The Big Picture: Is The Hobbit Too Long?

[TheSapphireKnight]

I never really had a problem with the length either. Even the bit in the shire never particularly bothered me or felt like it went on too long because the intro was so interesting and had plenty of action to tide me over until things got back up to speed.

The "extra" stuff I think will actually be a benefit to it in the long run. For starters it makes Gandalf's absences in the story feel important and necessary rather than it feeling like he was distracted by passing butterflies for the sake of building tension. I feel in the end I will appreciate having the 3 films as just one would have felt really compact and highlighted a lot of the flaws with the original story and while it could probably be done in two if it done as well as this first installment was I feel they can pull it off.

Not to mention it is not like a lot of Tolkien's extra writing will likely ever be seen on screen if not incorporated into the story it expanded on.

My only issue with the hobbit was the lack of practical effects(though the majority of the CGI was great) for the goblins/orcs and Azog specifically.

 

[ResonanceSD]

What the HELL, Bob?!
I'm halfway through, interested and BOOM: without warning you start about ending of the movie and what the NEXT ones will be about.... SPOILERS, dude!

Not everyone lives in the US where this might have been out for a long time, you know?

Dude do you have any idea how old this book is? It's not a new story. Most of the fantasy people read these days is derived from it.

 

[Farthing]

A great movie never finishes early or late. It finishes exactly when it means to.

 

[GundamSentinel]

Most of my feelings about the length of the Hobbit movie comes from what I know about the Tolkien books. I wasn't bored during any part of the of the movie, but I was often just waiting for something to happen that was actually in the book. I think this has in part to do with the limbo this movie is in between being a serious epic work like LotR and a movie that was more in the vein of the Hobbit book, a children's tale. There's a lot of stuff in there just to make the link between those two. It pads out the length, though not necessarily in a bad way. If the Hobbit had been made like the book was, a lot of people (including me) would have been a bit disappointed.

 

[Lunar Templar]

snip

good ep and all that but ....

where's our 'Death and return of Superman' eps you promised back in 'Going Green'?

cause some of us wouldn't mind hearing about that mess in an easy to digest form (that, and I like the 'Comics, Are, Weird eps best)

 

[DTWolfwood]

At the end of the movie, i wanted to see more... SO to me, it isn't too long, it's not long enough! D:<

 

[Muspelheim]

It did feel a bit long right there and then, with my butt hurting and my fingers lazily stroking the cigarette pack in my pocket. It's impossible to have that length without it becoming noticable.

However, the problem to me seem to be that the film is simply slightly overburdened. There's so many asides and the battle segments just can't get enough of themselves. That isn't to say that I dislike them, but I did ask myself if it was that necessary.
It's a question of efficiency, I'd say. The reason why The Hobbit is my favorite of Tolkien's works is because it's fairly tight, simple and contained. It's short, neat and efficient, by Tolkien's standards, and feels alot more agile than the usual lumbering barrage balloon of a story Tolkien mainly wrote. But; I do have faith in Peter Jackson's ability to make it all pay off in the end.

It was nowhere near as bad as the long, drawn out ending in The Return of the King, that's for sure. It was more like "This would be a good moment to bite off. No? A'ight, no immediate hurry", as opposed to "Just get in the boat and LEAVE already!!" that The Return of the Etc. envoked. When I think about it, I'm alright with the length. I never lost interest in the actual film, and I suppose that is what matters when you get down to it.

Was it too long? Yes. Period. He is pulling stuff from the Similarion to pad the story on and milk money from the content. Star wars anyone?

Oh, yes, I'm sure that's Peter's master plan to steal all the little moviegoer's money away. It's not like he even wants to make something good, he just wants our allowances.

http://t2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQmlui5kSeIvaHQ1l0gRw1SLeMREyERni1YvmWyD506hmAgm7dG18s04GZ9

(Well, alright, a little bit, but you -can- combine wanting to make something great with wanting to make some dough)

 

[OtherSideofSky]

Also, the three consecutive openings were completely unnecessary. It would have been much better to open either with the first old Bilbo segment, fading from the illustration of young Bilbo to his actual face, or to open immediately with young Bilbo and the opening line from the book (which makes no sense in the film's context of Bilbo narrating a story he intends Frodo to read, because Frodo knows exactly what hobbits and hobbit holes are) and then play the Smaug flashback over the dwarves singing about it, with the full song instead of the out-of-place narration (the film immediately cuts to a different narrator, the first narrator never comes back, and enough people fell in love with that song and requested a longer version after seeing the first trailer to demonstrate that audiences would have sat for it).

That would have been pretty cool, that way they could also maintain the mystery a bit longer, instead of spilling the beans right away. When we watch the movie, we know why the dwarves are there, because we basically just saw why they came.

Yeah, the way they set it up we aren't really following Bilbo, except then we are, and the film can't make up it's mind for a little while. The absence of that sort of narration anywhere else makes that opening seem tacked-on and gives the impression that the film is afraid to linger too long on the quiet, almost uneventful portions necessary to buildup (compare it to the Fellowship of the Ring, which goes for a good while before the action starts and doesn't bring out a real battle until about two hours in).

I agree that the sense of mystery is important, but just as important to any good fantasy is the sense of initial normalcy which erodes gradually as the narrative progresses. I would try to justify that statement, but I couldn't possibly do it better than C.S. Lewis did when he explained why a book that ends with Merlin and a boxing bear fighting Big Brother, who is the cybernetic severed head of a French genius scientist and serial killer with a giant exposed brain like Mojo Jojo that is possessed by the devil, while a mansion full of faschists are eaten by tigers begins with two chapters about the internal politics of a small British college, so I will leave it at that.

 

[1337mokro]

Yes it is too long.

It is too long for a first movie. They set up so much stuff that doesn't really have any impact without a second movie. Now they are making a guaranteed second movie but it was too long. A shorter tighter movie could have really helped especially in the character department.

Honestly can you tell me any dwarf names outside of the leader guy and even his name eludes me as of this point. Chop off 30 minutes, extract some of the pointless additions and set up, push that towards the second movie, put in more character development even made up character development is fine, it's an adaptation after all, and now you have a long movie that isn't Too long.

 

[Ryan Hughes]

Uh I hate to say it, but there are far more reasons that the industry standard for film was 80-130 minutes.

The real reason was not so arbitrary: the actual cost-of-goods. Up until last year, most films that were released were literally made of thousands of feet of polyester film. (Celluloid is banned by insurance companies in sane countries because it is a fire hazard.) The development and materials for these prints usually cost between $15 USD and $20 USD per minute, so a 100-minute film could cost a full $2,000 dollars. Then, once the print was finished, it needed to be shipped. Technicolor had a long-running contract with Airborne Express, while Deluxe used their own distribution network centered around major airports. When Airborne was bought out by DHL, eventually Technicolor had to switch to UPS, because DHL had no idea what they were doing.

Anyway, each print could weigh up to 60 pounds for a 130 minute film, so sometimes it cost hundreds of dollars to ship domestically, and thousands to ship overseas. Now, multiply those costs by however many thousands of screens that your film was opening in (barring the semi-rare practice of 'interlocking'), and the cost-of-goods can differ by tens of millions of dollars for a 90 minute film and a 120 minute film.

Thus, unless a film was being groomed for the academy awards, or unless you were Steven Spielberg or James Cameron, films more or less had to fall within the 80-130 minute guideline. While the number of showings in a given 13-14 hour period was important to Hollywood, it was never as important as the blank cost-of-goods.

 

[Kekkonen1]

I was actually surprised when I went to watch the Hobbit, when I started shifting in my seat and wondering how much was left I realised there were only about 20 minutes remaining, this from someone who has never been a big fan of fantasy in general or Lord of the Rings in particular. I guess for me it helps that The Hobbit actually gave the characters room to breathe instead of just linking action scenes together, although even less action would have been preferable, but then again I realise that is what most people want.

 

[Ekit]

Great video, but I have to correct you on a mistake you've made twice now, Bob...

There are 13 dwarves, not 12.

Sorry for being such an annoying nerd. :/

 

[Rad Party God]

A great movie never finishes early or late. It finishes exactly when it means to.

Pretty much this.

I haven't seen the movie yet and I'm definitely looking forward to seeing it, before it gets removed from the theatres.

 

[Maxtro]

Things that could have been cut.

Frodo and Bilbo at the beginning.
The brown wizard and forest animals. Didn't need to be cut entirely, but the scene itself was too long.
The dwarves being chased by the wargs and orcs. That scene went on for too long as well. Again it had too much of the brown wizard and his rabbits.

 

[souper soup guy]

Honestly, the hobbit ended in right about the right place, it was either there or after Mirkwood, but that wouldn't have allowed the proper pacing for each movie.
However, there was one part of the movie that could have been done infinitely better, the exposition prologue, where Bilbo is explaining the back story to "Frodo".
This completely hurt the movie in three main ways
1) It destroyed some of the sense of wonder and going into the unknown that the book provided, we should be like Bilbo, going into a new and magical place, we don't need a rather boring voice over explaining the plot, especially if we already have a much better way to do that in the dwarf's song


2) It wasted the whole dwarven song, it would have been so easy to simply take some of the prologue, and simply have the dwarves sing their awesome song, this would have served the same purpose, but would have been so much better.

3) It was far longer than it needed to be, and made the entire movie feel like it was dragging at the end.

I liked the movie well enough, but man, I can't help but feel there was a missed opportunity to make the movie that much better.

 

[Frasman]

The problem isn't the actual runtime: Django was as long, but I never got bored or noticed that it was going on so long.

The problem with The Hobbit is that parts of it, especially the action scenes, are really boring to watch. They play like scaled-down versions of LotR encounters, with no attempt made to make them interesting or unique and set pieces that often we've all seen done better in other films. The film seems terrified of ever letting things be dark, which leaves the meeting with Gollum far less atmospheric than it ought to be and makes the escape from the goblins in the mountain (even with all the we-wish-we-were-Jackie-Chan business with ladders and boards and the humorous interludes that don't quite fit) far less visually interesting than the one described in the book (tense fighting down narrow, twisting passages illuminated only by glowing swords and the occasional goblin torch).

My thoughts exactly! I saw Django and Hobbit during the same week, and Django felt much much shorter. I mean the whole Bilbo / Gollum scene took so long to play out, I was literally pulling out my hair waiting for it to end. The stone giant battle seemed tacked on, as was the old geezer rabbitsledding through the forest.

For me, acting is the key to any movie. A movie, expecially one that is north of 3 hours, has to have acting to back it up. Django has great performances by Foxx, Waltz, Jackson and DeCaprio. I care about those characters because they have depth, thus I care about what happens to them. The hobbit might as well as ripped off the same midgits from Snow White and the Huntsman, that's how little I care about them. Bilbo, Gollum and Gandalf are the only characters I care about, not due to great acting, but through familiarity.

 

[smartalec]

Also, Galadriel is probably not the best female to insert int eh story as she kind of does nothing but look pretty and manipulate others. (Both of which fit into two sexist notion of what women are).

Some folk are being concerned with spoilers, so I'll just say that they likely needed to introduce Galadriel here so that her appearance and actions in a later part of the trilogy don't come out of nowhere.

I think there's a lot of stuff in this first movie that we're going to look back on after having seen the whole trilogy and say to ourselves, 'oh, that's why they put that in'. Likely over half of this movie is setting up stuff that'll be important in the next movies. Radagast, Dol Guldur, the Spiders, the White Council, the Ring, Azog the Pale Orc, death of the Great Goblin, Erebor, the Dwarves, Bilbo's sword and its current namelessness, the dwarvish key and the prophecy about the side-door...

I think that's why this movie feels weird. Fellowship of the Ring's stuff mostly paid off during that movie - the Fellowship was created and ended, the relationships between the characters were all resolved (and then never changed for the next 2 movies) the Ring and Sauron's influence was felt from the beginning, Saruman was introduced and had an active role in events...

There's comparatively little payoff in Unexpected Journey, it's all being saved up for the next 2. That's why it feels too long to some.

 

[Fuzzed]

Isn't the story yet to be finished? This (among other things) sort of renders Bobby's video kind of pointless...

 

[Hinro]

Did anyone else immediately connect the stone giant battle with rock-em sock-em robots or was it just me?