Hobbit 3 Talk

Finally got around to seeing Hobbit 3.

The Good :
Ian McKellan is always great and I think he's almost solely responsible for making these films believable. Credible gravitas is in short supply in this movie, but he delivers.

Weta Workshop + $250,000,000 = quite the spectacle. The sets, costumes, and props are very well done. I'm completely burned out on CGI, but the attack of the eagles, the White Council whaling on the Nine, and Smaug firebombing Dale look amazing.

War Bambi. Much confusion surrounds this fellow, but to my eye he is not a moose, but an Irish Elk, which is actually a type of extinct deer (Megaloceros giganteus). Or maybe he's just a fantasy moose. Whatever. He was neat.

Airborne Bear Beorn! Sad that he only gets about 5 seconds of screen time.

The best moments in the movie were the quietest. It's surprisingly touching when Bilbo shows the increasingly gold-mad Thorin the acorn from Beorn's garden. Gandalf cleaning his pipe was a much needed grounding moment after the battle. Those were the only two moments in the movie when I was moved to actually care about the characters.

The Bad :
There is an extra 'the' in the title. Why the fuck? Of course I'm being needlessly nitpicky, but I think it reveals the problem with Peter Jackson's approach to the movie: adding more stuff does not make the movie better. It just makes it longer.

Most of the movie is shot with excessive light bloom. Yeah, it's fine that Galadriel gets all glowy once in a while, but gratuitous bloom is more distracting than a JJ Abrams lens flare.

On a similar note, we get more rubbery Hobbit feet and Dwarf prostheses jiggling around at 48fps.

The characters are hardly worth talking about. Bilbo is solid and Thorin gets some ham fisted character development, but the rest are contrived, goofy, and/or flat. We get more elf/dwarf love, lots of cameos of the producers' children (or whoever's kids these are), and then there's Alfred. Given that it's already well established that people with unibrows and bad teeth are craven and selfish, I have no idea what purpose this character served.

This is Thorin's movie, but his decent into madness was overdone and covered by unnecessary expository dialogue. It's such a caricature that I found it impossible to take seriously. My mother read the Hobbit to me when I was five, and I was devastated when Thorin died. It may have been the first time I was exposed to the idea that good people can die. When Thorin died in this movie, I couldn't care less.

The script is a trainwreck, especially considering that it comes from great source material. It's easy to be dazzled and distracted by the visuals, but just listen to the dialog. When the orcs show up, Dain yells "Oh, come on!" Indeed.

The Goats :
The war goats epitomize what is going on with this movie. On the one hand, they look fucking awesome. On the other hand, it's jarring when they abruptly show up. This movie is all spectacle and no substance. If you can just accept that, then you can learn to stop worrying and love the goats.

I'm not cynical about Peter Jackson's motivations in making these movies and I don't mind that they made billions of dollars. As I mentioned earlier in the thread, I'm not at all opposed to the idea of extending the Hobbit into a trilogy or adding/changing things to make good movies from the book. The trouble is that these are not good movies. They're better than most fantasy films, but that's a pretty low bar to hurdle. I still enjoyed parts of them and there were some wonderful moments, but these were isolated scenes or sequences. Hobbit 1 has Gollum, the trolls, the goblin king, and eagles. Hobbit 2 has Smaug and the Mirkwood spiders. Hobbit 3 has...Bilbo's acorn! And more Smaug. And more eagles. Definitely the worst of the lot. Jackson adapted a charming, heart-warming little book and into a soulless, grandiose, overwrought CGI monster. I still enjoyed watching it, but only in the superficial way that one enjoys the thrill of a roller coaster.

Kudos to the New Zealand landscapes, Ian McKellan, and Weta's CGI animals. I figure it's best to take a deep breath and just enjoy the war goats.

Attrition wrote: When Thorin died in this movie, I couldn't care less.

i saw the movie a month ago and have no recollection that Thorin died in the movie. That film is garbage. I also don't remember these war goats that everyone talks about. I wasn't drunk watching it or anything, I can't remember these things.

Great post.

Black Barney wrote:

Attrition wrote: When Thorin died in this movie, I couldn't care less.

i saw the movie a month ago and have no recollection that Thorin died in the movie. That film is garbage. I also don't remember these war goats that everyone talks about. I wasn't drunk watching it or anything, I can't remember these things.

Great post.

There's a scene in the middle of the big battle when Thorin decides he needs to get up to the top of the rocky peak where Azog is calling down signals to his army using orc-semaphores. He's not sure how he's going to get all the way up there though. He turns around, and standing right behind him are four armored mountain goats. The next scene has him, Fili, Kili, and ... Dwalin? ... riding these mountain goats as they nimbly spring up the mountainside.

In all, it's probably 10 seconds out of a 2 1/2 hour movie, so who cares, right? But as Attrition noted, it's emblematic of Jackson's approach to this movie -- just do what looks cool even if makes no fucking sense.

Joebot wrote: The next scene has him, Fili, Kili, and ... Dwalin? ...=.

i need you on my trivia team. If you can remember useless information like this (or at least be able to take an educated guess), you could be our ringer.

I knew it wouldn't take long...

Single 3-hour Hobbit Movie