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The Hobbit films look absolutely disgusting

BAD

Member
Oct 25, 2017
9,565
USA
Tasteless, abundant, unbelievably gross, stylized CGI.

We will get into the physics issue in a minute. And yes, the wigs and prosthetics are dated and hideous too.

But the films look terrible and it's distracting. Overcome with stylized bloom lighting, orange and blue sunset colorization, and completely inorganic green screen junk sets - the films are tragically ugly.

To no surprise, the internet is full of people noting The Hobbit looks more like a video game than a fantastical New Zealand. The lighting and colors look off at almost any moment because they insisted on digital manipulation being apparent. Many characters are totally CGI hell holes in shots.

This is made more tragic by the fact these movies were way more expensive than the trilogy from the prior decade. It's believed to have cost nearly triple the budget to make The Hobbit films compared to Lord of the Rings. We did not get triple the quality. Unlike Lord of the Rings in which each sequel made more than the film that came before, finishing with a near complete sweep of the 2004 Academy Awards, and concluded with a stellar legacy - The Hobbit films each released in declining box office compared to the previous film, and little praise for its Rotten-rated finale.

They don't just look bad in images. They look ridiculous in motion. Described by many as cartoonish, slapstick, and video game-y - the physics and CGI motion was a haunting cloud over all scenes after action took place. Leaping across barrels in river rapids, skipping across individually separating bricks on a walkway, surfing on dry earth, rabbits pulling a sleigh.
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How the HELL did it end up being so horrendous?
 
Volimar

Volimar

volunteer forum janitor
Member
Oct 25, 2017
38,236
Please tag those gifs as the film is so disgusting that even those short clips are forcing me to vomit uncontrollably. Or you know, be less hyperbolic in your criticism.

To be fair, some of it reminds me of the almost cartoony early Harry Potter CGI.
 
Goat Mimicry

Goat Mimicry

Banned
Oct 25, 2017
1,920
I didn't pay attention to The Hobbit's advertising campaign at all, so I figured it would look like the LotR trilogy. The opening scene was genuinely shocking to me.
 
gnarlyxcharlie

gnarlyxcharlie

Member
Oct 29, 2017
1,494
I hate that barrel scene so fucking much. TT and RTK had hints of ridiculous shit with legolas but that was just so bad.
 
Ravelle

Ravelle

Member
Oct 31, 2017
17,752
I watched the first one in 3D in that exta high Hz they were showing in theatres.

And holy moly, my eyeballs got attacked. Not only was the CGI so bad for even the human characters, panning shots were a blurry mess and had you constantly readjust your eyes, The subtitles were in 3D as well and was way too distracting and hard to read. Backdrop backgrounds lookliked they were standing in front of paintings and cheap green screens.
 
lobdale

lobdale

Member
Oct 25, 2017
1,987
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.
 
BlackFyre

BlackFyre

Banned
Oct 27, 2017
2,430
It's absolutely hideous!!! Aside from Smaug, who I thought looked great, the over usage of CGI was too much.

And 5 Armies was just an overly long, bad movie.

I hope it's re-done.
 
8byte

8byte

Attempted to circumvent ban with alt-account
Banned
Oct 28, 2017
9,880
Kansas
They didn't look fantastic, I agree.

Also gotta love an OP that forces discussion through the use of rather extreme hyperbole. The films look bad, but "absolutely disgusting" is just pressing for a 100+ reply thread.
 

Deleted member 17207

user requested account closure
Banned
Oct 27, 2017
7,208
You even see this creep into the LOTR trilogy when you compare Fellowship and Return.

But yeah, I can't rewatch these movies. It looks fine compared to other CGI-fests of today, but when LOTR felt so grounded (for the most part) and "real", The Hobbit was the opposite.
 
Dreamwriter

Dreamwriter

Member
Oct 27, 2017
7,461
Spoopy Boatington said:
I didn't pay attention to The Hobbit's advertising campaign at all, so I figured it would look like the LotR trilogy. The opening scene was genuinely shocking to me.
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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.
 
CloseTalker

CloseTalker

Member
Oct 25, 2017
30,506
Why can't people just make normal, human threads? The hyperbole in the OP pretty much tanks any chance of reasonable discussion, whether or not the point is valid. Just speak like a normal person, it's not hard.

To the thread, I agree that the trilogy uses too much CG, but overall the quality of the CG is pretty good. But you can definitely sense a lack of real presence to the world, it feels more artificial.
 
Lord Error

Lord Error

Member
Oct 27, 2017
4,353
I knew Jackson started losing it when it comes to CG from the moment Legolas climbed and surfed on that mammoth in ROTK. It easilly looked less convincing physically than the similar scenes from Shadow of the Colossus. No surprise that everything that came next was an extension of that crappy scene.

I do wonder if jumping off of falling blocks is physically possible though. If they are heavy enough and he's light enough, he should still be able to jump upwards a bit, just like it's being shown... I think?
 
Joe Shlabotnik

Joe Shlabotnik

Member
Oct 27, 2017
5,883
Ravelle said:
I watched the first one in 3D in that exta high Hz they were showing in theatres.

And holy moly, my eyeballs got attacked. Not only was the CGI so bad for even the human characters, panning shots were a blurry mess and had you constantly readjust your eyes, The subtitles were in 3D as well and was way too distracting and hard to read. Backdrop backgrounds lookliked they were standing in front of paintings and cheap green screens.
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I absolutely could not handle There And Back Again in HFR 3D. I bailed about twenty minutes in and just bought a 2D ticket for another time.

I went to see Desolation of Smaug with a couple of people who insisted on HFR 3D so I couldn't leave that time, haha. But whether the filming improved or I just got used to it, it seemed somewhat less distracting.
 
Zonal Hertz

Zonal Hertz

Banned
Jun 13, 2018
1,079
It's shit now. When it was in 48 fps in the cinema I wanted to hurl. Also was incredibly unnecessary to be a trilogy and it showed.
 
Doctor_Thomas

Doctor_Thomas

Member
Oct 27, 2017
9,643
It feels like they knew the book had a different feel, so tried to bring it across in the trilogy... but the films have bigger issues than how they look.
 
Dreamwriter

Dreamwriter

Member
Oct 27, 2017
7,461
I personally loved the HFR, especially when they dialed it in for the second and third movies. It made the 3D look super pristine and real, like the screen really was a window into the movie. But it definitely made any tiny costume and effects mistakes glaringly obvious, so the dwarf beards looked totally fake.
 
CitizenVectron

CitizenVectron

Member
Oct 27, 2017
5,386
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


Here is what the character ended up being (CGI):

6ca7a5f06f76ba52253581ee439e4087.png


It's very sad how bad it looks in comparison to the physical costume.
 
Maledict

Maledict

Member
Oct 25, 2017
4,073
Lord Error said:
I knew Jackson started losing it when it comes to CG from the moment Legolas climbed and surfed on that mammoth in ROTK. It easilly looked less convincing physically than the similar scenes from Shadow of the Colossus. No surprise that everything that came next was an extension of that crappy scene.

I do wonder if jumping off of falling blocks is physically possible though. If they are heavy enough and he's light enough, he should still be able to jump upwards a bit, just like it's being shown... I think?
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Click to shrink...

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.
 
T002 Tyrant

T002 Tyrant

Member
Nov 8, 2018
8,926
The higher your frame rate the more visual data is captured by your eyes meaning actor's performances come off more wooden, and the CGI imperfections are highlighted more. If you watched it at 24fps it would improve things a lot BAD
 
Orb

Orb

Banned
Oct 27, 2017
9,465
USA
My favorite thing about the entire Hobbit trilogy is the extremely obvious GoPro footage during the barrel sequence that they snuck in as if they thought you wouldn't notice lmao
 
Garlador

Garlador

Banned
Oct 30, 2017
14,131
The studio didn't give anyone on the crew any time to prepare or plan. The fact they are even WATCHABLE is a miracle given how rushed they were.
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thewienke

thewienke

Member
Oct 25, 2017
15,921
They were entertaining when they came out but I've become even more forgiving as the years have gone on after hearing about the absolute production hell that this trilogy went through. Peter Jackson had a substantial amount of prep time for LOTR and supposedly they were nearly making stuff up as they went along with the Hobbit.

I know there are no "redos" but I truly wish Peter Jackson was able to have a second shot at this trilogy.
 
dragonbane

dragonbane

Member
Oct 26, 2017
4,583
Germany
Not really sure what they were thinking. They would have looked a lot better if they went with the exact same technological approach as the original trilogy, just with a little bit better CGI in the battle scenes. That's all they had to do and apparently it would have been cheaper too considering what the hobbit films cost vs the original. But it probably had to do with the production hell hole they were in.
 
maxxpower

maxxpower

Attempted to circumvent ban with alt account
Banned
Oct 25, 2017
8,950
California
Lord Error said:
I knew Jackson started losing it when it comes to CG from the moment Legolas climbed and surfed on that mammoth in ROTK. It easilly looked less convincing physically than the similar scenes from Shadow of the Colossus. No surprise that everything that came next was an extension of that crappy scene.

I do wonder if jumping off of falling blocks is physically possible though. If they are heavy enough and he's light enough, he should still be able to jump upwards a bit, just like it's being shown... I think?
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Click to shrink...
Or when he hopped on the warg in The Two Towers.
 
chandoog

chandoog

Member
Oct 27, 2017
20,071
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


Here is what the character ended up being (CGI):

6ca7a5f06f76ba52253581ee439e4087.png


It's very sad how bad it looks in comparison to the physical costume.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...



WOW

I knew about the physical costume before but hadn't seen a picture of it.

It looks so much better than the clearly-CGI abomination
 
signal

signal

Member
Oct 28, 2017
40,170
the made up witch king stuff with the mountain tombs were cool. but yeah old and uncontroversial opinion.



 
Tophat Jones

Tophat Jones

Alt Account
Banned
Oct 26, 2017
14,946
I laughed out loud several times watching this trilogy, it is just awful.


Akin to the Star Wars Prequel trilogy without the memes. OOF
 
Halbrand

Halbrand

Member
Oct 27, 2017
19,612
Sadly, the cinematographer who also did LOTR died just after The Hobbit movies finished.
 
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