THE HOBBIT (2012/2013): News, Rumors, Pics Till Release

Ugh. Two hours and forty minutes, and that's just for the first movie. I imagine the second and third will be at least three hours each.

Which to me is just way too freakin long. I enjoyed LOTR, but I'm not exactly dying to sit through another 9 hours of it.

 

And dwarf bodily functions. I'm looking at you, ROTK EE.

 

I thought they'd earned it, as with the ridiculously cool moment where Leggy swings onto his horse as the Warg attack begins.

I kind of draw the line at ROTK's "game over" line, though.

 

Frankly thats a bunch of crap. Now I do agree that a lot of material that is cut from film is cut for three primary reasons and one of them is the reason you listed.

1, Being material that just isn't up to the quality of the bulk of the film

But here are two very common reasons for cutting.

2. Length, most film studios will try and keep films under 2 and a half hours. Could be a thousand page book, its going to be under 2 and a half hours. usually films that have a huge name director, or films that are considered money in the bank already can exceed this.

3. Cutting material to give a movie a certain focus. If you have a large cast for example you might film material for thats balanced out, but when you decide to market it you might want to have one primary story as the driving force, so you edit the material to focus on that one character and lessen the role of others.

As for Jackson you realize he cut a ton of material out of the three lord of the rings films, even the extended editions aren't even close to all the material he shot for those three films. Its estimated he could put back in over 30 min on each film, and thats not even counting material that was filmed and then rewritten afterwards and redone in pickups. Like Arwen at Helms' Deep as an easy example.

For example with the exceptions of 4 scenes in the extended editions, I think they are the far superior cut, they even get better critical reviews then the theatrical cuts, so its not just my meaningless opinion.

There are 4 though, that I think hurt the films. There isn't enough for example in Fellowship that was added that didn't help improve the film.

Kingdom in Heaven is an example of a film that the extended cut is far superior to the theatrical release.

It all depends on the material. Long doesn't equal crap. Period.

Doesn't equal good either. But pretty much any literary classic book thats been done in long form verses standard theatrical length that I have seen I found superior.

 

I'm thinking of him boarding down stairs in TTT, and the oliphaunt's trunk in ROTK...

 

And then you went on at length to mostly agree with me. Strange.

 

Worth the price of admission for me.

 

Come to Wellington airport, see the ruddy great big Gollum to scare the crap out of passengers:

http://www.stuff.co.nz/entertainment/film/7867560/Weta-Hobbit-sculpture-unveiled-at-airport

 

That's awesome!

 

Yeah, that is pretty impressive.

 

It's precious.

 

Holy shit, that's amazing!

 

You could tell the entire Hobbit novel in two hours and forty minutes. Seriously, he's going to do three movies on The Hobbit that are going to clock in at at least eight hours? Oh, but of course, Peter Jackson is a genius. The same genius who decided to take a ninety-minute movie in King Kong and turn into into a bloated, three-hour-plus "epic."

Here's hoping it works out but the decision to turn The Hobbit into a trilogy is strictly a money grab by the studio and Peter Jackson's continued love affair with himself. Seriously, it's pretty much him masterbating on-screen for eight hours.

 

Well I applaud your unconditional enthusiasm but if my broad generalisations turn out to be wrong I'll eat my 3d glasses.

 

Nail on the head.

However one parses it Jackson had more individual material for each one of his LOTR movies - including The Two Towers, which shifted a chunk of the novel's actual story to the next film - than he does for the entire Hobbit Trilogy. While incorporating the appendices played an important role in the LOTR films (Arwen's story is drawn entirely from it), it'll play a much more significant and larger role in these films.

That the decision to make it a trilogy rather than a duology also came very late in the game raises eyebrows. So I think they're fair concerns.

 

And other than 'kewl' action, what does that buy you? it was only a couple pages in the book because it was something that our characters weren't really all that involved with. The motivations were kinda spotty, Bilbo stayed in the cave for the most part, and when it was over, he came out and pretty much all were dead.

Do we need 45 minutes of epic sweeping battle shots, establishing characters to have fight, etc? They don't have much to do with the story, before during or after the battle. Just kinda happens, and then Bilbo gets on with his life.

 

Regardless of what the best thing to do was in terms of the story and pacing it and all of that, Jackson made the mistake of making it into three films because the concept of doing so still hasn't connected with the potential audience yet. Those people who know that he did it, like us here on this board, are all scratching our heads as to what aspects about the story merit a longer length (The battle of the 5 armies, etc) but the main concern is that so many people - even Hobbit fans, don't know that he even made into three films.

This week I went to two gaming meet-ups and no one that attended (yes we're all geeks) even knew that he had done this. Some people knew by happenstance that he was making two films. Like I mentioned before, people like my mother who like the story were flabbergasted by this: 3 films? WTF?

I think Jackson has caused a lot of confusion among the devotees and the casual film-goers with his decision, regardless of how he justified doing this with the studio. That is the point I think this thread hasn't quite gotten to.