruman was a welcome character to see.

I didn't like the second movie very much. It suffered to much from the roller coaster effect. Everything that could AND could NOT turn into a gigantic over the top brawl turned into a gigantic over the top brawl. It was particular annoying with the barrel escape because the whole point of that part was that Bilbo's plan was so clever, the Elves never knew what hit them. There was no reason to turn it into a massive chase between Dwarves, Orcs and Elves.
I'm going to second everyone else and say Legolas was a bad, bad part of the movie. I liked that he was in the movie, it would be pretty hard to justify his absence but he was to much of a creators pet. He was only there to remind us of just how much better he was then every single other character in the movie and to fuel that stupid love triangle. The elf girl reminded me of characters found in fan fiction and that's never a compliment.

I liked the third movie. It barely followed the book but I felt it at least tried to have its own identity. For the first time in the trilogy, perhaps BOTH of them, I found myself actually impressed by the Orc's. Azog came off as both incredible strong and cunning rather then us just being told he was and Bolg was no less impressive in a fight. Legolas was still annoyingly ''cool'' but this time I felt the movie at least attempted to have fun with it and did something of a ''what can we make him do now'' game.
I felt the white council part a bit underwhelming. Seeing Sauruman and Elrond fight the Nazgul was cool but the location was supposed to be Sauron's main base and they just walked in as if it was nothing.

 

[TheRightToArmBears]

I think I would have liked it much more if it wasn't such a disappointment. They're not bad, but they feel like a made-for-TV movie compared to LotR. The overuse of CGI makes it all so much less real, and definitely not one cohesive world with LotR- I just can't understand that decision.

Still can't get over the weird Go Pro bit on the barrel scene in the second movie either. What's up with that? It looks like someone's holiday snaps got mixed up with the film.

 

[Kolby Jack]

Failure is a pretty broad term, and the way you used it suggested to me that you thought of the trilogy as a failure not just in your eyes, but overall. If you consider it a failure, that's fine, more power to you. It just read like you thought it failed in any way that matters to the creators, which it didn't. That was my only point.

I think that's a little sad, though. It made a lot of money, it's true, but there are other measures of success, surely? The last film currently has an aggregate score of 60% on rotten tomatoes, and was a major critical let down, especially given the pedigree of the source materials, and of the older films. They messed up the themes and lore that mattered most to Tolkien. The fact that they succeeded in the only way that mattered to Hollywood, the bottom line, is the entire problem. Their priorities are all wrong. They shouldn't be trying to make the most money for the least amount of effort, they should be trying to create a quality piece of art. Sure, it wasn't unsuccessful, but in 10 years no one will even remember the work. To people who respect Tolkien, and who have studied his work in earnest, it feels like this series made a mockery of what he stood for. It would be like if someone made an adaptation of King Leer, and inserted fart jokes everywhere. It's just a little sad, is all.

I don't think it's QUITE as classless as that. Believe me, I am no stranger to utterly shit adaptations of works I love. I'm a huge fan of Avatar: The Last Airbender, and I've seen the film (on my 21st birthday, no less). Maybe it's not totally accurate to compare a cartoon (no matter how good) to a classic piece of literature (even though I haven't read any of the books; Tolkien's writing is too wordy and dry for me), but the rage was there. I was FURIOUS after I saw that movie. I can respect people not liking the trilogy, especially if they're fans of the book.

But 60% is still a majority of critics liking it. Sure, any Tolkien fan would want a Tolkien adaptation to get 90% or more because they feel he deserves as much, but I think any Tolkien fan would be glad that these movies are bringing his works to wider audience. I just don't see how these films are a disservice to the man's legacy in any way. The books are still there, as he wrote them, but now people like me who aren't big into books can have a way to enjoy his ideas in another way.

 

[babinro]

I can't add much to this discussion other than to say I enjoyed the book up until the end of Smaug.

I've tried to watch the first hobbit movie twice now and both times I failed to get through it. It's sheer boredom. I'm not invested in the characters they focus on. The action sequences are time sinks because I have no reason to care. It's just something that looks kind of pretty at times but completely fails to hook. My mind wanders until which point I'm upset at myself for wasting my free time and move on.

I've heard that the 2nd movie would be right up my alley from some who genuinely disliked the first as I did. I may give the second movie a try but I'm not about to pay money for it. It'd have to be added to netflix when I later renew my subscription or be free by some other means.

 

[wizzy555]

In general it had less soul than the lord of the rings trilogy. Final movie had a very conflicting tone. The padding scenes were a missed opportunities, if you have to stretch the movie into 3, stretch it with interesting stuff. They could have explored more Elven or Orc history with more flashbacks.