Hi,

I havn´t read the entire topic, I just wanted to know how many of the three movies are finished (or is only the first part "An Unexpected Journey" finished?) and if Cate Blanchett will be in all parts, if this is known at all.

Thanks

Cate Blanchett will probabaly be in all three films (she filmed for around two weeks I believe), the bulk of all three films has been filmed, but they have yet to film The Battle of Five Armies, and a few other things from the appendices-presumeably framing/ bridging sequences to tie it togther with LOTR

I think that the originally planned two films were scheduled to be filmed back to back which makes sense since Shire sets and extras for example would only be needed at the beginning and end. The three films wer decided on so they didn't have to edit much out. So not much extra filming require making the decision potentially very profitable.

I'm sorry for the length of this...
 

Hello everyone,

this is kind of my third post on this forum, and before I start - could I say that I have never met a more opinionated throng concerning the LOTR & upcoming 'Hobbit' films. For that, I am very, very thankful to discover that there are many more people here who actually aren't heedless peasants that get so explosively excited for one-third of a story that isn't even out yet, and blindly forgive the filmmakers for every little questionable creative decision these "hobbit movies" are being submitted to.

I love to make movies, and would like to consider myself a filmmaker, and this particular story has been in my head for the good sum of almost seven years. I'm a bit ashamed to say that I was thinking of a movie version of this for so long, but in context, it should - a fraction of a tiny bit - justify some of my opinions on further criticism concerning these upcoming movies.

Sorry to bog down this thread: I just want to say that I agree with most of you about the gigantic notion of overkill this book is experiencing, and - from my knowledge about this particular project - The Hobbit's production has been in trouble since the beginning. In 2004, after ROTK came out, Jackson was fairly indifferent to anything Tolkien-Related (who can blame him?). Sure, he said they'd try to help make "the Hobbit", but after many years of a bit of bad blood between him and New Line Cinema, and MGM holding the rights to the movie (and going through bankruptcy), I'm pretty sure Jackson and his group were less and less interested in doing something they've already done for over seven years.

Back when they were initiating the project in 1996/7, it was something new and natural. They really went out to make a statement for themselves and did a really good job for the most part on this really daunting project. Afterwards, Jackson was able to do whatever he wanted in terms of filmmaking, and KING KONG was his dream-project.

After years and years, in 2007, they finally made peace and started this "Hobbit" movie as two parts, and Jackson had no intention of directing since he already made LOTR and what else is there to do? He even said he had no interest in directing it at all. They got Guillermo Del Toro to do it (who once said the idea of 'elves, hobbits, and dragons' didn't interest him much to begin with), and later on after some New Zealand labor problems and location complications, the studio pushed for Jackson to direct after all. He always says for him the challenge was to find out a way to make the process "enjoyable" rather than what it should be: "a faithful adaptation of the book". So, with that in mind, you can see that this isn't really a project anyone was particularly "passionate" about, and to me it definitely shows. It's really just a movie that had to be made because of LOTR's success. Jackson might be in the swing of things by now (directing and whatnot), but it's definitely not the same drive that made him and his crew work so hard on LOTR, regardless if you thought the movies weren't up to par or not.

To me, the results are pretty apparent. "The Hobbit" didn't have to be three movies, and it certainly didn't have to be made the way it is. It definitely feels like that "LOTR" prequel trilogy that was made simply because it just had to be made.

Again, so sorry for my long-winded speech. I thought it would be the best to summarize on this thread.

Yeah, I agree with most of the spirit of the criticisms regarding PJ.

But.....

I'm really looking forward to

• seeing the White Council attack Dol Guldur and send the Necromancer fleeing,
• the exchange between Gandalf and Thrain,

and I'm sure there's more. :D

Apologies if someone else has already put this up somewhere, but I found this mishmash of several TH trailers edited together chronologically.

On a side note, I would have sworn I saw a fleeting glimpse of a sled of some sort pulled by rabbits. :rolleyes:

It's in the Appendices...you just have to look really hard (and it helps if you've had a drink or two). ;)

I don't hear the Hobbit in my head, like I did LotR, and so I figure, let's just sit back and have some fun.

Bring on the bunny sled!

The magic of 3
 

By the by, why do we have to have 3? Why isn't 2 or 4 more frequent? LotR was split into 3 books. Oddly we had only 3 movies from the same ;). Star Wars (you may have heard of it) was a trilogy, and then the prequels were again the magic 3. Same with the X-Men and Spiderman arcs (not including spin-offs and reboots).

Well, as far as X-Men and Spiderman went, I think the Rule of Three has a lot to do with "the Third One Sucked," thus killing the franchise as it then-stood.

Beyond that, however, trilogies work for telling a longer story because stories are naturally and easily broken into three: beginning, middle, and ending. Of course, each story within a trilogy may have a beginning, middle, and ending (the Star Wars movies do, but the constituent parts of the LotR do not--because the LotR is only a trilogy through the happenstance of separated binding) but in the context of a trilogy the first part sets up the story (beginning), the second thickens the plot and generally leaves something big hanging, and the third wraps up the overarching story.

Extending that to four-plus increments generally means more than one "middle" and depending on how well things advance from one to two to three to four, could fall prey to a sense of being stuck or not moving along. If planned from the beginning to have four parts, that's as much a problem, but if you're making up parts as you go along (Star Wars) or dividing a single work into pieces (LotR) I suspect that would be harder to get right.

:D

By that reasoning, LotR should have been 6 movies since Tolkien originally split it into 6 books. Therefore, I eagerly await the next ambitious director, a generation from now, who insists on doing it all over again in 6. :p

If we don't have Legolas's red sky divinations, swinging through Mirkwood on vines or down fallen trees upon shields i'll be disappointed. I'll also enjoy watching contingents of glittering remote faced elves appearing when they aren't needed or wanted while Aragog will also make an appearance as head Attercop.

Despite it all, i've enjoyed and will enjoy whatever is released.

Now now Manwe you must wait tol it is released to decide if you will like it :Merisu::smokin:

Have to be fair apparently and not decide on basis of pastexperience and trailers..

Before I run away and hide does the three thing have anything to do with the guide for food presentation and horse mane plaiting received wisdom that odd numbers look better.

The Nuclear Unit of the Monomyth
 

I believe I've posted this elsewhere, but again, regarding the so-called "thing about threes" in tales of heroic (mis)adventure:

In the case of J. R. R. Tolkien's telling (The Hobbit) and retelling (The Lord of the Rings) of the standard three-part monomyth, a Hobbit leaves the little world of the shire, has adventures along the way to a mountain where a great battle happens, and then returns home to the Shire determined to live the life of a reclusive bachelor. Same story. Similar hobbit. Bigger mountain.

As a practical business matter, with a half-a-billion dollar budget spent lavishly producing Tolkien's first, rather bare-bones telling of the monomyth in terms of hobbits -- his singular literary creation -- Peter Jackson requires at least three marketing cycles in order to have a hope of recouping that enormous sunk investment, much less make a profit. A pecuniary strategy of dribbling out parts of the rather slim tale over two-and-a-half years -- by any and every possible commercial gimmick -- accounts for the so-called "trilogy" and not any fealty to the standard formula for a heroic adventure.

The Movie Is Sickening!
 

Or so says this article. And it wasn't even the script! ;)

Very interesting piece over on Salon, commenting on Jackson's 'ironic' approach to the story, & why its alien to the spirit of Tolkien's work

Perhaps that's the real danger of expanding the original story to the extent they have - not that you end up with Bilbo's journey being swallowed up in the epic sweep of the movies, till it just becomes one tale among many, & Bilbo just one character among many, but that it becomes too grown up & ironic & rather than celebrating the simple Hobbit values of the original story it ends up winking at them knowingly & then goes charging back into the 3D decapitations. Certainly there is 'irony' in TH, but its the irony of, for example, having a build up to a massive battle only for the pov character to get knocked unconscious at the start, miss all the 'heroic', bloody carnage & wake up among the corpses of his friends.

Thanks for the link, davem– and a good point about there being different forms of irony, of which the ubiquitous (and increasingly tiresome) "wink wink" routine is only one.

To be fair I feel ill with any 3d being astigmatic but I can imagine that improving it might increase the nausea.

To be even fairer, I get nauseous from most Peter Jackson films.

There is that factor.

Its interesting how both LotR & TH end with an anti-climactic battle - LotR doesn't end (as with the film) with the epic battle & the fall of Sauron, but with the Scouring, which is a nasty, brutal fight between ordinary Hobbits & a bunch of thugs - and as SF writer China Mieville put it, you end up with a broken Saruman only capable of doing a little mischief in a mean way (as Mieville put it, 'You can't even get a decent Dark Lord any more').

Of course, the Battle of Five Armies is a devastating conflict, but it happens off-stage so the heroics go mostly unnoticed, & the main impression we are left with is of carnage & loss as Bilbo is lead through the corpse-strewn field to the dying Thorin, whose final words are to tell Bilbo that he was right after all, & that its the Hobbit's values that really matter, not battles or treasure. And yet, its fairly clear that what Jackson cares about are those very things - battle (on-screen) & treasure (profit).

If you re-tell LotR without the ugly brutal wastefulness of the Scouring, or depict the Battle of Five Armies on screen, then you don't get Tolkien. The Scouring shows us the ugly reality of war - not glorious battles, where heroes fall in noble self sacrifice to save the world from evil personified, but where ordinary people die in the streets & fields they grew up in, in front of their spouses & children, in order to make their little corner of the world a bit better for those they love.

Bilbo's lying senseless through the BoFA & only awakening after its all over, to then pick his way through the blood, stench & hacked up corpses, to watch his friend die an agonising death while telling him that, after all, it was all a bit bloody pointless when all was said & done, & that Bilbo's way is better, is to give the reader the death without the having given him even a glimpse of the glory. As far as Bilbo is concerned the dead might have been killed in an eruption of the Mountain, or by mass suicide. Death without glory is the way both books end when it comes to war.

And that is clearly what Jackson misses. Still, I'll be going to see the spectacle, because as with the LotR movies, I reckon something of Tolkien will come through. What is sad is that many people will see the film & not read the book, or if they do go on to read it, they will do so in the light of PJs take on it.

Very well said, davem.

Additionally, I think that movie-goers didn't get to see the growth and maturation of the hobbits in Jackson's LotR, particularly because the Scouring of the Shire was omitted. The brilliance of Tolkien's original story is that the hobbits must fend for themselves once they return home. They must become the leaders, without the aid of wizards, dwarves, elves, glorified Anglo-Saxon horsemen or legendary kings.

Likewise, the enemy is no longer a Dark Lord with demonic orkish minions, wargs and balrogs; instead, as you said, they must face mercenary thugs, mannish brutes and vagrants, and Sharky, wounded, old and treacherous, bereft of divine power, but still able to commit appallingly petty acts of vengeance. And they must overcome the evil inherent in even unassuming but greedy hobbits. Thus, Tolkien offers a foreshadowing of the wars of the 4th age and onward, where the foe we fight is ourselves and not a supernatural enemy.

Jackson caught the cinematographic spectacle of the story, the huge sweep of vast armies and the marvelous edifices of lost empires, but he failed utterly in capturing the heart of the story and the nobility of the individuals involved. How else can one explain Frodo abandoning Sam, the savaging of the tragic hero Denethor, the befuddlement of Treebeard, and the trivialization of Aragorn's peer, Faramir?

Aragorn commits an ignoble act of treachery by beheading an ambassador under a flag of truce merely for a cheap one-line pun, and simply for the sake of added spectacle and CGI overkill a legion of undead scrubbing bubbles destroys Sauron's army, all but eliminating the need for the valorous and lethal charge of the Rohirrim. Frodo whines throughout the movie, Merry and Pippin never progress past boorish louts, Elrond is cynical and bitter, Gimli is a walking dwarf joke, and the character with the most depth isn't even human but a CGI replication.

I know Tolkien eschewed allegory, but woe to all of us if Jackson decides to make a movie about the Bible: Jonah would be swallowed by a CGI leviathan of Jurassic proportions, Noah's ark would be nuclear-powered, Moses would not inflict ten plagues on Egypt (he'd have at least twenty, including zombies, dragons, spiders and flying monkeys), and a wise-cracking Jesus, ably assisted by his 12 ninjas, would call down the heavenly host to smite the Romans. Because, after all, one must use creative license, and the original scripture needs tweaking to appeal to modern audiences.

Just a quick acknowledgment and thanks for all the positive rep for what was a very rushed post. :) There are certainly numerous points in the films where you get the sense that Jackson just doesn't get Tolkien's point, where the story becomes for him so completely unintelligible, that all he can do is invent an alternative. I so wish the Hobbit movie would follow the book and build up to the BOFA, with the audience expecting another Pelenor Fields, only for the screen to go black when Bilbo is knocked unconscious and the viewer to see nothing of the battle at all. That would be being faithful to Tolkien. But it won't happen, obviously. We'll basically get rehash of PF, a 'glorious' epic battle, with eye popping effects (and probably some few pratfalls to lighten the mood), which will overwhelm and undermine Bilbo and Thorin's final farewell. Anyway, too rushed again - and typed on a phone ( I was tempted to leave in the 'eye pooping effects' that the predictive text threw up back there.....)

On the other hand, there's this perspective.

Folks at TORN are getting busy: mumble mumble funny frames mumble

*coughs* Let's not get carried away here. At the risk of sounding like all the people bleating "But films and books are different mediums!" (which is for some reason supposed to demolish any criticism of the films whatsoever)– I really *don't* think that could work at all on screen.

Besides, the battle *is* described in the book– just not from Bilbo's point of view.

The reviews are starting for the first installment. That one seems in line with a lot of what has been said here. Discount the author's obvious unfamiliarity with the source material (such as when he refers to the "troll-infested forest of Mirkwood" :rolleyes:). Here's a snippet:

PJ was so intent on making the "bridge" between TH and his previous trilogy so obvious it looks like a troll in the living room, he just had to throw in a glut of characters that have no business making personal appearances in this story. Tolkien didn't think a ton of exposition about the side matters of the White Council was necessary in The Hobbit, but leave it to Big Hollywood to always consider they know best.

After a quick skim of the most recent discussion on this thread, I must throw out my two cents (or one cent, perhaps, because it is a trifle?). Bilbo did not fight in the Battle of Five Armies, no. As was pointed out earlier, he was unconscious during most of the duration. We will get Bo5A in the movie, whether we want it or not; there is no question. That would not really be a blight to the film, in fact, I think that I might actually enjoy it. It is keeping with the narrative of the book. The trouble I would have with the battle being an epic fifteen minutes of running time (as it will inevitably be), is if they decided to make Bilbo some war hero in it. In LotR the hobbits had a fair amount of battling. They did that in the books, though. I didn't see a big problem with that. I would, however, have a problem with Bilbo fighting in the Bo5A. That would be contrary to the book and to the essence of the story.

I will close this post by stating that this is exactly what my mother will do and so will my brother. I hear so many cries of "I don't have the time to read The Hobbit before I see it!" The fact of the matter is, TH isn't a very long book. I read it in a day, if given an hour or two here and there I think that it could be finished in a week or two. That is not taxing. Every time I hear someone -- who is usually close to me -- say that they cannot or will not read TH before they see it, I cringe. I am bitter or saddened because of it. When we spend three hours every day watching television, shouldn't we have time to read?

Critics are starting to chime in over on Rotten Tomatoes:

http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_...ected_journey/

Currently, the rating is a 75% (out of 100%). Much of what I read as I waded through the reviews is consistent with what I was concerned with all along: taking a linear mock-epic and weighing it down with superfluous subplots like so many carbuncles on the hull of a ship. Jackson (and his cronies at Warner) insisted on dragging this out to three movies in what is either a) a money grab, or b) a descent into megalomania on the part of Jackson and the twits he writes with.

The last time I checked at Metacritic or some other site, the rating was at 78%. I'm very willing to see the film since it is better than the crap that comes out of Hollywood these days. Still the Hobbit film, no matter how good it is can never beat the LOTR trilogy.

As has been pointed out we do get a description of the battle from: from Thorin's death, his nephews valiant stand around him to Beorn's appearance. This was a great battle.

Personally I don't care if the films are true to the events only described in the Hobbit, as long as they are true to the Legendarium. I would go as far as saying I don't even mind if things are added to the Legendarium, which likely happened, but were never explicitly stated. For me it is fine to have Legolas with his father at Mirkwood, why not show a young Aragorn playing in Rivendell or even have Gandalf mention how Elrond's great grandfather wielded Glamdring.

And when I last checked all the fanbrats there were *screeching*. Apparently now, not only is no-one allowed to criticise a film they like, they're not allowed to criticise one they *think* they might like. It's not like the critics are panning it, either, by any means, they're just pointing out flaws in the usual way.

Given the current state of the movie industry...why wait a generation?!

Let's reboot the entire series the moment The Hobbit trilogy is done!!!!

And let Jackson be the one to do it again!!!!

I'm sure the Witch-King's mace could be even larger!!!!!

I want to see Michael Bay direct LOTR. He does a good job with big films.

KIDDING!

Jokes aside, I'd like to see Christopher Nolan reboot the LOTR franchise. His Batman films were nothing less than outstanding.

Whut?!
 

Speaking of reviews...

This is a rather childish one.

The opening paragraph in particular was a doozie.

"I spent a fair amount of time during Peter Jackson’s latest installment in his Tolkien franchise comparing it to the Harry Potter movies, thinking how savvy J.K. Rowling’s approach to magic has been, how successful in the broadest way those films are."

Rowling's approach to magic was...savvy?

I don't think that word means what the critic thinks it means.

A couple of them seemed more of a rant against the faster frame speed, more than the actual film. But the criticisms about the length "You can read book out loud quicker than the time it will take to watch all three films" or Jackson's apparent refusal to understand trimming and editting films are a part of wearing the director pants are undoubtedly spot on.

The consistant favorite seems to be Gollum's appearance and encounter with Bilbo, which is refreshing that the memorable part of the first movie is a great chapter in the books. Those compliments are probably more appropriately given to Serkis and Freeman though.

"Why does "The Hobbit" look so weird?"
 

Without getting into the narrative aspects of The Hobbit -- that will come later, he says -- Salon critic Andrew O'Hehir focuses on just the technical aspects of HFR/3D in his review, "Why does 'The Hobbit' look so weird?":

http://www.salon.com/2012/12/06/why_...look_so_weird/

I think I'll see the film in standard 2D at 24 frames-per-second. I have enough issues -- namely, inane narrative and CGI bloat -- to deal with already. Simply trying to extract the first third of The Hobbit from Peter Jackson's video-game concept of Middle Earth: Episode I will no doubt prove challenging enough without continuously having to ask myself why this film looks the way it does while trying to remember whatever has happened to Bilbo Baggins, ostensibly the subject of interest in this film.

Aside from the Inigo Montoya quote, yes, teenagers waving about twigs and shouting in mangled Latinate is savvy, meaning Professor Mandingus Savvy, the first headmaster of Hogwarts, who initiated the whole prepubescent twig-waving, Latin-shouting fad among school-age witches. Voldemort turned him into a newt, but he got better.

Well... I 'd prefer to say that, in the case of this particular film, they're *probably* spot on. That's sort of the point I'm making: none of these fanbrats have seen the film yet, any more than we have, and yet they've already decided it "must" be a flawless masterpiece, such that no valid criticism is even possible.

As for the frame rate issue, and whether that should be a factor... hmmn, I don't know. Thing is, it *was* made quite a selling point.

Inigo Montoya meets Peter Jackson
 

Inigo: Hello, my name is Inigo Montoya. You ruined my favorite fantasy setting! Prepare to die!

A review from TORn about the regular film (24 fps) screening without the technical gewgaws.

Warning, spoilers!

Happy with Hobbit

Hmmm...it's not so much a review as it is a divine recapitulation. ;)

But aside from the flattering characterization of the movie (I, myself, was almost moved to tears :rolleyes:), one does pick up that it takes a damn long time for Bilbo and the Dwarves to get going on their adventure, which is consistent with many reviews I've read that state the movie doesn't really pick up speed until Bilbo meets Gollum.

And even with superfluous subplots, the first movie ends at the Carrock on the verge of Mirkwood; so one can easily see that two more movies would not be necessary in telling the remainder of the story. Which presupposes, of course, that the final two movies will center on the original plot of The Hobbit at all.

This leads me to believe that Guillermo del Toro's original scripting of a two-movie version of The Hobbit would have eliminated much of the extraneous flab that hangs like jowls off the head of a hog, and would be best served as additional fodder on an extended edition blu-ray.