Peter Jackson's 'The Hobbit' movie

Ticket prices are notably higher than they were for the LOTR movies, especially when you factor in IMAX and 3-D. I agree that there seems to be an underwhelming vibe surrounding The Hobbit and its sequels. I loved the LOTR trilogy, and I was left feeling kind of empty by the first Hobbit film.

 

Anyone know why Jim Rygiel, who was special effects coordinator on the three Lord of the Rings films (and won the Academy Award for them three times) wasn't attached to this project?

 

That's what I was thinking. It just kind of came and went, despite the reported earnings.

 

Wasn't he working on The Amazing Spider-man?

 

Possibly. But you'd think that given how important the special effects were to the Lord of the Rings trilogy, and the three successive Academy Awards for his work, that they wouldn't want to break up a good thing when moving forward. Schedules could be worked out.

 

In about 20 minutes if you bought the Hobbit on DVD/BD you can use the Ultraviolet code to unlock a Live Desolation of Smaug preview and chat with Peter Jackson at http://www.thehobbit.com/sneak

 

Moved back to LA, finished Spiderman, now working on Godzilla, according to IMDB. As beautiful as New Zealand is, not everybody wants to work there, for reasons of family, money, or other conditions.

 

loved evry second of this and it looked fine to me...

 

cool! gonna check it out! can't wait for the others...

 

I saw it too much hype some scenes were was too fast unbelievable at times.
Too long also. I wish Del Toro would have been able to do the hobbit.
Jackson is too in love with CGI world.
I would all those dumb "Dwarves" dead by the end of the movie
They could killed off at least some them this isn't snow white.
My favorite scene was cave scene with Gollum.

 

Wut He Sed!

My favorite scene was cave scene with Gollum.

 

Anyone know (or has it already been discussed) whether they are going to re-release this in a few month's time in an expanded version? Not sure I want to buy this now if it's already known there will be an expanded edition on its way.

 

I too was expecting at least some dwarf mortality. I was sure Thorin was a goner at the end, although that would have disappointed me because he's the only one I really liked. However, I read the book so long ago and with such ambivalence that I can't remember if any dwarves died in the book, or even if any or all of them actually appeared in the book.

 

As far as I know, there'll be a deluxe/extended version this fall...

 

Ha! I'd like to see a "condensed version" of the movie that only includes the events that are actually in the book!

 

I wasn't crazy about the way that they tried to make Thorin into this dashing young(ish) heartthrob type of character in the movie. I don't recall him being presented like that in the book at all. And of course, they had to give him a big, bad orc nemesis to help personalize the conflict.

 

Did anyone else note that the whole Azog/Thorin conflict is basically a photocopy of the Sauron/Isildur conflict in LOTR?

 

Zooooommmm. Right over my head with these names. That's the problem with Tolkien, too many names!

 

I love the movie, but the CGI doesn't look as good on the Blu-Ray as the LOTR Blu-Rays. I am guessing because of the high frame rate?

 

I may be wrong but I don't think the high frame rate is applicable to the blu-rays. I've also read that even many theaters did not show the movie in high-frame rate.

 

All you have to know is king fights bad guy, bad guy kills king, king's son takes father's sword and kills bad guy. Except in both cases the bad guy isn't really dead.

 

Thanks for clearing that up. Now I know who you mean!

 

You are probably right. Whatever the reason is, the CGI is not as good on the Hobbit.

 

How would you even know what movie scenes were part of the book? You can't even remember anything from the book!

 

I'm not claiming the ability to know what is and what isn't from the book, I'm just saying I'd like to have the option of watching, say, a 5-hour version that is faithful to the book rather than a 9 hour version that is the book plus several hours of extra story that Jackson and his merry band assembled in order to pad the thing out to a trilogy.

Just think of this - the common lament is that when a movie is made of a book, half the book is never filmed and the version of the story in the film is a seriously truncated and often dumbed-down version of the book Well, in this case, Jackson probably had the opportunity to create a movie (or more likely a pair of movies) that included every single detail of The Hobbit, and instead he chose to turn one short book into a three-film odyssey. In a certain sense it seems like a missed opportunity, and missed in exactly the opposite way in which most book-based movies turn out to be missed opportunities.