The Hobbit: Battle of the Five Armies Grade/Discuss (Spoilers)

[Mage]

Haven't seen Five Armies yet, but....

People are already pinning a lot on Jackson. I'm saying, ten years from now Peter will reveal in an interview how much creative input was taken from him by the studios. It happens more often, where producers and studios take over the creative side of a production, to try and sell it even more.

'Hey Peter, you're gonna have to make 3 movies, so we can sell more tickets.'
'Hey Peter, make a lot of references to the LOTR movies so people will geek out.'
'Hey Peter, make sure it has a load of silly jokes and comments in there, younger people will dig that.'

So on and so on...... Peter, during the makes of these movies, can't say anything because this will reflect negativly on ticketsales, but ten years from now, no one will care if he does.

 

[Mr Light]

I've watched every second of the hours and hours of bonus features, and it seems pretty clear PJ did whatever he wanted when it came to these movies. Ever since 2001 we've seen his predilection for bloated running times (and I say that with love).

 

[DWF]

I rather liked the Tauriel/Fili relationship and the personal fights at the end of the movie. But I thought some of the battle scenes did go one alittle too long, I thought that was true of the battle of Helm's Deep though. It was odd seeing Bilbo walk away without the chest of gold that we know has then to see him have it later on was pretty editing. Smaug's attack on Laketown and his death was amazing though and I'm the glad the rumors of his off death turned out not to be true. As a filmmaker I think Jackson's inproved great from the LOTR days, but he did go overboard I thik at times tin the Hobbit trilogy.

 

[Mach5]

As a filmmaker I think Jackson's inproved great from the LOTR days

In what way? He directed exactly five movies since LOTR, all of them mediocrely IMO. All of them were also poorly written, terribly paced and all in all incredibly uninspired.

 

[DWF]

As a filmmaker I think Jackson's inproved great from the LOTR days

In what way? He directed exactly five movies since LOTR, all of them mediocrely IMO. All of them were also poorly written, terribly paced and all in all incredibly uninspired.

Personally I liked his version of King Kong, but I did say filmaker not writer or editor. I thought thd Hobtit movie generally looked better and were filmed better, with the CGI blending in batter with the live aciton footage for the most part. Maybe the double frame rate makes a difference but the Hobbit movies look crisper and sharper than the LOTR movies.

I;m sure his versions won't the last version of the LOTR and Hobbit movies made, so any future remakes should interesting to see. I'm not quite as fond of LOTR movies as many otehrs were or are.

 

[Mr Light]

I love every second of PJ's six LOTR movies, but King Kong is a bloated mess. With LOTR you have the excuse (and obligation) to make three hour movies. But King Kong? Do I really need to spend 90 minutes with the characters before meeting the ape?

 

[DWF]

I love every second of PJ's six LOTR movies, but King Kong is a bloated mess. With LOTR you have the excuse (and obligation) to make three hour movies. But King Kong? Do I really need to spend 90 minutes with the characters before meeting the ape?

Where's the obligation to make a trilogy of films from one book?

 

[theenglish]

I love every second of PJ's six LOTR movies, but King Kong is a bloated mess. With LOTR you have the excuse (and obligation) to make three hour movies. But King Kong? Do I really need to spend 90 minutes with the characters before meeting the ape?

Where's the obligation to make a trilogy of films from one book?

I actually liked the first ninety minutes of King Kong much more than I liked the mess after the ape turned up. It should have been two separate movies (not a movie in two parts mind you!) because it was essentially two separate stories.

 

[fireproof78]

I love every second of PJ's six LOTR movies, but King Kong is a bloated mess. With LOTR you have the excuse (and obligation) to make three hour movies. But King Kong? Do I really need to spend 90 minutes with the characters before meeting the ape?

Where's the obligation to make a trilogy of films from one book?

Because it is not technically one book. It is actually three books (Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, and Return of the King). And, in actuality, the three books are themselves divided in to two parts, so you could technically make it in to six films, if you really wanted to do so.

Such an argument cannot be made regarding the Hobbit.

 

[DWF]

I love every second of PJ's six LOTR movies, but King Kong is a bloated mess. With LOTR you have the excuse (and obligation) to make three hour movies. But King Kong? Do I really need to spend 90 minutes with the characters before meeting the ape?

Where's the obligation to make a trilogy of films from one book?

Because it is not technically one book. It is actually three books (Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, and Return of the King). And, in actuality, the three books are themselves divided in to two parts, so you could technically make it in to six films, if you really wanted to do so.

Such an argument cannot be made regarding the Hobbit.

I was talking about the Hobbit and it is only one book.

 

[Skywalker]

Because it is not technically one book. It is actually three books (Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, and Return of the King). And, in actuality, the three books are themselves divided in to two parts, so you could technically make it in to six films, if you really wanted to do so.

Such an argument cannot be made regarding the Hobbit.

Honestly, if LOTR had instead been made in today's Hollywood, I would not have been surprised if they'd done six movies and justified it by saying "the story is broken down into six books!"

ETA: Come to think of it, I recall seeing a fanmade edit of the trilogy that split it into six shorter films, each consistent (as much as possible given the available material, that is) with the six books in the story.

 

[JediKnightButler]

I wanted so much to like/enjoy the Hobbit movies after enjoying the LOTR trilogy and was excited that they were able to bring back so much of the previous cast members but the Hobbit movies were all so bloated by excessive and unnecessary material that, while I enjoyed the visuals, I just wished that the movies had been significantly trimmed down to the bare essentials (some flourishes are fine but the Gandalf, Necromancer scenes were too much IMHO). Creating a character (Tauriel) out of whole cloth bothered me too. The book contained a good enough storyline to stand on its own IMHO. Plus, despite that Bilbo was the main character, I felt like he was barely part of the movies.

 

[theenglish]

Skywalker, the Extended Edition DVDs are split into six discs. Maybe that is what you are thinking about? Each of those discs could have worked nicely as a movie on its own I think.

With The Hobbit, I feel like I want the opposite--rather than EEs I would like shortened cuts of the movies to watch in the future. It would be cool to see an edit that sticks relatively closely to only the material presented in the books--although the Gandalf and the Necromancer story I don't mind since it is actually a part of the original story.

 

[Skywalker]

Skywalker, the Extended Edition DVDs are split into six discs. Maybe that is what you are thinking about? Each of those discs could have worked nicely as a movie on its own I think.

Nope, I mean an actual fan edit. They took the three LOTR movies and rearranged and restructured them to match--as best as possible--the six books that make up the novels. For example, instead of cutting back and forth between the Aragorn/Legolas/Gimli, Frodo/Sam and Merry/Pippin storylines in the second and third movies, once the Fellowship splits up at the beginning of Book III we don't see Frodo or Sam again until Book IV, which covers their meeting Gollum all the way through the encounter with Shelob, and then we don't see them again until the start of Book VI with Sam rescuing Frodo from Cirith Ungol. It was a pretty neat little experiment, actually.

 

[theenglish]

Skywalker, the Extended Edition DVDs are split into six discs. Maybe that is what you are thinking about? Each of those discs could have worked nicely as a movie on its own I think.

Nope, I mean an actual fan edit. They took the three LOTR movies and rearranged and restructured them to match--as best as possible--the six books that make up the novels. For example, instead of cutting back and forth between the Aragorn/Legolas/Gimli, Frodo/Sam and Merry/Pippin storylines in the second and third movies, once the Fellowship splits up at the beginning of Book III we don't see Frodo or Sam again until Book IV, which covers their meeting Gollum all the way through the encounter with Shelob, and then we don't see them again until the start of Book VI with Sam rescuing Frodo from Cirith Ungol. It was a pretty neat little experiment, actually.

That sounds interesting and probably fairly easy to do. Just move around the chapters of the DVDs.

 

[Enterprise is Great]

Battle of the Five Armies Extended Edition DVD available November 17

The EE adds 20 minutes to the movie and it will be rated R.

 

[Locutus of Bored]

I hope there's twenty more minutes of Legolas Tetris, because that was the highlight of the film.

 

[kirk55555]

If any movie didn't need an extra 20 minutes, its this one (and the other Hobbit movies). The higher rating is interesting, though. I guess bland CGI on CGI violence is becoming a bigger issue for censors

 

[Mach5]

If any movie didn't need an extra 20 minutes, its this one

If anything, WB should release a trimmed-down version of the trilogy, preferably as two movies instead of three, as originally intended.

I'd buy that bluray.

 

[BeatleJWOL]

There are already fan projects underway to make a purist edition of The Hobbit, just as was done for LOTR.

I'd probably watch it if it stuck strictly to the events in the book.