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shrike wrote:plus, Peter did alter quite a bit from the book, so saying I'm a fan of the book is also letting you guys know it's not a bad change.

Not really, not on this occasion, which surprised me a lot. There is a grand total of one scene left out, which spans two pages in the book and that was all that was left out. Appendices were added in as everybody knew already they were going to be (and what an addition they were, the scene at Dol Guldur was amazing). One scene was changed rather drastically but had the same result, and there were two character swaps that went hand in hand to add to the story (by character swap I mean they took out a character that appears in one scene in the book and replaced them with a character who is central to the story, and also the opposite whereby a character with one scene in the book was given some more; one of these was rather minor in my opinion also). Any other changes where small things that you either would expect or didn't really notice. I would say this movie was about 90% accurate to the book, which is a lot more than can be said for any of the LoTR movies.

Action sequences were very well put together; very fluid and well paced and they didn't drag on. Graphics were as good as people expected them to be, and though there were a lot of aesthetic changes, the world was still obviously Peter Jackson's Middle Earth.

Without giving anything away as well, how they handled the creation of Smaug for this movie was simply amazingly done, and will add so much to the later movies.

The Telegraph review astounded me as the only part of the movie I found to be slow was the beginning, and that was pretty much 99% faithful to the book, so when the same guy also starts waffling about faithfulness to the book, I start to wonder. Still, that was the only negative review I saw, and when it comes to critics, the best way to make some money is to completely pan what everyone else is praising.

To summarise, the movie exceeded my expectations quite a bit with its ability to remain mostly faithful while also providing an entertaining 3hrs for a general movie goer. However I felt it was the tip of the iceberg, and that what's in store for us next is going to blow it away. The battle at Dol Guldur and the Battle of Five Armies are easily going to be the top two moments of this trilogy. I will certainly be going to see it again.

shrike wrote:if boromir were to be shot 50 times in the chest and still kill a dozen more uruks, would that be fine because there's magic and giant elephants? No.

Except that's what happens seemingly in the books. His death is incredibly vague in the books, but what it does tell us is that they find him with many Orc arrows in him and a pile of dead Orcs around him. All that's seemingly different in the movie is that Lurtz kills him, but then again nothing in the book says it wasn't a Captain that shot him several times, because we don't actually see it happen.

shrike wrote:but the fighting is still relatively brutal (not really so far, only a few scraps here and there

Disemboweling and decapitating; are you saying that isn't brutal?

 Testify wrote:
I was pretty optimistic until I saw a clip of the dwarves in goblin town. The action just looked absolutely awful, like something about of an action film aged at 12 year olds.

That was actually my favourite action sequence in the movie. Seeing a clip isn't enough. It was incredibly fluid, and well put together, and it really fulfilled what it supposed to do for the story; show the moment when the dwarves truly measure up their courage and show us what they are capable of. And yet it remained effective and showed them as skilled warriors while not turning them into epic heroes the likes of Aragorn.

shrike wrote:PJ could hardly have added the necromancer stuff in there without showing what Gandalf was up to, could he?
Plus, there's plenty of mystery around him in the film, just because we know he was talking to the white council doesn't mean we know everything he was doing- it pretty much just shows what he said was doing in the book apart from that bit.

To add to this, the book didn't make him mysterious at all, in fact all it showed was Tolkein had no idea what he was doing with Gandalf at those points. Essentially Gandalf kept disappearing because they needed to face some challenges without him, and in the end when it got to the LoTR Tolkein chinned up and filled in the blanks with the appendices. But at the time of the Hobbit no, Gandalf wasn't mysterious and it wasn't to keep us guessing what he was doing, because Tolkein himself hadn't a clue.

kamakazepanda wrote:Also, despite being filmed in Eastern Europe, Middle Earth still looked just right.

I really hope this is a joke and you don't seriously think New Zealand is part of Europe.

 Harriticus wrote:
Decent movie, but you can really see them struggling to make this moderately sized book into a a trilogy each of 3 hour films. The whole albino orc subplot (struggling to find an identifiable villain and flesh out the movies action) and showing every last detail (like the dwarves signing about washing dishes) come to mind.

How are they going to struggle? Have you read the appendices on the White Council? There is a lot of that to go into the movies, with more than enough to fill them. This film paced well and managed to not take out anything from the book, and finished pretty much at the perfect spot to conclude it. The next has to cover Beorn, Mirkwood, Dol Guldur, and the coming to Erebor. The last then has to cover to finish at Erebor, Dale, the matter of the gold, and the Battle of Five Armies. I'm not seeing how that's not enough material.

The Dwarves doing the dishes; it's the last scene in the book where the truly fun comradery of the dwarfs is on the surface as from there on in it is all about the mission. It is important in that sense; consider it the 'last night on earth' scene if you will. Sure the very next scene is the Misty Mountains song.

How is it you can say they struggled to flesh out the action? The action scenes were applenty (some say too many) and fluid. They flowed together well and weren't forced. Besides, it's not exactly something you can struggle with as a film maker; if you need action you add action.

As for Azog, yes they didn't have an identifiable villain for the first movie straight from the book, but that isn't a fault with the movie at all, that's an issue in the book.

Sgt_Scruffy wrote:
Throw in some stuff from the Silmarilion since that was the one book I found to dense and disjointed to really get into.

They don't have the rights to the Silmarillion.

 KalashnikovMarine wrote:
Smaug seems to be a bit of a tease eh?

Yes, I loved how they didn't really show him properly so when you do finally see him it has much more impact.

 AegisGrimm wrote:
Lord of the Rings is about war, and the scramble to get ahead of the Great Enemy. The Hobbit is an adventure, in a time that was more "innocent" where only vague shadows of that war were beginning to surface. As such, the feel of the two sets of material and how they are handled on the screen feels perfectly appropriate, and so far I think The Hobbit stands up stringly to LOTR.

The parts added to the Hobbit about Dol Guldur bring just the right amount of foreshadowing from the source material, even if they weren't found between the actual covers of the Hobbit.

I couldn't put it better, well said.

 Testify wrote:
It's worth noting that The Hobbit was written for children at a time when children's literature was a hell of a lot more mature than adult literature today.

Lol, this is actually a pretty accurate statement.

 generalgrog wrote:
Thought it was very good. Almost as good as FOTR. I still think FOTR was the best film of the series , even though ROTK won the oscar.

Spoiler:

The dwarves were treated better than what I thought in that, they were actually heroic and not foolish, which is what I was expecting...good thing I was wrong. Radagast was great, Saruman was dissapointing. The opening back story of Smaug vs the Dwarves was awesome, wish they showed more Dragon though, I know it was a tease.

Only had a few complaints:
1) Goblin King voice, what's the deal... were they summoning Daniel Day Lewis's portrayal of Lincoln?
2) Didn't like Bilbo attacking the orcs at the end, just not part of the character IMO.
3) Not enough Bilbo..was hoping for more comic relief from Bilbo.

Besides that I thought The Hobbit was Brilliant.

GG

 brainscan wrote:
I'm glad I chose to watch the film in 2d. Saying that, I did find the mountain views (top down from above), really heard to see what was happening as I felt it was ott for the sake of making it look better in 3d...

Aye, I remember looking at that and thinking what the is going on here?

kronk wrote:Don't go in expecting the Lord of the Rings. Just like the Hobbit is more of a children's book than LotR, so too is the movie.

This is something I've found alright; those that had not read the book mostly didn't like it because they expected LoTR all over again, whereas those who did read the book and thus knew what to expect and didn't go in with those expectations mostly loved it.

generalgrog wrote:Yeah I saw a few Dwarven Troll slayers in that battle!

Yup spotted those. Guess he couldn't resist.

Akirakill wrote:Just felt that the pace was off ... And the dwarfs pretty week... And almost forgot the movie was about the hobbit...

The pace was the same as the book. The dwarves were stronger than they were in the book, so I don't understand that complaint (in fact some of those dwarves aren't actually fighters). And the movie (and book) are not about the hobbit, they are about the company. If anything it's more about Thorin than Bilbo, Bilbo is just the narrator for us really.

In the end most of these things come straight from the book, so if there's a problem it is there, and I know there is the argument to deviate, but if you were PJ what would you do after getting slated so hard for changing stuff in LoTR?

AlexHolker wrote:That's only a compelling argument if you want Jackson to expand upon them. If you wanted to watch The Hobbit and not Jackson's nine hour Frankenhobbit, adding unwanted filler to set up more unwanted filler isn't much good.

Am what? Clearly you know nothing of Tolkein if you think the White Council stuff is filler. If you weren't into the books even that's fine, but don't talk about them then like you know them. I would suggest reading all of the appropriate material, and then you will see how fundamentally important the White Council appendices stuff is.

Why do you think Gandalf is helping Thorin out on this quest? Do you think an uncorrupted Maiar has an interest in gold? Initially Gandalf turns down Thorin as he thinks the quest is just dwarven greed, but changes his mind later after Sauron returns. Gandalf is there solely to kill Smaug so he cannot join forces with Sauron, and Gandalf has been planning this for a long time; he pushes the council at that time specifically so that Smaug and the Necromancer cannot come to each others' aid at the time of the joint assaults on them. If the audience, like readers of the book, have no knowledge of Sauron as the Necromancer, then this makes no sense (which was fine for 6yr olds way back when). Even in the book Thorin pushes to go after the Necromancer also, but Gandalf rejects the idea as he has his plan already laid out. It is also important because otherwise you have one of the main characters disappearing randomly without any explanation throughout the film, which has red flags all over it (and did in the book as well). Basically without all of that, Gandalf has no purpose in the story whatsoever, and comes across as nothing but their get out of jail free card, which obviously gets annoying unless he has another purpose to be there.

And that's the short version of the explanation.

Not wanting to see this stuff is your opinion and you are very entitled to it, but calling it filler and acting like it doesn't belong in the film is ignorant at best.

I stick by my original analysis that it is the fans of the book that really have enjoyed this movie mostly, and that those who didn't read it but saw Lord of the Rings that mostly didn't, which is amusing as adaptations usually get the reaction the other way around.