Empire Gives The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug FIVE Stars!

[Dandontdare]

Finally got to see this last night. It was great fun but way too long - I kept mentally editing it in my head, cutting out or reducing scenes left right and centre - for example, [spoiler]when we go back to Tauriel and Legolas by the riverbank long after the dwarves have gone[/spoiler] - a totally pointless scene that adds nothing (except another five minutes) to the film.

I don't object in principle to adding extra scenes - [spoiler]in fact, my favourite bit of the whole movie was Gandalf and Radagast's visit to the Necromancer's tower - but the whole Tauriel subplot and the dwarves running around Erebond lighting furnaces and dodging Smaug was unnecessary. it made for a nice big set piece, but was undermined by the fact that the dragon simply shook off the molten gold.[/spoiler]

That scene also suffered from the same problem as the Goblin caves section of the first film - when the party appear to be magically invulnerable acrobats who can survive huge falls with no injuries, it removes a lot of the peril. Similarly with Legolas leaping around on people's heads and shooting rapid fire arrows, you never get the impression that he's in any danger.

There was a whole lot to like though - Laketown and it's inhabitants were beautifully realised (though Fry was a bit too Fry, if you know what I mean); Freeman is a perfect Bilbo and the dragon was absolutely awesome.

As for the technology, I don't know it was the High Frame Rate, the 3D or the amount of CGI, but at numerous points I had the disconcerting feeling I was watching a very well made animation. In bits with no fantasy elements, just the characters the HFR made it look like a TV picture.

I enjoyed this far more than the first film, but I worry about the third - I can't really remember there being much left to the story, certainly not enough for a full 3 hour movie.

[I, Cosh]

Finally sort of half watched this while cat-sitting the other night.

Good bits:
- Smaug (and I guess the drawn out finale worked a lot better in context than the goblin chase in the first one)
- the sexy elf

Bad bits:
- everything else

[Skullmo]

So was empire right to give it 5 stars?

[radiator]

Haha. I think, despite the money they made, the almost complete lack of impact the Hobbit movies have had on the public consciousness and how quickly they were forgotten relative to the Rings trilogy speaks volumes.

I ended up watching Battle of The Five Armies when it was on HBO a while back, and I honestly couldn't believe what I was watching. Not just a bad film, I think it's an actual travesty. Was Bilbo even in that one?

It's weird - I adore the LotR films - but every (cliched) complaint levelled at them over the years - that they're ponderous, pompous, self-indulgent, interminable and they're a crass bastardisation of Tolkein - I actually find to be a fair assessment of the Hobbit trilogy. They started weak with Unexpected Journey, but each one after that was an order of magnitude worse. How they took that timeless children's book and turned it into.... whatever the hell TBotFA was.... I'll never understand.

[The Enigmatic Dr X]

Got all three Hobbit extended editions and things like this thread mean I cannot bring myself to watch them.

Will it really be a wasted half-day of my life?

[GordonR]

The fact that Jackson admitted not so long ago that - while LotR was a labour of love years in the planning - he was basically winging it all the way through the filming of The Hobbit says just about everything you need to know about his dedication to the films.

But you do still get to laugh at Orlando Bloom's backwards career progression, so that's something.

[Tiplodocus]

I blow hot and cold about them.

There's much to dislike but also a lot of fun to be had if in right frame of mind.

What they are definitely NOT is an adaption of the book or anything that approached the level of LOTR films. Smaug definitely best of the lot.

My advice is to break it up into six two hour chunks over a couple of weekends and treat it like a tv series.

[Magnetica]

Personally I found all three films to be extremely slow and to be frank a bit boring.

But to be fair they were starting from way back in my estimation as the Hobbit is possibly my least favourite book of all time ( to me  each chapter has a completely random set of events unrelated to what had previously happened, until the end but by then I had lost interest ).

As with some other films I have seen, elements that are added on that aren't in the book leave me cold as they are not fundamental to the plot. But the Hobbit films take that further and don't just have events that are not in the book but characters that were not in the book -I guess just so "star" actor from LoTR can make an appearance.

[shaolin_monkey]

I found all of Jackson's LOTR stuff turgid, dull nonsense, but the Hobbit particularly so.  I enjoyed all the books as a youngster, particularly The Hobbit, but found the film's constant shoehorning in of 'new' stuff entirely tedious.

Talking of tedious, I saw 'Fellowship' when it came out in the cinema originally, with one of my now-exes. During the scene almost at the end where Sam piles into the river to be dragged out of the water by Frodo, I glanced over at my then-partner.  She was crying her eyes out.

I leaned over, and asked her if she was ok, thinking she was swept up in the emotion of the moment.

'Oh god, please let it end' she sobbed 'I'm so fucking bored!'

That is the one and only time I have ever seen anyone literally bored to tears!!   

[TordelBack]

I'm fascinated to re-read my own immediate gushing reaction on this thread. Suffice to say the way everything concluded in Part 3 was not as satisfying as I had hoped, and my feelings about Part 2 have suffered considerably in retrospect. I do still like most of the'new stuff', but there was very little eventual payoff for any of it.

[radiator]

The answer, of course, is that The Hobbit, with it's somewhat episodic and rambling nature, needed - like LotR - considerable cutting down and streamlining to pare it down for one solid movie, not the opposite - stuffing it with so much bloat that the light and breezy original spirit of the story is crushed to death in the process.

Jackson certainly took liberties with Rings, but he took the piss with The Hobbit. The things they added - especially the dwarf/elf romance, the truly ridiculous fight scenes, the endless cheap and contrived peril, cgi Billy Connolly - were so bad as to be genuinely laughable. What the hell were they thinking?

They're not as bad as the Star Wars prequels, but not by much imho.

I still contend that the trend for outrageously over the top, videogamey action scenes in movies (of which the Hobbit trilogy is probably the most egregious example) just needs to stop, and I'm hoping it's an awkward phase that is quickly grown out of. Spectacle for spectacle's sake with little regard for the laws of physics is fine in videogames, but action in cinema needs to be more relatable and primarily be anchored in character to be engaging and memorable.

I see they've just announced a box set collecting all six films with an rrp of $800. 

Dragon sickness, indeed.

[TordelBack]

I'd contend that little enough of the original story - the children's fantasy tale about Bilbo Baggins - survives into the 2nd and 3rd movies that it really isn't even a loose adaptation in the way the LotR movies are. I just can't see movie Bilbo as the same character, and his story is essentially lost along with most of Mirkwood.

For a while the Thorin and the Dwarves of Erebor story was being fleshed out in a satisfying way instead, and then that just sort of stopped in the 3rd one too, with a pretty dull exploration of Thorin's 'madness'. The massive expansion of Bard and the Master was entertaining enough, I actually loved the Kili and Tauriel romance, Legolas was ghastly but Thranduil was great, the White Council abd the Necromancer were okay, Radagast and Beorn started out very strong but ended up inconsequential.

I find myself in the odd position of mostly regretting that there wasn't more of the good stuff (Balin and Bofur, for example), and that all the various expansions had solid conclusions. If you had to cut an hour of acrobatics out of each movie to do that, I wouldn't mind.

[DrRocka]

Look for "The Hobbit: Tolkien Edit" online. A fan has re-edited the trilogy so it's basically the book, omitting all of Jackson's extra excesses, and it's an excellent version, just as good as LOTR.