The Hobbit

[Cainanite (imported)]

Alright, I just came back from the hobbit, and I can tell you, there are no issues with headaches from 48fps. Frankly, I really didn't notice much of a difference between this and any other 3D movie. Though I have to say, the digital creatures like the Goblin King, and Gollum look amazingly real. When you look at Gollum you actually believe he is real. He looks more lifelike than some of the human actors.

The Good:

If you have been craving a return to Middle Earth, you will love this movie. Middle earth looks exactly as we last remembered seeing it. Some movies suffer from film to film where cinematographers change, costume designers change, or simply the director needs to "express himself" and recreate everything from the ground up. The world of The Hobbit is very much the world of The Lord of the Rings. You will feel right at home.

Reprized characters. Ian Holm comes back, and so does Elijah Wood. We see the same people playing Gandalf, Lord Elrond, Lady Galadriel, and even Saruman makes an appearance.

The special effects are simply breathtaking. If you want to be dazzled, this is your movie for the season.

The Bad:

I really wish I didn't have to write this part, but I must. The movie drags in a way the Lord of the Rings movies never did. About half way through I was starting to realize just how uncomfortable my seat was, and I was wishing I could pause it and take a nap. Though the movie tries very hard to keep the action going, by the time the party makes it to Rivendell you just want them to get on with it.

There is a concentrated effort to make a parallel between Aragorn from LotR, and Thorin Oakenshield. Both are displaced kings, forced to live on the fringes of society. Both have murky pasts and great things to overcome. However in The Hobbit, Thorin's story comes across as tacked on. It feels like they are trying too hard to make the parallel. It didn't work for me.

The Middle Ground:

All the cast plays their parts admirably. There was no terrible wooden acting, such as Liv Tyler's performance in LotR. However, there are no standouts either. Passable, but not remarkable.

At times the movie is clearly trying too hard to please, and to provide fan-service. There is even a moment at the end of the film, clearly inserted by Peter Jackson to be a "throwback" to the original film. I do not remember that moment from the book, and it seemed very out of place in the movie.

There are moments in the CGI that look amazing, yet still are clearly fake. In the goblin city for example, they fight on these rickety looking walkways over chasms of certain death. Though it looks completely real, and you cannot point to anything that looks "wrong" the constructions clearly couldn't stand up under their own weight, let alone under the weight of 13 dwarfs, a Hobbit, and an army of goblins. When the whole thing finally collapses, it breaks apart like it was made of matchsticks and straw. There is no sense of weight at all. The fall down the chasm looks more like a ride at Disneyworld, than suggesting any degree of danger.

Because this is a prequel, and we had much of this story explained to us at the beginning of LotR, you lose a lot of the sense of tension. You go in already knowing that it will all work out just fine. All prequels tend to have this problem. This movie is no exception.

The Surprise:

For me, the biggest surprise was that this movie really does have a complete story arc. The ending, though we know there is more to come, felt satisfying. I in no way felt cheated that there is more story waiting to be told. It also didn't end with as big as a cliff-hanger as the first LotR film. This one wrapped up much more neatly.

I also got the feeling that this story is meant to be taken as much more tongue-in-cheek that the other LotR films. It has more fun with itself. It loses some sense of danger or suspense, but it is much more fun. You can clearly see its roots as a children's book. The wizard Radagast the Brown, racing through the forest on his sled pulled by rabbits is a clear example of this. It would make a great image for a children's book, but doesn't really translate to a movie where you are supposed to feel any sense of danger, or even take it seriously.

The Part that Pissed Me Off:

The part where Bilbo meets the trolls who want to eat him. This part was clearly re-written for this movie. The trolls are not in the positions they should be when the sun comes up. In LotR it is clearly shown that all the trolls were around a central point, with one pointing straight down, presumably at Bilbo as they argue over him. In this film, the company of dwarfs and the Hobbit are saved by Gandalf, (I won't say how he does it.) and the trolls try to scatter and find shelter. As they harden into stone, they contort in unbelievable ways, until they are in the positions we saw them in in the previous movies. The way one of them, hunches down and points to the ground for no reason was especially awkward.

Conclusion:

The 3D experience is the biggest reason to see this in the theater. It was some of the best I've seen. That being said, it is not a movie that has to be seen in 3D at all. There was no scene in it that screamed, "This is why we shot it in 3D" The story would be exactly the same if watched on a 2D screen. 3D neither benefits this movie, nor harms it.

The movie was good, but in no way great. Do not look for it to win any awards outside of technical achievements.

My recommendation is to wait for this to come out on DVD or Blu-Ray, and watch it at home. At 2 hours and 45 minutes you really feel its length. You will want to pause it in the middle and take a break from it. The part with Rivendell could have been cut completely. It added nothing to this film at all.

Was I glad I saw it? Yes. Will I see it again? No. At least not in the theater. I'll pick it up on DVD or Blu-Ray as a part of my collection, but it isn't one of the greats.

This movie certainly feels padded. I understand that Peter Jackson added things from the Appendices written by Tolkien himself to bridge the gap between his two works, but they are things that would best be left out. They aren't there in The Hobbit book, because they really don't add anything to the story. Adding them to the movie doesn't really work either.

With what they have, they did very well. However, I cannot understand how they will make three movies out of this. It feels like half of the story has already been told. They are already in sight of The Misty Mountain at the end of this movie. They should just cut to the chase, and finish with one more movie. Part one was already too long to hold my interest in the middle. I don't think I can take much more mindless wandering of Middle Earth to fill the time.

All that remains is to defeat Smaug, and to have the final battle. That is one solid movie if you ask me. Not two.

I really went into this hoping for a lot better than I got. It's not "bad" it just isn't great. Where they failed, was just too obvious for me to take. You may well have fun watching this movie. There were some really good moments in this film. It will be sure to please fans. But that is all this is... Fan Service.

Take my recommendation or leave it.

I give this movie 6 stars out of 10.

[bobover3 (imported)]

Just saw The Hobbit, and I'm in agreement with Cainanite.

[Slammr (imported)]

The Hobbit with an $85 Million opening had the biggest December opening yet.

[Riverwind (imported)]

I read the book 50 years ago or so, from the review and what I remember of the book the movie has not started yet. Maybe I will wait for the readers digest version of the movie, the one where its in one movie not three.......

But we do love our special effects.

Question for those of you who have watched the movie, where exactly did it end?

I just pulled the Hobbit off the shelf, yes I have a copy and Bilbo escapes the goblins at about page 90, but that stands to reason its a three movie set and the book is about 300 pages. WOW.

River

[bobover3 (imported)]

When the movie ends, eagles have rescued the company from orcs and deposited them on a high mountain top. (My thought - "Thanks a lot eagles! It'll take me a day or more to climb down the mountain.") They look out and see Erebor and the Lonely Mountain in the distance - the dwarves' lost home. Everyone looks toward Erebor with longing. In the movie's final shot, we go to Erebor, inside the former treasury of the dwarf kings. There are huge piles of gold. The gold stirs and we see Smaug's eye peering out.

We have yet to meet Beorn or enter Mirkwood or meet the men of Dale.

[Paolo]

So I sort of borrowed this one in AVI format from about 39,800 other users, and watched it...

Damn, I am so glad I didn't waste money on this one.

There is just so much wrong with this movie, in addition to the "bads" that Cainanite listed, that I don't know where to start.

The beginning with Bilbo and Frodo was good. Then the dwarves showed up and it all went to hell.

Then we met Rabastan the Brown Wizard, or whatever his name was, and it just burned up for me.

When the racing rabbits on the sled came in, I was done. Done done done. Never mind the birds pooping all over his head that lived under his hat, or his fancy for eating mushrooms.

Then we have Thorin, mighty Dwarf wannabe-king who always gets his ass whipped and has to have it saved by Bilbo.

The Goblin king? Seriously, with a scrotum for a chin? What the hell was that?

The wargs still look like CGI shit from 1990, too.

And it dragged. God, did it drag!

I can't speak to the 48 fps filming, since I saw a 25 fps AVI rip of a screener, but it ran OK.

Other than the fact that it was just a horrible adaptation.

[calmeilles (imported)]

Forgive me plagiarising myself: I wrote a blog post in response to The Guardian Film Show: The Hobbit and Smashed (http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/video/20 ... shed-video)

Calmeilles 15 December 2012 1:16AM (http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/video/20 ... t-20063285)

I saw The Hobbit this evening.

My first Imax film, my first 3D film and my first high frame rate film.

I thought it was superb.

I really didn't get the you can see the seams splitting on the CGI thing: in fact it is quite certainly the best CGI that I have ever seen. Maybe the clarity of the picture was a bit TV-like, but it was not at all disconcerting and didn't even take any getting used to. As a first experience it really did approach being immersive.

To a degree I also forgot that I was watching a 3D film. Mostly it was just even more real than the interpretation that the brain overlays on 2D. There were moments when it did jar in a "look at me mum, I'm doing 3D" way with things occasionally flying out of the screen but the several times when the party fell down mountains for longer than it took Nigel Pargetter to descend from the roof of Lower Loxley arriving at the bottom to dust themselves off and carry on did more to dampen the suspension of disbelief than anything else.

I was dubious beforehand about the now well publicised interpolation of matter from beyond the confines of the book. But what has been added so far does make sense, particularly if eventually both The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings are to be taken together as an ensemble.

Unlike The Lord of the Rings which had to be cut to get into nine hours (and had other messings around that irritated) here we're clearly getting the whole thing. And that's a good thing.

Despite what's said by the three luminaries above the dwarves were fine. One problem is that most of them are hardly fleshed out as full characters in the book anyway but here we have more individualism. However their introduction, amusing thought it may be, is decidedly with the manner of a children's book but this is not a children's film and the comic turn doesn't quite sit comfortably with what follows. That said Thorin, Fili and Kili can come to dinner here any time they care to!

The reprised roles are fine. I never was convinced by Cate Blanchett, not sufficiently ethereal for Galadriel although I'll freely admit that I don't know who would be. Christopher Lee looks older and should have had stern words with makeup about his beard. Of the new characters Manu Bennett is a wonderfully menacing Orc and you hardly notice Dame Edna at all.

On the whole I think our three reviewers have been distinctly uncharitable about it all. And Henry, get with the plot Tolkien-wise, even if you never do grok morris dancing.

So, what about the next two. Again the spectre of interpolated material raises it's head. There's got to be more of it to fill another 6 hours and one can see what the substance of it will be. I now just hope that it doesn't detract from the reasonably straightforward story of a Hobbit, thirteen Dwarves and a dragon.

[bobover3 (imported)]

In defense of the movie, it faithfully reproduces a flaw in Tolkien's original. In one of his prefaces, Tolkien said he began The Hobbit as an entertainment for his children. The tale eventually "grew in the telling." There's a marked change in style and tone within the book, which can be off-putting. When it begins, The Hobbit is clearly a children's book. The sentences are relatively short and simple, the vocabulary relatively basic (for Tolkien). More important, the book starts with a whimsical tone, the sort of thing found in The Wind in the Willows or Winnie the Pooh. Bilbo's perplexity at the arrival of Gandalf and the dwarves is the gag that frames the opening - perhaps Tolkien's one attempt at humor - and the movie reproduces it more or less accurately. As the book progresses, the mood becomes more and more serious, the language more and more mature. By the time of Bilbo's encounter with Gollum, we are in a different place, both literally and figuratively. Jackson surely conceived the three Hobbit movies as a whole, and I expect the opening to make sense when we can put it in the context of the trilogy.