The Hobbit Reviews Are Unjustified

[barbzilla]

I don't think anyone would say that the theatre release was bad because it didn't have Tom Bombadil in it.

I dont know hey, I for one was terribly disappointed that Tom Bombadil was not in the movie. Now the fact that I basically skipped all the pages where he was in... is besides the point.

In essence, Peter Jackson's directing reminds me quite alot of George Lucas' directing. Both their respective movies (all of them, including King Kong) would have been amazing had there not been a chop involved at several key stages in the process, ie. the directing.

Am I really the only one. I have lamented the loss of Bombadil in the movies. I was hoping to see him in the extended cut, but alas it was not to be. I actually liked the fact that Tolkien goes out of his way to show us that there are things in middle earth older and far more powerful than the power monger that is Sauron. Bombadil was only the first in the Lord of the Rings series to show us that. The Hobbit (I haven't seen the movie yet) sets this up with Beorn and the Steppes, and the Ents are also a part of that world. This is my only gripe with the LoTR movies. They have excluded a whole faction from the movies. I understand why though, so i still enjoyed them, but I will always lament the loss of Bombadil

 

[zumbledum]

Just saw it last night , have to say i was happily surprised at how good it was

padded? for myself PJ can take as broad a trip through middle earth as he wants now . if you are a fan of the lore and setting its just more of a good thing to me.

The cgi looked pretty good on the screen i saw and the film looked really good cinematography wise.

I think they got the feel and tone right , it retains a lot of the light hearted half comedy of the childs book it was written in but doesn't clash too badly with the existing lotr films so it felt cohesive to me, hell even Tolkien wroye himself into some dead ends and had to ret con the hobbit later.

Looking forward to the next part.

 

[Proverbial Jon]

I saw the Hobbit for a second time last night and I was BORED. Not because it's badly made, not because it's very long and not because the content is inherently boring because none of those things are true. What makes the film so insufferable is all the knowing winks and the constant allusions to the previously-made-but-yet-to-have-happened LOTR trilogy.

The White Council, Radaghast the Brown, the Necromancer at Dol Guldur, the stone giants; none of those scenes needed to be in the film, it was padding and shameless self reference. Some have said that the film's detail appeals to Tolkien fans, that you get more out of it if you know the lore better. I am a fan, I read the Silmarilion, but these added "details" are just distracting. There are enough flashbacks as it is and those are actually necessary scenes.

It's called The Hobbit, but how much screen time does Bilbo Baggins actually get? I approve of Azog and his involvement in Thorin's development, despite the fact that he gained a mere mention in the book and was long dead before the events described therein. Thorin was pretty much the same as all the other Dwarves in the book so it's nice to see him built up a bit. But Bilbo's little redemption scene at the end felt forced, as if someone suddenly remembered he was part of the film and decided his presence needed some validation quick.

I don't know... as a Tolkien fan, parts of this film bug me. As a movie fan, parts of this film bug me. I can't find an angle in which to view it that doesn't present a problem. Jackson treats the lore with the utmost respect, that's for sure, but sadly he's missed the mark with this one.

Disney manage to do tonal shift in a way that feels natural, like a unified piece of storytelling. The Hobbit just feels like two completely different films stitched together.

I think that might just sum up my thoughts on the matter. The Hobbit was a children's book, a completely different tone to that of LOTR and yet when we see that whimsical and childlike nature in the film it just feels jarring and so out of place. PJ should never have tried so hard to link The Hobbit to LOTR; the serious foreboding of Sauron's inevitable return only serves to destroy the light-hearted nature of Bilbo's adventure.

 

[Lovely Mixture]

The difference is that Disney are actually good at tonal shifts. With films like Bambi and The Lion King, they manage to make horrific events like the death of a mother/father seem like part of the story as a whole.

Lion King? Yes. Bambi? Hell no.

 

[Terminal Blue]

Lion King? Yes. Bambi? Hell no.

Bambi, when you think about it, actually has an incredibly simple story. It's a generic male coming of age story about a fawn growing into a stag. That's really it.

The death of Bambi's mum is a huge transition point in the film. Almost all the preceding scenes are just random cutseyness centred around the infant Bambi, with the occasional bit of foreshadowing to suggest that maybe this isn't all there is. All the subsequent scenes are far more about progressing the narrative and showing Bambi's maturation. The tonal shift isn't just there to get the required amount of maternal slaughter in there, it's the emotional heart of the whole story. It's the thing which forces Bambi (and by extension the audience) to step out of his idyllic childhood existence and become an adult.

Weirdly, I never thought about how similar the narratives of Bambi and the Lion King actually are, in that they're both coming of age stories which use parental death as a catalyst. I think the Lion King is the stronger narrative because it has a proper refusal, Simba doesn't instantly "man up" in the face of tragedy and I think to a modern audience that's much more sympathetic.

The issue with the Hobbit movie is that you'll have these whimsical or silly scenes like the Dwarves singing or Radagast being "quirky" or cute CGI animals or the trolls being dumb, and then suddenly we're in a random battle scene.. and some of the battle scenes here are graphic compared to Lord of the Rings. There's an awful lot of slow motion and some pretty weighty gore for a "kids film". Not to mention the weird nausea-inducing Michael Bay style editing on some scenes where it cuts very quickly between different action shots in succession. It makes what violence there is look much more serious and intense than in Lord of the Rings where it was basically a bunch of guys swinging fake swords around like lightsabers.

Another example would be the meeting of the white council where suddenly we've gone from a little story about some amateurish adventurers to these horrendously over the top "epic" performances and lingering close up shots of actors with caked foundation[footnote]That was another thing I noticed way too often. I don't know if it's the frame-rate or some other feature of the camera, but the makeup in this film was really obvious on the close-ups. I don't think it was badly applied, so I suspect it's a picture quality thing.[/footnote], and it just doesn't go anywhere or progress the narrative and, again, we're back where we started. Those are merely examples, the emotional and visual tone of the film is incredibly scattered throughout. It's not a narrative trajectory like Bambi or the Lion King, it's just a weird mix of tones and plot points.

Is it a bad film? Hell no, I enjoyed a lot of it (or bits of it, at least). But it would have had more of an emotional impact on me and got me more psyched for the next film had it been more of a coherent story and emotional arc instead of this weird scattergun of random scenes with very different tones, stakes and scales.

 

[sXeth]

-There was not a lot of characterization of the dwarves (outside Thorin), but this is understandable considering how much the movie had in it. And two more movies is plenty of time to add more.

I've heard this one alot, but really telling the dwarves apart (other than Thorin) in the book without multiple re-reads was one hell of a feat. (Or well, there was the fat goof one too)