The Hobbit Trilogy Discussion Thread

[Tok]

I highly doubt PJ visits this site

[Taikero]

Originally Posted by Tok

I highly doubt PJ visits this site

Is that really all you had to comment on from my review, or have you never heard of the "open letter" writing style?

[BLU_Until_The_End]

Originally Posted by Taikero

Is that really all you had to comment on from my review, or have you never heard of the "open letter" writing style?

To be fair, your review didn't break any new ground. Others have repeatedly pointed out and detailed every gripe you stated. You could have pretty much found and quoted any gripe heavy review in this thread and put "+1" under it. Your open letter style didn't add any meat to a bone that has been shared by plenty in this forum already - that doesn't make your review a bad thing - he was just able to focus more on the style of review than the substance because it's all been covered many times before.

[Kryptonic]

Armies added $9M yesterday, quite a bit more than the other Hobbit films on their first Monday. This is all the more impressive because this is Armies sixth day of release, whereas Journey and Smaug had only been out four days.

http://www.boxofficemojo.com/showdow...id=vs-lotr.htm

[raw341]

Originally Posted by Kryptonic

Armies added $9M yesterday, quite a bit more than the other Hobbit films on their first Monday. This is all the more impressive because this is Armies sixth day of release, whereas Journey and Smaug had only been out four days.

http://www.boxofficemojo.com/showdow...id=vs-lotr.htm

Really impressive indeed. Seems like it'll hit 1 Billion! Not sure if itll pass An Unexpected Journey though, it might. Return of the King will still remain King

[Darth Marcus]

My Middle-Earth Rankings:

1. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring - 5/5
2. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King - 5/5
3. The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers - 5/5
4. The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug - 4/5
5. The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies - 4/5
6. The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey - 3.5/5

[Tok]

Originally Posted by Taikero

Is that really all you had to comment on from my review, or have you never heard of the "open letter" writing style?

Hate to break it to you. But no one cares. An open letter is passé. PJ still made his money and made his vision.

[halon]

Overall good movie. It lacked the emotion of Return of the King. Jackson completely forgot about the stone. Some other small things.

I would love to see the Hobbit trilogy trimmed down to one 3 - 3.5hr movie, greed got in the way.

[Kryptonic]

Armies continues to outpace the previous two films by a healthy margin! I think this one might hit $300M.

http://www.boxofficemojo.com/showdow...id=vs-lotr.htm

[Josh B]

Anyone else get choked up a little when they heard that song for the 1st time in the 1st Hobbit trailer? Remember when they're all at the table, that shit caught me off guard. lol

[civiclx]

Originally Posted by SonOfArathorn

No offense but that's a terrible idea. Mcfadyen would a hell of a Thorin though.

Just did a random search for Angus Mcfadyen and found your post. I loved him in Braveheart and would have enjoyed seeing him in The Hobbit

[JamesBenjamin]

So what's the expected release date for the "Extended" edition? November? I can't recall when the previous ones were released

[MechaGodzilla]

Originally Posted by JamesBenjamin

So what's the expected release date for the "Extended" edition? November? I can't recall when the previous ones were released

The extended editions of the previous two movies were released in November, so it's safe to bet the third one will follow suit. It's worth noting though that with the previous trilogy the EE of Return of the King came in December, so maybe they'll repeat that with Battle of the Five Armies? Either way, it should be sometime in November or December, no earlier or later.

[L-Rouge]

watched the BOFA at home, enjoyed it a great deal more than at the cinema. a comfy 4/5 still.

all criticisms aside, the acting is top notch.

[SethRex]

I actually watched all 3 almost all simultaniously and enjoyed watching them that way. Within 3-4 days I saw them all almost back-to-back and felt they were stronger when watched that way.

[MechaGodzilla]

Originally Posted by L-Rouge

watched the BOFA at home, enjoyed it a great deal more than at the cinema. a comfy 4/5 still.

all criticisms aside, the acting is top notch.

I agree, the casting for this trilogy is nearly flawless and all the main actors turned in great performances, it's easily equal to Lord of the Rings and far superior to most other special effects-heavy films in this department. The actors didn't get nearly enough praise and acknowledgment.

[Falaskan]

Originally Posted by Darth Marcus

My Middle-Earth Rankings:

1. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring - 5/5
2. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King - 5/5
3. The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers - 5/5
4. The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug - 4/5
5. The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies - 4/5
6. The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey - 3.5/5

Mine's close.

1. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring - 5/5
2. The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers - 5/5
3. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King - 5/5
4. The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug - 4/5
5. The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey - 3/5
6. The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies - 2/5

[MechaGodzilla]

If we're gonna rank and rate all the movies:

1. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King - 9/10
2. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring - 9/10
3. The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers - 9/10
4. The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies - 8/10
5. The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug - 8/10
6. The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey - 8/10

All based on the extended editions, except for BotFA obviously. Depending on just how good a job the EE of BotFA does at "fixing" my problems with that movie, it could take TTT's spot. We'll see.

[JamesKurtovich]

http://www.theguardian.com/film/2015...ade-the-hobbit

The Problem with The Battle of Five Armies - YouTube

In a remarkably candid behind-the-scenes video from the Battle of Five Armies DVD, the Oscar-winning New Zealander details the radical shift in preparation time between previous JRR Tolkien trilogy The Lord of the Rings, which he had three and a half years to prepare, and its sequel saga. Jackson took over directing duties in 2010 following the departure of Mexican director Guillermo Del Toro, and according to his comments in the new video had almost no time at all to prepare his vision before shooting began and he found himself plunged into 21-hour days.

“Because Guillermo Del Toro had to leave and I jumped in and took over, we didn’t wind the clock back a year and a half and give me a year and a half prep to design the movie, which was different to what he was doing,” reveals Jackson. “It was impossible, and as a result of it being impossible I just started shooting the movie with most of it not prepped at all.

“You’re going on to a set and you’re winging it, you’ve got these massively complicated scenes, no storyboards and you’re making it up there and then on the spot […] I spent most of The Hobbit feeling like I was not on top of it ][…] even from a script point of view Fran [Walsh], Philippa [Boyens] and I hadn’t got the entire scripts written to our satisfaction so that was a very high pressure situation.”

The chaotic state of affairs on set in New Zealand helps explain why The Battle of Five Armies was pushed back by five months in 2013, from a July 2014 release date to its final December 2014 slot. Jackson explains he “winged it” right up until the film’s climactic battle but was eventually forced to concede that production would have to be called to a halt while he worked out how to shoot it.

“We had allowed two months of shooting for that in 2012, and at some point when we were approaching that I went to our producers and the studio and said: ‘Because I don’t know what the hell I’m doing now, because I haven’t got storyboards and prep, why don’t we just finish earlier?’

“And so what that delay gives you is time for the director to clear his head and have some quiet time for inspiration to come about the battle, and start to really put something together.”

While Jackson’s Hobbit trilogy scored close to $3bn worldwide, it was not a critical hit on the scale of its predecessor. Some fans complained over the decision to split Tolkien’s breezy 293-page fantasy fable into three epic movies with a total running time of almost eight hours, and The Battle of the Five Armies was the saga’s worst-reviewed film with a barely-fresh 60% rating on the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes.

[levcore]

Considering how little prep time Jackson had i truly think he did a phenomenal job. I mean no storyboards, just doing everything on the fly with that level of VFX and the sheer volume of footage they needed to shoot is staggering. I appreciate that they had to go back after the fact to shoot some key scenes once they'd assembled what they had. For example the whole finale under the mountain in Desolation of Smaug was a pickup i believe.