How will you be seeing 'The Hobbit'? In 3D? IMAX? 48fps? Digital? 4K? (Page 4 of 7)

The Misty Mountains hymn is cool. It needs to be extended into a fully blown goth metal version.

The Radagast smoking gag wasn't funny, nor was the stick insect in the mouth. Nor was how Radagast was going around in circles stupidly leading the orcs back to the dwarf party. Does anyone know why the giant spiders aborted their attack on his rat-infested hovel? Is it because even they have standards?

Did anyone find Thorin's rejection of Bilbo a little abrupt after the Stone Giants scene? I know it was set up at the beginning but he seemed like he was coming around after the Trolls and then all of a sudden Thorin loses his nut when Bilbo slips on the rock.

Also how was Bilbo expecting to get back from the mountains on his own when the path was just destroyed?

How did Gollum not hear Bilbo when he was invisible? We could clearly hear him moving around in the sound mix, so it's not like Sting masks the sound as well.

Why did Azog announce that 'Thorin is mine' and then order one of his underlings to kill him?

How many wargs were there in the final attack? The party knocked off a few in the initial charge. Even Bilbo killed one. Then the Eagles really cleared them out, two or three at a time. Then we see the final 'I will get you' scene on the promontory and it's still covered in wargs. Do they respawn?

Gandalf is the Necromancer - as he just resurrected Thorin with a spell at the end.

Why did the Eagles drop off everyone short of the destination (and in line of sight of the destination) when time is pressing? Surely Gandalf could have put another few coins in the meter, and the Eagles seem to be under his command.

It's funny how Australians get cast as all the leaders in each realm. Goblin King = Aussie. Leader of Rivendell = Aussie. Leader of Lothlorien = Aussie. Leader of Gondor = Aussie.

Whether or not it was necessary, it looked really cool 

I'll agree with that, given that the eagles are kind of an enigma within the LOTR films. Given most people's reaction to them, I think Tom Bombadil would have been a huge mistake.

So far we've seen Gandalf call the Eagles three times (from Orthanc, outside the Black Gate, and at the end of the Hobbit) and three times they've come. Talk about air-support. I love the smell of pipe-weed in the morning.

You could have a scene where Gandalf calls and the Eagles don't come. Or they take a high altitude dump on the dwarves to shown their disdain. That would send the message they're no-one's bitches.

But at the end of The Hobbit, the Lonely Mountain is right there - it's just ahead. Not here, just a bit further while you're at it. We'll even throw in the fat dwarf as a tasty reward.

Fair point. But those songs were usually more of an accompaniment to the scene -- Eowyn sang at Theodred's funeral, Pippin provided ironic counterpoint to a hopeless battle -- rather than being the only reason the scene exists.

Granted, there were only two songs and they followed on each other fairly rapidly. I think that just gave me the feeling that oh Christ, there's gonna be singing all over this bitch. And then there wasn't but that feeling was still there.

See, I would have no problem with The Hobbit as 3 movies, if they were all 80 minutes, which is what I'm going to aim for.  I liked the opening backstory stuff with Thorin, and I dug everything at Rivendell.  I just think the majority of Bag End's is death, and as you and I discussed, I would cut it after they escape the Goblin King.

So, it's been a week since I saw The Hobbit and I figure I should write something somewhere about how I felt about it. The short version: I liked it a lot.

Now, speaking of 'short'. A lot of the criticisms about this movie has to do with the length and inclusion of material outside of the immediate scope of the orginal novel. I can aboslutely see why people have these problems, but Im gonna try to explain why I, after 170 minutes in the theater, still was ready for more.

When I first watched Fellowship of the Ring back in 2001, I didn't immediately love it. It was okay and I was happy to have watched it, but it didn't make much of an impact. It was only when I watched the Extended Edition almost a year later that I finally fell completely in love with that movie. I ended up having the exact same experience on both of the sequels and it became clear that when it comes to Middle Earth,  I'm not looking for the tight, bare minimum version that'll appeal to as many people as possible. I want as much Middle Earth time as Peter Jackson can get away with giving me. And since these three movies are the last chance I'll get to have him adapt anything from Tolkien, I want him to cram as much of it in them as he's able to.

Now, about the movie itself: Liked most of it. Loved The Riddles in the Dark, Radagast, The Whte Council and the performances (especially Martin Freeman and Ian McKellen. My least favorite parts were probably the first song where the dwarves are throwing plates around and the Stone Giants sequence.

Also, I can't wait to buy the EE of this one.

Last edited by Hansen (2012-12-19 04:09:45)

Hansen, you give me hope that I'm gonna love this shit out of this thing. I'm very much all of this:

Gonna try and get out to it tomorrow, since it's my one day off between now and the new year.

Good post, thanks. Interesting read and some thought-provoking theories about learned response, idealized motion, etc.

So the jury is still out on whether this is the future. If it is learned response, then young kids who grow up on 3D OLED screens should perceive The Hobbit as natural/normal and 24P as old fashioned (like we look back at old blurry old black & white movies from the 1930s).

It is weird - every other advance in cinema over the last century gives you more: more colour, more contrast, more audio channels (& with 3D two separate visual 'channels'), more screen size, more resolution,... and yet this one thing, HFR, is perceived as a backwards step. More is suddenly less.

Last edited by avatar (2012-12-19 14:33:56)

SOMEONE TAKE HIM UP ON THIS.

Then we can have a DIF sleeper cell in London for whenever we have... a... plan... to... colonize Parliament or something.