Re: The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug teaser trailer
avatar wrote:fireproof78 wrote:The extras are very much worth it, delving in to so much of the production and actors and character development. I loved all of that stuff and well worth it.
At least if Hobbit 2 & 3 are bland/lame, we'll have the superb extras to look forward to.
I'm surprised how 'honest' these behind-the-scenes are - very rare for tentpoles so soon after they're released. Ian McKellen is shown spitting the dummy at least twice, the production crew are shown resistant to Peter Jackson's hare-drawn sled idea (is he becoming Lucas?) , the actors who played goblins are shown disappointed at being replaced by digital goblins, the actors are shown workshopping the script in the council of Eldrond scene, the AD is shown impatient with Christopher Lee's endless stories, etc.
I missed the AD part, but wow...really?
Anyway, I love the honesty of the BTS and making off featurettes. The actors are incredibly generous with their time and and I love the way they describe the process of getting in to character and working. Scene 88 is incredible.
As for Jackson's excess, I think he is becoming Lucas in the sense that he feels he will never get to visit Middle Earth again so he is pouring so much in to it, possibly without thinking. That may be one of the reasons Christopher Tolkien is getting so annoyed with the films is the amount of liberties they are taking due to Jackson's whim.
It is an incredible process that is going on, and I personally, am looking forward to seeing the rest of it unfold.
I've now seen all the Hobbit 1 extras, and the video blogs / trailers for the upcoming Hobbit 2, and to be honest, there's no indication these prequels will improve.
1. The move away from models and prosthetics to CG has allowed endless consequence-less action sequences that are shot/edited too fast for the audience to enjoy, especially in 3D. Having it PG13 and with indestructible characters doesn't help. Just looks and feels cartoony.
2. There's too many dwarves, and most have no personality or individual skills. It's a movie limitation that you have an upper limit on the number of characters the audience can have empathy for, especially if 50% of the movie is chasing/action/fighting scenes. In addition, half the dwarves don't even look like dwarves. Killi and Filli look like rangers. And at least two of the dwarves look retarded. Only Balin and Thorin stand out.
3. The humour doesn't work. At all. We get it - dwarves aren't well behaved at dinner.
4. Martin Freeman - wanted to like him, but he's too whiny. All he does is bitch. The emotional beats with Thorin were forced. And Bilbo is bland e.g. he expressed no wonder at seeing Rivendell the first time. Why does he suddenly want to help the dwarves with their quest at the end of AUJ - it was a pay-off with no set-up, as was the Thorin reconciliation. In LOTR, as Frodo became possessed, Sean Astin carried the emotional weight of the quest. There is no equivalent character here.
5. I get the sense Peter Jackson now has too much money and time and an sense of infallibility and he's lost his ability to generate interesting new ideas. This has happened to Lucas and Ridley Scott and no doubt other directors what have been showered with accolades.
