New Trailer For "The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies"

[FSTargetDrone]

Whoo, troll-mounted siege weapons!

[Ahriman238]

This is going to be so very stupid, and insulting to the book. And the worst part is, I'll go and watch it anyways.

[Crazedwraith]

There seems to be remarkably little of Bilbo in a trailer for 'The Hobbit'

[streetad]

There seems to be remarkably little of Bilbo in a trailer for 'The Hobbit'

And yet quite a large amount of Sir Not-Appearing-in-this-Book Legolas...

[Batman]

If we excise everything from the movies that didn't actually happen in the book there's not much left.

[Crazedwraith]

If we excise everything from the movies that didn't actually happen in the book there's not much left.

Say you know... maybe one movie's worth of material?

One movie per book. A radical suggestion I realise.

[Batman]

Get lost. Next you're going to tell me that since The Hobbit was considerably shorter than any of the LotR books it could likely have been done in an ordinary length movie.

[Hillary]

Get lost. Next you're going to tell me that since The Hobbit was considerably shorter than any of the LotR books it could likely have been done in an ordinary length movie.

But where would be the money fun in that

[Purple]

This is going to be so very stupid, and insulting to the book. And the worst part is, I'll go and watch it anyways.

I won't. After what they did with the other parts I have basically completely abandoned cinema as a whole. It's all just crap these days.

[Crazedwraith]

So you've gone to the other extreme! Well done, that's no less silly.

[Purple]

So you've gone to the other extreme! Well done, that's no less silly.

Well, the way I see it all of the movies coming out recently have been big hollywood exploitation pieces working to cash in on some old IP or the other. And quite honestly I am sick and tired of those. So I'll just stick to film festivals and artsy stuff and leave mainstream movies to those that have a stomach stronger than I.

[Havok]

I find The Hobbit adaption immensely boring and unfun. Which is odd because I know that is how people feel about LOTR that really like The Hobbit book.

[Gandalf]

I think a part of the issue is that Jackson just isn't bringing the same mojo he brought to LoTR. With LoTR there was an incredibly detailed world, with lots of attention paid to the small things. Huge parts of the Hobbit films feel like he just handed it off to the effects people and said "Give me ten minutes of content."

[Purple]

I find The Hobbit adaption immensely boring and unfun. Which is odd because I know that is how people feel about LOTR that really like The Hobbit book.

That's because they quite literally butchered the work. And I am not talking about this in the usual metaphorical outrage sense. Basically, the entire point of the work is to present Bilbo, an everyman hero who likes smoking his pipe and newer had any adventures and thrust him into danger where he uses his quick thinking, whit and ultimately clever use of a magical ring to become the unlikely hero that saves their adventure. The movies on the other hand pretty much got rid of that in favor of action scenes and turning him into an action hero. And this meant leaving out a lot of the original humor as said humor comes from said whit. They literally cut out and butchered a lot of the main scenes that were funny and character establishing (like meeting Beorn, Bilbo taunting the spiders etc.)

[JLTucker]

I find The Hobbit adaption immensely boring and unfun. Which is odd because I know that is how people feel about LOTR that really like The Hobbit book.

That's because they quite literally butchered the work. And I am not talking about this in the usual metaphorical outrage sense. Basically, the entire point of the work is to present Bilbo, an everyman hero who likes smoking his pipe and newer had any adventures and thrust him into danger where he uses his quick thinking, whit and ultimately clever use of a magical ring to become the unlikely hero that saves their adventure. The movies on the other hand pretty much got rid of that in favor of action scenes and turning him into an action hero. And this meant leaving out a lot of the original humor as said humor comes from said whit. They literally cut out and butchered a lot of the main scenes that were funny and character establishing (like meeting Beorn, Bilbo taunting the spiders etc.)

The extended editions of both movies fixed the theatrical counterparts. They feel like different movies. Beorn is actually established as a character.

[Gandalf]

The extended editions of both movies fixed the theatrical counterparts. They feel like different movies. Beorn is actually established as a character.

Thank fuck for that.

Now it's just a matter of finding them here for a reasonable price.

[JLTucker]

The extended editions of both movies fixed the theatrical counterparts. They feel like different movies. Beorn is actually established as a character.

Thank fuck for that.

Now it's just a matter of finding them here for a reasonable price.

Seriously. There are some great additions. For instance, in AUJ, the conflict between greed and honor re Thorin is given more depth as Gandalf and Elrond discuss the prospects of the mission. In DoS, the spider scene is longer and is shown to be more perilous. It's funny as well. Beorn is given more lines. Dol Guldor's scenes are longer and there's a character that was completely left out. It really heightens the sense of urgency and makes it so much more fun to watch.

[Gandalf]

In LoTR they actually cut some stuff out for the Extended Cut, which helped the films a lot with some odd pacing issues. Are there any significant cuts in DoS?

[JLTucker]

The reason why LotR is superior is simple: it was a gamble on the studio's part. They trusted Jackson, who by then only had a smei big budget movie and it was a comedy ("The Frighteners"). He showed he was capable of fantasy with "Heavenly Creatures," but that is not enough to show he could handle Tolkien. Therefore, they had budgets, time constraints, and had to be extra careful. Flash forward nearly twenty years later and Jackson has established himself as a blockbuster filmmaker. The studio wants money, and they give him free reign to do what he wants.

In LoTR they actually cut some stuff out for the Extended Cut, which helped the films a lot with some odd pacing issues. Are there any significant cuts in DoS?

Spoiler

More about the burial of the Nine, particularly Angmar, and The inclusion of Thrain in Dol Guldor. Both of those sold me on it being far better than the theatrical cuts.

[Elfdart]

The extended editions of both movies fixed the theatrical counterparts. They feel like different movies. Beorn is actually established as a character.

Thank fuck for that.

Now it's just a matter of finding them here for a reasonable price.

Yes and no. The add-ons for AUJ don't make up for the tedious council scene in Rivendell, which just goes on forever; and the add-ons for Smaug don't make up for the endless Erebor hijinks and the most ham-fisted "romance" since Attack of the Clones, or the way they turned Beorn (my favorite character since I was a kid and read the book for the first time) into an extra from Cats! on steroids.

I still enjoyed the first two films much more than LOTR, which with the exception of a few scenes in TTT, bored me. I like the goofier tone and best of all, no hobbits bursting into tears on a regular basis (knock on wood).

[SpottedKitty]

Now it's just a matter of finding them here for a reasonable price.

If it's any help, the Extended Edition of the second film is now out in the shops, I got it last week. (The first one came out last December.) What sort of delay do you normally have in DVD releases?

[Civil War Man]

I find The Hobbit adaption immensely boring and unfun. Which is odd because I know that is how people feel about LOTR that really like The Hobbit book.

That's because they quite literally butchered the work. And I am not talking about this in the usual metaphorical outrage sense. Basically, the entire point of the work is to present Bilbo, an everyman hero who likes smoking his pipe and newer had any adventures and thrust him into danger where he uses his quick thinking, whit and ultimately clever use of a magical ring to become the unlikely hero that saves their adventure. The movies on the other hand pretty much got rid of that in favor of action scenes and turning him into an action hero. And this meant leaving out a lot of the original humor as said humor comes from said whit. They literally cut out and butchered a lot of the main scenes that were funny and character establishing (like meeting Beorn, Bilbo taunting the spiders etc.)

It's more than that. They didn't turn Bilbo into an action hero. They turned him into a supporting character. I was actually okay with An Unexpected Journey, since it, if anything, increased Bilbo's importance to the story, by having him instead of Gandalf be the one who outsmarts the trolls, and adding him rescuing Thorin at the end. Every change in Desolation of Smaug, however, reduced his importance. He did not participate in the majority of the fight against the spiders, his plan to escape Mirkwood using the barrels was almost immediately foiled by the guards (requiring an Orc attack and Evangeline Lilly's character to allow them to escape anyway), Bard already knew about the missing scale on Smaug's chest, and Smaug completely overwhelms Bilbo during their conversation.

The way I see it, Bilbo was demoted in Desolation of Smaug in favor of retreading the same "Last scion of a fallen kingdom returns to reclaim his birthright" story we saw with Aragorn in LOTR. A lot of the changes in general seem to be made with "let's make the LOTR lightning strike twice" in mind.