Oh, man. Yes. The attempts to bring The Hobbit into the PJ version of Middle-Earth are decent. But they’re so infrequent imho that it’s painful to realize that after a decade of development hell, that was the best we were going to get. Whatever people might think of the PJ-verse, it’s seems like the LOTR movies are a labor of love. The Hobbit feels like a contractual obligation.
It’s not just the rock-jumping, either. There are so many scenes that are just there because they want to show off how good those Red Epics were, and to show off that they filmed it in 60fps 3D. As much as I enjoy 60fps, I enjoy it when it’s well done and there’s a reason for it, not when it’s in a 9-hour technology showcase. Now…admission time, I didn’t see it in 60fps, but people I know who had said it made the movie look fake. Well-done 60fps imho can look like a window into another world. Seeing it in 2D at regular cinematic framerates made it…well…tolerable.
I mean…it’s been 14 years since ROTK came out, so I’ve had time to think about it. I admit to being biased because i was not one of those people who read it as a kid; in fact, I didn’t read all three until after I’d seen Fellowship in the theaters. So with that out of the way…
I don’t mind it. Of all the major changes, this is one I mind the least. In the old one, they end up looking like the heroes to their people by saving people from the Scouring. In the PJ-verse, they come back home to a people whose attitude is that if you mind your own business the world will leave you alone. Well, that’s obviously not true, our heroes have gone to hell and back to save the world…and their people have no frickin’ clue. The Scouring was probably timely for Tolkien, and imho the haunted veterans returning to an untouched Shire felt timely.
I saw the first one in the high frame rate version in 3D (48fps, not 60) and it was a rather surreal experience. I was really excited to see the Future Of Cinema and a “window into another world”. And at moments, when the camera was slowly panning over the horizon or we were looking at the interior of Bag End, it looked as terrific as I’d hoped. But the moment that PJ stuck his camera in the face of a dwarf (which he loves to do), or an action sequence started, it looked like home video. The ultra fluid motion had the opposite effect of what it was supposed to achieve: it made things look cheap and too real. Suddenly I wasn’t watching a fantasy epic, I was watching LARPers in goofy rubber masks. The 48fps pulled me out of the movie and never gelled.
I might agree, if they had played that up a bit more. Except perhaps for Frodo (who gets on a boat shortly after), I don’t get much feel of traumatization from the others after they return. Or, beyond that one old guy, that they’re unwelcome.
When Legolas surfed down a staircase on a shield I thought “OK, that is gratuitous and unlikely.”
When Legolas slid down a giant elephant trunk like Fred Flintstone skipping out of work I thought “now it’s just getting silly and cartoonish.”
When Legolas grabbed hold of a giant bat I thought “is Peter Jackson just recycling that CGI action sequence he used for how the characters escaped King Kong’s cave on Skull Island?”
By the time Legolas started hopping across rocks in midair I was just thinking “HIT THE X BUTTON TWICE FOR A DOUBLE-JUMP, FOOL!”
I’m positive that I suffered PTSD after the Battle of the Five Armies. It definitely had four armies too many. That and the hidef framerate fiasco. Peter Jackson should be tossed into a volcano for that.
I kind of wish the films delved a little deeper into the impact of drug culture on wizardry.
We all know that Galdalf is really into weed and Radagast fried his brain on shrooms, and if you read between the lines “Saruman the White” is clearly a reference to cocaine addiction. But what of the Blue Wizards? Are they the Istari version of Walter and Jesse?
I enjoyed the high frame rate presentation, but yeah, it really highlighted any minor technical or aesthetic flaws and made them much more noticeable. Not only have we had a century to get used to 24fps as the cinematic look (which also lends it a somewhat dreamlike unrealistic character), but higher frame rates are more unforgiving since there isn’t as much blur to hide behind. Substandard props, costumes, and sets look more noticeably fake, digital VFX become twice as expensive and thus more likely to have corners cut, and the film is already operating under the handicap that our eyes are already trained to associate higher frame rates with cheap video.
I still like the overall look and I’m glad PJ did it, but the lesson learned is that you really have to be on the top of your game in cinematography and every last department that answers to the production designer and costume designer if you’re going to pull it off.
A 35 gal isn’t even waist high, you would have to ballast it with gold bars to keep it from tipping with a person in it. Try this in your sink, take a plastic tumbler and put one of your Barbies in it and see what happens. See how many pennies you’d have to put in to make it stable.
Except that was close to the source material, it just does in one step what the book did in two: in the book, ghosts take out the corsair invasion of southern Gondor, freeing up Imrahil’s army to swoop in at the last minute and break the siege of Minas Tirith.
The problem with the ghosts is that the movie oversimplifies warfare into a series of counters: Ghosts > Oliphaunts > Horses > Orcs > Humans (with Legolas being somewhere above Oliphaunts). Once the ghosts arrive, the fight is over.
In the books, on the other hand, the forces arriving on the ships don’t decisively win the battle, but they strike at a weak point and allow the forces of Gondor and Rohan to regroup and win.
Best comment of the day for me! I also thought that the Scouring of The Shire was essential, but only because I wanted to see the embiggened Merry & Pippin kick ass. You have a deep enough understanding of Tolkien to tell me why it really mattered.
