The Hobbit Trilogy (Peter Jackson, 2012-2014)

[Mr Sausage]

Wasn't The Hobbit him rewriting Beowulf (from a different vantage point)? Where else did he do that?

Both Hobbit and LOTR are versions of Beowulf and the Volsunga saga. I mean, just the Ring aspect alone is a rewriting of the Sigurd/Sigfried cycle (Der Ring des Nibelungen, anyone?).

[jindianajonz]

Your friend is a little misinformed, as are most people. Only the first two films are adapted from The Hobbit (hence the second being called The Desolation of Smaug, which is essentially the end event of the book), with the third film being a translation of some most interesting appendices Tolkien wrote to coincide with The Lord of the Rings.

I don't think it's quite that clear cut- from what I've heard, they are splitting their originally planned first movie into two (everything through chapter 14 of the book, as listed in the article you linked) and the previous second movie will remain the third movie. The bits from the appendices will augment the stories here and there, but I haven't seen anything to indicate this augmentation will only occur in the third film, let alone make up the entirety of the third film.

The big side story I've heard of that will be included is Gandalf's pursuit of "the Necromancer," which took place at the same time Bilbo was going on his adventure. It doesn't make much sense to largely cut one of the biggest characters in the franchise out of the first two movies, follow that plot to it's completion, then come back with a third that says "Meanwhile, at the same time as those last two movies...." It would make a lot more sense to just cut back and forth between the two stories in order to make sure chronological continuity is preserved.

[rs98762001]

Wasn't The Hobbit him rewriting Beowulf (from a different vantage point)? Where else did he do that?

Both Hobbit and LOTR are versions of Beowulf and the Volsunga saga. I mean, just the Ring aspect alone is a rewriting of the Sigurd/Sigfried cycle (Der Ring des Nibelungen, anyone?).

"What's Opera, Doc" did it better in six and a half minutes.

[Adam]

The issue is that The Hobbit, to me, is clearly a kid's book, even with the narrator's voice directly addressing the young reader. LotR supplementary material, and LotR, is teen/adult material. So I can't imagine it will remain as a kid's movie.

I personally don't find LotR, books or films, to be too long at all. Maybe not long enough. But The Hobbit, the film series, might well be too long.

[Jeff]

Jen Yamato declares 48 FPS dead on arrival

[David M.]

HD TV did look rather freaky at first, I'll give him that, and there's a shared quality of too much visual information that The Hobbit's 48 fps shares with high-def television.

Too much visual information? Sounds like someone needs to take their TV out of torch mode?

[knives]

Wasn't The Hobbit him rewriting Beowulf (from a different vantage point)? Where else did he do that?

Both Hobbit and LOTR are versions of Beowulf and the Volsunga saga. I mean, just the Ring aspect alone is a rewriting of the Sigurd/Sigfried cycle (Der Ring des Nibelungen, anyone?).

Derr, I should have understood that was what you were thinking.

[Brian C]

Too much visual information? Sounds like someone needs to take their TV out of torch mode?

My dear fellow, there are in fact only so many pixels the eye can see in the course of an evening. I think I'm right in saying that, aren't I?

[CSM126]

I've never much cared for Tolkien, but I was curious about the High Frame Rate, and since I live near theaters that are equipped to project 48fps, I decided to go for it. It's certainly very interesting - the amount of detail, and the general fluidity of motion are rather astonishing, almost frightening at first since the mind isn't used to seeing such things on a movie screen. There are a few moments early on where you get that Benny Hill effect - old Bilbo moves like he's on fast forward for some reason - but most of the movie is very natural-looking in terms of motion. I must also say, the CGI monsters are astonishingly realistic. I don't know if the 48fps speed has anything to do with it, but every CGI monster is just stunningly vivid and never once do they look like CGI. They look like real, physical presences in front of the camera, particularly Gollum, who is fleshy rather than plastic-looking for once. The substantial added vividness of the high speed presentation helps the 3D a lot, too. Most 3D movies suffer from being too dark thanks to the Buddy Holly glasses you have to wear, but The Hobbit retains most of it's brightness quite well. I took the glasses off a couple times just to compare the brightness with and without, and the difference was minute. As a result, the 3D effects are crisper, more detailed and generally more realistic than they even have been in other movies.

The big downside for me is the other special effects - the CGI scenery, the blue screens and even the costumes. They're all awful. The blue screen shots suffer from the classic "haloing" effect, where you can see an obvious seam around the actors' outlines. Right off the bat in the opening minutes there's a particularly awful shot where Gandalf first appears, stepping in front of the credits. Giant blue halo right in youir face, in 3D and in startling clarity. Looked like something out of a direct-to-video movie with atrocious chroma keying. The CGI landscapes are very plastic-looking and sometimes just look like matte paintings hanging a couple feet behind the actors. Wigs, beards, and Hobbit ears are all obviously fake-looking and frankly hokey. I assume the costumers and make up people were not prepared for the level of detail the film would hold.

Finally, I have to say that the movie on the whole has a decidely cheap look to it - it looks on par with a PBS special. The sets and costumes just don't seem to have as much detail in them as they used to, and with the enhanced brightness and contrast combined with digital photography, the film generally looks like what you'd see on Daytime TV (some people have already coined the term "the soap effect"). I also noticed that anytime fire is on screen it has that blown-out look that you get on video, where the area around the flame is just a blurry blob of white. I think some tweaking or enhancement of the lighting and the brightness/contrast settings of the cameras and digital workflow could help this, but I also think shooting on film would improve it as well. The sheen of grain would add some texture to an otherwise very smooth image, and might give it an at least slightly more theatrical feel.

So in the end, I can see the potential of High Frame Rate, but I can also see that there's a long way to go. I'm curious as to how it will work for James Cameron's new Avatar movies - if the higher speed really is responsible for the improvement of the CGI characters, then maybe the Navi will finally look somewhat realistic instead of like smurf cartoons - and I'm also curious to see if anyone starts projecting 2D in the high speed, because that would be of interest also. As far as I can tell, 2D showings of the Hobbit are only in the altered 24fps version.

[Brian C]

There are a few moments early on where you get that Benny Hill effect - old Bilbo moves like he's on fast forward for some reason - but most of the movie is very natural-looking in terms of motion.

I work at a movie theater, and - I swear this is true - we had a complaint that we were showing the movie in fast forward.

Finally, I have to say that the movie on the whole has a decidely cheap look to it - it looks on par with a PBS special. The sets and costumes just don't seem to have as much detail in them as they used to, and with the enhanced brightness and contrast combined with digital photography, the film generally looks like what you'd see on Daytime TV (some people have already coined the term "the soap effect").

"Soap opera effect" is a term that has been in use for several years now among HDTV enthusiasts to describe the effect of watching new TVs with all the (usually default) motion enhancement settings turned on.

I think you're dead right about the look of the movie. It's all designed, shot and lit so artlessly that, for example, the caves under Misty Mountain where Bilbo and Gollum meet look like queues for the lines of a Hobbit ride at Disney world. Even in the 24fps 2D version, the artifice is all too apparent. There are also weird continuity problems - one action sequence starts in the woods, only to suddenly have the action inexplicably transferred to a big open plain, only for the characters to slide down a hole onto Rivendell's doorstep in a big valley of which there's no sign of before they get there. Or later, the characters scramble out into the daylight to escape from goblins, only for it to instantaneously turn to nighttime. It's like Ocarina of Time up in there.

And then there's the adaptation itself, which is clumsy as can be. Even knowing (and liking) the book, the story seemed arbitrary and pointless to me, and seemed at times to be little more than a series of winks to the fans of the LOTR movies. The decision to frame the story as an LOTR prequel makes some sense as a marketing gesture, I guess, but seems unnecessary in the film itself and really keeps the movie from getting going. Jackson manages to tell the story of Smaug's takeover of Eredor, what, three times? It's just tedious screenwriting, to make us sit through this kind of stuff, and Jackson deserves all the crap he's getting for making a bloated mess.

I could go on, but I hardly see the point. The whole thing seemed rather inept to me.

[tenia]

I'm quite sure that the HFR combined with the choice to choose CGI monsters instead of extras in costume and make-up is what makes The Hobbit looks so cheap.

I was especially surprised by the sequence with the Trolls (who look absolutely dreadful), and also Radagast sled (the Fast-forward HFR effect turns it hilariously kitsch), but the escape from the Gobelins cave just looks like a God of War 3 cut scene.

Dreadful.

At the end of the movie, I felt it was a complete visual step back.

[Noiretirc]

...(same guys, naturally, who were saying exactly the same thing about Pink Floyd's 'The Wall' a year or so later).

I'm desperate to make a relevant joke about the much shorter (and better) Final Cut which followed, but alas....

[Finch]

I'm glad I've seen the High Frame Rate screening. Personally I think it has potential but it'll need a few more attempts from filmmakers to get it right. First film shot in 48fps so no surprise that it looks inconsistent. Landscape shots look very good (except for the exterior shots in the Shire) but scenes shot on set have a look to them that resembles video much more than film. I did get used to it eventually and there were moments where the presentation gave me a "you are there" feeling but I reckon it'll be up to other filmmakers to turn HFR into a game-changer. The film itself, you ask? I think it's a disaster, and much of it is to do with how they approached this adaptation. The Hobbit as a book is an entirely different thing to the Lord of The Rings: there is much less at stake and the book is only a couple hundred pages long. A disciplined director & screenwriter would have taken the book and turned out a script that gets all the essentials in 120-130 mins, an extra 20 mins at a stretch. Jackson is so full of himself that he stretches the first third of the book to an agonisingly long three hours with stuff from the Appendices of the later novel, adding characters and subplots that have no business of being in The Hobbit and that stop the story dead in its tracks over and over again. The film is dead on arrival with 2 prologues it doesn't need, spends nearly an hour that feels like an eternity before it even leaves the Shire and then wastes more time on things like Radagast the Brown and the Necromancer only so that an originally slight and fun story feels like a proper prequel. To think that in order to fill another 6 hours across 2 more films they'll add more unnecessary detours.. urgh! The only scene I sort of liked was the Riddles in The Dark although I'm so tired of Andy Serkis' shit by now. And Cate Blanchett with her slooooow delivery. Even allowing for the fact that I just don't dig Tolkien anymore, Hobbit 1 is a crushing bore. Peter Jackson hasn't been good at his job since and including Return of the King. Dude needs to get an editor that's candid with him. Best film of his is still Heavenly Creatures.

[Niale]

I dont get why everyone is so hard on this movie. Its kind of nice that every problem in the film is not a end of the world, fend off a million foes, nerve fraying catastrophe. And when the film does ascend to those pitches, it does not just drown the cgi action figures in scale and peril, they actual fight their way out! Where as in the previous films, it was just a lot of decapitation intercuts and then back to a big super wide shot... And then comes the sun, battle over. The troll king battle was the exact opposite of that... Even though the sun was as forgiving as it always is in these films. The wog battle in this one was also really nice, im thinking of the really playful sound mix in particular. Sure this was rather sloppy at times, but it was also a great deal of fun. For me the movie never dragged, when the humor was not very witty, it was almost always well timed. I thought bilbo was a terrific hero, very handsome, great screen presence and his pantomime performance of hesitation's and collision's was delightful. All that being said, I poked my head in a HFR screening and it looked awful. I almost expected to look into the audience and see Alex from a Clockwork Orange getting his eye drops.

[colinr0380]

The film itself, you ask? I think it's a disaster, and much of it is to do with how they approached this adaptation. The Hobbit as a book is an entirely different thing to the Lord of The Rings: there is much less at stake and the book is only a couple hundred pages long. A disciplined director & screenwriter would have taken the book and turned out a script that gets all the essentials in 120-130 mins, an extra 20 mins at a stretch.

It does seem ironic that after it took literally decades to convince a studio that a three volume novel required a three film treatment (even if only for the reason that a one or two film adaptation required newly placed and awkward narrative breaks) that now it seems impossible to suggest that an adaptation of a short, pacey one book novel should perhaps just be one film.

In a strange way, Lord of the Rings would have been a better film to have piled all of the extraneous Silmarillion/Unfinished Tales material and plot diversions onto, since it has that powerful driving through narrative to keep everything held together (which is perhaps why the Return of the King kind of falls apart once the threat is gone and we are left with the many multiple endings involving people hugging each other).

Although of course that kind of material would never have made it into Jackson's original theatrical versions of The Lord of the Rings because of the need to prove that a film adaptation could be a success by highlighting the main narrative and missing out aspects like the early Tom Bombadil encounter, and so on (My father was grumpy at the time that they missed out the Bombadil scene from Fellowship of the Ring but in a careful what you wish for moment it looks as if there are lots of those kinds of scenes piled into The Hobbit!)

The Hobbit just doesn't have that same drive and instead is more of a relaxed lark with slight foreboding hints of what is to come. There are some scary bits with the dragon but nothing too insurmountable or world-shattering (which is one of the reasons why my father let me read it as a young kid!) That's what makes it such a good companion piece/balance to the grander scaled, ambitiously intertwining narrative of LOTR, and that worryingly seems to be the aspect that appears to have been totally missed in this adaptation.

[Finch]

Del Toro might have made a film that, like the original Rings films, would have appealed to non-Tolkien fans, especially if they'd stuck to their original plans and made one film out of the Hobbit and used the Appendices for a film bridging the gap between the Hobbit and the original films, even if such a second film sounds exactly like the sort of tedious lipservice to the fans that The Hobbit as it is now plays out. The Goblin King looks like a creature Del Toro would have (perhaps did) designed and it's about the only memorable design in the film. tenia mentioned the God of War games which came to my mind as well when I saw the Orc character who is after Thorin.

I also felt that more so than in the original films, the dialogue was an awkward mishmash of contemporary lines and Tolkien's dialogue. And considering that it's called The Hobbit, Martin Freeman is ironically side-lined for much of the film. It feels like it's more about the dwarves and even then, you can only sort of distinguish about 4 or 5 of them. Again, a good writer would have been daring and cut the group down to 4 or 5 instead of 13 and given those 5 characters distinct personalities.

edit: the pacing of the first two films felt right to me, especially in the longer cuts. Return of the King was a bloated mess in both cuts, more so in the longer version which made the already hugely flawed thing near unwatchable to me. King Kong took 70 mins to even get to the island (by which time they were back on the mainland in the original!). In a way it feels uncomfortable close to George Lucas: Jackson can add whatever he wants not because it makes sense and strengthens his films but because he simply can.

[Tommaso]

Just back from the cinema, 3D screening but at 24 fps. Apart from the technical questions (the 3D looks horrible every time there's a close-up, but as this was only the second 3D film I've seen - apart from "Pina" - I can't really compare; some of the long shots of course are terrific), the film is a misfire because it at the same time attempts too much and too little. I may be the only person here who would have liked it if Jackson had actually included MORE of the appendices and other material, as this larger scope might have allowed to cut down the far too extended fight scenes. Especially the last hour felt far too overblown given that these fights are actually on a far smaller scale - also in terms of importance - than those in LOTR, but they take on a self-indulgent quality here which doesn't serve the story itself (unlike those in LOTR, where after all the world was at stake).

There's not enough variation, to put it bluntly. I liked the slow beginning because it allows for some characterisation and getting acquainted with the characters, but all in all the film lacks in innovation and truly surprising moments, which of course isn't unexpected given the far less developed character of the source novel. But then again: either stick to the novel and make it a one-film film, or make three films and only use the "Hobbit" book as a kind of 'golden thread' to develop on the history of Middle-Earth in general. But the film as it is can't decide between these two options, and that's why it doesn't really work. But I guess I just want Jackson to have filmed "The Silmarillion" instead.

[Roger Ryan]

The HFR and 3D do no favors to this film. Nothing is added beyond a mild novelty and there are more than a couple of shots that have an ugly strobing/interlace look. Portions of the film look decent enough but only enough that I felt like I was watching something shot on film instead of HD video. Most of the time, I felt like I was watching an installment of some classics of literature program presented by the BBC. Certainly the effects show more of their artifice with the high frame rate (the "fire" effects look especially poor). The 3D often looks post-converted with much of the imagery looking like 2D cutouts.

As to the film itself, it feels like a LOTR "greatest hits" collection by bringing back so many familiar faces and hitting many of the same beats. The structure feels almost the same as FELLOWSHIP OF THE RINGS with its apocalyptic prologue followed by a whimsical shire sequence followed by some mild menace. Then there's a scene in a mountain where Gandalf imparts some wisdom to a hobbit, etc. Nothing felt like it was freshly conceived for this new series. All the same, I thought it was better than I feared. Apart from the fairly interminable shire sequence, all the scenes played at a decent pace and held my interest. Although I can't imagine this story being carried out to five more hours or so.

If I check out the sequels, however, I'm sticking with good old-fashioned 2D at 24 frames a second. That way the films might still hold a little magic for me.

[life_boy]

I quite enjoyed the film, although I understand every objection that has been raised. I didn't mind the long runtime or the thought of future sequels continuing the story so it seems that puts me in a weird minority as a cinephile who enjoyed The Hobbit yet one who is not an all-out Tolkein fan either. I haven't read the book so the whole story is new to me.

I was bogged down a bit in the early Shire sequences because I don't love the Hobbits-being-Hobbits stuff from any of the LOTR films (or here), and even though the stuff with the dwarves imposing on Frodo is played for laughs, I didn't find it particularly amusing. So it goes. I did, however, love the dwarf singing sequence and love the haunting melody that encapsulates, I guess, their quest, and becomes a running theme for Shore later in the film. I don't find Jackson to be particularly complex but I never saw anything that made me feel he was being particularly indulgent either (especially anywhere near the level that he buggered his frustratingly lengthy, yet intriguing (to me, anyway) Kong); I felt here that he had the freedom to build the whole book into a film and was setting out to do just that. I find that to be a good thing for mainstream American cinema, that has so pigeon-holed the 90-120min runtime as the proper length of cinematic storytelling.

This definitely seems to want to tie in more explicitly with the LOTR films than the book 'The Hobbit' likely ever did, but I don't mind that so much. I was ready to watch the other 6 hours of the series at the end of the screening. I wish they weren't delaying the other releases by a whole year, which is something that does feel indulgent, but likely studio-mandated.

One thing that hit me about Jackson attempting something close to a complete adaption is the inclusion of things like

SpoilerShow

the scene of the company on the mountainside in the storm, with the two mountain beings fighting. I loved the majestic beauty and strangeness of an incident like this, that serves no narrative purpose (at least not in The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey) and would likely not be included in a movie were it not in the book to begin with. It gives the sense of a world outside of the main characters, where they can stumble upon this and not impact it in any way by their being near it.

It is probably my favorite scene in the movie and part of what made this movie enjoyable to me.

I did see this in 3D (though not HFR) and was reminded of how little I like seeing 3D movies (it gives me a headache because my eyes like wandering throughout the whole frame). I will definitely see this again at some point and will not bemoan seeing it in 2D. A fun movie.

[zedz]

I must say, it's interesting how many people here are planning on seeing, or have seen, the film in formats other than HFR 3D (for what seem like sound aesthetic reasons), and yet the mantra with every home video release is that we want to see films as the director intended them. It raises the possibility of our overriding 'director's intent' when we disagree with it, or when we think the director's made a big mistake.

(This is, of course, based on the assumption that HFR 3D is Jackson's preferred option, and everything I've heard him say about the film seems to support this.)

[rspaight]

I must say, it's interesting how many people here are planning on seeing, or have seen, the film in formats other than HFR 3D (for what seem like sound aesthetic reasons), and yet the mantra with every home video release is that we want to see films as the director intended them. It raises the possibility of our overriding 'director's intent' when we disagree with it, or when we think the director's made a big mistake.

(This is, of course, based on the assumption that HFR 3D is Jackson's preferred option, and everything I've heard him say about the film seems to support this.)

It's an odd variant on that rule, isn't it? I generally avoid 3D anyway, so I don't feel like avoiding the 3D HFR variant is necessarily any more Jackson-defying. And as long as I don't even have 3D equipment at home (and have no plans to), I'll be OK with 2D/24fps in that arena as well (assuming it's even possible to produce a 48fps experience with current gear -- I suspect it isn't, at least without some sort of pull-down shenanigans that would only work with 1080p sets with a certain minimum refresh rate).

If you took 3D out of the equation and just made it a HFR or 24fps proposition, then things become murkier (the proposition, not the picture!). I absolutely loathe the look of the "motionflow" settings on new LCD TVs, and word so far suggests that HFR is not dissimilar in appearance. "Looking like a cheap video production" is not what I want from my films. If (theoretically) both versions were available without a financial penalty, I'd be willing to give the HFR version a shot since Jackson wants it seen that way. Otherwise, 24fps would be my preference (I don't want to have to buy it again if I don't like the HFR).

Some friends of mine saw the HFR version (I intend to see the 2D version this weekend). He's a computer and tech enthusaist and thought the HFR was great and a must ("you have to get all the frames"), making the action sequences more immersive. She's much more of a cinephile and *hated* HFR. Her observation was that she felt like she was watching a behind-the-scenes featurette. When a CGI character appeared, it was startling and took her out of the movie, because she was unconsciously expecting a guy in a motion capture suit or a tennis ball on a stick. The sets and CGI green-screen work didn't hold up for her in HFR, either.

It'll be interesting to see how this goes.

[Finch]

The CGI does look painfully bad especially in the beginning of the film, and, generally, sets don't look too impressive either. The action, which I found occasionally confusingly shot with little spatial awareness (the fight with the 3 Trolls), did look smoother to me once I got used to the quicker speed. I'm only hoping that I will have choices other than Avatar sequels to see if any filmmaker fully gets to grips with HFR.

[Zot!]

I'm only hoping that I will have choices other than Avatar sequels to see if any filmmaker fully gets to grips with HFR.

You can watch Our Lady of the Assassins or Wassup Rockers if you're a glutton for punishment.

[Mr Sausage]

I must say, it's interesting how many people here are planning on seeing, or have seen, the film in formats other than HFR 3D (for what seem like sound aesthetic reasons), and yet the mantra with every home video release is that we want to see films as the director intended them. It raises the possibility of our overriding 'director's intent' when we disagree with it, or when we think the director's made a big mistake.

(This is, of course, based on the assumption that HFR 3D is Jackson's preferred option, and everything I've heard him say about the film seems to support this.)

In theory, people should see what the director intended. In practise, I go for the version I most enjoy watching.

You can't always match up to your own ideals, I guess.

[MichaelB]

Dial M for Murder is an interesting example - the 3-D process was contractually imposed on Hitchcock, much against his wishes (he made it at a time when Warner Bros were shooting all their major features in 3-D).

So it's possible to argue that in this case the 3-D was simultaneously intended but not wanted - although of course this doesn't necessarily mean that Hitchcock would have favoured the 2-D downconversion: he clearly would have preferred to shoot the film flat from the start.