Quote:
Originally Posted by Sky_Captain
The Hobbit was only four minutes longer than Django Unchained. If people want to complain about inflated running times, complain about that POS.
|
I'm a huge fan of both Tolkien and Tarantino, but between the two films, Django Unchained's running time was managed much better than An Unexpected Journey's. Django's 165 minute runtime went by, in my personal opinion, at a rather snappy pace. Each scene pulled me in and held my attention. Very rarely did I feel a scene overstayed it's welcome.
An Unexpected Journey, on the other hand, had a pacing that was all over the place. The first 5-10 minutes were amazing. After seeing that opening, I thought I would be in for a real treat. But the introduction to the dwarves and the nature of the journey went on too long. I know the Hobbit is sillier and light-hearted, but the dwarves tossing around plates and singing, most of the dinner antics in general, weren't really necessary. By the time the adventure finally started, I had already started to lose interest. Then they made it to Rivendell where things picked up. Then they went to the caves and it really slowed down again. Then Gollum livened things up. The movie constantly shifted from high highs to low lows. When you make a movie that spans past two hours, pacing is paramount. You have to make sure people don't realize they've been sitting there for over two hours. The Lord of the Rings films did a great job of this, especially Return of the King. In mine and many others' opinions, An Unexpected Journey failed in this regard.