Will The Hobbit Films be "Oscar" worthy?

jtarkey

jtarkey

Rohan
So we all know that the Lord of the Rings trilogy was a great achievement in movie history, with all three films in the trilogy being nominated for Best Picture. All three films were also released at the end of the year, December to be exact. I know that usually, if a film is expected to be Oscar gold, it is released at a later time in the year in order to keep it fresh on the minds of the critics when awards season comes around. Now my question is this.......

Will PJ and GDT be aiming for the same kind of impact with the Hobbit and its sequel, or will they be aiming to just make the film as entertaining as possible? I know that, regardless, they will make it as entertaining as possible but do you think they will try to make it something critics will look at towards award season? It would be nice to see The Hobbit get some acting nods and even Best Picture. I'm just wondering what everyone will think if the release date of the movie falls in the spring or summer as opposed to the winter? Do you want it to be as unprecedented and grand as LOTR in terms of awards? Or do you just want it to be what it is?
 
Movies like LOTR always find their way into the Oscars, so it's without a doubt that The Hobbit will get nominated, but we'll just have to see if things turn out good enough for it to win any.
 
Sadly, it will close in a month. Sad, because it will be a great film, the kind of achievement that The Lord of the Rings films only wanted to be. But no one will realize it for forty years, when what was once considered del Toro's notorious, career-breaking flop is at last appreciated for its genius, and he's finally given an honorary Oscar. Jackson's LotR films will by then have fallen into a dustbin of obscurity, and deservedly so, in the opinions of the few film historians that ever watch the trilogy.







In other words: who knows? But I don't think that del Toro should make his film with Oscar in mind.
 
I really don't care about the awards for myself, except to the extent it helps the careers of the people who work on the movies. I will be very satisfied if The Hobbit movies are true to the book, and the extra material is as true to Tolkien as it can be.

I think the movies will be of high quality in the technical areas, but I highly doubt there will be any acting awards. The movies will be ensemble-type, and it's very difficult for an actor on that type of movie to be nominated for an acting award.
 
I would love for The Hobbit to be a high-quality summer blockbuster: light, funny, exciting, precision-made, a masterpiece of the comic art - without a serious bone in its body. It is a comedy, after all. Bilbo should be funny, and the dwarves funnier. The serious material in the book should be played as Edwardian melodrama, with Bilbo's deadpan commonplaces puncturing the atmosphere every time. The monsters should be scary, but always get defeated; Gollum should be both creepy and absurd; Gandalf should be fussy and exasperated; Thorin should be serious, pompous, and full of himself, but nevertheless smarter and more effective than his companions.

Even the Battle of the Five Armies could be played as in the book: just as it gets going, music building, special effects exploding, Bilbo falls unconscious and we miss most of it - a satire of those overblown war epic movies, just as Tolkien intended! Later Gandalf tries to tell the hobbit what happened next, but keeps getting interrupted by the more serious business of Bilbo getting some food - Bilbo really doesn't care how the battle was won, as long as it was won by the good guys. We get the general sense that there was a large battle, but that it ultimately had no effect on history.

One benefit of this would be to differentiate The Hobbit from the LotR films as soon as possible, so that people would realize this is not LotR Part IV. Families would flock to it. If it's done right, it should rule the summer season!
 
And here's what I think: it will be hard for either to win an Oscar.

Not by the movies' merits, but just because of the sheer expectations that are placed on them. After all, 11 Oscars is a tough act to follow.

However, I agree with that who said Del Toro will aim for an Oscar, let's just hope expectations do not kill these movies critically.


EDIT: Little piece of trivia, since I don't think it's worth putting it in its own thread: Bernard Hill is the ONLY person to have appeared in two 11-Oscar movies (he was the captain of the Titanic) Beside being one of the two people who have appeared in two movies with over $1 billion in global box office. The other one? Orlando Bloom, playing Legolas, and Will Turner.
 
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I don't think so at all: as far as I know, it was on the contrary one of the most momentous victory won by PJ's 'Rings', that it was the first film on a story of that type that got considered worthy of Oscar nominations... let alone Oscar wins!!!
It actually got a record number of them, equal to the record won by 'normal' movies, but did that start a trend one can always count on, is not sure...
Let's say rather that at least the long tabou has been broken, and hopefully will stay broken...
 
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Of course yes, it is a comedy, but with increasing seriousness as it turns into quite a big war because of Thorin's 'stiff neck', acknowledged with embarrassment and sorrow even by his own companions, but which is the central reason why all the others in turn have no other way than going to war against him as well. Bilbo (and all the readers with him) can see every time how peace could have been maintained and a very good agreement reached, but for Thorin's decision every time to reject the offer. Yes, it all hangs by a thread like that, and depends on the decisions made by petty tyrants like that, in the 'real world' as well, alas...
It seems to me that Tolkien's Bilbo realizes more and more as time passes how empty is the supposed glory of war, in defeat of course, but just as well in victory. It's all expressed in a way that won't bore or really alarm the children that will read the story, and it never turns totally into a drama, but I would say there are definitely a few serious bones here and there, and that they shouldn't be lost in the film version of the story.
 
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I think the movies will be of high quality in the technical areas, but I highly doubt there will be any acting awards. The movies will be ensemble-type, and it's very difficult for an actor on that type of movie to be nominated for an acting award.
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I agree but think that it is a pity. Some of the acting in LotR was as good if not better than that presented in 'normal' movies. And over all three films the screen time for any of the main characters matches that for a main character in a feature film. If I had to award acting trophies, then Andy Serkis, Sean Astin, Ian McKellen, Bernard Hill and Miranda Otto would be up there on the podium - their impact on the screen was tremendous and they all brought such depth to their characters.
 
LotR, he didn't do it with the intention of winning the Oscars at all... given the fact that fantasy films simply didn't win best picture Oscars. ;) I would be amazed if The Hobbit and film2 didn't win any Oscars, though. We consistently won for other aspects of the films (costume, special effects, music, etc). I'm still shocked at the lack of acting recognition. *scowls*

I think if they released on December 22, 2010, they'd have a fabulous weekend turnout as it would be the Christmas Holiday weekend. If they can't release until 2011, they'd better not make me wait until December!!!
 
Over the past years, films like LOTR, Harry Potter (if I recall anyways), and Golden Compass have found away to atleast get nominated. They're all fantasy movies, and with The Hobbit being a prequel to LOTR, and a fantasy movie, my guess is it will get nominations, but we can't tell yet if it'll win anything.
 
Guillermo won't be making these films with any kind of award in mind - he never has. He makes movies that he would like to see. Saying that, he was astonished at the awards Pan's Labyrinth garnered, including six Oscar nominations and three wins, all of them deserved (although the film SHOULD have won Best Foreign Film). But he is also very aware that this kind of 'genre' film will always have an uphill battle for the top awards. Remember that RotK won after the first two had been 'ignored' by the committee, even though in many fans' and critics' opinions it wasn't the best film of the three, an opinion with which I agree wholeheartedly.

But all of this is moot - GdT will make these films the way he wants, with a result as close to his own vision as he can. If he is happy with the result and audiences are happy with the result, then for him that is reward enough. Anything else is just gravy, lovely and powerful gravy though it is.

HM
 
and that's all we can expect now. Since LotR, the movie world has been inundated with fantasy films, trying to be the next "Rings" movie. Some have been good, many have been bad, but the point is, there have been too many. It'll be very hard to "stand out" now, even with the pedigree of "literary classic". I believe they will get production, costume, effects type awards, perhaps even music, but that will be it.

I'd be happy to be proven wrong.
 
that it will be nomiated for Best Picture. But even if it doesn't it's sure to be nominated for Best Visual Effects. I mean, Weta's doing the effects.
 
upon receiving one of the ROTK Oscars - I think it was the Best Picture one - where he thanked the academy for no long thinking of fantasy as an F word. Now all we need is for other fantasy films to follow on from the high standards set by the likes of Pan's Labrynth and LOTR when it comes to excellence of story-telling, to show the world that these noniminations weren't flukes and that fantasy is a serious form of the movie art.
 
The other nominees were Ethan Hawke for Training Day, Ben Kingsley for Sexy Beast, and Jon Voight for Ali.

Scanning the filmographies of Broadbent and McKellen, it's interesting to see that Broadbent had a supporting role in Walter (1982) and Walter and June (1983), two acclaimed telefilms directed by Stephen Frears that starred McKellen. Broadbent was Buckingham in McKellen's famous Richard III (1995). And both voiced roles in the English-language version of The Magic Roundabout (2005).
 
Obviously The Hobbit has got more of a chance of winning best picture than film two, so I would think that The Hobbit would be released xmas 2010, win the oscar, then film 2 will be released the next summer after all the hype...or maybe xmas again....I can't remember if they said when they would be released...
 
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