The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies

[slynger]

I loved the reactions to that myself. I knew it was coming so it made it fun for me to see how everyone who didn't reacted to it.

Same here. I could see the film building up then as Smaug took off I knew it couldn't go past that - priceless seeing how upset and confused some people were.

 

[The Josh]

Same here. I could see the film building up then as Smaug took off I knew it couldn't go past that - priceless seeing how upset and confused some people were.

I ended up seeing DOS 4 times and each group had a little different reaction to it. I had one group that was complete silence and they just kept looking at each other waiting in the dark until the credits started. I loved it.

 

[Adolfo]

God I hope they show us a trailer soon!

 

[BagginsOfBagEnd]

God I hope they show us a trailer soon!

Bring on the trailer already!!

 

[karamazov80]

I think it's telling how many changes this entire thing has gone through. Direction, CGI vs. practical, CGI replacements, character replacements, story revisions, 2 films then 3, title changes, etc. It just seems like there's no real concise vision for these Hobbit movies, unlike Lord of the Rings. They seem worlds apart in terms of production. LOTR had some kinks like Arwen at Helms Deep or Sauron at black gates originally, but righted itself. Hobbit? It seems like it has no real vision and they just made them because, well, why not.

I enjoyed the first film, but after seeing the second one a couple of weeks ago I feel similarly. Feels sort of like Nolan doing TDKR--like he's just going through the motions. Jackson seemed to be doing the same with Hobbit 2. The thing that was most disappointing to me was the lack of genuine suspense and conflict, that I think he had been pretty good at generating through the previous 4 films. But maybe that's an inevitable part of stretching this story way thinner than it was ever intended to be.

 

[Sachiel]

"I feel thin, sort of stretched, like butter scraped over too much bread." - Peter Jackson's The Hobbit Trilogy

 

[Sachiel]

Viggo Mortensen on Peter Jackson and The Lord of the Rings Trilogy

“Anybody who says they knew it was going to be the success it was, I don’t think it’s really true,” he says. “They didn’t have an inkling until they showed 20 minutes in Cannes, in May of 2001. They were in a lot of trouble, and Peter had spent a lot. Officially, he could say that he was finished in December 2000 – he’d shot all three films in the trilogy – but really the second and third ones were a mess. It was very sloppy – it just wasn’t done at all. It needed massive reshoots, which we did, year after year. But he would have never been given the extra money to do those if the first one hadn’t been a huge success. The second and third ones would have been straight to video.”

"It was very confusing, we were going at such a pace, and they had so many units shooting, it was really insane. But it’s true that the first script was better organised,” he says. “Also, Peter was always a geek in terms of technology but, once he had the means to do it, and the evolution of the technology really took off, he never looked back. In the first movie, yes, there’s Rivendell, and Mordor, but there’s sort of an organic quality to it, actors acting with each other, and real landscapes; it’s grittier. The second movie already started ballooning, for my taste, and then by the third one, there were a lot of special effects. It was grandiose, and all that, but whatever was subtle, in the first movie, gradually got lost in the second and third. Now with The Hobbit, one and two, it’s like that to the power of 10."

“I guess Peter became like Ridley Scott – this one-man industry now, with all these people depending on him,” Mortensen adds. “But you can make a choice, I think. I asked Ridley when I worked with him (on 1997’s GI Jane), 'Why don’t you do another film like The Duellists [Scott’s 1977 debut, from a Joseph Conrad short story]?’ And Peter, I was sure he would do another intimately scaled film like Heavenly Creatures, maybe with this project about New Zealanders in the First World War he wanted to make. But then he did King Kong. And then he did The Lovely Bones – and I thought that would be his smaller movie. But the problem is, he did it on a $90 million budget. That should have been a $15 million movie. The special effects thing, the genie, was out of the bottle, and it has him. And he’s happy, I think…”

 

[DiFabio]

I agree with Strider.

 

[The Ween]

One thing with The Hobbit is you are working with 6 ft tall dwarves. There has to be a lot of CGI with them. Even if you would have a lot more guys in costume, etc. you still had big guys who had to look small, so you had a lot of green screen work.

As for LotR, I think it turned out great, CGI and all. Viggo has always preferred his more simplistic, artistic films.

 

[carbo-fation]

I agree with Aragorn. Peter needs to put the genie back in the bottle....

 

[Irvy]

I was coming here to post that article : lol He's bang on the money imo. Hobbit films are decent but feel more like cartoons than a grounded world.

 

[carbo-fation]

I'm going into this very cautiously without getting up expectations. After DoS, it'll take a lot for this movie to redeem the trilogy. Just too many missteps and silly story changes that made DoS feel like a different movie, completely foreign to Tolkien lore.

 

[The Ween]

PJ not only has to appeal to Tolkien fans, but to the masses as well if he wants the movie to sell well. If he would've made ONE movie and made it like the book, it would've been boring to most. With this one, you get more Smaug and bigger battles. Both which I'm happy about. Sure, there are a few things that I would've tweaked out, but I feel that way with most movies.

 

[The Josh]

Viggo didn't really say anything bad as I've seen some say. He just said he like FOTR a little more because it has just a little less CGI. All three movies are amazing so I have no real complaints about how they look. As far as the chaos he talks about we all know by watching the behind-the-scenes stuff that it was chaos making these films. So again I don't see anything bad about what he said. In regards to The Hobbit films. They've been fantastic as a whole. Sure there are things I'd change but I feel as a whole they are doing a fine job representing the material. I do think these films require more CGI than some of the other films because of the places they had to go. So I expect this film to be another winner like the previous five.

 

[crows]

i have to admit i was really disappointed in DOS. some stuff was great but by the time they reach lake-town i was ready to call it quits
If it wasn't because I wanted to see the dragon i dont know if i could keep going. If i watch the movie again i might skip the lake-town scenes.

and even the glorious smaug scenes went for too long. his conversation with bilbo was pretty amazing but when he kept chasing the dwarfs I was restless. the first time that one of these movies felt like a bitter sweet experience for me.

 

[Niltusk]

Not for me... more Smaug = win! EE cut with 30 minutes of Smaug sleeping and occasionally twitching... bought.

 

[crows]

 

[The Josh]

Not for me... more Smaug = win! EE cut with 30 minutes of Smaug sleeping and occasionally twitching... bought.

There's going to be 25 more mins in the DOS EE but I don't think it will be all Smaug. Hopefully lots of slower character moments as I think that balances out what we got in the TE quite well.

 

[Niltusk]

There's going to be 25 more mins in the DOS EE but I don't think it will be all Smaug. Hopefully lots of slower character moments as I think that balances out what we got in the TE quite well.

That's awesome, seeing Smaug on the big screen really did make me feel like a kid, more so even than any comic book movie ever has, maybe I 'over connected' but it really was one of those " this is happening and I'm getting to see it"

I can't think of a lot of stuff that has hit me like that as an adult.

 

[The Josh]

That's awesome, seeing Smaug on the big screen really did make me feel like a kid, more so even than any comic book movie ever has, maybe I 'over connected' but it really was one of those " this is happening and I'm getting to see it"

I can't think of a lot of stuff that has hit me like that as an adult.

I agree. I'm excited to see what they add and of course take out. There are some changes (shortening the chase stuff a bit) that I'd like to see but as a whole I want slower moments like more time with Beorn. Seeing Smaug come to life was a pretty damn cool moment. In the end this Trilogy while not the level of LOTR has been a damn good set of films and deserving of being in the same universe.