A new trailer.

And I just realized that it's only three months till the premiere.

 

Definitely seems to have a different and more whimsical feel than the LotR trilogy which I think is a good sign. Also, were those werewolves? They didn't look anything like the wargs from the trilogy.

Edit: There are five different endings to the trailer. Its just the last bit at the end starting at 2:20, but its a little more content. The original works the best with Gollum one following it in my opinion.

 

Has anyone taken a look at the behind the scenes pictures? They're absolutely awesome!

 

Woah. Am I allowed to think that despite the not so entertaining source material, the Hobbit trilogy just might turn out better than its predecessor?

My favorites of the bunch:

Concept art.
Rape faces.
Shire shot.
Creepy realistic hands.
Dat Goo.
Set design.
Inflatable fat.

 

Anyone wants to listen to the complete Hobbit soundtrack? Empire has it.

I just listened to the beginning, because I want to hear it first while watching the movie, but about two minutes of it sounded good to me. It's similar to LotR, but new enough to not be repetitive.

 

Nuuuur, they're gone! D:

 

I just hope the scenes with Gollum are done right and aren't an obvious foreshadow of future events.
Tolkein paid keen attention to Gollum and the ring, but just as much to the trolls, Tom Bombadil and Smaug. And once the incident was over, he neatly put it away and didn't mention it again in the Hobbit, aside from Bilbo using the ring to go invisible, and mention of the effect this had on him, though this is not stated so much as in LOTR. Anyway, the future reappearance of, and major involvement of, Gollum, is kept completely quiet; the ring, we are aware, has curious properties and will show up again, but that is it. I think it would be a major mistake if they overempasize this scene.

3rd movie could largely involve the standoff between the Lake Town people and the company over divvying up Smaug's treasure, and Bilbo's "betrayal". The big visit to Bombadil could be on the way home, and there's another party, with Gandalf's fireworks, when they return to the shire. Bilbo uses the ring to disappear from the party and return home, and this is when Gandalf confronts him over what he has found, and first suspects the ring might be The Ring. Gandalf later told of his years searching to determine the truth about the ring - was that in LOTR or Unfinished tales?, they could perhaps include some of the search and end with him learning about the nine rings. But that would be a big change from Tolkien's happy, home again, all-is-well(mostly) ending.

 

Did I miss the announcement that they're going to include Bombadil in The Hobbit somehow?

Because I re-read the book a month ago and Bombadil is never mentionned.

 

Prohably did the Same thing I always do and he confused Tom Bombadil with Beorn.

 

Um, yeah, scratch Bombadil, I did mean Beorn, thanks! :facepalm

 

Apparently PETA is super pissed off because a lot of animals have died/gotten injured due to the negligence of the producers, so much so that a horse wrangler quit. I usually dislike what PETA does but if even half of what this article says is true then I am inclined to agree with them. It sounds horrific.

 

I just have to say the movie was fantastic, I actually prefered it over the book. And for me thats no small thing to say, considering The Hobbit is one of my alltime favorite books. They have changed somethings from the books, and that was what made the movie so god damn good.

So to everyone on DLP go out and se the movie.

Do it now!

 

I saw it Monday, and thought the opposite.

The movie is good on its own (though not really Fellowship of the Ring great), but as someone whose favourite book is The Hobbit, I was disappointed.

Not so much that they added stuff from the appendices, because I was expecting that and more Gandalf was very welcome, but the changes made in Bilbo's adventure were poorly disguised attemps at making Bilbo "just a prequel" to Lord of the Ring.

The Hobbit (the book) has a very different feel from LotR, whereas The Hobbit (the film) tries very hard (at times, too hard, a few similar shots to wink at the audience is fine, but it goes way beyond that) to emulate Jackson's trilogy.

In short, Patrick Rothfuss was right.

Still, 4/5 because Gandalf, Bilbo and Gollum were excellent.

 

Couldn't agree more with JWH. The movie was very enjoyable, but the tone wasn't very much Hobbit -like.

And Radagast's bunnysled made me rage :/


Still 4/5 just for Bilbo, Gandalf and Gollum, who I found to be absolutely perfect.

 

Okay, just saw the movie and I absolutely loved it. Now, I agree with JWH and Peteks in that they did make a few changes to make absolutely sure that everyone got that this is a prequel to the LotR movies, with a few unnecessary scenes and while I wished that they had cut those out and let it remain a pure adventure style book without the whole fate of the world shit, I still loved this so much. I would say that I prefer this movie to any of the three LotR movies. Apart from the "foreshadowing" they did everything right and it was just a blast watching it. Laughed quite often, the dwarves singing scene was brilliant and send a chill down my spine and over all, it was just a grand, excellent adventure.

Definitely going to watch this one again.

5/5

 

What did everyone think of that Stone Giant scene? I thought that out of all the big action pieces, that one could probably have been lost without too much fuss.

As for my opinion, fresh from seeing it:

Leaving my Tolkien-nerd side alone, who would rage over any change, I loved it quite a bit, and though I noticed all the references to the LOTR film trilogy, I thought they did quite well in not dwelling on any one part of that for too long.

I've heard a lot of complaining about the movie being too long or dragging on, and I have to respectfully disagree for most of that. I recently rewatched FOTR, and the pacing of that seems slower, and it takes ages to get started, with Gandalf's whole trek to Gondor and back stuffed in there as well. If anything, some scenes could probably have used a little more time, especially towards the second half, in which it seemed that action scenes were back to back with barely a conversation in between.

Gandalf uses quite a bit more magic here, and the supernatural side of middle-earth in general seemed to be more present than it ever was in the LOTR movies, which is a bit odd.

I disagree with some that the movie tried to emulate LOTR too much - I thought it distinguished itself as being considerably more whimsical than any of those movies, with quite a bit of humour thrown even into action scenes. I thought those were a lot less realistic than any of LOTR's too, with a more fantastical feel to them rather than the serious tone in similar scenes of those movies. The rush through Goblin-Town in particular comes to mind in particular.

Other minor annoyances: reusing setpieces from LOTR just because. Weathertop in particular stood out to me, though I appreciated seeing that the trolls turned to stone just as they were in the scene they filmed for LOTR, though afaik they were never actually in the movie as more than a background item. A few shots were awfully familiar from LOTR, too. Brandishing Sting and first putting on the ring come to mind..

Aside from that, I thought that the setpiece of a bunch of people fighting or standing on a precipice was overused. Aside from the whole rock giant thing, there was the dragon's-mouth shaped thing they fell on after the dwarves took their mad tumble in the trapped cave (which, itself, was a bit silly to begin with), and then there's the crazy fiery pinecone part, also on a cliff, after which the eagles take everyone - to yet another tall cliff. It seemed like this movie had more of those than Cliffhanger.

Aside from that - hum, a few of the dwarves were a bit underused, but I'm hoping they'll get more screentime in the sequels, since Balin and Thorin got the lion's share here. A few are walking stereotypes, basically, but they don't even really use that too much, beyong minor background things. Bombur, for example, is referred to jokingly a time or two, but that's basically it. He is mostly invisible most of the time as far as I saw. A few of the other dwarves get similarly minor cred, so I don't even really know which one is which without looking up the list. It's good that at least those dwarves which get the limelight pull it off.

Hum, this is getting long.

Since I'm a fan, my score will inevitably be higher than the regular moviegoer, I think. Even with what changed from the book, I really enjoyed it, and I thought it captured quite a bit of the lightheartedness that Hobbit always had more of than LOTR. Perfect? Nope. Good enough for an 8.5 from me? Yup.

 

Anyone saw The Hobbit in HFR? Going for it this Sunday.

 

I couldnt adjust to the double frames as it looked speeded up and kept focusing on it but it did look fantastic.

 

Just got back.

I think my only real complaint with the movie is from the troll scene. Gandalf didn't use his ventriloquism trick on the trolls. Instead they had Bilbo keep them distracted while the sun rose. Now I liked Bilbo's increased involvement, but I think it would have been better for he and Gandalf to work together to distract the trolls rather than just have Gandalf come in to announce that it's daylight.

Everything else was amazing. I approve of pretty much all the changes made save for the above. They more firmly establish the story within the rest of the series and give it a far grander scope than the book ever had in my mind. Radagast in particular was a welcome addition. I'm not going to bother assigning some arbitrary number rating to it, but it's definitely one of my top movies of the year.

On the contrary, I think that was one of my favorite parts from the film. The sheer scale of the fight between those giants was just great.