The Hobbit: First Look At Smaug

Who knows what changes Jackson will make, but the two major points I would anticipate from the book are the destruction of Laketown and the Battle of the Five Armies. So you've got a dragon firestorm starting the third film, with the climax being the battle with the the goblins, etc. There's going to be a LOT of action. So much so that I predict we'll all be fairly disoriented by the end of it.

I do think it's a shame Jackson decided to add that whole section with the gold melting nonsense, rather than follow the book more closely in the Smaug passages. He could have ended the film the exact same way, with the dragon flying off to burn Laketown, but what would have come before would have made a whole lot more sense.

 

What I don't get, with all the needless padding they added to this film to flesh it out to trilogy length, is why they drastically condensed so much of the material Tolkien did write. What happend to much of the Mirkwood material (no river that makes Balin sleep, abbreviated spider sequence, and drastically abbreviated Wood Elves sequence). Rankin Bass may have done better with this part of the book.

 

I saw Smaug yesterday, and throughout it I felt that while the LotR movies seemed lovingly crafted, the Hobbit pictures feel manufactured. And often sloppily so. As others have pointed out, the whole drown Smaug in gold scene was preposterous and unnecessary.

When I got home, I felt the urge to watch 'something like the Hobbit, but that doesn't suck' so I broke into the Game of Thrones Blu Ray set I'd been saving. Among other things, I was stunned by the production values - how is it that Thrones looks so much better than Smaug!?

 

My immediate reaction was, "wow, they sure managed to melt down a thousand pounds of gold quickly." You'd think that would take all day; it seemed to take about 5 minutes in the movie.

 

chalk another one up. eh?
I'd love to see a list of the movie you do like?

 

I didn't hate the Hobbit; I just thought it was kind of all over the place. This past year, I enjoyed Iron Man 3, I didn't think Monsters University was too bad, I liked Gravity and Great and Powerful Oz quite a bit, and thought Star Trek, Man of Steel, Pacific Rim, and Wolverine were merely OK, but not terrible. I liked Identity Thief and Now You See Me a lot more than I had expected. I didn't hate many of the movies released in 2013, but Lone Ranger, Elysium, and White House Down would all be at the bottom of that list. Terrible, terrible films that got bad reviews and were notable flops, too.

 

that's cool, but I guess your voice is ((((louder)))) when you hate a movie more than when you enjoy one...

 

Naaaa. I went out of my way to start several threads here on this forum to alert people of movies I thought were very good that they should go out of their way to see. Inception and Gravity were two of them. Your perception is not my reality.

The vast number of films that come out, to me, kind of fall into the "OK, not great, not terrible" category. I'd much rather feel passionate one way or the other: either loving a film quite a bit, or hating it because it took a good idea and screwed it up so badly. Hobbit is maybe a little better than OK, but it's not a great movie to me. I'd certainly say it's very good on a technical level.

 

no, I'm an outside source.

 

I'm surprised you liked "Thief"- talk about a movie chock full of stupidity and plot holes!

It couldn't even get little things right, like the fact it places Winter Park FL on the ocean. There was zero reason the movie needed to feature Winter Park - why not just say they were in New Smyrna or wherever and not look lazy/stupid?

Maybe if the movie had been funny I wouldn't have minded, but nary a laugh could be found in that stinker...

 

It made me laugh. I don't have anything higher on the checklist for comedies than that. There's a lot of very silly, stupid films that are nonetheless funny. Funny is funny. Not a great film by any means, maybe just an "OK" one. But I had thought it would be horrible and was pleasantly surprised.

 

There's absolutely nothing wrong with keeping your brain turned on while watching a movie or tv show.

 

of course not! if one can actually watch the movie without ripping it apart. EVERYTHING has good in it if you open your eyes.

 

I thought it would be funny and was UNpleasantly surprised!

I'm with you in that I can forgive a variety of cinematic sins if the movie entertains me. "Identity Thief" did not, and that was partly because it was so stupid/illogical. That said, if it'd had more laughs for me, I probably wouldn't have noticed/cared so much about the idiocy on display. It just struck me as a relentlessly LAZY movie - like everyone involved knew they could've made something good but didn't feel like it.

"The Heat" was easily the better Melissa McCarthy film from last year - it's precisely 982 times funnier than "Identity Thief"!

 

Despite the 3D boost, this is the least successful of the LOTR and LOTR-related Jackson movies, having made $850M so far

http://boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=hobbit2.htm

The first Hobbit flick grossed one billions dollars!

http://boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=hobbit.htm

I was almost sure "Smaug" couldn't top "An unexpected journey", but not a whopping $150M less

 

What was the estimated budget for this one?

 

Also, in my opinion, the diminishing returns on these films are in large part due to stretching it to three 2-1/2-hour movies. Both films have mostly felt like a chore to sit through, especially all the Laketown stuff in "Smaug." Once again, this should have been a single 3-hour film.

 

Not having seen the third, I tend to think two movies would have been optimal. I wouldn't be unhappy, if the third movie changes my mind. So many people assume that because the book is short, there isn't enough material for two or three movies. Well the book is rather dense and "floats" over a complicated world in which there are many parallel stories.

Jackson seems to be inclined to merge (and yes invent) some of these stories into these movies. He just doesn't seem to make the people real and blend the stories into a cogent whole, he is not telling us why he is blending, interpreting and retelling Tolkien's words this way. I also think that the movies suffer from an overdose of CGI which detracts from rather than add to what I have seen so far.

 

There's no production budget shown on the boxofficemojo entry, but I guess every "Hobbit" chapter cost more or less the same. Weren't they filmed back to back?

 

I just got a digital copy of this film. I enjoyed it in the theater, but trying to watch it a second time at home was a chore. I started skipping around. And I had two ten year old boys who showed zero interest in watching it a second time. Not good. Watching it again, I realize how this movie is so freaking dragged out. And I started finding the musical score almost absurd. There can be a scene of a Hobbit taking out the garbage and all of a sudden the music swells up dramatically like the death song of Tristan und Isolde. This film is just way too full of itself and overblown. I'm beginning to feel like the Hobbit is Jackson's Star Wars Episode 1, 2 and 3. And I hate to say it, but Thorin the dwarf just isn't heroic enough to carry the weight he's supposed to have. I don't know if it's his character or if it's because he's a mini-king, but he's no Aragorn.

 

Anyone else see the trailer for the final film? I'll still go watch it because at this point I feel invested enough to see it through to the end, but my reaction is basically:

This trilogy has left me feeling pretty cold, compared to the LOTR films.

Too padded.
Too much CGI.

I look forward to the fan edits of it into a single film.

 

Yeah, Laketown reminds me of friggin' Sweethaven from Popeye! Bard's changed position and kids are completely unnecessary inventions.

Having a ballista for dragon defense, rather than just a regular long bow, however, does make a bit more sense than the way it's portrayed in the Hobbit. I mean, it took how many arrows to fell Boromir? But you down Smaug with one?

 

I didn't "hate" Smaug, but it's telling it's the first LOTR/Hobbit Blu-ray or DVD I haven't got. The story was all over the place, cartoonesque scenes and too many characters I didn't really care for.... Of course I'm going to see the conclusion of the trilogy in a few months, but my expectations aren't very high....

 

absolutely loathe this new trilogy. And what a waste of Howard Shore's efforts.