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Solicitr
Mithlond
Apr 25 2020, 6:02pm
Post #102 of 255
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Alternatively, you could just cut out Bilbo entirely along with all that other rubbish from some forgotten English kiddie book, and make the epic "Thorin the Great and the Nazgul Tombs." Or maybe, "Mountainheart."
(This post was edited by Solicitr on Apr 25 2020, 6:09pm)
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Chen G.
Mithlond
Apr 25 2020, 6:22pm
Post #103 of 255
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Had all of five letters been different ("Dwarf" instead of "Hobbit"), your whole assesment of the film would have been different? Does that sound reasonable to you? What if someone happened to catch it on TV and didn't quite catch the title? Is he to abstain from passing judgmenet on the film, because he lacks the context provided by the title?
Or maybe - just maybe - movie titles don't really matter, to begin with? Maybe they're more about sounding intriguing or helping the brand of the movie than they are intended to actually be a statement of the film's content and focus? Maybe one should be able to infer what a movie is about simply through watching it? The prologue of An Unexpected Journey is enough for one to grasp who's story the films are truly about.
An non-exhaustive assortment of movie titles that don't offer a true encapsulation of the film: The Silence of the Lambs, The Bridge over the River Kwai, The Lord of the Rings, Gladiator, Kingdom of Heaven, Chimes at Midnight, Summertime, Infinity War, Star Wars, The Two Towers, The Robe, Doctor Strangelove, Dune.
(This post was edited by Chen G. on Apr 25 2020, 6:34pm)
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The Dude
Ossiriand
Apr 25 2020, 7:45pm
Post #105 of 255
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There are plenty of reasons why splitting "The Hobbit" into three films did not work but one stands out.
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From the beginning of the production, one of the main justifications for splitting the book into several films was that the films would offer a more in depth-characterization of the dwarves. In the book, after all, most of them are mentioned by name and that's about it. Now, there is a good explanation for why Tolkien wrote them that way, and there is plenty of evidence to believe that the filmmakers should have followed his approach. But let us put that aside for the moment...
From the design of the dwarves, and the way those designs were publicized, it is clear that Jackson and Co. did not want a group of interchangeable bearded faces as their secondary characters. They specifically intended to give each and every dwarf his own backstory and unique design. Merchandising considerations might have played a role in this decision as well, but honestly, I doubt this was Jackson's main objective. Originally, I believe, he really wanted to create a second fellowship.
And yet, most of the dwarves are nothing but glorified extras in the films. The only truly fleshed out characters are Thorin, Kli, and Balin. Then come thinly sketched characters like Bofur, Dwalin, and Fli. The rest of the dwarves are utterly forgettable. And this gets worse over the course of the three films. When Tauriel and Legolas show up, most efforts to personalize the dwarves are thrown out the window. Hardly the first time this is mentioned, but when Bilbo says good-bye to the dwarves near the end of the third film, most viewers probably struggled to identify two thirds of the dwarves. Azog or no Azog, if a 474-minute-long adaptation of a relatively short book does not manage to flesh out most of its characters, if Gamling in the "Two Towers" is a more memorable character than two thirds of Thorin's company, something went wrong. That is perhaps not the fundamental but the most obvious flaw of the three film adaption.
(replying to you at random)
(This post was edited by The Dude on Apr 25 2020, 7:47pm)
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Otaku-sempai
Elvenhome
Apr 25 2020, 8:02pm
Post #106 of 255
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From the beginning of the production, one of the main justifications for splitting the book into several films was that the films would offer a more in depth-characterization of the dwarves.
And, more generally, to allow the story room to breathe. And, to your later point, Peter Jackson largely fails at giving most of the company well-rounded personalities. There is just too much extraneous material--not just from outside of the book, but outside of Tolkien's entire legendarium. Even with adding content from the LotR appendices, a two-part adaptation of The Hobbit should have been more then enough to do justice to the book.
As I've stated often before, I do like Jackson's Hobbit trilogy, but I can never love it wholeheartedly.
#FidelityToTolkien
(This post was edited by Otaku-sempai on Apr 25 2020, 8:02pm)
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Chen G.
Mithlond
Apr 25 2020, 8:03pm
Post #107 of 255
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I'd say Jackson wisely chose AGAINST flesing out ALL thirteen Dwarves. Even for three three-hour films that would have been too much. Instead, he focused on seven of them: Thorin, Balin, Dwalin, Kili, Fili and Bofur.
Its not accident that, other than Bofur, all of them arrive separately from the main group. Fili is certainly the least fleshed-out, but I disagree about Bofur and Dwalin, who are actually quite well-defined. Dwalin even gets a character arc which proves quite significant in bringing the story to completion. Hes a more refined personality than either Legolas or Gimli have in The Lord of the Rings.
I also think there are some inherent differences compared to The Fellowship. All the Dwarves know each other before the quest has begun and while this sometimes makes it hard to separate them, it allows them to operate as facets of the company, which is a character unto itself. The Fellowship isn't a character, but the company is: it has a personality, which is at once raucous and somber, uncouth but dignified, mercenary and yet human.
Would I have liked more individual moments with the Dwarves? Absolutely. But its hardly some major failing of the trilogy as a whole.
(This post was edited by Chen G. on Apr 25 2020, 8:12pm)
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The Dude
Ossiriand
Apr 25 2020, 9:26pm
Post #108 of 255
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Bad middle of the road approach.
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I would wager Jackson decision to essentially abandon most of the dwarves came relatively late in the production process, and probably involved some pressure from the studio (although I would be hesitant to blame them entirely). I also think Jackson knew there were "inherent differences" between Thorin's company and the Fellowship, but he clumsily tried to walk a fine line between fleshing out some of them (the core Fellowship 2.0) and totally ignoring others. This created a weird effect in the films, where one could safely dismiss most of the dwarves as mere extras. It is not so much that these characters are not fleshed out, they could have been called Dwarf #12 and Dwarf #13 too. And as a group they are mostly presented as a bunch of buffoonish yet invincible warriors who switch to a faux-heroic gaze whenever one of the actually important characters gives a monologue. Again 474 minutes of film, and instead of a deep portrayal of dwarven culture, we got seemingly never-ending scenes of weightless slapstick action.
As mentioned above, the only truly fleshed out dwarven characters are Thorin, Kli, and Balin. There is much to criticize about how these three characters turned out in the final cut of the films, but I would not deny that they are full-fledged characters. Meanwhile, the only thing I can recall about Fli is that he carried a lot of hidden knives, I guess. They originally tried to give a more prominent role to Bofur, but eventually Nesbitt's own daughters somewhat eclipsed him. I also do not see how you could call Dwalin a "more refined personality" than Legolas or Gimli, unless you merely assess this through so-called character arcs. Sure, he has his character moment in the third film, when he confronts Thorin, but prior to that I only remember him as "angry, rude warrior dwarf". Gimli's desire to visit Moria and his realization that his kin have all been killed is a far more interesting and haunting story, in my book.
(Of course the best path forward would have been to make one, or if the producers insisted two, films (1), focus on Bilbo entirely (2), truly flesh out only Thorin but only vis-a-vis his interactions with Bilbo (3), do the same on a much smaller scale with Balin and maybe Fli and Kli (4), and present the dwarves as a homogeneous group of ostensibly indistinguishable bearded faces (5), i.e., viewers would have learned much about their alien and barely decipherable culture and fairly little about the individual characters. But that would have a required a bold break with audience expectations...)
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Solicitr
Mithlond
Apr 26 2020, 2:16am
Post #109 of 255
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for all the countless hours of Star Trek that have been filmed, they only managed to flesh out maybe a half-dozen Klingon characters. Character development takes screentime, lots of it.
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The Dude
Ossiriand
Apr 26 2020, 1:38pm
Post #110 of 255
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I would not cite "Star Trek" as a positive example for anything... ^^
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..but that is maybe a story for another hour (I would say though that the recent Star Trek shows/films have achieved the impossible by making that franchise even duller and sillier than what came before.).
Nevertheless, you are right "true character development" (emphasis on "development") takes a lot of time. But turning secondary characters into interesting sketches does not. "Ocean's Eleven" is by no means Soderbergh's best film, but he managed to do in 117 minutes what Jackson failed at in nearly 8 hours.
As I mentioned above, I would have preferred a shorter adaptation that solely focused on Bilbo and explored the dwarves through his eyes alone. Turning "The Hobbit" into a trilogy was always a bad idea, but the negative effects of that decision would have been mitigated to a small degree if the films had focused on Bilbo and the dwarves. Sure that is not "The Hobbit" but it is better than what we got: a disjointed story about Thorin, Bilbo, Kli/Tauriel/Legolas, and Gandalf.
The thought process probably went something like this:
A,) We can't just make a trilogy about one hobbit...
B.) So we will focus on the dwarves too, especially Thorin...
C.) But wait a moment...in the end they all look alike...there is no romantic subplot here...no elves...let us instead focus on one or two dwarves, some new characters, oh, and wait, Bilbo.
I would not call "An Unexpected Journey" a good film, but it is clearly the best out of the three films, partly because it sticks closely to Option B.). Again, they should have gone with something along the lines of Option A.) from the start, but if push comes to shove, I would have preferred B.) over C.).
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Noria
Hithlum
Apr 26 2020, 1:43pm
Post #111 of 255
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Before filming of The Hobbit began, I remember reading the suggestion by at least one book fan that the number of Dwarves should be cut to just a handful because most of them are just background characters, nothing more than names and hoods, in the book.
I also recall Jackson saying that one of the things that he found off-putting when he contemplated filming The Hobbit was what to do with all those Dwarves. His solution was to keep the iconic thirteen intact, feature just a few of them and make the rest minor characters, each made visually distinctive and receiving a few moments in the sun now and again when required.
One of the reasons the Unexpected Party sequence is so long in the films is that we are given the opportunity to get to know the Dwarves somewhat as individuals, most of them as much as we need to for the purposes of the movies. Other than that, the role of the less prominent Dwarves is primarily is to make up the Company of Thorin Oakenshield and provide an occasional bit of colour. I agree with Chen that the Company itself is, in a sense, a character.
IMO the character who got short-changed in TH movies was Fili and I suspect that was due at least in part to the change of actor part way through the shoot.
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Chen G.
Mithlond
Apr 26 2020, 5:21pm
Post #112 of 255
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I think he was partially reacting to audience feedback
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This trilogy, like The Lord of the Rings, doesn't contain any major course-corrections or retcons a-la the various Star Wars trilogies, but it does contain little variations that seem based on audience feedback.
In the audio commentary to An Unexpected Journey, Jackson shows that he is aware of the complains of glacial pacing, and I think the faster pace of The Desolation of Smaug (which I love) is partially a reaction to this.
Likewise, that Tauriel doesn't have a lot of screentime in The Battle of the Five Armies also appears to me to be a result of fan-reaction, and its part of why her story feels so much less compelling in that film. Although again, its nothing too major since the essential beats of Tauriel's story are still in there (unlike, to return to Star Wars, Jar-Jar or Rose).
It seems that in the attempts to cut the other two films to be more lean (particularly for theaters) much of the individual moments of the anchillary Dwarves got left on the cutting room floor. In the Battle of the Five Armies some of those got re-inserted into the movie for the extended cut.
Its a missed opportunity, but not an outright flaw.
(This post was edited by Chen G. on Apr 26 2020, 5:27pm)
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Noria
Hithlum
Apr 27 2020, 1:19pm
Post #113 of 255
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DOS especially is certainly faster paced than AUJ, but one could argue that that the set-up of world, characters and situation had largely been done in the latter.
Still, it seems that Jackson can be pretty determined when he chooses. I enjoy his occasional apologies in the commentaries for both trilogies, when he basically says sorry some of you viewers dont like such and such but I (PJ) do so too bad.
Myself, I loved pretty much every second of the Unexpected Party. Bilbo, Gandalf, Thorin, Balin and Dwalin and the rest, Bag End the Hobbit fan in me ate it up. Plus, as I said previously, the sequence establishes a lot about the characters individually, the Company itself and the quest.
On another note, and I know Im in the minority here, I dont feel that Thorin is the main protagonist of the movies, or at least not the sole main protagonist, though his role is tremendously more substantial in the movies than it is in the book. I see Bilbo as equally important, and the relationship between Bilbo and Thorin as perhaps the most significant in the trilogy. Bilbos personal story is simpler the rise of an everyman to hero and less spectacular than Thorins tragic fall and rise and fall. To some extent, I suspect that our perceptions of these matters depend upon where our eyes drawn, as in to look at Bilbo or at Thorin. I tend to look at Bilbo.
As far as Im concerned, the EE of BOTFA, with its character moments, the funeral and such should have been the theatrical release and more goodies added to make a another EE version. As with RotK, I much prefer the EE.
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Voronw_the_Faithful
Doriath
Apr 27 2020, 4:32pm
Post #114 of 255
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There are sublime moments that greatly add to the film of BOTFA, but there are also ridiculous moments that greatly take away from it (e.g., the skulls in the paths of the dead in ROTK, and Alfrid's death in BOTFA, among other things).
Like you, I think the first hour of AUJ is almost perfect, and might be my favorite part of all six Peter Jackson M-e films.
And I don't disagree with you about Bilbo's role in the films (and Martin Freeman is extraordinary in the role), but I do think that the push the emphasis on Thorin too far.
'But very bright were the stars upon the margin of the world, when at times the clouds about the West were drawn aside.'
The Hall of Fire
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Solicitr
Mithlond
Apr 27 2020, 5:15pm
Post #115 of 255
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De gustibus non est disputandum, but to me the EE of RK is vastly inferior to the theatrical cut; unlike FR, which is improved by the restored material, almost everything cut from RK deserved to be cut and should have been left on the floor. The cascading skulls was perhaps the most egregious, but there is also the completely bollixed Voice of Saruman sequence (which also is in the wrong movie- that's not just a purist point, but a filmic one, since Saruman is the Big Bad of TT and his arc needed to be closed there) - and the horrible, terrible, very bad Gandalf-Witch King confrontation, just to name a few of the lowlights.
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skyofcoffeebeans
Nargothrond
Apr 27 2020, 6:38pm
Post #116 of 255
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They should have written the confrontation between Saruman, Grima, and the company to occur at Helms Deep, something like the parlay between Aragorn and the orca somewhere in the books. I understand the structural decisions that led them to cut Sarumans scene out of Film 2, as a physical journey to Isengard after the emotional climax of Helms Deep and Osgiliath wouldnt make sense in the way they had built their version of TTT. And I also understand their reasoning for cutting the scene in Film 3 for the reasons they stated.
Of course, they could have just not have a warg attack on the plains of Rohan for the purposes of a fake-out death scene just so Aragorn could see the army coming their way, but clest la vie.
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Noria
Hithlum
Apr 28 2020, 12:33pm
Post #117 of 255
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I completely agree about the skulls and the avalanche. I dislike even more what I call Pirates of the Anduin, that cluster of silly and gratuitous cameos, but at least that is short. Its as if at the end of the long and arduous process of filming and post-production for three films and three EEs, PJ lost perspective and went a bit nuts, more than usual I mean,
But the good of the RotK EE, like Eowyn and Merry, Eowyn and Faramir, the Houses of Healing and so on, even Sarumans demise, far outweighs the bad to my mind. (Like it or not, at least his final scene completes Sarumans story, one movie too late).
Similarly, most of the additions to the BotFA EE really enhance it fnd for me are worth the price of having to watch Alfrid being munched by an ogre.
Full disclosure: I love the chariot chase scene in BotFA, especially the jam bags. Its silly, thrilling, impossible, gory, heroic and just fun.
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Chen G.
Mithlond
Apr 28 2020, 2:25pm
Post #118 of 255
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The Return of the King is actually my all-time favourite movie. I love those ludicrous moments like the skull avalanche: its just fun.
There's not a moment in cinema history as numinous as Sam carrying Frodo on his shoulders. Emotionally, it confused the hell out of my sixteen year-old mind at the time!
The Battle of the Five Armies is a different case. While its clearly not as good a movie as The Desolation of Smaug, it IS a much more powerful viewing experience, because the climax is there. It works for me, and the chariot race is a nice, more-swashbuckling interlude in what's overall quite a grim movie.
(This post was edited by Chen G. on Apr 28 2020, 2:26pm)
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lurtz2010
Nargothrond
Apr 29 2020, 2:57am
Post #119 of 255
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BOFA is the best hobbit movie imo
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It was the only one that didnt leave me confused about my feelings when I saw it the first time. I thought it was completely solid and the only thing that didnt really work for me was the Tauriel and Kli love story. I never understood why so many think its the weakest of the three and the EE makes it 10x better.
I also dont get the hate towards the skull avalanche in ROTK, I think its visually well done and fits the paths of the dead sequence perfectly.
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Paulo Gabriel
Menegroth
Apr 29 2020, 7:23am
Post #120 of 255
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Not related to this post in particular...
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but what do you mean by ''JPB''? Jackson-Phillipa Boyens?
But don't people usually refer to the writing team as ''J/B/W'' (Jackson-Boyens-Walsh)?
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Paulo Gabriel
Menegroth
Apr 29 2020, 7:25am
Post #121 of 255
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It was the only one that didnt leave me confused about my feelings when I saw it the first time. I thought it was completely solid and the only thing that didnt really work for me was the Tauriel and Kli love story. I never understood why so many think its the weakest of the three and the EE makes it 10x better.
I also dont get the hate towards the skull avalanche in ROTK, I think its visually well done and fits the paths of the dead sequence perfectly.
all I can say is that I agree 100% with this.
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Noria
Hithlum
Apr 29 2020, 1:53pm
Post #122 of 255
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For me, the Paths of the Dead should be quiet and eerie and frightening, not funny. Its that comedic slant of the scene, with Gimli tiptoeing and crunching his way over the bones, that bothers me, a choice PJ made with which I disagree. The avalanche, which admittedly looks great, is just the icing on that cake. Hey, I can be puristy too. Anyway, who piled up those thousands of skulls?
PJ apparently started out making extremely gory comedy-horror films and I get that its that part of him on display in the Paths of the Dead. It just doesnt really work for me, but certainly doesnt significantly detract from my love of RotK.
Now that I think of it, RotK and BotFA are each my least favourite of their respective trilogies, not because I think they are bad movies but because Im not as invested in big battles as I am in the rest of the story. I was middle-aged when RotK was released and Im old now, so why would I be? But the overall story in both movies is so powerful, so satisfying, that the my battle quibble is less thanminor.
And when I say my least favourite, I mean something like 98% compared to my 99% love for the other four films. I love all six movies.
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Voronw_the_Faithful
Doriath
Apr 29 2020, 3:25pm
Post #123 of 255
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While I would say that I am someplace in between you and solicitr, I am much closer to your position than his.
(recin hcum era uoy dna.)
'But very bright were the stars upon the margin of the world, when at times the clouds about the West were drawn aside.'
The Hall of Fire
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Solicitr
Mithlond
Apr 29 2020, 4:28pm
Post #124 of 255
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one wonders- apparently the Men of Dwimorberg were boneless? Skulls but no skeletons? Maybe they were cartilageneous like sharks?
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