Now We Know Why the Hobbit Movies Were So Awful (theguardian.com)

HughPickens.com writes: Everyone seems to agree that the key to the success of Peter Jackson's Lord Of The Rings trilogy was years of careful planning before production ever began. Now Bryan Bishop writes at The Verge that in what can only be described as the most honest promotional video of all time, we find out why the Hobbit trilogy turned out to be such a boring mess. In the clip, Peter Jackson, Andy Serkis, and other production personnel confess that due to the director changeover — del Toro left the project after nearly two years of pre-production — Jackson hit the ground running, but was never able to hit the reset button to get time to establish his own vision. Once the new director was hired, the harried crew members had to scramble to redesign everything to suit Jackson's vision, but they could barely even keep up with the production schedule, let alone prepare anything in advance.

At some junctures in the process, Jackson found himself essentially having to improvise on set because there was nothing really prepared for his actors to do. "You're going on to a set and you're winging it, you've got these massively complicated scenes, no storyboards and you're making it up there and then on the spot," said Jackson. "I spent most of The Hobbit feeling like I was not on top of it."

But wait: "Peter has never made a secret of the fact that he took over the Hobbit directing job with very little preparation time remaining before shooting had to begin. It was a challenge he willingly took on. His comments are an honest reflection of his own personal feelings at times during the movie's production," says a spokesman for Jackson. "Somebody has decided to create this cut-down, using only the sections of The Gathering Clouds that discuss the difficulties faced, not the positive ways they were addressed and overcome – which are also covered in this and other featurettes."

Comments

it was just too long

[prasadsurve]

3 movies for such a short story was what killed it. I mean did it have to take 1 whole movie just reach the damn mountain?

Re:it was just too long

[TWX]

Well, there were plenty of complaints about the LOTR movies, that they were too short relative to the stories, so take that as you will.

I kind of wish that the miniseries format would become more popular again. Design the entire series in advance, figure out where the source-material will need bolstering as it changes from print to film, figure out how to time the dramatic elements so that each episode has something to look forward to, and package the thing where it makes sense.

Re:it was just too long

[Gr8Apes]

But the Hobbit, at best, was a 4 hour movie. Yes, the sitting around the fireside staring morosely into darkness or flashbacks add to the overall "feel" but if you add so many that they make the movie plod along like a hamstrung zombie, perhaps it's not too entertaining?

Re:it was just too long

[TWX]

And a four hour movie could easily become a five or six episode miniseries. If the directors/producers/studio wanted to tell the entire middle-earth saga then it could be part of a greater work too.

Re:it was just too long

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah the Hobbit was far too slow paced for my liking. That was my main complaint.

Re:it was just too long

[AthanasiusKircher]

3 movies for such a short story was what killed it. I mean did it have to take 1 whole movie just reach the damn mountain?

Agreed. Before I even saw the first movie, I said, "I'd rather have a 9-movie series doing The Lord of the Rings rather than 3 long movies about The Hobbit." There just wasn't enough material and enough stories to fill the time.

Anthony Lane, after alluding to Wagner's seemingly never-ending "Ring Cycle" of operas, in his review of the first Hobbit movie in The New Yorker probably summed it up best, concluding:

As Bilbo says, nearing the end of the book, "Roads go ever ever on." Tell me about it.

Re:it was just too long

[lgw]

3 movies for such a short story was what killed it. I mean did it have to take 1 whole movie just reach the damn mountain?

That's key, but they also failed because the tone was wrong (and inconsistent). The Hobbit was a kids book back when those were allow to get scary - a fun adventure story with some dark moments for our hero. Our hero was clearly Bilbo: it was his narrative, and his character arc. The places where the tone got dark were specifically the places where he needed to grow, and find to courage to overcome the new difficulty. The mix of fun adventure and dark moments made perfect sense.

This was a very different tone than LOTR, which was fundamentally a war story for adults. The Hobbit film just didn't understand that, and rushed production is no excuse. The film never really felt like Bilbo's journey "there and back again." Almost all the filler was dark and dramatic, so much so that the original fun parts of the book were now jarring and inconsistent in the movie. The inclusion of a kooky Radagast could have worked with the original story, but felt completely out of place in the film.

But dammit, lose the cartoon rabbits. From the SW prequel trilogy and Jar Jar to the Hobbit and the rabbit sled, I support a Constitutional Amendment banning cartoon rabbits in prequel movies!
 

Re:it was just too long

[Beardo the Bearded]

Yep.

It's nice that they finished The Hobbit fifteen minutes into Five Armies, but did they have to go all Lost and dick around for two more hours after they'd run out of ideas?

Re:it was just too long

[ganjadude]

exactly. I am hopeful that the x files miniseries will spark something there

Re:it was just too long

[phantomfive]

That's key, but they also failed because the tone was wrong (and inconsistent).

I agree with this completely. The Hobbit was grand old fun adventuring.....there and back again. Something to be sung or told around the campfire. Like in the Norse tales when Thor and Loki traveled to the land of the giants, then came back. The movies tried to take on the mood of LOTR, which were supposed to be an epic battle between good and evil: so serious. The Hobbit book wasn't that, it was all in good fun.

The only part of the movies where I thought they captured that was in the opening scenes of the first Hobbit, where the dwarves come in one at a time, and then start singing while they clean the kitchen. So lighthearted and fun.

Re:it was just too long

[AmiMoJo]

It really didn't help that they tried to shoehorn a lot of stuff in. The female elf character because there aren't any major females in the book, for example. Maybe do a gender swap or something, but trying to tack on a badly written new character just didn't work. Fleshing out crap throwaway characters to make up the run time didn't work either.

It was all just so obviously tacked on to the main, original story that it didn't even feel like Middle Earth any more.

Re:it was just too long

[Gr8Apes]

well, if you're going to go "mini-series", then the world opens up. Because there are lots and lots of side stories that can be fleshed out in the Hobbit, many that should have been completely removed from the movie.

Re:it was just too long

[Wraithlyn]

Bingo. I always said the biggest problem with The Hobbit films was the jarring tonal shifts between "fun & silly" (like the book) and "dark & epic" (trying to be another LOTR).

Re:it was just too long

[Dan East]

Agreed. Before I even saw the first movie, I said, "I'd rather have a 9-movie series doing The Lord of the Rings rather than 3 long movies about The Hobbit."

I had a couple issues with LOTR - one being Aragorn's "reluctant hero" portrayal in the movie. In the books he knew his lineage and his destiny. He took 5 minutes just saying his name and rolling off his bloodline and claim to the throne. He carried around Narsil for pete's sake.

However, my biggest gripe is totally cutting out the moral lesson LOTR teaches. That was in the form of Tom Bombadil and the Scouring of the Shire. Both teach the same lesson (especially the Scouring of the Shire), which is that we are responsible for making the world a better place. It is up to us as individuals to play that role.

Re:it was just too long

[Kjella]

That's key, but they also failed because the tone was wrong (and inconsistent). The Hobbit was a kids book back when those were allow to get scary - a fun adventure story with some dark moments for our hero. Our hero was clearly Bilbo: it was his narrative, and his character arc. The places where the tone got dark were specifically the places where he needed to grow, and find to courage to overcome the new difficulty. The mix of fun adventure and dark moments made perfect sense. This was a very different tone than LOTR, which was fundamentally a war story for adults. The Hobbit film just didn't understand that, and rushed production is no excuse. The film never really felt like Bilbo's journey "there and back again." Almost all the filler was dark and dramatic, so much so that the original fun parts of the book were now jarring and inconsistent in the movie. The inclusion of a kooky Radagast could have worked with the original story, but felt completely out of place in the film.

The problem is that the audience from the first trilogy would be too old for such a movie and their children too young. They wanted a movie someone who watched and liked LotR would watch. They wanted as many tie-ins to the LotR story and as many of the same actors to appear as possible. And they wanted to throw a bone to all the ladies who got dragged along to LotR and stayed for the Aragon/Eowyn/Arwen romantic overtones. There's nothing like that in the story, it's a fairy tale that easily could have been written with an all-male cast for young boys with gremlins, grumpkins and a dragon like Narnia with less girls and queens. Don't get me wrong, it could have been a decent children's movie by itself but as LotR: The prequel it would have been a total flop. It would have been more painful to watch than Star Wars and Jar Jar Binks.

And the problem with pulling in those LotR bits is that it makes Bilbo's story seem more like a trivial side show. So they have to make his story darker, the conflicts more intense and the dangers bigger. No leisurely floating down the river, no sneaking past the dragon for some reason Bilbo goes on in a crazy quest to slay a dragon, claim the treasure and retake a lost city he's got no relationship barely escaping all kinds of monsters and an orc army giving chase. At least Frodo had good reason to be the reluctant hero and Sam couldn't possibly abandon him, why Bilbo doesn't say this is totally nuts I'm going home is beyond me. I guess the funny bits are still there as an attempt to show it's an adventure too, something he'd like to be part of. But they're not really convincingly selling it.

Re:it was just too long

[Grishnakh]

Well, there were plenty of complaints about the LOTR movies, that they were too short relative to the stories, so take that as you will.

Those complaints were correct. LotR was a much, much longer story than The Hobbit, so *of course* it should warrant a lot more screen-time. The Hobbit was one shortish book, LotR was three rather long novels (and each novel was further divided into two "books"). Doesn't it make sense that 3 long novels shouldn't get the same amount of screen-time as one short children's book?

I always thought that each LotR movie should have been 2-3 times as long as it was.

The Hobbit should have been one 4-hour movie at most.

Re:it was just too long

[skam240]

I went into the first Hobbit movie a bit worried about how it was going to be. The dwarf dish scene really got my hopes up as it was both great and straight out of the book. Of course then the rest of the movie was both terrible and not at all like the books. Everything in the book became an action scene and worse still, they were terrible action scenes. I've never experienced so many action scenes that were boring in one movie before.

I actually walked out of the second movie part way in. Not sure why I even bothered.

Re:it was just too long

[phantomfive]

Everything in the book became an action scene and worse still, they were terrible action scenes.

Yeah, that's true. I still remember being depressed after watching a dwarf get bashed in the face with a spiked mace, and get up shortly after with hardly a scratch. Which was not in the book, of course.

Re:it was just too long

[phantomfive]

I'm actually happy to hear that I'm not the only one who liked the dwarf dish scene :)

Re:it was just too long

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, there were plenty of complaints about the LOTR movies, that they were too short relative to the stories, so take that as you will.

Each of the three novels was divided into two 'books', so an argument could easily be made that it really deserved 6 full length films. And frankly speaking, there was more than enough material to do that and still not get everything right... as it was the three extended director's cuts still feel rushed.
The Hobbit had the opposite problem, the book was also written in what was basically two parts, but they decided to stretch it to three movies by including a bunch of backstory and outside action that wasn't in the original, but rather taken from various supplemental writings. The result was a bloated, wandering story that spent far too much time on action scenes and focused far too heavily on the outside events.

Re:it was just too long

[I'm New Around Here]

Actually, it was written as one book. The publisher said "Hell no, Mr. Tolkien." So it was changed.

Re:it was just too long

[I'm New Around Here]

The Hobbit was a kids book back when those were allow to get scary

You've never read any books for children published in the last 20-odd years, have you?

Sparkly vampires aren't scary.

Re:it was just too long

[J-1000]

The only part of the movies where I thought they captured that was in the opening scenes of the first Hobbit, where the dwarves come in one at a time, and then start singing while they clean the kitchen. So lighthearted and fun.

Yep, that scene was pretty well done.

To me, The Hobbit's flaws were just a magnification of flaws that already existed in the LOTR movies:
- Everything looked fake
- The pacing was always off. Either rushing through moments that should be awe inspiring, or dragging out moments that either shouldn't exist (because PJ invented them), or were boring filler (eternal battle scenes, interpersonal relationship drama).
- Trying to make everything epic. What ruined the soundtrack in LOTR (and The Hobbit), for me, was the fact that it never shut up. Not every scene requires grand accompaniment.

There was never a focus on doing these movies right. It was always about doing them big.

Re:it was just too long

[0100010001010011]

I started watching "Under the Dome" hoping it was a mini-series. I would kickstart/crowd fund a "10 episode event" of any book or story that was appropriate for that length.

Not a movie. Not a series done to death. 10 episodes. 2 hours. No commercials. That's 20 hours to tell a lot of stories very well.

Re:it was just too long

[DNS-and-BIND]

It's not a short story, it's 300 pages. It's a decent book. Not an 800 page doorstopper, but I suppose that's how we think today, if it's not long then it's not good. Back then novels could be 300 pages and still be good.

Re:it was just too long

[Anonymous Coward]

Scouring of the Shire yes - a very obvious returned soldiers from WWII having the responsibility to set things right at home as well reference but still timeless.
Bombadil? God-mode Mary Sue that decided to sit around and do nothing so that other characters would be relevant should have been edited out of the book instead of being left in just to indicate that it was the same universe as some of his short stories.

Re: it was just too long

[MenThal]

Sounds like a perfect job for Joss Whedon.

Re:it was just too long

[Boronx]

That was one of the few good scenes in the movies.

Re:it was just too long

[Boronx]

And the value of guile (Theoden). He could have made a whole series of valiant charges to arrive at Minas Tirith tired and late, but instead his army skulked through the woods like a pack of thieves.

Re:it was just too long

[thegarbz]

Well, there were plenty of complaints about the LOTR movies, that they were too short relative to the stories, so take that as you will.

That is still consistent. LOTR was over 1100 pages depending on which print you look at. The Hobbit was 125.

By that measure the Hobbit should have been just a tad over an hour long.

Re:it was just too long

[serviscope_minor]

However, my biggest gripe is totally cutting out the moral lesson LOTR teaches. That was in the form of Tom Bombadil

They left that out because no one likes Tom Bombadil. Seriously Tom Bombadillo.

Nope nope nope nope.

Re:it was just too long

[marsu_k]

- Trying to make everything epic. What ruined the soundtrack in LOTR (and The Hobbit), for me, was the fact that it never shut up. Not every scene requires grand accompaniment.

So much this. A good soundtrack can really enhance a movie. But it doesn't need to underline constantly whether I'm watching a dramatic scene or an action scene (as in LOTR and The Hobbit), or be a selection of the most obvious songs you could think of (Watchmen). As a matter of fact, I think the best soundtrack (or audio design really, as there isn't hardly any music) of recent years was No Country for Old Men. The results were tremendous, I don't think Anton Chigurh was any less terrifying despite not having a theme song accompanying him.

Re:it was just too long

[nedlohs]

LOTR is a 1000 page trilogy. The Hobbit is a 100 page children's story.

Re:it was just too long

[Blaskowicz]

I'm sure they could have printed it on bible paper, but it was the 60s and the works would have been lost to people rolling marijuana joints with it.

Re:it was just too long

[fredgiblet]

There's a couple of ~4 hour edits for all three movies floating around.

Re: it was just too long

[TWX]

Joss Whedon has never set-out to make a miniseries.

Nonetheless, he seems to make a lot of them...

Re:it was just too long

[serviscope_minor]

In Tolkein's own words though:

That's all true and there's interesting points around Tom Bombadil, but I found the atual character intensely irritating. I skim-read that part of the book. I know some people like him, but he's pretty unpopular.

Re:it was just too long

[Ed Avis]

Back in the day The Phantom Edit took out a lot of the crud (Jar-Jar, etc) from Star Wars Episode 1 and made a shorter, more watchable film. Is there a decent fan re-edit of the Hobbit trilogy into one fast-paced two-hour movie?

Re:it was just too long

[RockDoctor]

Only if you're printing LoTR on A4 and Hobbit on A3. I'm in a different country to my copies of both (both of which are over 35 years old), but I think the difference is more like 4:1 or 5:1 than 10:1 . There is a "background information" section at the end of my LoTR which bulks the 3rd book up a bit too, without really adding to the actual storyline.

The pacing of the LoTR films was a bit too rushed. The pacing of the Hobbit film was dragged out to at least twice it's appropriate length, and more likely three times it's appropriate length.

Re:it was just too long

[RockDoctor]

I understand and accept Jackson's reasons for leaving the whole Tom Bombadil story out of the film version of LoTR. I don't like it, but I do accept his reasons. It would have made the whole story significantly more complex and if he tried to tie up the loose ends (who the fuck is Tom Bombadil? ; why is he unaffected by the Ring? ; why doesn't he take it and wipe out Sauron with the back of his hand, without even thinking of using the Ring?) it makes the whole of the rest of the mythology of Middle Earth unavoidable. That's a whole shitload of other movies. About fifteen for the Silmarillion (five major battles ; one movie per battle ; one movie each for Beren & Luthien ; Tuor and his girl and the dragon ; another for Gondolin ; Earendil ; and another five for setting up the Ainu and Numenor) ... and I can see why Jackson just left Tom Bombadil out of it.

They should have left the Scouring in. but that wouldn't have fitted in with Hollywood's requirement for happy endings. Sucks to work with Hollywood.

Re:it was just too long

[RockDoctor]

God-mode Mary Sue

You don't understand Tom, do you? He's not "God Mode" anything. He's a god (well, Ainu), though not one of the major ones. He certainly out ranks the other Ainu in the plot (Gandalf, Sarumen, Radagast, Sauron) put together, but he's not allowed to act by orders of the Boss.

returned soldiers from WWII

Tolkein was referring to his own return from the trenches of WW1. Remember that he started to write this in the late 1920s.

Re:it was just too long

[RockDoctor]

The Hobbit book wasn't that, it was all in good fun.

Which is precisely why Tolkein had Gandalf (the Ainu) go off to do his "big scene" stuff with the "Necromancer" (another Ainu, called Sauron) OFF STAGE. Same reason that some guy called Shakespeare (who is reputed to know a thing or several about writing screenplays) had his guys Rosencrantz and Guildenstern killed offstage - to keep the focus on Hamlet.

Re:it was just too long

[tehcyder]

The Hobbit book wasn't that, it was all in good fun.

Which is precisely why Tolkein had Gandalf (the Ainu) go off to do his "big scene" stuff with the "Necromancer" (another Ainu, called Sauron) OFF STAGE. Same reason that some guy called Shakespeare (who is reputed to know a thing or several about writing screenplays) had his guys Rosencrantz and Guildenstern killed offstage - to keep the focus on Hamlet.

If this Shakespeare guy's so hot, how come he never won an Oscar?

Re:it was just too long

[RockDoctor]

Same reason that Newton (a near contemporary) never won a Nobel. While the work was almost certainly up to standard, they're both disqualified by having been dead before the awards committee met.

I suppose they've both eligible for a "lifetime achievement" type award of some sort though. Might be worth suggesting. I'll get on the phone to Nobel, if you get on the phone to Oscar?

Re:it was just too long

[cwsumner]

3 movies for such a short story was what killed it. I mean did it have to take 1 whole movie just reach the damn mountain?

You are just accustomed to the usual Hollywood hack job on movies!

It is true that a normal novel is about three movies long. Particularly now-days when they tend to be three or four hundred pages. But people don't want to sit for a movie that long, so two thirds of the story is left out and the rest glued together in a mish-mash.

Re:it was just too long

[Boronx]

No, I mean Theoden sneaking through the forest. Paths of the dead is in the movie.

real reason

[Anonymous Coward]

it's a short semi-exciting children's story, completely different ball game to The Lord of the Rings. And that's just the books. Got 30 mins into the first Hobbit movie when I decided that enough was enough.

Clerks II nailed this a long time ago

[JoeyRox]

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

Re:Clerks II nailed this a long time ago

[Anonymous Coward]

If I understand correctly....

The Lord of the Rings trilogy was made using a waterfall process, whereas the Hobbit movies were made using an agile process.

The quality of the Lord of the Rings was higher. The Hobbit project was able to turn on a dime and be salvaged rather than die, and the result made money, but it was only barely what the clients wanted.

Sounds about right.

Re:Clerks II nailed this a long time ago

[UnknownSoldier]

Haha, that was great.

This youtube comment was spot on:

Both trilogies are great and both have terrible prequel trilogies.

Re:Clerks II nailed this a long time ago

[bsolar]

No, that's nit correct. The Lord If The Rings was actually done with an *extremely* agile process too: Fran Walsh described writing the script for the production as "laying the track down in front of a moving train". As example Aragorn was originally supposed to be played by Stuart Townsend, but during the first month of filming it was deemed too young and Viggo Mortensen became his replacement just before filming Aragorn's first scene. There are also many instances of unplanned stuff getting thrown in, like the orcs stomping their lances during the siege or Aragorn deflecting a knife with his sword.

a better cut available? anybody remix this thing?

[beckett]

Never bothered seeing the Hobbit movie after i fell asleep during the first one. trend for official re-releases have been to make the movie even longer than before. I've about given up on high minded talk about Vision; use what you have, and leverage the shit out of it. Don't stand on a million dollar set equipped with millions of dollars of production equipment with A listed actors and whine about a redesign. Most directors would kill to be saddled with such high quality problems.

having said that, have there been any fan-edits floating around that have made this watchable? Fan edits like the DeZionIzed matrix, the LOST miniseries, and Phantom Edit have been stellar improvements over the official releases. the hobbit movies are breathtaking, but Jackson is too in love with his creation to edit objectively.

One Book vs. Three Books

[ZahrGnosis]

I didn't think there was much of a question; the lord of the rings simply had a huge amount more material that was fully assembled by the original author than the Hobbit did. It was one book, with a scattering of notes and addendums, that got stitched and stretched into three epic movies.

It's interesting that they're admitting directorial mayhem at this point, but the direction taken from the outset was overkill and greedy. I'm sure it could have been better, but still, it took a lot to make this mess.

Of course, I'm still going to watch them again. Someday.

Re:One Book vs. Three Books

[phantomfive]

The script was bad from the beginning. There was nothing a director could have done at the last minute to save it (other than get a new script). You could immediately tell when the characters stopped quoting the book, because the quality of writing plummeted. When poor Gandalf had to say, "So, this was their plan all along!" I cringed for the poor guy.

Re:One Book vs. Three Books

[KGIII]

I feel vindicated in my decision to not watch them. I still haven't finished the first trilogy. I got bored in the second one and still didn't finish it. I own a copy of them on BluRay so, I guess, I'll finish it some day.

Re:Book

[fustakrakich]

Yeah, really... If you're going to do a trilogy, make it a good one

I loved all three!

[cfalcon]

The Hobbit always struck me as a weak little brother to the power of the Lord of the Rings trilogy- a kid's book before he launched into what he really wanted to leave the world. While taking the one with the least content and turning it into a trilogy sounded silly to me (along with pretty much everyone), unlike the majority of Tolkein fans, I was *immediately* sold when I realized that the extra stuff he had added was to bring back characters I wanted to see a hell of a lot more of, and to highlight all the cool middle earth setting stuff. I knew they would probably never get rights to any other story in that universe again, and by turning the Hobbit into this trilogy- milking it for all it was worth- I got to see Orlando Bloom jump up a falling staircase of rocks. *And I loved that!*

If I had been of the opinion that The Hobbit was some masterpiece of literature in the same way I feel about the epic trilogy, maybe I would have been really cross. But I just don't. It was fun and had good production value and had great characters, and gradually walked through the storyline.

I know it's a minority opinion, but I just thought it was great.

Re:I loved all three!

[skam240]

Orlando Bloom was a reason you liked the Lord of the Rings movies? I honestly thought him and Glimli were the worst parts of an otherwise excellent movie series. I mean, shield surfing down a set of stairs? It's like a Middle Earth themed Mountain Dew commercial. "Too the extreme!"

Re:I loved all three!

[cfalcon]

I'm sorry to say all your post has done is remind me that I also want to see John Rhys-Davies hit more orcs to death.

Re: I loved all three!

[Zoxed]

I put off watching the Hobbit for ages, expecting it to be crap, then I watched it on 3 consecutive nights and loved it, maybe more than LOTR!

Re:I loved all three!

[tehcyder]

If I had been of the opinion that The Hobbit was some masterpiece of literature in the same way I feel about the epic trilogy, maybe I would have been really cross.

If you think LOTR is a masterpiece of literature, you really need to widen your reading.

OTOH, The Hobbit is a genuine classic like Treasure Island or A Wrinkle In Time, which is to say a children's classic.

Re:The Hobbit stunk

[ledow]

Yep.

And LOTR was a three-volume book with each volume twice the size of The Hobbit.

That means that the Hobbit should be one sixth the length of the LOTR trilogy, not virtually the exact same length.

Scale and Flotsam

[Dracos]

There are two main problem with the movies:

They tried to surpass the epic scale of the LoTR movies, while the book was nothing of the sort. Splitting it into three only made it worse.

They added so much extra junk that was obviously filler. Tauriel should never have been created, and the love story with Legolos should never have been pasted in. While the stuff with Gandalf and the Necromancer was at least legitimate, it wasn't necessary to the story.

The Hobbit movies would have been much better as a 6 part HBO miniseries. If any film project would have benefitted from a smaller budget, it was this.

Re:Scale and Flotsam

[chispito]

The Hobbit movies would have been much better as a 6 part HBO miniseries.

How about just one popcorn flick. Two to two and a half hours and we're done. Not everything from a book needs to make it in the movie.

Re:Scale and Flotsam

[mvdwege]

While I agree that Tauriel was a Romantic Plot Tumor, I can live with that; she adds a few minutes to the movie at worst.

No, the worst offenders were those long, drawn-out set pieces, like the chase scenes such as the one through the Goblin Kingdom in the first movie, or that muddled mess at the end of the third movie. That's just Jackson being self-indulgent, cutting that crap would have brought the movies down to two, and some judicious editing might have brought the whole down to only one movie.

Re:Scale and Flotsam

[MightyMartian]

The problem was that that to make it into a three film series, they had to insert a lot of stuff INTO the story. If they had stuck by and large to the actual book, they'd probably had a pretty good 2 to 2.5 hour film.

Best and More Than Adequate

[NEDHead]

Was Nimoy's video

Re:Best and More Than Adequate

[Anonymous Coward]

Video

If you've never seen it, take a look! Live long and prosper

Re:Best and More Than Adequate

[Brett Buck]

OH, thank you so very much! Nothing like having that running through my head for a few days.

Re:The Hobbit stunk

[rsilvergun]

It's even better than that. The Hobbit is a shorter, simpler books. See here.

What's Wrong with the Hobbit?

[Bruce Perens]

The Hobbit books are to a great extent about race war. The races are alien and fictional, but they are races, and the identification of good or bad is on racial boundaries. This isn't all that unusual in the fantasy genre, or even some sci-fi.

Lots of people love those books. And there's lots of good in them. To me, the race stuff stuck out.

Re:What's Wrong with the Hobbit?

[phantomfive]

The races are alien and fictional, but they are races, and the identification of good or bad is on racial boundaries.

Hmmm interesting, I never thought of it that way. But there are issues between races that are "good" or "bad," too. For example, the elves have a long-running dispute with the dwarves. I can think of cases where people (or wizards,etc) crossed the line from the "good" races into the bad races, but none where a "bad" race became good.

Lots of people love those books. And there's lots of good in them. To me, the race stuff stuck out.

That's interesting because I had never paid attention to it before.

Re:What's Wrong with the Hobbit?

[Bruce Perens]

That's interesting because I had never paid attention to it before.

I think it's because the meme is so deeply ingrained within the conventional devices of literature in our society that we take it for context. It's there, it has an effect, you don't notice.

Re:What's Wrong with the Hobbit?

[Bruce Perens]

OK, call me a Philistine (deliberate racial epithet to make a point) but I consider The Hobbit and LoTR to be a piece.

Re:What's Wrong with the Hobbit?

[Hognoxious]

Oh, they're a piece alright.

Re:What's Wrong with the Hobbit?

[skam240]

Interesting thought but I dont quite subscribe to it. Humans are very much the dominant race in Middle Earth and they had a very large presence on both sides of the war. That alone for me makes your point questionable but to really nerd out on you, the Similerian clearly lays out that the first orcs are corrupted Elves which muddles the waters on racial identity in that area as well.

Also, what a depressing conclusion to come to. Some nebulous evil being of immense power creates a bunch of evil everyone else fights and it's a race war?

So, in movies as in software

[idontgno]

Forcing yourself to hit a release date, even though something catastrophic has exploded your schedule, remains the guaranteed recipe for shit.

Oddly comforting to know it's not just us out here in software-land.

Hobbit MOVIES? As in plural?

[PopeRatzo]

I didn't know there was more than one. The Hobbit ones have the guy who plays Dr Watson alongside Cumberbatch's Sherlock, right? Yeah, the one I saw wasn't so horrible. It had dwarves who found some big basement filled with gold and then the head dwarf didn't want to give it up and then the badass elves came and said "You've got to give up that gold" and the dwarf said, "Nuh-uh!" and then Gandalf came and said some shit and then the orcs came (love the orcs) and then Billy Connolly as one of the dwarves comes riding up whipping orc ass and them some more shit happened and then...I don't remember the rest. But I love Billy Connolly because I find Scottish accents to be funny as hell. I like to imagine Begbie from Trainspotting riding the Caragor, yelling, " 'CUSE I FOOCKING TOLD YA SO, YA DOSS CUNT!

It wasn't great, but it wasn't horrible. I'm pretty sure I was high as fuck when I saw it though.

So, there were more Hobbitses after that, and did they have anyone with Scottish accents? I'm gonna go watch a little Begbie to tide me over.

https://youtu.be/vc3E7UkIzt4

Memoir

[Anna Merikin]

Hilarious! I worked as a movie actor for some time, and, now and then, a production is doomed this way for some reason or other. I was working as an extra in a production shooting on location in Boston. During filming, the co-star suffered a heart attack and was disabled for months. During that time, a substitute was found, but rather than reshooting all the scenes with the new actor, he was shot from behind so as not to make the change obvious to viewers. The location director was the main director's brother, and he was not up to the job. Shooting went badly, and lots of time and money was wasted over stupid decisions made ad hoc.

Of course, it was impossible to edit coherently; it closed during its premiere in New York, as all the audience had walked out before the credits.

No, I will not mention the title, but it was 1969 and the brothers who wrote the story directed the film, which previously had been published in Playboy as a short story. The elder brother has since gone on to huge success in Hollywood.

Its been a few years time for a reboot

[future assassin]

....

I Don't Care

[wisnoskij]

I don't care if Jackson had to shoot the entire trilogy on a long weekend with an iphone as the only camera. That is still no excuse to have an Elf fall in love with a dwarf because he made a joke that implied his penis was a dangerous weapon. And it is certainly no excuse of the ridiculous CGI action sequences.

Re:a better cut available? anybody remix this thin

[UnknownSoldier]

> but Jackson is too in love with his creation to edit objectively.

At least Jackson has the balls to admit he screwed up.

In contradistinction to George Lucas who was completely oblivious to how bad his writing was for ages. He is/was surrounded by far too many "yes men" to tell him the Emperor had no Clothes. Lucas finally admitted he is the king of wooden dialogue.

Re:a better cut available? anybody remix this thin

[java_dev]

Yes! Look for The Hobbit: The Tolkein Edit. Cuts all the crap out, trims the three to a single movie, and makes it a much better film.

never a doubt

[spaceholes]

anyone that enjoyed reading the hobbit never had a doubt as to why the movies sucked. we wanted to see Tolkien's the hobbit, not jackson's the hobbit.

Re:a better cut available? anybody remix this thin

[Dutch Gun]

to tell him the Emperor had no Clothes.

Thank you for that particularly horrific vision...

How about the one fact.....

[Lumpy]

That they made a 6 hour trilogy out of a FUCKING SHORT STORY?

Honestly.... what the hell, a single 2 hour movie is stretching it.

Re:How about the one fact.....

[DNS-and-BIND]

It's not a short story, it's a 300 page novel. They definitely went overboard doing 3 movies, but the novel can't be blamed for that. It's a good book, you should read it.

Re:How about the one fact.....

[swillden]

That they made a 6 hour trilogy out of a FUCKING SHORT STORY?

Honestly.... what the hell, a single 2 hour movie is stretching it.

It wasn't a short story, it was a good-sized novel. I think it could have been done well in two movies. One would have required cutting some material. Three was too much.

Re:Guess what?

[MightyMartian]

If someone were to go along, re-edit the movie, pull out all the Dol Guldur sequences and the like, cut down on the exposition and remove the whole Azog plot, and made it, say, 180 minutes, it would be possible to fix it. But that abomination that Jackson turned the barrel ride into is probably irreparable and should just be cut down to a bare minimum.

typical

[bigdavex]

Many making-of documentaries emphasize the challenges to create a narrative around the miraculous production. IMHO, these movies sucked because:

A) Lots of stuff happened but the characterizations were so weak that we stopped caring.
B) The CGI orcs were boring and unbelievable next to the live footage.
C) It was too long.

Re:typical

[DarthVain]

1) I'll agree, it was too long. I assume intentionally for money making purposes. The book was like 150 pages long.
2) It is based on a book, one of the most read books in existence. It isn't like the movie was an original work or something. How much "Vision" do you need.
3) No one seems to mention the legal troubles as well, with the Tolkien estate taking them to court trying to get more money, or not have the movie made, delaying everything.

Way too long

[Snotnose]

The first one was ok, much better than I thought it would be. The second one, I really enjoyed the party in the barrels, but don't remember anything else about the movie. The third one? Waaay too long. That whole battle of 5 armies crap just dragged on and on and on. Dead bad guy under the ice isn't really dead and is coming back for another 10 minutes? Saw that coming a mile away. The whole "w00t we did good" at the end of the movie? Delete.

Return of the King was boring as hell. The entire last hour, where everyone said "bye, catchya later on the downlow" should have been deleted.

Re:Way too long

[AugstWest]

The battle of 5 armies is 5 or 6 pages of the book. It's not even a whole chapter.

That right there is everything you need to know about what went wrong with the movies.

Re:a better cut available? anybody remix this thin

[newcastlejon]

It might help you to bear in mind that the first person to portray the Emperor was a woman. Emphasis on "might".

Re:a better cut available? anybody remix this thin

[guacamole]

The Hobbit movies did pick up the pace after the first one. My favorite was the second part. Speaking of slow beginnings, the first LOTR was also awfully slow.

There was more than that wrong with the films

[UpnAtom]

Yours is the most accurate critique. Jackson attempted a completely different way of telling the story and it failed utterly. How was the audience supposed to perceive the films? I mean, how could we have found them anything but boring?

Perhaps the biggest failing of the films was not making us care. Most of the dwarves were rubbish and this is possibly due to Jackson's energy being elsewhere. But every director should know that you cannot make an audience care about more than 3-4 characters. That's basically Gandalf, Thorin and Bilbo... and we already liked Gandalf.

Now Bilbo didn't like Thorin and that's a problem if you're telling the story from his perspective. If the rest of the film had been good enough, Jackson would have got away with it. The book I recall shows the other dwarves paying immense respect to Thorin and that's another way Jackson could have got us to care.

Jackson should have learned by now that every time you deviate significantly from the script, you alienate your core audience. The female elf love plot wasn't the worst thing in the films by any means but didn't fit in with Bilbo's story.

LotR spent a good portion of time showing us beautiful vistas of the world. The Hobbit looked like it was filmed in the world's smallest studio with extremely dodgy lighting. This made the dwarves and the goblins look ridiculous.

I truly wonder how much of this could be fixed by a fan edit. Obviously you can't change it to Bilbo's perspective but you can remove anything that doesn't make the audience care. Use some filter or even blurring on the overlit scenes. Make the barrel and Goblintown escapes look less stupid.

Much of the third film was excellent -- if you like battles.

Exactly

[mschaffer]

Exactly, and it was not a prequel to the LOTR!

Am I the only one...?

[Black.Shuck]

I have read The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and The Silmarillion. All at least twice. Loved them. And still I have no quarrel with any of Jackson's movies.

I'm happy about what was left in, taken out, twisted or invented. I'm happy with how many films there were, and how long.

Anyone else?

Re:Am I the only one...?

[redlemming]

I have read The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and The Silmarillion. All at least twice. Loved them. And still I have no quarrel with any of Jackson's movies.

I'm happy about what was left in, taken out, twisted or invented. I'm happy with how many films there were, and how long.

I'm not entirely happy, but on the whole it's clear that Jackson did a very professional job, appropriate to the medium. Like any good story-teller, he adjusted the story to the medium and the audience. Tolkien, as a good story teller himself, would no doubt have understood.

The decision to have 3 movies for the Hobbit was a good one: it's a long book by most standards (especially compared to the norm from that era), and there's a whole lot of material (even aside from all the extras that appear in the appendices to the Return of the King).

I haven't listened to the director's and actor's commentary for the Hobbit yet, but now that the extended edition is available I'm looking forward to doing that. The commentary for the LOTR was pretty informative, and I came away from it with a lot more respect for Peter Jackson. Perhaps the extended edition of the Hobbit will address some of the things I wasn't entirely happy about (much as happened with LOTR).

Re:Am I the only one...?

[tehcyder]

My summary would be that with LOTR he took a good book and made a very good movie , whereas with The Hobbit he took a great book and made a very poor movie .

Re:Am I the only one...?

[AugstWest]

Compare the violence in the Hobbit movie to the violence in the book... It's like a Dr. Seuss snuff film.

Put all that shit on HBO

[Kevin Fishburne]

I read The Hobbit and thought it was just okay, which made me not read the rest of the LotR books. I also watched the LotR movies and to be honest thought they sucked. Despite their length, they largely failed to communicate who everyone was, their relationships to each other and their motivations. I felt like the films were made for people who already knew everything that was going on. There were endless conversations that appeared to be about nothing. Nearly 50% of the films were slow motions shots of, again, nothing. The entire thing was a painfully long "wtf" moment. I didn't care who lived or died and there were no feelings of loss or triumph. The closest thing to emotion I felt was the scene with the "who said it would be a man" bit. Anyway, if the books are actually good, they should do a Game of Thrones style series where proper time is taken to establish the characters and why things are happening. I'll never watch another LotR movie again.

TBH, that extra stuff was a good idea

[Anonymous Coward]

WHY did Gandalf (who could have solved the Mirkwood problem easy peasy) leave? It's the big thing with the book that screams "DEUS EX MACHINA!!!!". Doing something on the backstory was 100% fine. It was ALWAYS an immersion breaker in the Hobbit.

Even putting Radaghast in was, well, OK. And Legolas at least believable *if he was merely "there" as a walk-on*

What wasn't OK was Gothmog, the stone giants (twice over), the surfing inside the Misty Mountains, Dick jokes making Elven lass knickers explode with quim juice.

it could have made two decent (not great, but decent) movies of normal length or even a little longer. 5-6 hours tops.

They could have done better with a miniseries ABOUT hobbits. All the bits that purported to be from the Red Book of Took, all the bits in the Appendix of both books. If they tried now, nobody would bother until it came out on DVD at cut price.

Re:Book

[MoarSauce123]

I had exactly the same thought. No matter which director, a boring script/book is just that....boring.

Instead of improvising, just use the actual book

[jbssm]

Perhaps Jackson, instead of having so much trouble improvising, could just have sticked to the actual book, make only one movie and cut those stupid add ons he put there like that absurd romance between the dwarf and the elf.

But no, poor Jackson entered the project in the middle and since he didn't knew what to do, instead of using the actua source for all the material - aka the original novel - decided to come up is some half assed Hollywood ideias that ruined the film.

Sure, Peter, I really feel for you bro.

That's not why...

[sbaker]

You take a 1000 page story for adults - keep 100% faithful to the original story - spread it over three episodes - and it's great.

You take a 200 page story for children - market it to adults, rewrite half of it, kludge in new characters - stretch it over three episodes - and it sucks.

Why are we looking for deeper reasons?

Re:That's not why...

[Jastiv]

I agree. The whole movie was filled with added plot filler and pointless action scenes. I feel it should have been only one or two movies. I did manage to sit through it, but I was sorely disappointed after the big lord of the rings movies. I just feel like they didn't know how to write the book and tried to add too much to it. I also felt they dragged things out way to much. It could have been better done as two movies rather than three movies, more characterization of the main characters and less added action scenes.

Re:Book

[tehcyder]

Yeah, really... If you're going to do a trilogy, make it a good one

That's a great trilogy, but great books do not generally translate to great movies, as there is simply too much that you have to lose in the translation.

The reason that Lord of the Rings works well as a movie is that it is not great literature to begin with. It's not bad, it's just minor literature in the same way that PG Wodehouse or Agatha Christie are, both of whom also translate well to the small or large screen.

Re:Guess what?

[tehcyder]

I thought the movies were really good. I never understand the people who don't like movies. Haters on The Hobbit. Haters on Star Wars. These were entertaining. That's why I go to the movies. To be entertained. They succeeded.

So you don't think there is any real differentiation between movies at all? They're all just a bit of harmless fun?

Alvin and the Cunting Chipmunks is just as good as Pulp Fiction?

Re:message to all the lord of the rings NERDS

[tehcyder]

What's a "fagget"?

What the GP is simultaneously afraid of and excited by.

Re:Book

[cwsumner]

I had exactly the same thought. No matter which director, a boring script/book is just that....boring.

"Boring" is not something that happens to you from outside, it is something that you do to yourself. It is a choice. 8-)

Children's book - Murderfest

[AugstWest]

My kids, now 7 and 8, have heard the Hobbit twice now. They love it, it's one of their favorite books.

I was SO pumped to have a good, new version of it in movie form to show them, but unfortunately, they still haven't seen it, because it turned into a WWE/UFC wet dream somehow.

Sure, there are battles in the book, but the movies were pure gorefests. It's more violent than the Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

I'll never understand Hollywood.

Re:a better cut available? anybody remix this thin

[AugstWest]

There are several edits of it floating around, but none of them can save it.

I watched 3 of them hoping to find a version I could actually show my children, who loved the book, but no luck.

Re:a better cut available? anybody remix this thin

[UnknownSoldier]

> Fan edits like the DeZionIzed matrix, the LOST miniseries, and Phantom Edit have been stellar improvements over the official releases.

Agreed! Fans have done an amazing job.

1. Anyone have a link to a high quality version to these? Particularly The Phantom Edit ? (It has been years since I've seen it.)

This is a low quality link :-(
* http://www.dailymotion.com/vid...

2. I would also add:

Star Wars I-III: A Phantom Edit *1080p*
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...