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Post by siamesesin on Dec 15, 2012 22:35:35 GMT -5
Sylvester McCoy gave me a woodie, so to speak. I went to the 48 and I really liked it. It's hyper-real and the 3D blur is really reduced. I'd say people should give it a whirl on something they like that's this visual, because there's a good chance as the tech improves that it could go more mainstream. And If the Smaug/Bilbo stuff in Erebor is half as good as Gollum/Bilbo was, I will die a happy nerd.
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Post by Mr. Atari on Dec 15, 2012 23:53:46 GMT -5
We all loved it, as well. I was warned that the first act took forever to get out of Hobbiton, but that was my favorite part. The dialogue and general goofing off during the unexpected party couldn't have gone on long enough for my taste.
I knew Martin Freeman would be my favorite part, and he was. I did little emotional fist pumps at all the fun lines from my childhood that showed up (including, but not limited to, "Curses and splashes!" and "Gandalf means me!"). So much was the Rankin-Bass version playing in my head that I was a bit saddened when other favorite lines didn't get mentioned (including, but not limited to, "Who are these miserable persons!?!" and "It knows the way in, but it does not know the way out, my precioussss.")
I didn't particularly enjoy the Radagast stuff, but I didn't hate it. I had heard him compared to Jar-Jar in his ridiculousness. For me, he was just eccentric and goofy and a bit extraneous. I also didn't especially mind the addition of Azog or of the changes to the plot he brought. But I did have a problem with the fakey CG of the Trolls, Goblin King, and Azog. I missed the human performance and realistic menace of Lurtz from the other trilogy. As much fun as the Goblin King's voice and general attitude was, the rest of the Goblin Town sequence was just too Xbox-ish for me. So much of it was (intentionally?) a reminder of the Moria sequence in Fellowship, but didn't have any of the weight or drama of that sequence. It just came off as cartoony and fakey.
I absolutely loved the moment where Bilbo spares Gollum, and I found the final scene reveal of the Lonely Mountain to be quite effective.
I don't think I like it more than the original trilogy, but I found it very satisfying and compelling. Now I have a big itch to see the next two.
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Post by Satchmo on Dec 16, 2012 15:23:13 GMT -5
I liked it, but I can't say I loved it. They added a lot of padding, and I really didn't like what they did with Radagast the Brown; it's strange to think they cut Tom Bombadil from Fellowship because they thought he was too goofy, yet they added Radagast here for precicely the same reason. Still, the acting was fantastic, the movie looked great (I did not see the 48 frames per second version), and they made the movie seem much shorter than it's nearly three hour run time in spite of all the padding. And the Gollum scene was brilliant.
I actually really liked what they did with the Great Goblin.
It was not the Trilogy, but after a good deal of thought, I don't think it could have ever been. That's the danger of filming The Hobbit after The Lord of the Rings trilogy; the LOTR books have a lot more story to tell, and it's a story that's more cinematic than The Hobbit. But I enjoyed what they did with part one, and I'll eagerly await parts two and three like a good nerd.
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Post by mummifiedstalin on Dec 16, 2012 23:32:36 GMT -5
The more I think about it, the more I like Radagast. He seems as strange and unpredictable as a wizard should be. Gandalf always talked about how strange wizards were, but, especially in the books, he's mainly grumpy. Radagast gave me a sense of that strangeness, almost like a replacement for the odd singularity of Tom Bombadill. I told someone else that it's the one thing from all the Jackson movies that actually made me like something about Tolkien more than I did before.
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Post by siamesesin on Dec 17, 2012 2:11:06 GMT -5
He made me recast the last two and a half seasons of "Doctor Who" in my head.
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Post by Mr. Atari on Dec 17, 2012 2:48:32 GMT -5
He made me recast the last two and a half seasons of "Doctor Who" in my head. Speaking of Dr. Who dreams, I saw a note online (possibly apocryphal) that David Tennant had agreed to play Thranduil, but had to drop out due to the pregnancy of his wife (aka the Dr.'s daughter).
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Post by mummifiedstalin on Dec 17, 2012 14:32:44 GMT -5
That would have been awesome. Lee Pace just looked downright...tripping. In a bad way. That look in his eyes when the elves turned away was just creepy, soulless.
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Post by siamesesin on Dec 17, 2012 15:57:30 GMT -5
I would have geeked all over my seat. I like Lee Pace usually, but I thought he was a weird choice for this one.
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Post by mummifiedstalin on Dec 18, 2012 23:49:15 GMT -5
Holy crap! The ENTIRE THING is up on youtube:
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Post by Joker on Jan 9, 2013 4:45:15 GMT -5
Your world can turn on a dime in Middle-Earth. One minute Bilbo Baggins (Martin Freeman) is just chillin' outside of his hobbit hole and the next he's recruited by the wizard Gandalf (Ian McKellen) to be hired on as a burglar for a group of twelve roughneck dwarves led by their prince, Thorin Oakenshield (Richard Armitage). This team has to go on a quest across the lush landscape to reclaim the dwarves' mountain home from the dragon Smaug, who was drawn to the massive amount of wealth there. You'd think that just going from point A to B would be easy, especially with a powerful wizard travelling with you, but we wouldn't have much of a movie if that was the case. The forests are being violated by rampaging spiders and the only person who can remedy it somewhat is a terribly mentally ill nature spirit wizard named Radagast the Brown (Sylvester McCoy). By the way, it's hard to take a character seriously when he has a bunch of bird poopie caked onto the side of his face. I'm surprised this made it into the final film as it's so crusty and white and distracting in every scene he's in. His story only serves to imply that there is this dark undead being lurking on the edge of their fantasy reality called the Necromancer (Benedict Cumberbatch according to this film's IMDB page), who I thought was Sauron, but I guess is not. This may contain spoilers so for suspense's sake:
There's a Pale Orc who Thorin has bad blood with because of the death of his father. Thorin also has a grudge against elves because of past offenses and he should know better really, so there is terrible tension when he gets to Rivendell. He also has a bipolar mood swing moment as he suddenly talks a bunch of smack about Bilbo even after the hobbit managed to save him and his fellow dwarves from being eaten alive. This only serves to create a reason for Bilbo to consider just going home. At least his bitter dwarf personality pays off in the showdown in the burning forest with that heavy metal Pale Orc villain.
Sir Christopher Lee reprises his role as Saruman and there is some tension there as Gandalf knows that this guy is more powerful than him and some with us as the audience as we know what this wizard is capable of and what he will do to rape the earth. When he tries to shut down the quest it becomes a vaguely sinister scene. Mostly this is because of Lee not really moving that much and stating the facts as he sees them.
The stuff with the bloated, diseased Great Goblin (Barry Humphreys) and his hideous testicle-like double chin that just keeps jiggling wound up being insane and hilarious. There was also a neat comedic callback as Bilbo forgot his handkerchief and then later in used as one and has stringy sheets of troll snot that effectively slimed him. He has the perfect look on his face after this gross turn of events happens.
This leads to the films biggest asset, Freeman as a young Bilbo. He winds up being very likeable and believable as the one guy on this team who is not all that gung ho for adventure. He's not good at fighting and really seems out of his element pointing a sword at Gollum, but then proves to be very good at riddles. Because of his expressive face the decision he makes when he has an incredible advantage against Middle-Earth's version of a meth freak it comes off as genuine. Another good moment with him comes when he tells the dwarves why he'll stick with them, which is a powerful statement on par with the moral ending of LOTR: Fellowship.
I don't remember the book being this dense a story as I read it in high school and it was a pretty quick read. I could never read the LOTR books after it and even the audiobook was very dry. But even Gandalf says something about embellishing one of his stories and it takes a masterful director to make people care about a scene where people are just talking. Luckily, Peter Jackson is good at at that, although there is a lot of what I call "lorespeak" in this film. On Star Trek shows it's called "technobabble" when characters talk about a scientific principle or how a device that hasn't been invented yet works. In fantasy there's what I call "lorespeak" where people keep telling stories about what has happened in the past and there's a lot of names and places that I couldn't remember. This stuff does get visualized in an interesting way most of the time, but it feels like people are just full of stories. This flashback device was not used during the Riddling scene. They could have visualized that so that the characters would put the pieces together mentally to find answers. It would have been neat, like on CSI when they have to explain how a bullet hits things, how glass breaks on a microscopic level, how blood would splatter based on gravity, etc. Altogether it's still a very good film with maybe too many digressions at times and the distracting literally poopie-faced Radagast. "He eats too many mushrooms." Recommended.
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Post by Tor Johnson on Mar 17, 2013 10:00:33 GMT -5
I really have no desire to see this film EVER. I tried watching the first LotR and was very bored by the whole thing.
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Post by TheNewMads on Mar 21, 2013 21:33:14 GMT -5
I'm with Tor. Not my thing. Although when I saw whichever one of the Lord of the Rings movies I saw and hated, a bunch of Tolkien-heads dressed up like hobbits and gandalfs sat behind me and i did appreciate their hand-clapping squeals of glee throughout the movie. the movie itself still sucked, though.
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Torgo
Moderator Emeritus
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Posts: 15,420
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Post by Torgo on Mar 21, 2013 22:11:52 GMT -5
I really have no desire to see this film EVER. I tried watching the first LotR and was very bored by the whole thing. As a not very "fan" of Lord of the Rings, even I have to ask, was this thread worth bumping after three months for this post? But if I were to stray on topic, I saw it in Imax a while back, mostly for the Star Trek preview because I was just nerd enough to want to see what it was. I don't have much fondness for Lord of the Rings. I thought it was interesting to watch once, but didn't have any desire to sit through it again (one such torturous story was when Two Towers came out on DVD, I rented it for my dad and we started watching it. Then people kept coming over and we had to start it over and over again. I watched the beginning hour of that movie three damn times before we got to watch the whole thing). I kept hearing about how much the Hobbit "sucked" and how it was "boring." So I went in going "if I sat through Fellowship of the Ring, I can sit through this." Maybe it was my low expectations, but I surprisingly enjoyed it. I didn't really think it was boring in the slightest. Fellowship bored me. This movie on the other hand had more elements of fantasy that was more suited to my taste. It moved at a brisk yet polite pace and kept a friendly and fun tone offsetting Peter Jackson's bombastic nature. I'm not enthused with their idea of turning a 300 page book into a 9 hour trilogy, but if the next two can stay this fun, then I have little too complain about. I watched the movie again on blu-ray to see if it held up, and while I see the crude humor sticking out like a sore thumb, its spirit still delighted me. I still don't think LOTR is all that, but they might make me a Hobbit fan yet.
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Post by TheNewMads on Mar 22, 2013 8:15:02 GMT -5
i'm actually a bit sorry i missed it in the theater just because i'd like to have seen what the 48 fps looked like.
but something else is... this was also done by peter jackson, yes? I just don't like him anymore, since he went mainstream. Not only was LOTR milquetoast, but i also was not terribly crazy about the King Kong remake.
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Post by mummifiedstalin on Mar 22, 2013 12:20:17 GMT -5
i'm actually a bit sorry i missed it in the theater just because i'd like to have seen what the 48 fps looked like. but something else is... this was also done by peter jackson, yes? I just don't like him anymore, since he went mainstream. Not only was LOTR milquetoast, but i also was not terribly crazy about the King Kong remake. Yeah, but you like Banacek. I really have no desire to see this film EVER. I tried watching the first LotR and was very bored by the whole thing. As a not very "fan" of Lord of the Rings, even I have to ask, was this thread worth bumping after three months for this post? He's TROLL Johnson! HA! Sorry...
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