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The Hobbit films look absolutely disgusting

The Teachinator

The Teachinator

Member
Oct 28, 2017
967
These movies were so so so disappointing. I was so excited to see this in its original HFR 3D presentation way back when and I was really so taken out of the film by it. I decided to skip the other two in the theater. Once they all released I watched them over a few days. Overly long and boring. The cast, while good, didn't have the same chemistry as the fellowship at all. Th e movies also just look fake as you stated. It's all very sad and it appears to have really taken a toll on Peter Jackson. His physical appearance during this time was of a man just worn out. He made these movies out of an obligation to the fans and material not because he wanted to.

With that said, I hope Peter Jackson films something else soon. I think he is an interesting filmmaker. I hope he doesn't completely turn into George Lucas.
 
Toth

Toth

Member
Oct 26, 2017
4,007
Edmond Dantès said:
Another disappointing aspect was the score by Howard Shore. After the heights of the LOTR trilogy, what a come down this was. It's like his heart wasn't in it.
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The music was all over the place. For example, he overused the excellent dwarf theme in the first film and then pretty much ignored it in the next two.
 
Ithil

Ithil

Member
Oct 25, 2017
23,390
It's the extreme bloom in every scene that kills it. Like a mid 2000s video game.

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steejee

steejee

Member
Oct 28, 2017
8,619
I do feel like you could make a pretty good Hobbit rendition by editing down the three movies into about 3 hr total of footage, Phantom Edit style. I know there are a fair number of efforts to do just that, but I haven't seen any of them yet.

There's enough in the book to do two solid movies, mostly since stuff like the battle of five armies is only a few pages in the book but should have made a spectacular set piece (albeit one that didn't need to run as long as it did). Just didn't have the time to get it right.

I also wonder how things would have panned out if they didn't try to make the Hobbit match LotR's tone. In a way they sorta needed to for continuity, but the book's tone was way different than LotR's and that was inevitably going to complicate the adaptation.

One thing I was okay with in concept but I wish they had done way differently was adding female character(s) - Tauriel was just..bad. Simply gender swapping 2 or 3 of the dwarves would have made total sense - they're not all very fleshed out in the book anyways, and having some be female would have been a nice shoutout to the Gimli bit in Two Towers. Adding in Legolas was fine - it made sense he'd make an appearance, but taking the shield surfing bit to 11 with all his crazy combat antics in Hobbit was awful.
 
Dabanton

Dabanton

Member
Oct 27, 2017
4,914
A few people I work with did a lot of work on this.

Apparently when Guillermo Del Toro pulled out because they wanted three films instead of just one. Peter Jackson was asked if he could take on directing duties. Because of tourism and of course it would provide a lot of work for people living in New Zealand.

You can see on the screen, his heart and passion were not in it at all.
 

jimtothehum

Member
Mar 23, 2018
1,491
I was ok with the first two Hobbit movies. I get the complaints, but I was able to overlook them. The Battle of Five Armies is the biggest flaming pile of shit outside the prequels. I just feel the movie lost it's way. The movies should have ended with the defeat of Smaug and there should have been more of a focus to develop the relationships of the Dwarves instead of bringing in a horrible Legolas love triangle.

It's just awful, and a waste of Martin Freeman, who was absolutely fantastic in the movies.

That's the thing that annoys me the most. There are some great performances in the movie. Martin Freeman and Richard Armitage, primarily.
 
bananab

bananab

Member
Oct 27, 2017
2,861
I got really nauseous at the 3D showing I saw. I kept having to take breaks and go stand in the hall a while.
 
mhayes86

mhayes86

Member
Oct 27, 2017
5,249
Maryland
I enjoyed the first two and didn't find them disgusting, but some of the effects were definitely distracting and pretty bad (like the barrel scene in DoS in OP, which I'll agree was pretty awful). Five Armies was bad. Bad bad. Sadly, I think they'll age worse than LotR if they haven't already.
 

Deleted member 31923

User requested account closure
Banned
Nov 8, 2017
5,826
rsfour said:
Not sure which trilogy is worse, episodes 1-3 or The Hobbit ones
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I would honestly say the Hobbit ones only because the LOTR were better films than the Star Wars OT (though I love the OT, I have to admit this), so it was a much further fall from grace. And the Hobbit should have been one movie, two at most. A trilogy was just a greedy and stupid move that made each film worse.
 
Cirrus

Cirrus

Member
Oct 25, 2017
1,121
CitizenVectron said:
The biggest tragedy (for me) was that the original The Mountain actor (Conan Stevens) from Game of Thrones actually left GoT to play an Orc...and then his entire role was cut when they extended it from two the three movies to make more money. Instead of filming reshoots, they decided to replace him with a CGI character. So we lost the best (and most scary) Mountain from GoT, and also an amazing costume for The Hobbit.

Here is what he was supposed to be in The Hobbit (costume):
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What a stupid move. He should have stuck with GoT instead of abandoning it as soon as Hollywood started calling.
 
TAJ

TAJ

Banned
Oct 28, 2017
12,446
It's really sad that Peter Jackson got replaced by an alien doppelganger with no taste or knowledge of Earth society, just like George Lucas. Weird that both replacements were done before prequel trilogies.
 
Wulfric

Wulfric

Member
Oct 25, 2017
5,967
CitizenVectron said:
The biggest tragedy (for me) was that the original The Mountain actor (Conan Stevens) from Game of Thrones actually left GoT to play an Orc...and then his entire role was cut when they extended it from two the three movies to make more money. Instead of filming reshoots, they decided to replace him with a CGI character. So we lost the best (and most scary) Mountain from GoT, and also an amazing costume for The Hobbit.

Here is what he was supposed to be in The Hobbit (costume):

DSViQ7DVQAAZWDr.jpg
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What a waste! That's a great costume.
 
Flaurehn

Flaurehn

Member
Oct 25, 2017
3,361
Mexico City
PJ cared so little about dwarfs that he found excuse after excuse to not follow them in their own movie, in LOTR it was easy since there was only Gimli, but here it was just sad
 
AgentOtaku

AgentOtaku

Member
Oct 27, 2017
4,444
lobdale said:
The first one was over the top but at least sort of charming with its motley crew, the second and third were pretty joyless all around.
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I still think the first 3rd of Hobbit Part 1 is charming as hell and manages to capture the intended tone of the book.... And that dwarf song sung after the dinner setpiece (which itself is wonderful) still a banger...
Then they try to go full LotR and ain't no one buying that shit.
I DID think the Barrel scene @ 48fps/3D was pretty neat at the time :)

I've yet to actually ever watch Battle of Five Armies and I never intend to
 
Box

Box

Banned
Oct 27, 2017
6,629
Lancashire
Anyone who saw it in 48fps. What were the panning shots like? I've yet to see one at 24fps on a large screen that hasn't made me want to tear my eyes out.
 
gr8kamon

gr8kamon

Member
Oct 30, 2017
430
My friend and I watched all three of these shitshows in HFR just because we could. Terrible movies.
 
The Teachinator

The Teachinator

Member
Oct 28, 2017
967
Box said:
Anyone who saw it in 48fps. What were the panning shots like? I've yet to see one at 24fps on a large screen that hasn't made me want to tear my eyes out.
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Very uncomfortable. I feel like everything would have been better if the camera moved LESS. I know that doesn't make sense but it would have been way less jarring.
 
Herne

Herne

Member
Dec 10, 2017
5,319
They're an awful smeary mess without going anywhere near the CGI, which is understandable (along with all the other problems the films have due to a lack of time). I don't know if it's responsible but I'm attributing this to their insistence on using 48fps, since they were crowing about how it's the future of cinema and how we all need to get over ourselves and embrace it.

It turned out to look awful and in the absence of anything else I'm blaming the changes necessitated by moving to 48fps.
 
AgentOtaku

AgentOtaku

Member
Oct 27, 2017
4,444
lobdale said:
The takeaway here really does need to be that this is almost entirely the studio's fault and they should have gotten their shit together fast enough so that Del Toro could have made his versions instead of just relying on Jackson to bail them out with basically no chance to prepare for it even though he didn't really REALLY want to do them in the first place.
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Yep, shit seems grossly mismanaged.
 
Goat Mimicry

Goat Mimicry

Banned
Oct 25, 2017
1,920
Dreamwriter said:
What was shocking about the opening scene? Looks just as good as anything from LotR. The dwarf kingdom looked good, the dwarf king's beard in that scene is one of the few that doesn't look totally fake. Old Bilbo looked a bit too old for the time he was writing the book, considering the actor had aged, but it wasn't bad.
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You're right, looking at it again I realize I got my scenes mixed up. I thought the CGI orcs showed up sooner, though the elf-king's elk definitely gave me pause at the time.
 
Zaro

Zaro

Member
Nov 13, 2017
1,398
I was so hype for The Hobbit after LOTR, it turn out that they are not as good as what i was expecting.

Not just the CGI but there's a lot of bad action that look like superheroes movie.
I remember feeling so embarrassed while looking at the last fight, it was so bad.
Many scene left me disgust, like Legolas flying, Bard using his son as a stand to fire arrow, etc...
 
Won

Won

Member
Oct 27, 2017
1,428
Didn't even go to the cinema for the third one. Just narratively and visually unappealing.

You just have to feel bad for everyone involved. No one wants to follow up LotR with this.
 
AgentOtaku

AgentOtaku

Member
Oct 27, 2017
4,444
Blade30 said:
It's been so long but as far as I remember the whole MGM deal took too long that (almost two years or so) for Del Toro that he had to drop out so he could work on another project. PJ scrapped the whole production or most of it and started from anew thus having shorter time than intended. As for why it was scrapped, I dunno but it was said that PJ just couldn't take Del Toro's vision and continue from there on.
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Ugh, like... It's okay for different interpretations of an IP
jimtothehum said:
I was ok with the first two Hobbit movies. I get the complaints, but I was able to overlook them. The Battle of Five Armies is the biggest flaming pile of shit outside the prequels. I just feel the movie lost it's way. The movies should have ended with the defeat of Smaug and there should have been more of a focus to develop the relationships of the Dwarves instead of bringing in a horrible Legolas love triangle.

It's just awful, and a waste of Martin Freeman, who was absolutely fantastic in the movies.

That's the thing that annoys me the most. There are some great performances in the movie. Martin Freeman and Richard Armitage, primarily.
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At least we got a stellar Dracula from Armitage!
 
Lord Error

Lord Error

Member
Oct 27, 2017
4,369
Maledict said:
no. Legolas is exerting a force down, there's nothing to exert acounter force to leap upwards from. Unless he's literally got anti gravity boots it's impossible to do this.
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I think the difference in mass, if big enough, should allow for some upward movement from him. If you jump up from the ground, you push the ground below in the opposite direction, but since the Earth mass is insanely larger than ours, it's only us who visibly move. This is not theoretically impossible, just the scales of what was shown in the movie are wrong and make his run very improbable - but I guess he is superhuman after all. I just found out a serious analysis of what was actually shown in the movie:
It's a very fun and informative read.
 
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DassoBrother

DassoBrother

Member
Oct 25, 2017
2,626
Saskatchewan
I remember being sort of OK with the first movie. I was always a bit disappointed when I heard there was going to be more than one film since I enjoyed that Hobbit was a smaller, contained story. I don't really remember the second film though and I never even saw the third so I must not have liked it. It was an incredible decline from the hype of the LotR trilogy.
 
Barahir_mjh

Barahir_mjh

Member
Feb 18, 2018
178
Well, I guess I'll be the contrarian here. Yes, there is some really stupid stuff in the trilogy (which should have been two movies) - the bunny sled, the Smaug chase at the end of movie 2, almost everything with Legolas, etc. There are many problems and they could have been much better.

Nevertheless, I feel like some of these critiques are exaggerrated. it's not all bad and there is still some great landscape footage, impressive sets, and location shooting, and beautiful cinematography in the best scenes. I'll point out a few things besides the obvious most people will acknowledge - Riddles in the Dark, Far Over the Misty Mountains Cold, Smaug's design and VA.

The eagle rescue in film 1 is one of the most beautiful scenes in all Jackson's films, featuring one of Shore's best tracks.
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This scene in Laketown (a great set) has some beautiful lighting and is very well staged with the torches and snow:
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While I acknowledge there is a lot of stupid stuff leading up to it, this scene with Bilbo and Gandalf just sitting in silence after the battle is still a brilliant and subtle character moment. They had dialog written for it and wisely threw it out:
 

dapperbandit

Member
Oct 30, 2017
1,162
It's such a shame. The lotr films have aged well barring a few sequences because so much of it was practical effects. Everything in the hobbit was just drowned in shitty cgi
 
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