Saw it last night, and pretty much agree with the thumb sideways assessment. I can see what they're going for with the whole Azog thing; intended to build up to adding a less anonymous fate to Thorin in the eventual Battle of 5 Armies. But it was definitely clumsy from the start. The pale guy swore an oath to exterminate his bloodline! When they first met! Therefore he's a terrible enemy from his past! Doesn't follow. Radagast's portrayal was certainly a bit much. Poor Sylvester McCoy certainly does play the heck out of terrible things he's given though. My Doctor Who geekery has always wished his run as the 7th Doctor was given better things to work with, because I had the impression he really could've shined much brighter in the series if the BBC hadn't apparently been trying its hardest to murder the franchise at that point. (I'm guessing; just what it felt like. I digress.) I never even noticed the elfblade inconsistency of glow, but now I'll see it forevermore. Thanks! Jackson lucked out so much by getting Serkis as Gollum. I was annoyed every time it cut away to slapstick Goblintown fights from the awesome Bilbo vs Gollum confrontations. I worry about how they'll shoehorn in non-book Gollum appearances in the rest; I take for granted that they will. Probably end up having him ride Azog around like Master Blaster from Thunderdome.
On the Azog thing, I think they felt they needed to add something to the story that would create an enemy to focus on that the audience could see and understand rather then the few glimpses of the dragon we get. Remember, in Fellowship they did the same thing with the leader of the Uruk-hai, Lurtz.
I understand why he did it, I just think it was dumb. It was dumb in the LotR films, too, but at least there they used a villain that was already in the story. Both stories already have plenty of immediate enemies for the audience to focus on, anyway--Black Riders and orcs and the Balrog in Fellowship, and Trolls and Goblins and Gollum and spiders and elves and eventually Smaug in the Hobbit. I'm not sure why cramming in one more makes either story better or more accessible to the audience.
If you view the story as a single entity, then sure, you don't need more. But these are movies that won't see the next part for a year, so you need something that pays off the story so far at the end of each part. Defeating Lurtz accomplished that in Fellowship, leaving the audience on a high note. Granted, the way this film ended doesn't really achieve the same thing. But you can't set up Smaug as the main villain only because what happens after he's killed off? Even reading The Hobbit I always felt the stuff after was just a long epilogue. So what Jackson is doing here is creating Azog as a villain that will keep the audience engaged after Smaug is killed and justify however many more hours we sit through after that. Remember, Smaug will either die at the end of film two or sometime really early in film 3 (assuming there isn't some major story revision).
There was a scene right before the group encountered the storm giants where Azog was tracking them, and he says something about the mountain pass. So it didn't feel out of place to me that Azog was on them right after they escaped the goblins. IIRC, the Phantom Edit wasn't just some fan, it was Topher Grace working on his editing chops. Edit: I was wrong, Phantom Edit and Topher Grace's version were two different things.
Defeating Lurtz directly after confronting the Balrog was probably one of the biggest anticlimaxes in the history of cinema. Seriously, who the hell gave two shits about freaking Lurtz? He was just some dumb Orc that had no real relationship to the story aside from the fact that we got to see him early in the film, as foreshadowing. Azog is arguably worse, though. Because he survives the first Hobbit film, so we don't even get the incredibly superficial payoff of getting to see the heroes kill off some pointless character that nobody cares about at the end of the film. So instead, he's a pointless character that lives on, serving as an ongoing distraction from the main storyline. I suspect that Jackson thinks that people will be confused if the protagonists don't keep fighting the same enemy through the film, rather than having a series of mostly unrelated encounters (that end up being not so unrelated in the end, when all of the parties that they pissed off along the way come back to haunt them. With armies). I think he's wrong, and wish he would stick more to the story as written, since it's generally a damn sight better than the stuff that he invents.
Saw it today. Have nothing to add that hasn't already been said - just reread Ben's posts againg and you have my take. Having the brilliant scene between Gollum and Bilbo intercut with The Three (well Thirteen) Stooges escaping from Goblintown was a painful reminder that PJ also made the ghastly King Kong. But casting was great, and some bits shone - I'm certainly looking forward to seeing the full Smaug.
The fact that people in the theatre I was in cheered when he was killed tells me that a lot of people disagree with you on that. These films aren't primarily made for the hardcore Tolkien fan who will later watch them all in a short amount of time. They are made for the casual moviegoer who is looking for some entertainment and expects some sort of payoff for their 2-3 hour investment.
I know several people who were pissed off at the end of Fellowship because they didn't know it was only the first part of a trilogy. They were expecting a nice, tidy ending with everything wrapped up.
Good lord, I hope not. But the whole point of the end of the story... and I guess I should probably spoiler this...
Well, that's a fairly backhanded compliment. "They are written for people who won't think about them too hard." For what it's worth, I agree!
I just finished re-reading LOTR and I had forgotten how much was changed, especially in The Return of the King. The main plot points are there, but almost everything up to the Battle of Pellennor Fields is different. As much as I love Tolkien, I don't find him infallible, so I tend to forgive Jackson many of his transgressions. I may have made different choices in adapting the story, but let's not forget he took something most people considered unfilmable and turned out some damn good films and a billion dollar franchise. Ben, please tell me you're not one of those people complaining the Scouring of the Shire was cut? Talk about an anti-climax.
I agree with Ben's spoiler re: the themes at the ending of The Hobbit, but I think the third movie is going to circumvent this somewhat by focusing on the Necromancer by that point. While we don't know how the chronology of events will pan out, I doubt that Gandalf & Co. are going to pop over to Dol Goldur and banish the Necromancer while Bilbo and the dwarves are traipsing around in Mirkwood. It seems more likely that the movies will opt for a big onscreen confrontation that ends with the Necromancer's "defeat" and thereby provide the comic-book villain that some of the audience needs, hopefully without obscuring the themes of greed and pride that Thorin embodies. (And as someone upthread noted, the final movie will likely end - perhaps with an after-credits scene - by showing the Eye of Sauron opening above his tower in Mordor.) It's worthwhile to remember that Tolkien's dwarves are, by and large, not particularly admirable folk. They're often xenophobic, greedy, selfish, prideful, and cowardly. Even Thorin isn't an especially likeable guy - he's kind of an ass, in fact. Thorin's band of dwarves is not a group of honorable, selfless warriors on a sacred quest to reclaim their home - they're opportunists that are after wealth and treasure, first and foremost. Time and again, they "volunteer" Bilbo for the hard jobs and send him in to bad situations alone while they hide elsewhere. It's more explicit in the book, but as a whole, dwarves are not particularly brave or honorable.
It's not a matter of Tolkien being "infallible," just a simple question of "Are Jackson's changes better than the original material?" Almost 100% of the time, I find that they aren't. Note that this is not incongruous with the suggestion that Tolkien's work could be improved upon, though personally, I prefer when they stick closer to the books. My interest in the movies stems mainly from the fact that I love the books, so I think that's a perfectly valid position. That's one change that I actually agree with, despite the fact that I think it's a hugely important part of the story in the books. It's just not something that could be made to work in the format of a film, though--even a very long one. The ending already took a huge amount of screen time without the Scouring. And I agree that, in spite of my many criticisms, Jackson did a surprisingly good job filming a story that I long suspected to be unfilmable.
Pretty sure that's how it's going to go down. Benedict Cumberbatch is not credited as Smaug in the 3rd movie (although we all know IMDB is not infallible), but only as The Necromancer. The thing that sort of baffles me is that he's credited as both The Necromancer and Smaug in the 2nd, so I'm not sure how Jackson is going to work that out. I still want to know why we see his name in the end credits of the first movie. IMDB says he was The Necromancer. All we saw of The Necromancer was a shadowy figure surrounded by light that just sort of screamed for a few seconds. If all it took to get into the end credits was to stand there and scream, that would be freaking hilarious. He may have more presence in the Director's Cut, though (good lord, I don't even want to know how long that's going to be) and they simply left his name in after editing. I can''t think of any other reason. Second movie is going to be all about Smaug (it's named The Desolation of Smaug after all and we did get the final scene of his eye opening). Thorin is in the third movie. I predict either death by orc or going out in a blaze of glory, Boromir-style, defeating The Necromancer. Like you, I have a sneaking feeling that that's going to be the big climax. Bunch of tears, shouting, a bit of closure for everyone else, then cue The Eye of Sauron and fade to black. Just don't Lucas-up the other two movies, Jackson, and I'll probably be happy.
That's all it ever takes, this is nothing new for Hollywood. Short of just being an extra walking in the background if you're on screen or your voice is heard you're in the credits.
Yep. A buddy of mine got his SAG card and his name in the credits for saying two words and getting a piece of gum spit into his hand.
I think we can expect at least an hour and a half for the battle of five armies, including a ten-minute speech where Thorin rallies the troops.
I finally saw the movie this weekend and it felt like a lot of it was filler. I hadn't read the book since high school (about 25 years ago). My buddy explained to me that Peter Jackson added a lot of stuff found in the appendices and that some stuff were changed. I don't recall anything about a white orc. I thought orcs would be short-lived compared to dwarves? They said it had been sixty years since the dwarves were kicked out of their homeland. Even if that white work lived that long he's in surprising great shape for an 80 plus year-old.
I'm not sure what you mean by "a lot of it" when you call it filler, but most of this movie is straight from the book or only somewhat modified. I guess you can call the opening prologue filler, and of course the Radagast and Necromancer stuff, but that is only a relatively small part of this film.
I enjoyed it quite a bit. I went in with fairly low expectations, expecting it to be LOTR-lite with more gags than I'd care for, and that's pretty accurate actually. However the dramatic bits were more compelling than I was expecting and the funny bits were usually restrained enough to be enjoyable. Radagast was pretty ridiculous but didn't bother me much, for whatever reason. If you're going to make him ridiculous a bunny sleigh is kinda cool. The Great Goblin, on the other hand, fell completely flat. As did everything in that scene, repeatedly, for a long time. That whole segment was the worst of trying to have it both ways - dramatic and comical - and failing at both. There's no tension in the dwarves being captured with so much farce thrown in, so the whole chase only really functions as comedy, and even for slapstick it's not very good. There were plenty of bits I thought were awesome though, like the mountain giants fighting, Gandalf at Rivendell, dwarf drama at Erebor, everything Smaug because DRAGON!!!!, and of course Gollum who continues to be brilliant. So yea, those are my cards on the table: when Peter Jackson does high drama it (generally speaking) really works for me, whereas his comedic and visual excesses do not.
I don't think Tolkien ever definitively established how long orcs lived, but he did say that they were created from corrupted elves. So presumably they are similarly long-lived. Edit: I just did a quick google search about this because, why not? And one guy was claiming that Tolkien never mentioned old orcs. Thinking back, I think he's right. And I even read the fucking Silmarillion. That could mean one of three things: 1) There are no old orcs because they all die in battle before they reach old age. 2) We don't get to hear much about orce domesticity because all the stories are written from the viewpoint of the orcs' enemies. 3) The orcs, much like their ancestors the elves, don't actually get old. Take your pick which option appeals to you the most.
My buddy, who read The Hobbit recently, said that the end battle with the white orc was created just for the movie. According to the Tokien wiki the white orc was mentioned by Gandalf in passing in one sentence. I thought the movie could have ended after the Company fled the goblins and I thought the warg battle and the rescue by the giant eagles could have been trimmed down (my buddy said the ponies made it up to the Lonely Mountain).
I have similarly read 'The Hobbit' recently (for the fourth or fifth time) and I'm about 90% certain that your buddy is talking through his hole because as far as I recall, there are no orcs in the book at all - just goblins.
Ah, looks like some people use orc and goblin interchangeably. Including, perhaps, Tolkien himself. I've always thought of them as separate races and there certainly appears to be a difference between how Jackson portrays goblins and orcs in all of the films (for example, in the Mines of Moria in Fellowship).
As a D&D player I always assumed the goblins were a smaller species like those in Moria. There are enough variations of orcs that the goblins could be sub-species I guess.
Is it me or almost all of the orcs and goblins in The Hobbit so far are all CGI? Previously they were stuntmen in suit and make-up (in the non-massive battle shots).
Yeah... Tolkien used "goblin" and "orc" as synonyms. Because he happened to use "goblin" more often in the hobbit, and because the orcs in that book were smaller orc breeds, many people associate "goblin" with the smaller orcs. But Tolkien himself doesn't stick with that nomenclature. They're all goblins & orcs. It's goblin & orcs all the way down.
Reading some wiki stuff, it looks like he wavered. In Book of Lost Tales, for example, orcs and goblins are explicitly separate things.
The end battle was certainly significantly jazzed up. In the book, the goblins set fires around the trees; the trees are just about to be consumed, taking our heroes with them, when the eagles show up and rescue everyone. There's no sword/axe play, and Bilbo does not get all heroic about saving Thorin. In fact, he barely makes it out with the eagles. I'm afraid your buddy is wrong about the ponies. The goblins get those when they capture the party, and they're not saved. They get more ponies later. In fact, The Hobbit is pretty rough on ponies all round. Maybe Tolkien felt bad about it enough to make Bill the Heroic Pony in LOTR.
Yeah, I was scratching my head about that statement. The ponies from when they set off from The Shire are not the same ones they ride to the lonely mountain. The original ponies are presumably all killed. I still think my favorite part of the movie was the interaction between Gollum and Bilbo, even if it was like 30 minutes long. Gollum was just so fantastically creepy in this movie that I barely felt the time pass. The overly-comedic and extremely long goblin fight, on the other hand, can go fuck itself.
The most enjoyable part for me is the Bilbo-Gollum part. Gollum is noticeably much better in the 10 years since the Lord of the Rings movies. Andy Serkis needs to be acknowledge by the acting organizations for his part giving life to Gollum.
