The Hobbit: the Battle of Five Armies Trailer Released

An anonymous reader writes: The first teaser trailer for the final installment of the Middle Earth saga, The Hobbit: The Battle of Five Armies, debuted at Comic-Con, and now Warner Bros have made it available online. While the trailer contains some nice shots on a visual level, very much in keeping with the Lord of the Rings trilogy, about 80% of the trailer's awesomeness is provided by the background music. Pippin's mournful song from Return of the King plays intercut with the doomed mission that Faramir leads on his father Denethor's orders.

Comments

Such a Waste

[nmb3000]

After the travesty of the first two films, I'm not looking forward to the third movie.

While far from perfect, I felt that Peter Jackson at least made an attempt to stay true to the original story in Lord of the Rings. For the Hobbit he didn't hold anything back as sold out to the suits at Warner Brothers. Both he and the Tolkien family should be ashamed they agreed to this abortion screenplay.

Re:Such a Waste

[Billly Gates]

What's so horrible about The Hobbit?

LOTR all had battle scenes that took up half the movies that were too long. Songs were not included and plot from the book cut to make room for action and Hollywood.

The Hobbit has songs in it and has more of a personal story and A LOT MORE of what is in the books and material from The Silimarian. The 1st hobbit was a little long, but I liked the 2nd a lot and I loved Misty Mountains which had a nice theme to it that I found lacking in LOTR.

Re:Such a Waste

[khasim]

What's so horrible about The Hobbit?

The book? Nothing. It's a decent story. I like it.

But if you're talking about the movie trilogy then there's a problem. It isn't "The Hobbit". It's a movie that wants to be "tolkienesque" and uses names and scenes that Tolkien had used in his stories. The same as the "I, Robot" movie was with Asimov's stories.

Look at the page count in The Lord of the Rings. Then compare it to the page count in The Hobbit.

Now compare the run time of the movies. Either LoTR got butchered or The Hobbit was puffed up with standard Hollywood hero crap.

I'm skipping it because I do not want ANOTHER generic Hollywood cliche driven green-screen-spectacle-fest.

Re:Such a Waste

[Perky_Goth]

The action scenes from The Hobbit are way, way over the realm of suspension of disbelief. And they're all surrounded by pits, for some reason, but the good guys never trip.

Re:Such a Waste

[rmdingler]

That's what I thought to begin with during the First Trilogy, to be quite frank, and I probably wouldn't have suffered the first 6 hours of "incomplete story" except that my boys were children and I was accustomed to being disappointed at movies they preferred.

Yawn like the Spiderman movies.

Midway through the final chapter of the Trilogy, when Theoden's rallying the troops on the hill and the sun is rising... man, I'm All In. I'll give this the benefit of the doubt.

Re:Such a Waste

[Culture20]

What's so horrible about The Hobbit?

Gandalf knows that Sauron is back. This directly contradicts LotR. In fact, there's no reason Gandalf would let Bilbo keep the ring once he knew Sauron existed. And what's up with the Smaug fight scene? Instead of deducing Lake Town as the source of the intruder and exacting his revenge on the town (since he can't find the intruder), the movie version of Smaug runs around under the mountain for a while (so they can show off all the cool under the mountain visuals) then inexplicably decides to leave the dwarves without killing them. And the barrel riding was supposed to be a leisurely ride down the river; an escape plan showing the dwarves how clever their burglar really is, escaping with no danger or bloodshed. Also, Smaug didn't die in the second movie. That's the climax of the second portion. The cliffhanger should have been the first hints of the gathering of the five armies.

Re:Such a Waste

[Darinbob]

No, the Lord of the Rings dwarves do not exist and you won't find a human world replacement for them. These are not the same as dwarves in Game of Thrones or Willow. Lord of the Rings dwarves are a separate species from humans. If you used an actor with dwarfism then it would not fit the part.

Re:Such a Waste

[bill_mcgonigle]

sold out to the suits at Warner Brothers

That's not going to turn out well for them. After the first steaming pile, the subsequent two aren't even on my list. Even if the next two were great, what were we going to do, show our kids only the last half of the story (well, with other random crap thrown in)? It's not like they were going to go back and fix the first one.

Once the copyright fully expires, somebody will make a great TV miniseries of The Hobbit. The folks doing Pratchet's stories would do a good job, for instance.

Oh, and Jackson has blown his cred with everybody. Hope the contract with WB was airtight on this trilogy because that payment's gonna have to last for quite a while.

Re:Such a Waste

[washort]

This is what is so horrible about The Hobbit.

Re: Such a Waste

[Anonymous Coward]

Thorin, the dwarves, Bilbo, all of them are absolutely immortal in the movies. They've been through dozens of incidents which would certainly have killed them all - fantasy story or not - yet they come through completely unscathed every time. Because Hollywood.

Suspension of disbelief doesn't mean "anything goes". It means the story must be internally consistent for the audience to accept it. Wizards, elves, and dragons doesn't mean that Thorin and Company being completely invulnerable is acceptable - unless that invulnerability has been legitimately established within the story world and is consistent with it.

That is not the case here, which is why the writing for the movies is utter shite.

Re:Such a Waste

[Artifakt]

Some of the Hobbit film bits are supposedly from letters JRRT wrote Christopher about 20 years after LOTR came out, describing how he would like to rewrite the book to make it tie in better with LotR and the limited Silmarillion notes he had at the time. Tolkien was supposedly torn between finishing up the Silmarillion or going back and working on a 'better' hobbit first. I suspect there's some truth to this claim - LotR draws from a great many sources that are fundamental in studying early English literature, from Spencer's Faerie Queen to the "Jack the Giant Killer" stories, to the Song of Roland to Beowulf itself, and the Hobbit's literary roots are mostly in one story - the same one Wagner drew on for Das Rheingold. Some of the dwarf naming and such in the Hobbit seems to connect to Finnish mythological tales and maybe some other Scandinavian sources, but the references are mostly truncated there or limited to a few very short phrases to fit in a children's book.
          I can certainly see JRRT deciding to work in some other bits from classics he couldn't really use in LotR. LotR took so long because Tolkien wanted it to have a certain gravitas as fantasy and so aimed for being really encyclopedic in referring to the roots of Fantasy literature, and at least touching broadly on English literature of the mundane and modern kinds. Tolkien even read some Lovecraft (and liked it), probably before writing the scene of the Watcher at the gate to Moria, possibly afterwards to see how it compared, and read or re-read some of the more esoteric works of T. S. Elliot, R L Stevenson and such, maybe just to have a better idea of where he wanted to steer modern English lit. or maybe to see if he needed to actually address these modern works in what he aimed to make his Magnum Opus. What he did afterwards, planning a next stage after becoming such a success, was doubtless quite technically ambitious.
        I respect people saying they don't like this or that, but some of those people might want to do a little research before they label everything they don't like as not true to Tolkien. In particular, the scenes where the dwarves try to use all the gold to kill the dragon seems to have some real connection to Tolkien's plans for the story, and possibly the way there is more about human 'politics' in Laketown is too. Once people get some idea of what might have been the Hobbit, rewritten for an audience the same age as LotR's, they can rag on the Hobbit equivalents of Elven Shield Surfing twice as hard. (Please! I could have done without half the falls in the Goblin caverns and had the height of the other half quartered, and the extended commercial for the Elven Rafting Riveride at Universal Orlando). Still, not everything here needs to be line for line either.

Re:Such a Waste

[Kjella]

Gandalf knows that Sauron is back. This directly contradicts LotR. In fact, there's no reason Gandalf would let Bilbo keep the ring once he knew Sauron existed.

Actually this is exactly like in the books.

The Fellowship of the Ring, "The Council of Elrond", p. 261

'Some here will remember that many years ago I myself dared to pass the doors of the Necromancer in Dol Guldur, and secretly explored his ways, and found thus that our fears were true: he was none other than Sauron, our Enemy of old, at length taking shape and power again. Some, too, will remember also that Saruman dissuaded us from open deeds against him, and for long we watched him only. Yet at last, as his shadow grew, Saruman yielded, and the Council put forth its strength and drove the evil out of Mirkwood and that was in the very year of the finding of this Ring: a strange chance, if chance it was.

As for the ring, Gandalf did not know it was the One Ring.

Then for the last time the Council met; for now we learned that he was seeking ever more eagerly for the One. We feared then that he had some news of it that we knew nothing of. But Saruman said nay, and repeated what he had said to us before: that the One would never again be found in Middle-earth. (...) [Gandalf] sighed. `There I was at fault,' he said. `I was lulled by the words of Saruman the Wise; but I should have sought for the truth sooner, and our peril would now be less.'

He finally found an ancient scroll to test if it is the One Ring, because on the surface it looks like any other minor magical ring.

And then in my despair I thought again of a test that might make the finding of Gollum unneeded. The ring itself might tell if it were the One. The memory of words at the Council came back to me: words of Saruman, half-heeded at the time. I heard them now clearly in my heart.
` "The Nine, the Seven, and the Three," he said, "had each their proper gem. Not so the One. It was round and unadorned, as it were one of the lesser rings; but its maker set marks upon it that the skilled, maybe, could still see and read."

This is where it all starts in Fellowship of the Ring.

Re:Such a Waste

[DutchUncle]

...and the extended commercial for the Elven Rafting Riveride at Universal Orlando

This. This is what has taken me out of the "suspension of disbelief" in each of the first two Hobbit segments - the feeling that I'm looking at the preview of a ride, designed for that purpose rather than designed to be a film.

Not looking good

[KeensMustard]

One of the better features of The Hobbit (or There and Back Again) is that Bilbo is knocked unconcious at the beginning of the battle of the 5 armies. And since the story is written from his perspective (or he wrote it) there is virtually no dewcription of the battle itself. SO I was hopeful that we would not be subjected to yet another boilerplate over the top battle scene where actually fearsome creatures (trolls, wargs) repeatedly fail to kill their enemy and participants appear to be able to defy the laws of physics. I mean, for Manwes sake: if i wanted to see acrobats I'd go to the circus. Actual character exposition appears ot be confined to clumsy dialogue. Apparently there is no screen time for visual exposition on the change in Bilbo from comfortable, insular shire hobbit to a slightly amoral but very plucky thief. Instead he (bilbo) needs to convey this through long, confessional speeches with the dwarves, whilst 2 dimensional elves do stupid things.

Re:Not looking good

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm usually against but-the-book rants in movies but I definitely agree on this. I gave up on the hobbit series being plausibly good as soon as I saw preview footage involving Radagast the Brown.

I mean damn he was A) just a brief mention in the hobbit and B) not some bird-shit coated foil for comic relief he was one of the friggan Istari, one of the 5 Maiar that took on the form of men.

Tolkein would have been flipping tables over it.

Re:Not looking good

[Areyoukiddingme]

I'm usually against but-the-book rants in movies but I definitely agree on this. I gave up on the hobbit series being plausibly good as soon as I saw preview footage involving Radagast the Brown.

Fucking rabbit sleigh ride. That was unconscionable.

I'll take the Battle of Five Armies, and I'll take the Extended Super Collector's Director's Edition WTF 95 Hour version too. It's all fine. Peter Jackson can knock himself out.

And then I will download the Kerr fanedit that takes all that footage and makes it reasonably match the book. No pathetic attempt at elf-dwarf romance, no whacky dragon chase scenes, no orc invasion of Lake Town, no running fight down the river, no motherfucking rabbit sleighs. And no whatever stupid shit they feel obliged to stick into Battle of the Five Armies.

There will probably be an hour and forty five minutes of footage left. One solid Tolkein movie. And that's how it should be.

Re:Not looking good

[krups gusto]

Copyrights don't expire anymore.  This is necessary so that great writers like Tolkien are incentivized to keep writing more books.  It also prevents anybody from making Mickey Mouse porn.

Re:Not looking good

[Dutch Gun]

Read LoTR's description of Tom Bombadil again, an equally powerful but rather loony figure in his own right, and tell me that Tolkien couldn't have imagined Radagast the way he was depicted (admittedly probably without the bird shit).

Frodo and Sam stood as if enchanted. The wind puffed out. The leaves hung silently again on stiff branches. There was another burst of song, and then suddenly, hopping and dancing along the path, there appeared above the reeds an old battered hat with a tall crown and a long blue feather stuck in the band. With another hop and a bound there came into view a man, or so it seemed. At any rate he was too large and heavy for a hobbit, if not quite tall enough for one of the Big People, though he made noise enough for one, stumping along with great yellow boots on his thick legs, and charging through grass and rushes like a cow going down to drink. He had a blue coat and a long brown beard; his eyes were blue and bright, and his face was red as a ripe apple, but creased into a hundred wrinkles of laughter. In his hands he carried on a large leaf as on a tray a small pile of white water-lilies.

A bit silly-looking for one of the most powerful entities in Middle-Earth, no? Somewhat frivolous-minded, too. The Council of the Ring considers Bombadil as a safekeeper:

‘No,’ said Gandalf, ‘not willingly. He might [take the ring], if all the free folk of the world begged him, but he would not understand the need. And if he were given the Ring, he would soon forget it, or most likely throw it away. Such things have no hold on his mind. He would be a most unsafe guardian; and that alone is answer enough.’ ‘But in any case,’ said Glorfindel, ‘to send the Ring to him would only postpone the day of evil. He is far away. We could not now take it back to him, unguessed, unmarked by any spy. And even if we could, soon or late the Lord of the Rings would learn of its hiding place and would bend all his power towards it. Could that power be defied by Bombadil alone? I think not. I think that in the end, if all else is conquered, Bombadil will fall, Last as he was First; and then Night will come.’
 

Why should Radagast have necessarily been a clone of Gandalf or Saruman? Tom comes across as halfway insane or a goofball, dressed like a clown and constantly breaking into song. Gandalf also speaks of him as ancient and powerful, but one who, if they gave him the ring, would literally forget about it. Jackson's take on Radagast was, I think, similar to Bombadil, one who concerned himself more with nature than the goings-on in the world of wizards, men, elves, and dwarves.

The Hobbit didn't take the material seriously

[sjbe]

What's so horrible about The Hobbit?

The movies are stretched and it shows. They simply didn't have enough plot or action to fill the time and I got fairly bored at times. There are seemingly endless and mostly pointless action scenes that serve no purpose and frankly aren't all that well done either. The special effects were rushed. The dialog they added is insultingly bad. Etc... While I won't say they are horrible money grab movies on the level of say The Phantom Menace, they could have been a LOT better even if they had just spent more time in the editing room. Basically they knew they would be a commercial success so they really didn't try very hard.

LOTR all had battle scenes that took up half the movies that were too long. Songs were not included and plot from the book cut to make room for action and Hollywood.

The Hobbit is worse regarding the action scenes - the ones in LOTR didn't feel nearly as stretched out. And as for the "songs", there are lyrics but no actual music in the books so any music would be contrived. And frankly NOBODY wanted these movies to be a musical. (If you did then you are the only one) I sure as hell didn't go into them wanting to hear a bunch of "music" and I've read the Lord of the Rings probably close to 20 times. That is not what is the really interesting bit about the books - it's more of an intellectual curiosity than anything else that would have been terrible on the big screen.

Re:The Hobbit didn't take the material seriously

[jafac]

What's funny, is that I remember for DECADES, fans bemoaned the lack of a good LOTR/Hobbit adaptation, because the special effects weren't good enough. We had the Ralph Bakshi atrocity, then the Rankin-Bass embarrassment. (and for the hipsters, the little-known black-and-white Russian adaptation). Then. . . Nothing. No studio was going to invest their good money into such a farce. Then Peter Jackson came along, with some contacts who had a CGI technique that could maybe make human actors look like Hobbits - then, we finally got LOTR.

And there was great rejoicing among the FANS. But if you really want to look at LOTR with a critical eye, step back and take a look at it, and yeah, it was pretty stretched-out (and at the same time, weirdly had the feeling of being tightly compressed; like months of road-travel and hiking crammed into a 30-minute TV episode compressed.) (I hike. And I don't know how you make a long hike "interesting" to a cinema audience. But that experience, of long day-after-day exposure to nature, that absolute breathless awestruck feeling when you behold the spectacle of pristine wilderness, the deafening silence, the overwhelming feeling of "letting-go" of your personal safety in the face of insects, weather, predators, rough terrain, homesickness, isolation, struggle, confusion, physical exhaustion, was all very deftly conveyed in Tolkein's prose, and totally absent from the movies). But, overall, still better than the Bakshi version of the movie.

Hobbit takes that to the next extreme. I think it's obvious that the Studio wasn't going to fund Hobbit unless they could milk it to the same profitable extent that LOTR was milked. Only, it's like 1/10th the literary material to work with. I think it's also apparent that the creative team had a difficult time making that requirement work. My guess is that everybody was all geared up to accept this new whizbang 48 fps 3d technology, and that they were hoping that this would make these movies so visually engaging that the audience wouldn't care about the pacing and story and plot problems. I think that they almost certainly fell into the groupthink trap, and bought into their own bullshit, and somehow, anybody who had any nagging doubts was just never in a position to say; "fuck, this is awful, we need to back up and fix this shit." because, by that time, it was probably too late, and the only impact of speaking-up would be to end one's career in the industry. I've been on projects like that. I know that feel.

A video game

[plopez]

In search of a story.

Hard to believe same director made both trilogies

[UpnAtom]

LOTR: Excellent pacing, lots of suspense, amazing sets, good cinematography, decent casting.
Hobbit: Terrible pacing leading to little suspense, cheap sets, awful cinematography with very awkward angles, mediocre casting.

In The Hobbit, Jackson makes the particularly noob-director mistake of trying to feature far too many characters. Nor does he give us much reason to care about them. Compare the OK Dwarven song in Hobbit 1 with the first encounter of the hobbits with the Nazgul.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Interestingly, this fundamental scene is set up by special effects, but you've also got the nice touch of the creepy crawlies trying to get away from the Nazgul and Frodo's weird (but later understood) response. This scene sets up the whole trilogy: the pitifully out-of-their-depth hobbits vs the servants of evil.

The main problem with LotR, changing the storyline, gets worse in The Hobbit too. Obviously we didn't give Jackson a hard enough time about it.

finally over

[rjejr]

So can I finally get my Lego Smaug now? I've been waiting 37 years for it.

The Hobbit didn't take the material seriously

[jazman_777]

What's so horrible about The Hobbit?

The movies are stretched and it shows.

Sort of stretched, like... butter scraped over too much bread.

Re:Trailer not HFR?

[Dutch Gun]

Believe me, 48FPS is not the future. Or if it is, then there is a long way to go in setting it up and filming it properly.

It probably is, but I'm guessing our generation will have a really hard time accepting it. Our minds have been conditioned to think of 24 FPS displays as "cinematic" and higher FPS (30 or higher) at "cheaper", because for years the TV images we've seen *have* looked much "cheaper". It's an association that I don't think we can easily rationalize our way out of. Why do you think videogames have gone so far as to artificially render fake film grain or lens flare artifacts? That's a completely illogical thing to do except for the pleasant association people have with the look of traditional movie media.

Simply put, I think the high frame rate and high fidelity end up causing a negative association in our minds. It's not that it really looks worse - we're just not used to it looking quite so sharp and fluid, and it just doesn't feel "cinematic" to us. At least, that's the conclusion I've come to. Honestly, nothing else makes much sense to me, because otherwise, we're always pushing to make the picture better, more realistic, etc. After all, you can't really blame increased frame rate for making a movie set look more "fake", right? Film has always been a "high resolution" experience, after all.

Or, put another way, I think film technology just fell into the uncanny valley for some people, where it looks so close to reality that their brains are rebelling a bit and causing distractions, which leads to a poor viewing experience.

Re:That has to be the most garbled summary....

[DutchUncle]

You may have a problem. I have never found fuck boring.