Last movie watched...

[radiator]

There's actually some really nice, underplayed character stuff in LotR. There's plenty of stuff that's a bit out there - especially in Return of the King, but nothing imo as poorly judged as that particular moment.

[Definitely Not Mister Pops]

Jackson and co don't really have anything left to prove and it shows in the final product. Perhaps Jackson was ultimately forced into directing against his wishes and so his heart wasn't 100% in this one? That's certainly what it felt like to me.

I'd partly agree with that first sentence, but I'm not so sure about the second. Why would he stretch it to a trilogy if his heart wasn't really in it? The way I heard it, Jackson sees this as his last chance to play in Middle Earth, so he wants to cram in as much Tolkien lore as possible. After all, no one is going to give him hundreds of millions of dollars to make a Silmarrillion movie are they?

I reckon there are less physical effects and more CGI extras in The Hobbit because Jackson found them to be a logistical nightmare while making LotR.

I've said it before and I'll say it again now, my biggest concern with these prequels is that Jackson will go and do a Lucas on the LotR trilogy. I don't want to see Freeman Forest Gumped over Holm, or scenes of Freeman finding the ring cut into the prologue of fellowship.

[radiator]

Why would he stretch it to a trilogy if his heart wasn't really in it?

Because - cynical hat on here - doing so brings even more monumental amounts of cash into the NZ economy and keeps Weta digital in work for longer? He (probably wisely) clearly didn't want to direct The Hobbit, and only did so after Del Toro had to leave the project.

In any case, it all comes down to the aforementioned lack of judgement and tendency to self-indulge.

I think artistically I'd have liked to see a single sub two-hour movie adaptation of The Hobbit. It definitely would have been possible if they had been just as ruthless as they were when adapting LotR. Jettison all of the foreboding crap and excessive backstory and keep it as a light, full-on fantasy adventure story. The film we got had brief flashes of this, but felt so bogged down with everything else. Personally I'm curious to see what the inevitable fan edits are able to make of it.

I've said it before and I'll say it again now, my biggest concern with these prequels is that Jackson will go and do a Lucas on the LotR trilogy. I don't want to see Freeman Forest Gumped over Holm, or scenes of Freeman finding the ring cut into the prologue of fellowship.

While the OCD in me would want a couple of things in LotR 'fixed' - replacing weird Fellowship proto-Gollum with the proper Gollum, swapping out Freeman for Holm in the flashback scene at the start of Fellowship and overall cleaning up some of the dodgy fx and compositing all round - especially where digital doubles and headswaps are concerned - yes, I think ultimately it'd be best to just leave as is. Slippery slope and all that.

[Definitely Not Mister Pops]

Why would he stretch it to a trilogy if his heart wasn't really in it?

Because - cynical hat on here - doing so brings even more monumental amounts of cash into the NZ economy...

That's a good point, I'd forgotten that NZ was squeezing Middle Earth for every tourist penny they could, and rightly so. I just wish they'd do that with GoT/Westeros here in Norn Iron, but the tourist board seems determined to sink all the money in the Titanic.

[Recrewt]

I went to see The Hobbit at the cinema when it came out and it was enjoyable enough but ultimately quite forgettable.  I agree with other posters though that the tone of it was all over the show - a light-hearted movie with more of Mr Freeman, rabbit-sleighs and OK, a scary dragon, would have been great.  But then they have added some really dark elements and that white-goblin thing was just far too much for this movie. 

In terms of length I think this could have happily been made in two films.  Books always take up plenty of screen time so I think two films could have kept on course whilst still delivering enough of a spectacle.  Three films is pushing it too far.  If I were being cynical then I would say this has been done to wring as much cash as possible out of it but it also seems to me that film companies are obsessed with trilogies.  OK, you can see the temptation with this as LOTR was a trilogy but just like the Star Wars prequels - we did not need three new films.  What's wrong with making a two-parter?

[Professor Bear]

I just wish they'd do that with GoT/Westeros here in Norn Iron, but the tourist board seems determined to sink all the money in the Titanic.

A cynical man would suggest there is a political slant to aggrandizing H&W's big ticket that is rather inevitable in a politically-polarized country where everything in the history falls on one side or the other, if for no other reason than because of latter-day politically-motivated revisionism or cultural appropriation. They've tried branching out into cross-community projects before like the Maze exhibit, but with the proviso that no mention must be made in the exhibit or press materials of internment, hunger strikes, or famous detainees.  I am sure it will be great.

My brother went to some Game Of Thrones exhibition down in Belfast where they did tours of the big locations and had interactive exhibits set up.  The original tour was apparently supposed to be of the sets, too, only they nixed this because they were planning on using them again later - possibly once the show wraps (or at least the bits made in Belshaft), there'll be a bigger exhibit set up somewhere.

[radiator]

What's wrong with making a two-parter?

To me, The Hobbit feels like it deserves one solid film. Splitting it into two robs the story of it's completeness and levity somewhat. It's a much smaller story than LotR, so they should have embraced that and built it all around Bilbo and his relationship with Gandalf and Thorin. The book feels a bit episodic and unsuited to film, so frankly, they could have covered a lot of it in montage, and cut some sequences out altogether to make a tighter, more satisfying arc.

[Definitely Not Mister Pops]

The original tour was apparently supposed to be of the sets, too, only they nixed this because they were planning on using them again later

Well, I heard a story from a friend of a friend whose uncle owns Blacks Castle. According to this third hand source (with whose story I've taken some creative license), HBO was using the castle for interior shots, so the production crew would show up and start painting the interior walls to make it look more Westerossy, painting doors where there were no doors and windows filled in with blue matt paint that could be digitally masked in post-production. Then, when they were done filming, they'd cover the whole lot in magnolia. Then three months later, they'd return to do pick up shots or whatever and would have to go through the whole painting rigmarole again.

So after the second season's main shooting was finished, and they were covering all their hard work in magnolia again, my mate's mate's uncle (lets call him Jack), walks up to the unit director and tells him that if they want to just leave the paint uncovered, he would be fine with that.

"Can't really do that" says the unit director "We've all signed NDAs, and although it might seem trivial, HBO doesn't want ravening internet fanboys crawling all over their sets"

So Jack considers this "Here," says he "Would it not be a lot easier to get some MDF, cut it to size and then paint that? Then you could just bolt it up and take it down as needed. It'd be a lot less fuss than all this painting craic, so it would"

The unit directors eyes glaze over for a second before he responds "That's a really really good idea"

And that was that as far as Jack was concerned. Until three months later, the crew shows up again for pick-up shots and what have you, and the unit director calls Jack over to one of the lorries that's being unloaded.

"Look at this" says he as sheets of MDF are being pulled out "We're using your idea. I told the bosses over in the states about it and they loved it. They're implementing it across all their shows now. Now we don't have to continually re-hire teams of painters, we just pay them to do it once. You have saved HBO literally millions!"

And apparently Jack was quite annoyed by this. Not because he'd given away the idea for free, but because the only reason he'd thought of the idea in the first place was because he had a load of MDF he was looking to unload on these Hollywood types.

Like, I said, this is third hand information and probably not entirely accurate or true, but maybe that's why you can't visit the sets. They're on MDF boards in a HBO storage locker somewhere.

[Jim_Campbell]

Whimsical musical numbers, but several gruesome decapitations. Tonally it felt all over the place.

There's a musical number and a limb-severing in the same scene in Star Wars...

Cheers

Jim

[sheldipez]

Whimsical musical numbers, but several gruesome decapitations. Tonally it felt all over the place.

There's a musical number and a limb-severing in the same scene in Star Wars...

Cheers

Jim

That sounds like my local on a Friday night.

[Professor Bear]

Isn't citing Star Wars in a geek argument our version of Godwin's Law or something?  At the very least it's not playing fair to go disproving opinions on the internet with empirical evidence.

[Recrewt]

Ha! Much as I love them, tonally the Star Wars films are all over the place.

[Definitely Not Mister Pops]

Tonally all over the place? Or to put it another way, not monotonous.

[radiator]

There's a musical number and a limb-severing in the same scene in Star Wars...

If it were Luke, C3PO and Obi Wan singing the song then sure it'd be the same. But it's not.

[Frank]

Tonally all over the place? Or to put it another way, not monotonous.

Adorable wee Jawas abducting weet-wooting wobots one minute, the smoking corpses of the former alongside the blackened, grinning skulls of the hero's family the next. Worked for me then in the same way as the liquefied faces of the Nazis in Raiders of the Lost Ark. Adults forget how wee kids' daily lives are a constant intermingling of cloying sentimentality and existential terror.

The belief that films have to focus on doing one thing, belonging to a single genre at the exclusion of all others is a relatively new one and only really obtains in Anglo Saxon cinema. Hollywood films of the golden age aspired to be alround entertainment, routinely chucking comedians and musical turns into cowboy films and thrillers for a bit of variety.