The Big Picture: Is The Hobbit Too Long?

Abomination

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Dec 17, 2012
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Mangue Surfer said:
Is one Rivendell scene too long. Serious, the Rivendell "videodcast" really boring me.

"Look you stupid nerd fan boy, characters of the Lord of the Rings cameo, now you can masturbate!"
You're implying I didn't stop after the quote "I am a Baggins - of Bag End."
 

Something Amyss

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Dec 3, 2008
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LotR bored me, and I'm betting these movies will too. The scenery porn was especially boring for me. But if the metric is subjective, than it is probably lost on me anyway.

I just wish "epic" meant more than "long." I'd like bigger movies, but when I read or watch "epic" fantasy, I just find myself thinking about their "quantity over quality" concept.

bdcjacko said:
As long as the watcher isn't bored it isn't too long, unless it has like a 5 hour run time with no potty break. Then again I grew up in the 90, when they were all about the 3 to 4 hour movies.
There were like, 10 of them.
 

TheSchaef

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Feb 1, 2008
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So the long, ponderous stretches with no dialogue and extensive focus on the characters, where we're supposed to glean their inner thoughts for ourselves, is a deliberate design choice in 2001, and not actually boring?

What's Kubrick's excuse in all his other films, save Clockwork Orange?
 

Nicholas Bagwell

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Sep 28, 2011
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My only complaint so far?

"Now we discuss our plans, our ways, means, policies, and devices."

It's my favorite line from the book and they didn't use it. I mean, I know when trying to fit such a slender book into nine hours of superlative cinema you inevitably do not have room for everything but I really miss the line.

Still, if that's the worst I can say about it then that's pretty good.
 

rofltehcat

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Jul 24, 2009
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I wasn't really bored either (other than the house party part, though I never enjoyed all this singsong stuff) and overall really enjoyed the movie.

However, after a while I needed to pee really hard... too much coke.
so a better question imo is:
Should breaks be used again for long(er than normal) movies?

I mean it would probably increase the amount of snacks the theaters sell, right?
 

Therumancer

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Nov 28, 2007
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As I've said before I think the problem was the 3D. To be honest a huge amount of the set up and wasted time seems to be in contreiving reasons to have the dwarves dangling over chasms or whatever and then panning the camera around to show off all of that "dazzling 3d". As someone who gets headaches from 3d, I watched this movie without it, and to be honest without those FX you can actually see how much of it was drawn out to create these scenes that are largely only worthwhile in light of the 3D gimmick.

Truthfully, 3D is sticking around longer than I thought it would, as Hollywood sticks with it in a dogged effort to not see it die out again as a useless gimmick, but I think it will die out again. Something I'm happy for because when I see a 3D movie I have to pre-dose with painkillers and then usually lay down afterwards, and I'm hardly alone in that it seems, which means Hollywood is cutting out a decent portion of their audience by pushing this. It also means that I think a lot of movies like this one are going to be panned in the long run when people view them without the 3D bells and whistles.

Or in short form... I think it's the 3D that made the movie too long, and there is probably a divide between movie goers who saw it in 2D and 3D that influances this. I haven't complained too much overall because I'm a huge sword and sorcery fan, and am glad to see the movie, but I stand by how they should have subtiled the movie "The Misadventures Of The Dangling Dwarves" rather than "The Unexpected Journey" because really the dangling and swinging around is kind of the point of a lot of the scenes of the movie and if your not getting the 3D pay off, it's a lot of wasted space.
 

Daaaah Whoosh

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Jun 23, 2010
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I think I just understood 2001: A Space Odyssey. Unfortunately, as I now understand it, the parts where I wanted to kill myself and also slit the throat of the fabric of space so that everything would sort of spill out in a disgusting, agonizing, chaotic way culminating in the utter destruction of the entire universe and most especially of any existence I once had or would have had in the future, actually did their job well. But I still don't want to kill myself, or horribly murder time and space, so I'd say the movie still failed to provide a useful experience to me. However, as I have not yet seen the Hobbit, I am glad to know that it is not, in fact, too long, and Bob's analysis of the content of the next two movies leaves me reasonably comfortable with the notion that those won't be too long or unnecessary either. I'm especially excited to see how they develop the final battle, with the hope that there will be enough world-building going on during the first two movies to allow the third to consist almost entirely of action, rather than exposition.
 

Hitchmeister

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artanis_neravar said:
MovieBob said:
Is The Hobbit Too Long?

MovieBob ponders if The Hobbit is longer than it needed to be.

Watch Video
There are 13 Dwarves.

I would say the Hobbit was the perfect length. The only time I ever checked my watch was when I was trying to figure out how much more awesome i was going to be able to see.
Bob has a weird blind spot when it comes to the number of dwarves. He was corrected before. It bugs me because Tolkien stressed it as a justification for adding Bilbo to the party. Thirteen is an unlucky number, and since Gandalf can't be with them all of the time, they need a 14th member.
 

AxelxGabriel

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Nov 13, 2009
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Im a huge fantasy geek, so movies like The Hobbit just holds my interest the whole lenght of the movie. I eat stuff like this up.
 

Falseprophet

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OtherSideofSky said:
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.
This. Cloud Atlas was also as long, but I never got bored with it either (I could see how someone else would be confused by that one though).

I mostly found the pacing problems to be in the first hour. Once they finally leave Bag End, the rest of the movie pretty much clicked for me.

The very beginning bothered me a bit, and I went and watched the opening of Fellowship of the Ring to figure out why. At the beginning of Fellowship, it takes about 5 minutes to tell the story of the War of the Last Alliance, the Siege of Barad-dur, Isildur failing to destroy the One Ring, the Ring being lost when Isildur is ambushed, and Gollum finding it. Meanwhile, the beginning of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey takes about 15 minutes to explain who Smaug is, why the dwarves want him dead, and why Thorin hates the elves. Most of that time is spent showing Ian Holm and Elijah Wood. I felt that could have been cut back somewhat.
 

Proverbial Jon

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Nov 10, 2009
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Too long, period.

I saw this film twice and I was bored 30 minutes before the ending; coming from a big Tolkien fan that's not exactly something I'm proud to state.

I agree with Bob that the establishing scenes in Bilbo's home were necessary. I enjoyed that part of the film and think it was incredibly well done. I also agree that they ended the movie exactly where it should have ended, utilising a significantly climactic encounter as the big finale.

I do however disagree that certain scenes couldn't be cut. As much as I love Sylvester McCoy and his portrayal of Radaghast The Brown, it didn't need to be in the movie. His scenes in the forest, the discovery of the necromancer, Gandalf's visit to the White Council... none of this content added any value to the story. It was all just tenuous throwbacks to a trilogy that won't happen in that world for another 80 odd years. As a fan, I didn't appreciate the references as much as I thought I might.

The Pale Orc however? I actually liked that sub-plot. It helped to bulk out Thorin's character, something that was very much needed. In the book Thorin isn't much different from the other dwarves, apart from being in charge, and considering what he does when they finally reclaim the mountain... yeah you needed a stronger personality for that to seem even remotely possible. I feel that his vengeance towards the Pale Orc and his entirely overblown hatred of the Elves (compared to the book) are all completely necessary additions.
 

Coldsnap

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I was never completely bored and enjoyed the movie, but it couldn't hurt to have some trimming here and there.

It has been mentioned a couple of times already, but the goblin chase scene really dragged on. The shots in that scene also jumped around constantly and made trying to keep any cohesive spatial relationships nearly impossible.
 

pointless vandalism

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Mar 27, 2012
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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?
 
Jan 12, 2012
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quantum mechanic said:
Re: how will the content of the book be divided among the next two movies? {beware of spoilers, I guess}

I think the second one will (and/or should) deal with the dwarves meeting Beorn, getting through Mirkwood, making it to Lake Town, and setting off for the Lonely Mountain, while Gandalf leaves them at the edge of Mirkwood and takes care of all or most of the "Necromancer in Mirkwood" plot with the rest of the Wise*. The third movie would then wrap up the Necromancer stuff (if necessary), get all the dragon stuff in, with the destruction of Lake Town and the death of Smaug as the mid-way mini-climax, and then all of the political arguing and Battle of Five Armies happens as the real climax. I like Bob's division, but I'm not sure there's enough material to make the third one seem like it wasn't just tacked on at the end.

*I really hope this is tied in with the dwarves' imprisonment by Thranduil in some way like in the book (sort of). Along the lines of 'these guys are kind of xenophobic because the forest is going all giant spiders and evil sorcery on them,' I guess. I didn't like how Thranduil just seemed like a totally compassionless asshat in the first movie...he wasn't really like that in the book (the way I read it, anyway).
I think they are going to make the second movie take care of most of the build-up of getting to Smaug (including sneaking into the cave) and gathering the Wise. Then, the third movie has a structure built around three battles:

1) Smaug comes in, wrecks Laketown, and is killed; a good 30 minutes of action to kick it off.

2) The dwarves and Bilbo spend most of this time talking; negotiating with the elves and humans, summoning the rest of the dwarf clan, etc. To prevent people from getting bored, this is intercut with the Wise going into the depths of Mirkwood and banishing the Necromancer.

3) Gandalf drops out of the movie for a bit so it can focus on the rising tensions at the Mountain. The "good races" start squaring off, then the Orcs come in for a nice final battle sequence.
 

anian

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For all the extra plots that were hinted but got expanded here, they still haven't explained the deux ex machina that are the hawks (they save Gandalf in Two towers as well), in the books it's somewhat explained, but still if you haven't read the books it's a pretty weird occurrence.

It's not that it's too long, but, as mentioned, the episodic sequence of events didn't give me any sense of adventure or epicness, the world feels limited with characters just popping in and out with not much emotional influence on the characters.

Of course you could've made it shorter, please don't bs it can't be done, the whole brown wizard/necromancer plot line could have been removed, as well as the mountain/rock giants fighting (the scene really comes out of nowhere and ends without any influence on the characters, if it was gone you wouldn't notice a thing).
That's not even making the harder cuts, you could remove the whole white orc plotline and still make it a movie (maybe in 2 parts, not 3).

All the extra filling amounts to having people waiting 2 more years for the story to finish and, unlike the LoTR trilogy which really had more definitive endings in each part, this story (in a book that's thinner than any of the LoTR books btw) is stretched out so thinly that it has a story progression of Lost or any other modern series which is extremely annoying if your expectations are different (and bets are they were).

I didn't actually mind the length of the movie, but the movie lacked emotion and atmosphere.
 

umbraticus

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May 4, 2011
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this episode could've been a lot shorter on itself.
just: "No, it was not too long. It was awesome. I'm Bob and that's the big picture"
:D
 

franksands

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Dec 6, 2010
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After I saw this movie I remembered a Joke about the last Star Trek movie: They said JJ was going to release a 5 hour version of the movie with all the discussions of the romulan senate for the "true" star trek fans.

I like Lord of The Rings, I thought the 3 movies were incredible, but for me, it is not so engaging to entertain me for 3 hours straight in a plot that is indeed a series of captures and escapes.

The question of "Is it too long" depends on how much you like to be emersed in Tolkien's universe, even when there isn't much happening. In my humble opinion, it is a resounding YES.
 

bdcjacko

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Jun 9, 2010
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Zachary Amaranth said:
bdcjacko said:
As long as the watcher isn't bored it isn't too long, unless it has like a 5 hour run time with no potty break. Then again I grew up in the 90, when they were all about the 3 to 4 hour movies.
There were like, 10 of them.
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
 

F'Angus

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Nov 18, 2009
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Nope... plain and simple. The film didn't bore me, I was entertained throughout. And that's all I really need to question if a film is too long.

It felt a bit like the extended LotR films true...but they're the only LotR films I watch now days.

Although the films would probably be the exact same length and even more rushed/packed if they were still doing it as two films. There's so much you need to show.