Peter Jackson's 'The Hobbit' movie

Discussion in 'Visual Arts' started by Mohojo, Apr 27, 2012.

Thread Status:
Not open for further replies.
  1. stepeanut

    stepeanut The gloves are off

  2. benjaminhuf

    benjaminhuf Forum Resident

    As Vidiot says, according to the Hollywood Reporter, the trilogy is expected to cost three quarters of a billion dollars, but it's also expected to bring in $3 billion....

    My guess is that the only trilogy to top this will be the new Avatar trilogy. A billion dollars total?

    Box office for the three films will likely top $3 billion globally
    Warner Bros.' faith in director Peter Jackson to make The Hobbit films has paid off in nearly $2 billion in global box office receipts for the first two films, but the cost of the trilogy has bumped up to $745 million, according to financial documents filed in New Zealand this month, AP reports.
    Warner Bros created a subsidiary company in New Zealand to make the movies and their annual financial reports are publicly available. The latest financial statements show that production costs through March 2014 had reached $745 million (NZ$934 million). The films were made in the never-before-seen frame rate of 48 frames per second and shot in 3D. The cost of production onThe Hobbit films is three times as much as Jackson spent on making The Lord Of The Rings trilogy.

    When The Hobbit films were first announced in 2007 as a two-film package it was estimated that they would cost around $150 million each. Jackson shot the films back to back in New Zealand and had enough material to convince Warner Bros. to turn the films into a trilogy. The first film, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey grossed $1.011 billion worldwide, while The Hobbit: the Desolation of Smaug fell just shy of the billion dollar mark, taking $958 million globally. ...
     
  3. He's not the only one. I thought his criticism of The Lord of the Rings trilogy was overly harsh. But everything he said about that trilogy came true with The Hobbit films. Such wasted potential. The most disappointing cinematic experience of my life.

    All that money probably went to half-a$$ed CG due to the director's incessant last minute changes. Throwing the CG team last minute changes and expecting them to create quality, completely rendered work is the new "we'll fix it in post."
     
    Vidiot and benjaminhuf like this.
  4. Erik Tracy

    Erik Tracy Meet me at the Green Dragon for an ale

    Location:
    San Diego, CA, USA
    Very interesting read about Christopher Tolkien...but - where is the actual transcript of the interview that Le Monde conducted? Did I miss that?
     
  5. Aggie87

    Aggie87 Gig 'Em!

    Location:
    Carefree, AZ
    Problems I have with these Hobbit movies: The characters really aren't that interesting. There are too many indistinguishable dwarves. The story just isn't that interesting. There is no heft or emotional substance to any of it. It looks fake and CGI. In the LotR films, I cared what happened to the characters. In The Hobbit flicks, I could really care less.

    I'll see the third one just like I saw the first two. But I don't have any desire to own the extended versions, let alone even see them again. Unlike the LotR films, which get repeat viewings.
     
    GullGutt, Ghostworld and Vidiot like this.
  6. DreadPikathulhu

    DreadPikathulhu Senior Member

    Location:
    Seattle
    I'm seeing the third one more out of a sense of obligation than anything.

    Hard to believe that Jackson was the director I fell in love with after Bad Taste, Meet the Feebles, Heavenly Creatures, and Forgotten Silver.
     
    Hutch and benjaminhuf like this.
  7. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR!

    Location:
    Hollywood, USA
    I dunno. The excerpts are in the Worldcrunch.com link I provided.

    While I'm still a fan of Jackson's work, he is known for making last-minute changes.
     
  8. BeatleJWOL

    BeatleJWOL Senior Member

    Funny, that's a complaint about the book too; there they're basically only distinguished by the color of their hoods.
     
    JimC likes this.
  9. PaulKTF

    PaulKTF Senior Member

    Location:
    USA
    Yeah, but the book is funny and charming so I'm willing to overlook/not care about that quite so much.
     
  10. mrjinks

    mrjinks Optimistically Challenged

    Location:
    Boise, ID.
    I had the same thought. For a piece that was described as an "interview", there were virtually no questions and answers (?).

    Thanks to Vidiot for providing the link, tho!
     
  11. I've been a huge cheerleader of Jackson's since Bad Taste (his first film). But after seeing the Desolation of Smaug there's no denying, he's lost it. I haven't liked a film of his since The Two Towers although I didn't mind the Lovely Bones (even though everyone else hated it. I just hated Mark Whalberg's wig. Jackson's cameo in The Lovely Bones was hilarious.)

    You're correct about his last minute changes, but nowadays, because of his over reliance on CG he has an inability to commit to design and decisions. This hurts productions. His last minute changes have reached a fever pitch. He even changed the design of the dragon in between the first and second film!

    All of the problems with ...Smaug I can easily see where the addition of pick ups were stitched in the movies to make two Hobbit films into a trilogy: That god awful love triangle. Changes from prosthetic Azog and Bolg to their lame/boring digital counterparts. The Tom & Jerry chase sequence with Smaug. My goodness...how can't he see how horrid this all is? He hasn't even used the music Howard Shore wrote for these films (they are, however, on the soundtrack) and opted instead to reuse music from the LOTR trilogy.

    I used to LOVE this guy's films. After I slog through There and Back A...I. mean... Battle of Five Armies...I won't watch a movie of his again. I can already see the unearned melodrama of specific characters in this last Hobbit film. None of which will match the emotion in falls of Boromir and Gandalf the Grey in The Fellowship of the Ring. (speaking of which, I'm sure you're more than familiar with the botched home blu ray releases of both the theatrical and extended versions of this film. :realmad:)

    I'm just cranky. :rant: I, personally hope this is the last attempt to bring Tolkien to screen.
     
  12. +1
     
  13. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR!

    Location:
    Hollywood, USA
    Not to be an apologist for Jackson, but he would probably say, "when your making a film, you have one idea of how everything should look, and then a year later when you're finishing it, you develop new ideas over time and you have no choice but to incorporate them if you want the film to be the very best it can be." A thing like a film is a constantly-changing, fluid concept, and it doesn't really solidify until it finally gets released. And in truth, nowadays the film you see in the theater often gets further changes by the time it comes out on home video. And then 10 years later, the director or studio might change it again as a "director's cut."

    How are they botched? To me, the home videos are no better and no worse than what they did in the theater. I think they're technically very good, but there is a kind of "sameness" to the endless digital battles and the stilted dialogue that kinda tires me out over time. After seeing 5 of these 3-hour epics, I'm like enough already.
     
  14. Yovra

    Yovra Collector of Beatles Threads

    I think this one hits the nail on the head. I loved the LOTR-trilogy because it was character- and story-driven. In the Hobbit trilogy so far it's one large digital vista after another. I liked part 1, but the Desolation Of Smaug was one of the most ''empty'' movies I've ever seen in the cinema.
     
    Hawklord and marblesmike like this.
  15. The Fellowship of the Ring bothces = DNR theatrical, green color timing for extended. I know some people try to deny the latter, but I've seen it with my own eyes. Again, he just can't stop piddlin' around. Leave **** alone when it's already been released. Only the DVD releases were untouched. Both DVD and blu ray versions of The Two Towers and The Return of the King had no changes made. I don't know what's the fascination with teal color timing. Did you see Criterion's release of Scanners? I don't know if it's theatrically accurate, but it sure looks like modern day teal timing to me.

    But to get back to Jackson, I know what you're saying about changes but I mean, he's made story changes that have messed up the continuity in the story lines of the Hobbit trilogy alone (see Thorin's father, Beorn, etc.), never mind how they'll factor in LOTR. I don't know. I recognize a clear change in his abilities and not for the better.

    I hear you about the "epics". Most of them are trying to match what Jackson did with LOTR and none really come close (including Jackson himself), despite being a decade later. After this last Hobbit film, I'm out.
     
  16. marblesmike

    marblesmike Forum Resident

    Location:
    Pennsylvania
    The biggest mistake with the Hobbit franchise was made when Jackson ended up having to take over the directing duties himself. Oh, and that leads me to second biggest mistake: turning a 300 page novel into a 9 hour film trilogy.
     
    Hawklord likes this.
  17. Deesky

    Deesky Forum Resident

    It's daft. BTW, why is it called color timing? Why not color filtering or tint/tone adjustment?
     
  18. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR!

    Location:
    Hollywood, USA
    Gee, now that I've seen this comparison, I have to admit it is alarming that they've pushed everything so cyan:



    One explanation is that it's a tradition from film laboratory practices, where the color changes were tiny notches cut in the sides of the cut film negative, designed to trigger changes in the optical printer. The changes would happen based on a punch tape which referenced to the timing (that is, number of frames) in the entire reel. So on frame #1201, the instruction would be to add two points of green; on frame #1563, it would make the whole thing brighter; on frame #2100, it would go down three points of density (that is, red, green, and blue all down equally 2 points). 6 points generally equals one F stop of exposure, but it depends on the laboratory and chemistry used.

    So "Color Timing" was the term used all the way back to the Technicolor days of Dr. Kalmus and his mad experiments in the 1930s. Color Grading is probably a more widely-used term now, particularly since it's all in the digital domain, but the terms color-correction, color-timing, and color grading are all used interchangeably:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_grading

    I generally call it "trying to F up the picture a little bit less," which also works. When they do intense over-the-top color-correction of massive VFX epics like The Hobbit, I think they cross the line into more VFX than color.
     
    Last edited: Oct 24, 2014
    IronWaffle and Deesky like this.
  19. DreadPikathulhu

    DreadPikathulhu Senior Member

    Location:
    Seattle
    The Hobbit would have been a terrific three hour movie.
     
    JimC and marblesmike like this.
  20. Deesky

    Deesky Forum Resident

    Very interesting background, thanks! With my computer & graphics background, color correction is the term with which I'm most familiar, however, in this case color destruction might be more appropriate.
     
  21. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR!

    Location:
    Hollywood, USA
    That is true that far too many people (IMHO) go for an extreme over-the-top look these days. I'm kind of baffled why they feel it's necessary, but whaddya gonna do? If I refuse to do it, they'll just kick me to the curb and bring in a new guy to do what they want.

    I would say that Peter Jackson is OCD enough that he keeps a very close eye on everything that gets released. If the first film had blues shifted to cyan, then I'd bet he deliberately wanted them that way. I don't think that was done accidentally or haphazardly.
     
  22. Erik Tracy

    Erik Tracy Meet me at the Green Dragon for an ale

    Location:
    San Diego, CA, USA
    I'm Peter Jackson and I approve this post...:righton:
    [​IMG]
     
    Hutch likes this.
  23. At first he wouldn't comment on it. Then he said he and his D.P. added a "a touch here and there". But some one busted them showing that the same level of color timing had been blanketed on every seen in the exact same amount. And it's a total bummer in certain scenes. Green snow and clouds. Bleh. And that scene where Frodo and Gandalf are in the Mines of Moria quietly discussing "Bilbo's Pity" went from a dark black mine to a greenish one. Ugh!
     
  24. robertawillisjr

    robertawillisjr Music Lover

    Location:
    Hampton, VA
    Most Formal Automata or Formal Languages texts are very thin. If you ever see a thin mathematics or theory book and you are not theory inclined, RUN FAST. Fortunately my Computer Theory instructor used a text that wasn't so dense but has over 800 pages in it.

    The Hobbit is very dense. I think 9 hours is too long but I'll be there to see the last installment this December and will buy the Blu-Ray when it is available. :)
     
  25. I'm in between. I thought the original idea to split it between 2 films was perfect. Alas...
     
    robertawillisjr likes this.
Thread Status:
Not open for further replies.

Share This Page

molar-endocrine