Hobbit 3 Talk

Wow. Several folks favor Desolation of Smaug over An Unexpected Journey (and more shocking...over some LotR films). I don't rate DoS much at all. What am I missing here?

Can't get some of those Dain scenes out of my head. Swinging that warhammer around, head-butting orks, all with dwarves, elves, and orks battling around him...perfect Warhammer Fantasy Battle scene. I'll be seeing this flick again real soon. Before it leaves the theater for sure.

My order;

1) Fellowship
2) Two Towers
3) Return
4) Five Armies
5) Desolation
6) Unexpected

My list was cut short, due to the Unexpected Disappointment of the Hobbit Trilogy:

1. Fellowship of the Ring
2. Return of the King (too many endings)
3. Two Towers (the 30 minutes before the Battle of Helm's Deep is boring)

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4. Unexpected Journey (bad enough that I gave up on Jackson's Hobbit Trilogy)

Mr. White wrote: Wow. Several folks favor Desolation of Smaug over An Unexpected Journey (and more shocking...over some LotR films). I don't rate DoS much at all. What am I missing here?

You're missing the first two thirds of the film, which are great. The trip through mirkwood, escaping from the elf king and the barrel riding in the river are top notch entertainment with nary a foot put wrong.

Ok, so Smaug is a bit of a disappointment, and the finale is preposterous. But given that Unexpected Journey is an empty windbag of a film, a showcase for almost all of Peter Jackson's flaws, DoS beats it handily.

Just saw Battle of Five Armies tonight. It was ... decent. At the end of Desolation of Smaug I though "why on Earth did they leave the resolution of Smaug unfinished? It's going to be so anti-climatic." And yep, it was. But as soon as Battle of Five Armies started up and Smaug started lighting up Lake Town I realized studio executives thought if Smaug died at the end of the second movie no one would show up for the third movie. And they're probably right. Smaug's defeat was really anticlimatic, and after that the movie was just one, long, drawn-out fight scene.

This series really didn't need to be three movies long. I was really excited they were going to flesh The Hobbit out with some material from the appendices, but in the end driving out Sauron from Dol Guldor wasn't fleshed out much. Maybe it would have been squeezing it in to make it one movie, but three was excessive.

I think my favorite from the Hobbit movies is Unexpected Journey, but it's been at least a year since I've seen it and Desolation of Smaug.

Funny enough, I think my ranking goes in order of release.

Fellowship of the Ring
Two Towers
Return of the King
Unexpected Journey
Desolation of Smaug
Battle of Five Armies

Favorite scenes (in no particular order)
Balrog and Gandalf on the bridge (Fellowship)
Gandalf's epic falling fight with the Balrog (Two Towers)
Battle of Helm's Deep (almost half the movie of Two Towers, but way better than described in book, also it makes the Battle of Minas Tirith seem minisculte in comparison)
Riddles in the Dark
Bilbo's conversation with Smaug
Eowyn kills the Witch King

Most of those line up with my favorite parts from the books as well, but my favorite surprise addition in the LOTR movies is the scene where King Theoden visits the grave of his son.

Okay, this is one forum topic that I can easily get into. (Hi, I'm new here and should probably avoid my first discussion being negative!)

I disliked the new trilogy overall, but they got progressively better, with Battle of Five Armies being my favorite. Two main reasons I didn't enjoy the new trilogy.
-It's just a rollercoaster ride. The first two Hobbit films felt like all the Marvel and JJ Abrams films. Fun as a romp, but with this feeling like if you moved the camera a hundred feet to the left, there'd be nothing but bare rock everywhere outside of the shot. The third sort of had that feeling, but Jackson admittedly knows how to make an epic battle, and they were stuck in the same space, so it felt like they had to build up the location. It's a preference thing, but I am all about believable space.
-I wanted a story about Bilbo. I think Martin Freeman was the perfect casting for the character, and they could have told a wonderful story about him, but they chose to focus on an angry dwarf, and I don't enjoy watching characters spend literal hours being angry.

I thought this latest movie was actually pretty fun, but overall, as a huge Tolkien fan (and fan of the original trilogy), I felt they missed the opportunity to have fun and tell a wonderful 2-movie arc about a hobbit.

All that being said, I kinda loved the psychadelic moments of this latest movie. It felt super not-blockbuster and interesting.

My order:
1.Fellowship (my fave by far)
2.Two Towers
3.RotK
4.Battle (I could be convinced that Battle is better than RotK as a movie, but I prefer RotK. Pippin's song..)
5.Desolation (my least favorite as a Tolkien fan)
6.Unexpected Journey

fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/hobbit-battl...s-lord-of-the-rings/

more minutes than book pages, quite an achievement!

I saw Battle of Five Armies of the Holidays and enjoyed it quite a bit! My favorite scene has to be when the "DWARVES RALLY" HA!

Thorin's battle with gold fever is deep in its message for anyone who has given up honor for money or we can bring it home to the gamer universe, Free games for a favorable review, HA!

The "money is the root of all evil" theme is done very well but of course not as well as in "Citizen Kane"

Black Barney wrote: how about favorite character across the six flicks?

For me it's not even close. Theoden all the way

Favorite scene, not surprising, the charge of the Rohirrm (sp?) in RotK

Top 5 characters?

Theoden - has all the best lines
Samwise - the heart of the fellowship
Dain - fiery red, troll-slayer hair!
Boromir - duh...Sean Bean
Thranduil - the arrogant elf prick played to perfection

Its hilarious to read online a lot of the moaning about The Hobbit and how a small book became 3 long movies, its like they talk about it as though Peter Jackson was there fannying about doing it just for the love of it. Erm, I'm guessing the movie studios decided to cash in on LotR by making another trilogy which I guess worked cos I imagine Hobbit made a gazillion dollars. So no, PJ did not "fail" or "lose the plot", he did what he was asked. Milk a franchise for a fuckton of money. What were people expecting. The End.

i think people were expecting a great trilogy just like LOTR, you know, same director and everything.

definitely, but *after* the fact, it's naive to think that somehow he "failed", since the number of zeroes now padding the bank accounts of the people in charge of it say otherwise. I'm sure Jackson will get over it once he's sat in his trunks in the cayman islands getting blown by hookers. It certainly makes me feel better every time i lose an argument here. Though its a lot colder here and I pay the missus a lot less

Like butter scraped over too much bread.

I saw this on NYE. I'd enjoyed the last two enough. This was probably my least favourite of the series, i don't hate it, but found myself checking the time quite often despite it not being that long. I don't really object the changes in plot or feel betrayed or anything, i just didn't find it as entertaining as i hoped. I spent a remarkably long time wondering whether they were going to cut Bjorn, who for some weird reason is one of my childhood memories of reading the book.

things i liked; Billy Connolly, some of the fight choreography, dwarfs chearing the arrival of more dwarfs, Richard Armitage (forget his dorf name) rejecting negotiations, Martin Freeman, the first 20mins or so of battle stuff (then i got a bit tired)

things that could have been better;

The ecstasy of gold with Richard Armitage could have been given a bit more screen. They could have gone full Sierra Madre with him. In general i felt there was an excelent opportunity to make a really big deal out of the greed of various characters. it was in there but didn't really impact me.

Bilbo, he is the most interesting character, i thought he could have been used a bit more. Too much Legolas's face (by far the most uninteresting character in the 6 films), they could have cut him to a cameo and given me a lot more Martin Freeman.

Build up for the scene where the big guns show up to save Gandalf was completely missing. I didn't mind the inclusion of this part of the story, it just sort of felt dropped in really jarringly. If you were not already very familiar with the Lotr it would be even weirder i guess, which i strange for a scene explicitly to point toward the later story.


Also, why the Dune worms? SHI HALUD!

Those things have nothing on dune worms. One thumper placed in the middle of minas tirith and the dark lord would have won the day by daybreak