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[Epic Movie] The Hobbit: Part 1 (coming December 2012)

Discussion in 'BBS Hangout' started by dmc89, Apr 1, 2011.

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ROXTXIA Member

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bobmarley said: ↑

I read on r/TIL, that Tolkien based the dwarves on Jews.
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Ah, well. Tolkien among the Henry Fords and the Mel Gibsons of the world, ay?

Guess Gimli could've squeezed in next to those hook-nosed fiends of the Sanhedrin in their flashy gold-hemmed robes from "Passion of the Christ" (hated this movie, btw): SAVE BARABBAS! KILL JESUS!

Yeah, Tolkien's worldview was very pro-Anglo Saxon (Men) pro-Nordic (Elves). He taught Anglo-Saxon lit, if I remember right.

#261 ROXTXIA, Dec 13, 2012

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dmc89 said: ↑

Ah I'm a little let down by this.

When I started this thread and saw that they were making more than one movie, I was skeptical that it could match or surpass LOTR. Apparently this movie follows the mood of the book by being silly and lighthearted versus the dark, epic, and somber tone that pervades LOTR.
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It is a lot funnier than LOTR but still manages to get somber and epic at times.

Most of the funny lines in LOTR were given to Gimili a dwarf and with a movie mostly about dwarves it seems natural for Peter Jackson thing to amp up the humor. One of the funnier moments is comparing dwarf culture versus elf culture when they sit down for dinner in Rivendell. Also Radagast is used quite a bit for comic relief.

Hollywood loves to squeeze as much as juice as they can from a franchise even if it hurts the movie i.e. Indiana Jones 4, Jaws, Star Wars, etc. To use an expression from LOTR, "butter being scrapped over too much bread." I still have faith that PJ can make a quality Tolkien movie even with splitting one book into multiple parts and making up his own material. By this weekend, I'll know if that faith was misplaced.
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Don't get me wrong but I did enjoy the movie but it did seem to drag at parts and the plot tying it to the LOTR seemed forced at some parts. This is also just the first installment where they get a lot of back story out of the way so it may pick up later.

#262 rocketsjudoka, Dec 13, 2012
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ArtV said: ↑

I am so old. My son said his Hobbit ticket cost him $18...for a movie (3D)!?! I think the last movie I paid for was $7 and it wasn't a matinee. I had a friend that took his kids to a 3D movie, popcorn and cokes recently...$88. wth.
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I saw it in 3d with the 48 frames per second. It took me awhile to get used to it and was feeling queasy at first but after awhile it looked pretty good.

Even better I got to see it for free and got a large drink and popcorn thrown in!

[Cool story brah]This has been a great week for freebees for me. On Sunday got to see the Vikings' Chicago game in a suite with all food and drink comped. Tuesday booked a flight to Houston for free. Wednesday got to see the Hobbit for free!:grin: [/Cool story]

#263 rocketsjudoka, Dec 13, 2012
rocketsjudoka Member

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ROXTXIA said: ↑

Ah, well. Tolkien among the Henry Fords and the Mel Gibsons of the world, ay?

Guess Gimli could've squeezed in next to those hook-nosed fiends of the Sanhedrin in their flashy gold-hemmed robes from "Passion of the Christ" (hated this movie, btw): SAVE BARABBAS! KILL JESUS!

Yeah, Tolkien's worldview was very pro-Anglo Saxon (Men) pro-Nordic (Elves). He taught Anglo-Saxon lit, if I remember right.
Click to expand...

Tolkien is borderline racist. The heroic Men of the West and the elves are all tall white people, Aryan ubermensch in the case of the Riders of Rohan and high elves. The Hobbits are English everyfolk. The dwarves are wandering Jews.

The Hobbit starts out with the story of how greedy the dwarves are that led to their downfall.

.

While the bad men that sided with Sauron and Morgoth are described as being short, swarthy, with yellow skin and slanted eyes as in the case of the Easterlings. In the case of the Southrons they are described as being black of skin. In the LOTR the actors and extras that play the Easterlings and Southrons are probably played by Maori from NZ.

#264 rocketsjudoka, Dec 13, 2012
percicles Member

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I wanna hear from some one who doesn't think TLOTR trilogy is the GOAT or who doesn't lick Peter Jackson j*zz off his scrotum. Because from what I've read, this sh-t drags like a European art film minus the art.

#265 percicles, Dec 13, 2012
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^ I'm not a LOTR freak. I'll tell you after this weekend. I will see it in 3D 48FPS with my daughters but I can assure you I am not this kind of freak that's slobbering over a movie.

Anyone have free tickets or at least one for tonight (it's a school night, I'd go by myself!) they can spare this non-US-born Mexican? :grin:

#266 SwoLy-D, Dec 13, 2012
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bobmarley said: ↑

The Hobbit was written before WWII and is lighter overall. There are also more dwarves then in LOTR.

LOTR was written after WWII and Tolkien drew a lot of his writing from the experiences he had during the war.

I read on r/TIL, that Tolkien based the dwarves on Jews.
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Tolkein fought in WWI as an infantryman. I doubt his experiences in Oxford during WWII were darker than that.

#267 StupidMoniker, Dec 13, 2012

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ArtV said: ↑

I am so old. My son said his Hobbit ticket cost him $18...for a movie (3D)!?! I think the last movie I paid for was $7 and it wasn't a matinee. I had a friend that took his kids to a 3D movie, popcorn and cokes recently...$88. wth.
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Seriously. Well, demand for movies is at an all-time high, which is weird considering we're still in a recovery. Credit the 90's gen. who grew up on Disney which have a theater going culture. It just seems that, as hard as money is to earn, people don't mind spending it all on a trip.

#268 Dei, Dec 13, 2012
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percicles said: ↑

I wanna hear from some one who doesn't think TLOTR trilogy is the GOAT or who doesn't lick Peter Jackson j*zz off his scrotum. Because from what I've read, this sh-t drags like a European art film minus the art.
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just came back from the theater

it did drag on for a lot of parts

Thought it was well made and all, liked some of the plot, but sooo many damn parts didn't need to be the length they were.

#269 apollo33, Dec 14, 2012
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I was fully torqued throughout the movie. Can't wait to see it in IMAX 48 fps this sunday.

#270 Convictedstupid, Dec 14, 2012
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****ing INCREDIBLE. I didn't feel it drag at all. 48fps is a gamechanger and the new gold standard for 3D. Crisp, magnificent, beautiful.

#271 Keyser Soze, Dec 14, 2012
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Keyser Soze said: ↑

****ing INCREDIBLE. I didn't feel it drag at all. 48fps is a gamechanger and the new gold standard for 3D. Crisp, magnificent, beautiful.
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Did the 48fps look like a soap opera? The first demo received negative reviews but that's because it wasn't polished. How did this final version look?

#272 dmc89, Dec 14, 2012
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apollo33 said: ↑

sooo many damn parts didn't need to be the length they were.
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That's what Galadriel said! :grin:

#273 SwoLy-D, Dec 14, 2012

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Been reading several reviews. Seems my fears were justified. The Hobbit is a simple and fun movie like the book was. It is entertaining rather than epic and sweeping. Casual moviegoers will enjoy it.

Although visually amazing, it does not provide the same depth of 'spiritual' and mental escapism that LOTR did. Trying to make 3 movies from a short book was done for money; the LOTR had over a thousand pages which is why the movies were so rich.

48 fps criticism has not changed. I will be watching this in 2D the first time. It's too risky watching a new story with a new technology. Only one variable should change at a time. Toning down my expectations heavily for this weekend so I don't get disappointed having waited for 5 years.

This is a good "negative review" I came across:

All great stories deserve a little embellishment." So says Gandalf the Grey (Ian McKellen) in the most telling line in The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, Peter Jackson's return to the world of JRR Tolkien. It's a line that clearly outlines Jackson and his co-writers' intentions, yet it comes off as a veiled apology, as if the film-making team knew that what they have created is going to be problematic for die-hard Middle Earth fans. Sadly, Jackson's new film doesn't come close to silencing the skeptics like his Lord of the Rings films did, and is actually more ill-conceived than expected.

Things that do work well for the most part in The Hobbit are sequences that come directly from the source novel. Iconic scenes, such as the arrival of the dwarfs at Bag End or the encounter with the trolls are handled pretty well, despite being padded out to unnecessary lengths with lame gags and pointless alteration of the original events in the book. Juggling such a massive primary cast is obviously a challenge, and as such the film's best moments involve only one or two characters, with Bilbo's (Martin Freeman) meeting of Gollum (Andy Serkis) and the finding of the ring being a particular stand-out sequence, the only one that seemed like it could have used more time.

However, all of the good work that Jackson & Co do with the direct source material is swamped by the content they felt they had to develop themselves. The great achievement of the LOTR films is how they managed to distill the huge source novels to their most important story beats, only hinting at most of the wider story in a way that brought incredible richness to the world in which they take place. With The Hobbit though, Jackson only has a 300 page novel to start with, and the decision to make three lengthy films, I assume to parallel the first trilogy, is precisely why this first film doesn't work.

The Hobbit should be allowed to stand alone as its own film, but it is structured in such a way, almost identically to the first LOTR entry The Fellowship of the Ring, that it's all but impossible not to compare them. As a side-effect, the much lighter tone will be jarring for a lot of established franchise fans, the very people the film seems to be primarily aimed at. The chase sequence in the goblin tunnels for example is little more than an updated version of the Moria scenes from LOTR. It's exciting enough, but much of the action feels in service of the film- making technology on display rather than the story, and as such none of the stakes of the earlier films are built here.

Where the LOTR films had to keep moving at such a pace to fit everything in, The Hobbit dwells on unnecessary moments which had only the briefest of mentions in the novel to reach its 2 hour 49 minute runtime. Most damaging are the call backs linking the previous trilogy, setting up what is likely to be an almost completely new story bridge between the two trilogies in the third film due in 2014. There is absolutely no reason for Frodo (Elijah Wood), Saruman (Christopher Lee), and Galadriel (Cate Blanchett) to appear in this story, yet here they are, taking us away from a perfectly good narrative about a quest to fight a dragon. It reeks of cynical franchise care, and arguably disrespectful to the carefully crafted world that Tolkien created.

There's a good movie somewhere in The Hobbit, and had Jackson shown more restraint we might have seen it. The film could easily lose at least 45 minutes, but it feels as if director feels so beholden to his previous work that he needs to deliver an epic on the scale of LOTR. But that's not what this book is, and we're left with an uneasy balance - the lighter tone to distinguish this as a separate story but a strict adherence to the LOTR structure - but ultimately doesn't fulfill either side.
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#274 dmc89, Dec 14, 2012
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Is HFR 3D non IMAX at Edwards? My friends want to catch star trek prologue but i really wanted to see it in HFR!

#275 Han Solo, Dec 14, 2012
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never mind just found out.

#276 Han Solo, Dec 14, 2012
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This is a list of theaters with 48 fps for Houston that I found at http://www.studiodaily.com/2012/11/here-are-the-theaters-showing-the-hobbit-at-48fps/

Gulf Pointe 30 with IMAX (Houston, TX 77089)

Greenway Grand Palace Stadium 24 & RPX (Houston, TX 77027)

Houston Marq*e Stadium 22 + IMAX (Houston, TX 77024)

Tinseltown 22 + XD (The Woodlands, TX 77380)

First Colony 24 with IMAX (Sugar Land, TX 77479)

Studio 30 Houston (Houston, TX 77063)

Silverado 19 IMAX (Tomball, TX 77375)

Cinemark 18 + XD (Webster, TX 77598)

Deerbrook 24 (Humble, TX 77338)

Cinemark 19 + XD (Katy, TX 77449)

Willowbrook 24 (Houston, TX 77064)

#277 morpheus133, Dec 14, 2012
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dmc89 said: ↑

Did the 48fps look like a soap opera? The first demo received negative reviews but that's because it wasn't polished. How did this final version look?
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The first 10 minutes takes some getting used to, but when you adjust it's breathtaking. The action scenes look glorious and it's truly the future. If you're on the fence about it, take the chance and see it in HFR.

#278 Keyser Soze, Dec 14, 2012

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Keyser Soze said: ↑

****ing INCREDIBLE. I didn't feel it drag at all. 48fps is a gamechanger and the new gold standard for 3D. Crisp, magnificent, beautiful.
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What are some more positives?

Any negatives?

#279 ROXTXIA, Dec 14, 2012
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ArtV said: ↑

I am so old. My son said his Hobbit ticket cost him $18...for a movie (3D)!?! I think the last movie I paid for was $7 and it wasn't a matinee. I had a friend that took his kids to a 3D movie, popcorn and cokes recently...$88. wth.
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i really don't know how a middle income family of 4 or more can afford to go to the movies more than once a year, especially during evening times.

#280 macalu, Dec 14, 2012

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