The Hobbit Reviews Are Unjustified

[Abomination]

I enjoyed it for what it was, a more children friendly fantasy adventure. I did find the dwarf proportions a bit off though compared to Gimli in the original (his face was just so much more condensed). Then again he required a TON of makeup and trying to do that thirteen times would be a nightmare.

As for the changes to the story, I think they fit quite well. It really has made the idea of dwarves returning to their ancestral home an overarching story now. The pale orc is essentially the remnants of a failed expedition coming back to haunt the party.

 

[Leadfinger]

I thought the CG really did mar the movie. The problem with the CG was that it created these unbelievable, cartoony action scenes that broke the viewers immersion and drained away the dramatic tension of the scenes. The CG action scenes were so over the top that it was impossible to believe the characters were in any real danger. In this sense, the Hobbit was very much like a George Lucas film.

 

[Daveman]

I don't get the "it's too long" thing. I was entertained throughout and wasn't bored at all, and I didn't develop the need to go to the loo. So regardless of however long it actually is, who gives a shit?

I for the record, preferred it to all the LOTR films.

 

[Uhura]

I don't get the "it's too long" thing. I was entertained throughout and wasn't bored at all, and I didn't develop the need to go to the loo. So regardless of however long it actually is, who gives a shit?

I for the record, preferred it to all the LOTR films.

Well obviously not everyone felt the same way as you. I was bored and I thought that the length of the movie was detrimental to the storytelling.

 

[khiliani]

I genuinely liked the hobbit movie. I didn't feel it was too padded at all. with the possible exception of the panning shots of people walking that lotr made famous. The inclusion of Azog was a good choice cause, as it has been stated, it gives the story a persistent antagonist which the book itself lacks a bit in my opinion (I know there is the dragon, but he didn?t really feel like a threat when the party was still in the west).

And my 2 cents on the CGI: I saw it in IMAX with all the fancy 3D and 48 fps etc etc, and didnt think there was a problem with the quality or appearance of the CGI. my girlfriend who had seen the movie before in 2D said that bits that had looked bad in the 2D version looked better in 3D, so there may be that

 

[zehydra]

You didn't mention any of my qualms with it.

1) Excessive CGI (it looked too fake)
2) Some parts with poor writing
3) The hobbit in general is just not as serious as LOTR
4) Too much focus on cameos that didn't happen in the book (cameos for the sake of cameos)

 

[Kikosemmek]

I didn't like it for one basic and all-important reason: the 2nd half bored me to death. I'm not familiar with the book, but I'm a big fan of the lore and of the LOTR movies. I was down with the story and the plight of the dwarves, and was very happy during the 1st half's openings, exposition, music, and questing. The movie then began to turn stupid as soon as the head-hunter scene came along; "you think orc raids are funny?" What, is he 13? Have him voice his resentment in a mature and nuanced way. The whole thing with the trolls was really bad (they were so ridiculously stupid that the comedy took away from the tension of being captured by gigantic monsters); the Rivendell bits were more cheesy than smoked gouda (couldn't enjoy because they were so over-acted that I couldn't take it seriously); I was thinking it would become less boring when they were all traveling along the mountains, but oh yeah there are stone golem godzillas that just randomly fight. Out of nowhere. Like it just happens. Seriously? No one knew about that shit? No one heard them? No one thought that if there's a storm out (which is what I guess gets storm giants going), maybe not travel along mountains? Giant deux-ex machina from my perspective. The goblin city was meh; the riddles game with Smeagle didn't do anything except waste time and make me wonder when we'd get back to the story; the final fight was really fucking bad.

So, 1st half of the movie was cool; the 2nd half with all the climaxes and the action blew my dick so hard it almost came off. Final verdict: can't say half a movie counts for a whole movie, so it kinda sucks.

 

[Daveman]

I don't get the "it's too long" thing. I was entertained throughout and wasn't bored at all, and I didn't develop the need to go to the loo. So regardless of however long it actually is, who gives a shit?

I for the record, preferred it to all the LOTR films.

Well obviously not everyone felt the same way as you. I was bored and I thought that the length of the movie was detrimental to the storytelling.

Well I'm right and you're wrong so... nyeh. *sticks tongue out*

Opinions, such silly things.

 

[M-E-D The Poet]

although I must say I personally did enjoy the movie as it was with the added quest for erebor scenes (those are what most of the padding is meant to be although not completely true to the book itself for we've not seen Gandalf meet thorin in the pub but that may be in the extended cut)

You know, I'm just going to SPOILER ALERT this whole post rather than putting the whole thing in tags.

The opening sequence about Smaug's arrival at the lonely mountain was great. It was something the book lacked, in fact, in that it immediately established a motivation for Thorin and his company. Better, it did so visually rather than simply explaining it through expositional dialogue or a voiceover. That was a very welcome addition and I wouldn't consider it padding.

The whole reference to Moria and the conflict between Thorin and Azog was entirely unnecessary, in my opinion. The flashback is completely out of kilter with any of the previous scenes and clearly there to tick off a battle scene. I get that he's there to provide a named antagonist, but he's not interesting enough to pull it off.

In the book, it was the goblins who chased the dwarves with the wargs after they escaped goblin town. In the film, it's Azog. Last time we saw Azog was in the lone lands, so somehow he's crossed the Misty Mountains and perfectly located Thorin and company minutes after they hit the surface. That's.. weird, when you think about it. It would have made much more sense to use the goblins.

Additionally, I spent the entire movie waiting for him to die off at the end only to find he didn't. I assumed that he was there to provide a clear arc which would help the movie stand on its own as a story (which is cool, it kind of needed that) only the story wasn't resolved.

His role could have been entirely replaced by adding more scenes with the Goblin King and fleshing him out as a more credible threat, perhaps adding a few goblin lieutenants and and you would have lost nothing, stayed truer to the book and made a shorter movie.

Finally, the Necromancer/Radagast plot. Okay, the Necromancer is simply there to tie the events of the hobbit in with those of Lord of the Rings, but it's entirely non-essential to the plot. The plot has an overarching antagonist, it's a big-ass dragon (and a goblin army), we don't need to somehow tie everything back to Sauron. Now, I can see how it could result in some interesting scenes and I like Benedict Cumberbatch and am certain he will do a good job, but even assuming the pay-off is incredible there is simply too much exposition and foreshadowing in the first movie and it never really connects to the main story. It could have been cut down substantially to just a few establishing scenes and we would have lost very little.

The goblin king send a message to Azog,they made a whole thing about it with the little goblin on the cable tier.

I can see where you're coming from though.

 

[M-E-D The Poet]

You didn't mention any of my qualms with it.

1) Excessive CGI (it looked too fake)
2) Some parts with poor writing
3) The hobbit in general is just not as serious as LOTR
4) Too much focus on cameos that didn't happen in the book (cameos for the sake of cameos)

3 and 4 I kind of hit on well 3 I most certainly did otherwise I will have to take another look at my post.

The excessive CGI thing, I'm not sure about it although in some parts it looked off it may be due to the format one watched it in.

Just on a side note, I personally felt the scene with our favourite big boys was done well in writing despite people hating it for the way it was done in CGI. for me it felt like one of the best illustrated scenes from the book (People may hate me for it but it's the -how I always imagined it- idea)

 

[M-E-D The Poet]

I didn't like it for one basic and all-important reason: the 2nd half bored me to death. I'm not familiar with the book, but I'm a big fan of the lore and of the LOTR movies. I was down with the story and the plight of the dwarves, and was very happy during the 1st half's openings, exposition, music, and questing. The movie then began to turn stupid as soon as the head-hunter scene came along; "you think orc raids are funny?" What, is he 13? Have him voice his resentment in a mature and nuanced way. The whole thing with the trolls was really bad (they were so ridiculously stupid that the comedy took away from the tension of being captured by gigantic monsters); the Rivendell bits were more cheesy than smoked gouda (couldn't enjoy because they were so over-acted that I couldn't take it seriously); I was thinking it would become less boring when they were all traveling along the mountains, but oh yeah there are stone golem godzillas that just randomly fight. Out of nowhere. Like it just happens. Seriously? No one knew about that shit? No one heard them? No one thought that if there's a storm out (which is what I guess gets storm giants going), maybe not travel along mountains? Giant deux-ex machina from my perspective. The goblin city was meh; the riddles game with Smeagle didn't do anything except waste time and make me wonder when we'd get back to the story; the final fight was really fucking bad.

So, 1st half of the movie was cool; the 2nd half with all the climaxes and the action blew my dick so hard it almost came off. Final verdict: can't say half a movie counts for a whole movie, so it kinda sucks.

I'm sorry sir but you named so many plot points from the book as your "I hate the movie for these reasons" I can't really take your post seriously.


The scene with gollum is one of the most important ones in the book and the only real thing that ties the hobbit to the lord of the rings, as a fan of LOTR you should have understood that.
The Trolls were indeed so ridiculously stupid in the book, that's the bloody point of the scene.
They are tricked in taking the mountain pass if I remember correctly for Thorin knows very well what dangers loom in the mountains.

I'm not here to start a fight but I have to say without knowing the source material you can't argue about whether or not The Hobbit is good for a movie about well The Hobbit because well you don't know what you're comparing it to.

But then again you are one of the critics I pointed out in my OP.

 

[Strazdas]

So critics are disliking the hobbit? must be those critics i already marked to ignore for stupidity.

 

[grey_space]

I thought the movie was fine, a bit stretched out in places but overall worth seeing. I just hope this isn't another Star Wars prequel situation where people will be still be whining about it online in a decade's time.

Oh this please. I can put up the moaning short term but lets all get the sand out of our vaginas at least before the next movie comes out?


The movie didn't have any major issues with it but as has been said before ITS A KIDS MOVIE. And I don't have any issues with the tonal shifts; look at any Disney move. Tonal shifts aplenty. Still very watchable films

 

[Existentialistme]

Hey man it's a good movie for me and my friends so that'll be enough for me. I'm not even gonna try to deconstruct the logic of people that are displeased with the movie. *shrugs* Haters gonna hate.

This guy has the right idea. Do we really have to deconstruct every movie and game that is released these days? Shut the fuck up and take the movie for what it is, the internet doesn't need your short novel on why you didn't like it.

You know what, you're right. I'm never going to express my feelings toward a piece of art or entertainment ever again, regardless of its craftsmanship -- that's just dumb. It's not like it's an amazing ability to be able to express our own opinions of what is well-made, beautiful, or stimulating; any creature can do that. And what's more, expressing detailed opinions is just stupid anyway because no one really cares and we should just take everything at face value. No need to deconstruct when there's only one interpretation for everything. Thank you for having me realize that I need to just stop opening my mind -- it'll be so much easier this way.

 

[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)