The Big Picture: Is The Hobbit Too Long?

[MrBaskerville]

So yeah... bloated, unmanageable, and unwieldy. The thing is, it's as clear as day that even PJ himself only intended to make two films. All throughout the pre-production phase, all throughout the shooting phase, he and his co-writers were committed to the idea of two films. It was only in the middle of last year, with Warner executives just out of shot, that he announced he's suddenly changed his mind, and decided to make three. Despite having written and shot the thing as two. It's obvious to anyone that Warner pulld a fast one at the last minute, and demanded three films to maximise revenue. From the flabby nature of the story, to the fact they had to reuse unrelated music from the LOTR films to cover stuff that had been added in at the last minute.

First of all, i agree with everything you just wrote^^. But i´m not sure it´s entirely PJs fault, when the end credits rolled i noticed that there were around 4 screenwriters credited, one of them being Guillermo Del Toro. It seems like Peter Jackson has taken old work, maybe even a lot of old drafts and added more stuff on top of it, which might explain why the film is such a mess.

 

[TimeLord]

I've never read The Lord of the Rings or the Hobbit. But having seen all 4 films in the cinema and being a big fan of the extended editions of the films I say the Hobbit was a good length.

I liked the references like the trolls turning to stone tale he tells the children at his 111th birthday and how Bilbo came across Sting and Gandalf gets Fellhammer (correct name?). I enjoyed the padding in Rivendell and the council and the back and forth with Golum. Action scenes were placed nicely to break up the exposition and you can never have enough Sylvester McCoy! I never had to look at my watch and was engaged all the way through.

Saw it in 2D though so can't speak for 3 hours of 3D

 

[Something Amyss]

For the most part though the 90s had much fewer big release a year, unlike today where there are more movies released a month than for all summer 1992

That's still not enough, considering how much of a minority they were and how much crap they took. It was never really an accepted trend and was aimed mostly at serious, dramatic movies. The fact that we can now see high fantasy movies that are like 3-4 hours long is definitely a change.

NOW GIT AWF MAH LAWN!

 

[Tim Chuma]

I am going to try and wait until the Hobbit screens at my local cinema that still has an intermission in longer movies. The last movie I saw there was Lawrence of Arabia. Having a break in some of the longer movies is very welcome such as Apocalypse Now Redux and the Good, the Bad and the Ugly. I even saw the restored version of Heaven's Gate there.

They also did a triple bill of the Lord of the Rings movies late last year, but had some problems with people talking and texting during the screening, leading to this
http://astortheatreblog.wordpress.com/2012/11/28/astor-etiquette-101/

Seeing Watchmen and Inglorious Basterds at a regular cinema was a bit of a trial and I forgot to go the toilet beforehand so it was not pleasant towards the end.

When Joe Dante introduced The Movie Orgy at a local film festival, he told people it was designed so you could go out and get something to eat or go to the toilet and not really miss anything, which is good as it went for 4&1/2 hours. It started at midnight and let out close to 5am in the morning. Was the best thing I saw at the festival that year, don't crowd me!

There was a 401 minute version of War & Peace that screened at the Russian film festival last year, one of the battle scenes went for 40 minutes.

I saw the shorter version, but have heard the 5 hour version of Carlos is meant to be pretty good. It is meant to be screened as a miniseries on TV.

It comes down to how engaging the movie is, if you are into it you will not be checking your watch and nodding off. If it is good then you don't want to have to leave to go to the toilet so you can see how it ends.

 

[bdcjacko]

For the most part though the 90s had much fewer big release a year, unlike today where there are more movies released a month than for all summer 1992

That's still not enough, considering how much of a minority they were and how much crap they took. It was never really an accepted trend and was aimed mostly at serious, dramatic movies. The fact that we can now see high fantasy movies that are like 3-4 hours long is definitely a change.

NOW GIT AWF MAH LAWN!

Pfft, my point still remains that you are old.

 

[Twilight_guy]

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.

Certain elements, such as the key and the side door, are important and were in the hobbit. Other elements are not important and were in other books. Some things contribute to the story and other will never contribute to the main story unless they deviate far and away from he book. For example, everything to do with "the White Council" will not influence the main story because it has nothing to do with Bilbo and the dwarfs. The only way to make it important is to fuck around with the story of the hobbit. For example, the pale orc wasn't in the hobbit. He was added to give the movie a villain (and probably was in one of the other Middle Earth books besides the Hobbit or the LotR). The actual role that this plays in the events of the rest of the story is... none outside of shadowy people influencing the situation at best. It has nothing to do with Smog, his death, the dwarfs or the war of five sides (though I'm guessing that Mr. white orc will probably be leading the orcs in that battle now). It would take some epic story rewrites to make any of the characters at the council (aside from Gandalf) relevant. The movies have stayed more or less on target so far so I have no reason to think they're going to shoe-horn in some reworking here to make certain elements like Sauron relevant.

Even if they do though, those elements still are unnecessary. Having story elements that are not relevant until much later on in this section is unnecessary. They should be introduced and explained in the section where they are relevant. For example, having more or less an introduction of Sauron and the Nazgul in the first movie of the Hobbit is like people talking about Han Solo in episode 1. Even if you mention him again in episode 2 and 3, there is such a huge stretch of time before he becomes relevant in any way that all it does 3 movie before-hand is distract. A movie has to be striped of irrelevant elements and many of the elements like the council and Radagast have nothing to do with the main story besides being foreboding and introducing things that are important in the Lord of the Rings. Sauron is a distraction since the villain is Smog talking about Mr. ominous only takes away form the story by taking the threat away from Smog since the big bad is no longer this dragon but this mystery guy who scares even Gandalf while smog only make him a little worried.

Also, I have no idea why they couldn't just identify Sting. Is there any reason for not naming it until later? What possible reason could they have for not identifying it when it is in the book, at the same time as the other swords.

But the key point is that introducing things that have no relevance to the current issues just so you can use them later is terrible story telling.

 

[Headdrivehardscrew]

Oh, absolutely.

The source is a book fit to be read to kids or read by them. Blowing it up and making shit up seems very a Smaug thing to do, really. The present first one seems artificially stretched already, and that's before we have yet another nine hour epos at hand.

 

[scw55]

I heard the criticism that some people think it was money grabbing to make it into 3 movies.

I haven't read the book. But what I can say is, we will get our money's worth. Yes it's odd having a little book turn into 3 movies... but perhaps people should not think of it as just the Hobbit. It's the Hobbit and what happened around it. I think that's a better setting.

Look forwards to the epic 18hour Middle Earthfest when you watch all 6 films back to back.

I loved the film. I was concerned that the whole film would be set in Bag-end however. Or a large portion.

 

[Farther than stars]

I think one of the main reasons that the Hobbit's length (pun not intended) is so apparent is because pretty much all the big blockbusters of 2012 have been two-and-a-half to three hours long. There was Cloud Atlas (which can take however long it damn well pleases). Then there were Django Unchained, The Dark Knight Rises, The Avengers and (more recently) Zero Dark Thirty. So it was to be expected that at some point one of these movies was going to take criticism for being long, whether that length is justified or not.

 

[pigmy wurm]

I feel it's too long, but not by much. Their aren't any scenes in the movie I would cut, even the meeting with Elrond Gandalf and Galadrial which I know some people do think though be cut. However, I felt some of the scenes should have been trimmed. The song and dance routine in Bilbo's house felt like it wore out it's welcome a little bit before it ended, and I would have been happy with a slightly shorter rendition of both Ratigast's chase scene (not the one with the Dwarves as well) and the scene where the Dwarves are fighting through the goblin's. It's not that any particular moment is bad, it's just the old film adage, leave them wanting more. Or, an old film editing rule, if you think it's just long enough, you can probably cut out another 5 minutes.

Granted, I am happy that the fight scenes were done how they were instead of how they often are in modern action movies. Cut the movie so tight that you pack twice as many beats in half as much time and leave the audience dizzy and make the job for the CG artists easier since no-one can get a good long look at there work.

And at the end of the day, as a normal viewer, I really enjoyed it. It was mostly as a film student that I felt it could be trimmed a bit more.

 

[Flunk]

If you look at it without any context 2001 A Space Odyssey is a terribly boring movie.

 

[daxterx2005]

Man, the design for smog was pretty damn laughable, wasn't it?

 

[Strazdas]

Of course not. It kept you looking at it and not the watch, so its not too long.
You know a movie is truly good is when after 2,5 hours it ends and you feel cheated becuase surely this was just like 15 minutes right? and then you look at the clock. Yeah, time went that fast.

 

[zehydra]

It wasn't too long, but I found myself repeatedly bored with the story.

 

[00slash00]

too long? hah! i didnt want it to end! i knew it ended similar to the two towers (large battle and then ominous foreshadowing to the next movie) so after every big fight i was like "shit shit shit is it ending soon? okay something new is happening, its not over yet. i cant wait for the next one and id be totally happy if it ended up being even longer

 

[Lord Hosk]

There are only 12 dwarves, Fili Kili Thorin Dwalin Ori Gloin Nori Dori Oin Bombur and Balin make for 11, Bifur Bofur are the same dwarf everyone just kept forgetting if it was a I or a O in his name and called him by both names, even Tolkin screwed this up but no one wanted to admit their mistake, Good catch Bob.

As for the length I dont think the "3 hours" was the issue, or the number of things included, I just felt that 15-20 minutes could have been trimmed out a minute or two at a time. There were a lot of scenes that felt to me like they could have started a bit later and stopped a bit sooner. A lot of stuff that would have hit the cutting room floor in that first "ok we are running long lets see how much we can shave off without losing any dialog or action" just stayed in in my opinion.

I kept seeing things like a slow pan from the wide shot, to the party, to Bilbo, then Bilbo takes a deep breath, looks off, then talks, finishes the statement and ponders for a moment then nods and we go to a shot of Gandalf who takes a deep breath looks off... trimming a couple minutes out of that stuff would have really helped the movie.

Also while I love the idea of the goblin chase it was really hard to see anything or pay attention and it just kept going, I get it infinite goblins run run run.

 

[iblis666]

I think it should have been longer and am waiting to buy the blue ray extended version when it comes out but I'm probably not the best person to ask because i think the lord of the rings trilogy extended edition was too short

 

[octafish]

What could be cut? Ian Holm and Elijah Woods. I was checking my watch waiting for the film to start then.

Fan wank I liked? Figwit/Brett getting another line.

Ruining the movie for you? Barry Humphries reprises Bruce the Shark from Nemo as the Goblin King...totally the same voice, at least he didn't use Sir Les...though that could have been awesome.