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The only good parts of the hobbit movies are the beginning, the riddle game with gollum, and bilbo's encounter with smaug, in which the latter two are the best parts of the book anyways.
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Nov 15, 2023 02:10
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I was skeptical as hell about the movies but went and saw them for shits and giggles. Even splitting it into two movies was a bit much even with the added Gandalf stuff. The extended versions are almost 9 hours total for a 300 page book. I haven’t bothered with them because the theatrical ones were long enough. You could certainly cut most of the last 40 minutes of The Desolation of Smaug.
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Nov 15, 2023 02:36
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Feldegast42 posted:The only good parts of the hobbit movies are the beginning, the riddle game with gollum, and bilbo's encounter with smaug, in which the latter two are the best parts of the book anyways. Legolas' 800 orc killstreak while hanging upside down from a giant bat is cool. It's the sort of insane, over the top poo poo that the films would have been better if they embraced. I said it elsewhere, possibly in this thread, but the movies are a weird blend of the book's folkstory style, the LOTR movies' faux realism, weird Star Wars style prequel world building and an extemely goofy, over the top telling of the story. This last one had the best chance of success given the demanded scale of the story. You can still see little bits of it here and there, especially in the extended edition of the third film.
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Nov 15, 2023 02:37
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Snowman_McK posted:Legolas' 800 orc killstreak while hanging upside down from a giant bat is cool. It's the sort of insane, over the top poo poo that the films would have been better if they embraced. No, that stuff is awful, especially in Battle of the Five Armies. Why am I watching a grey washed out soul-numbing hour and a half battle piece based on 3 pages of a book for young children that can't concieve an action beat that doesn't involve a dozen bodies hitting the floor?
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Nov 15, 2023 02:59
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GrandpaPants posted:WB seems like it's pulling Unity levels of self sabotage. I just wish it wasn't taking down hbo max in the process. More like it's the larger form, slower burn version of Toys R Us style ham-fisted corporate looting.
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Nov 15, 2023 03:06
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The Hobbit movies work well for the smaller and quieter scenes, like the introduction of the Dwarves and the riddles in the dark. Everything else is incredibly grey, boring and dull. The huge battles drag, and the town drama is painful. I liked Smaug OK but he's not in that much of them. Stellar casting of Freeman / Cumberbatch though. Could've done without the hot Armitage dwarf.
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Nov 15, 2023 03:08
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High Warlord Zog posted:No, that stuff is awful, especially in Battle of the Five Armies. Why am I watching a grey washed out soul-numbing hour and a half battle piece based on 3 pages of a book for young children that can't concieve an action beat that doesn't involve a dozen bodies hitting the floor? The version in my head isn't an hour and a half of battle. That's way too much no matter how skillfully its directed. Even Red Cliff, which is a top shelf action director with functionally limitless resources, limits himself to less than forty minutes for his gigantic action finale of a four hour film. My ideal version also does not have that weird grey pallette pallette. That's an especially bewildering choice. A lot of the Hobbit mirrors 300's aesthetics more than LOTR's and Jackson never noticed that when 300 isn't grey. In his film. even Elves wearing golden armour are grey. The battle scenes are, like the rest of the films, a confusing mish mash of ideas, styles and influences. You do get little glimpses of a sillier film that's actually fun, and feels like someone telling a story to an audience he's worried is getting bored (which is actually the films' framing device) and that's the version I'd have liked to see: a ten minute battle that's nothing but insane beats that are explicitly Bilbo either lying or not understanding battles very well. That's the films other problem: they have this framing device and do nothing with it aside from going 'remember lord of the rings?'
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Nov 15, 2023 03:13
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The Hobbit movies really don’t feel like they concluded 9 years ago. Just about the point we started getting multiple superhero movies a year, but people weren’t remotely sick of them yet.
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Nov 15, 2023 03:32
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There were some cool scenes in the Hobbit movies, and I kind of like the first one, but overall its a dire trilogy. The third especially.
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Nov 15, 2023 04:25
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whydirt posted:There are three hobbit movies? I knew they broke it up, but I assumed it was just into two It was originally supposed to be two movies, directed by Guillermo del Toro and co-written by him and Jackson. The original idea was the first movie would be a straight Hobbit adaptation and the second movie would be an original story based off stuff mentioned in the Hobbit and LOTR because they only had the rights to those stories. Del Toro then decided to scrap the original story and do a two-part Hobbit adaptation. After he left the project and Jackson became the director, the studio mandated it become a full trilogy, with all three mixing parts from the Hobbit with original elements.
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Nov 15, 2023 04:36
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Maigius posted:My fear is that John Difool will be too competent and likable, besides the obvious coherency question. Played by Chris Pratt.
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Nov 15, 2023 04:58
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Feldegast42 posted:The only good parts of the hobbit movies are the beginning, the riddle game with gollum, and bilbo's encounter with smaug, in which the latter two are the best parts of the book anyways. Gandalf murking the goblin king was genuinely pretty cool
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Nov 15, 2023 05:05
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fire
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Nov 15, 2023 10:04
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Pope Corky the IX posted:What's Lucas been doing? 
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Nov 15, 2023 11:35
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Iron Hands Lucas
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Nov 15, 2023 11:51
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High Warlord Zog posted:No, that stuff is awful, especially in Battle of the Five Armies. Why am I watching a grey washed out soul-numbing hour and a half battle piece based on 3 pages of a book for young children that can't concieve an action beat that doesn't involve a dozen bodies hitting the floor? Probably because they expect a backlash from the general audience if they actually said a huge battle happened byt we only see the POV of an unconscious character.
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Nov 15, 2023 12:54
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I watched the Hobbit trilogy a few years ago over Father’s Day weekend when I was missing my dad and since it had been his favorite book and what he used to read to me as a kid. So I basically just spent the whole time sobbing. But I thought it did a lot of stuff right. It’s just way too long and drawn out with way too much stuff it doesn’t need and isn’t good enough to be worth it.
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Nov 15, 2023 13:17
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Grendels Dad posted:The Coyote movie write-off is hilarious because the Looney Toons are amazingly iconic and intrinsically linked to WB. Also, John Cena is a pretty big name and is working on other projects for them. It's like they are actively trying to bury their own company. Someone at WB made a deal with the devil for fortune and power, now the deal's coming due and they are desperately trying to renege before time's up. They thought hiring Zaslav would do it, but the shambling corpse refuses to die.
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Nov 15, 2023 13:19
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Napoleon theatrical reviews are out and... no surprise... it's uneven as poo poo because it's a Scott theatrical cut.
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Nov 15, 2023 13:39
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Nightmare Cinema posted:Napoleon theatrical reviews are out and... no surprise... it's uneven as poo poo because it's a Scott theatrical cut. Guardian gave it a five-star. Peter Bradshaw's often a pretty terrible critic but this seems like his wheelhouse
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Nov 15, 2023 13:42
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It's a lot of history to stuff into a movie, even if it's only 25 or so years, you could have a dense 20 hour epic tv show for each year, upto his surrender to Maitland.
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Nov 15, 2023 13:49
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I try to lean towards the positives with the LOTR movies because I've been reading Tolkien since I was a kid and I'll always have an affection for his work, so with the Hobbit movies I think "yeah its not great, but we did see Billy Connolly riding a pig into battle".
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Nov 15, 2023 14:16
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Grendels Dad posted:The Coyote movie write-off is hilarious because the Looney Toons are amazingly iconic and intrinsically linked to WB. Also, John Cena is a pretty big name and is working on other projects for them. It's like they are actively trying to bury their own company. I really hate this sort of speculation but are they trying to tank the stock price to make selling the company easier? There was that leak a few months ago that claimed WB execs all believe Zaslav is planning on selling to Universal.
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Nov 15, 2023 14:45
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McSpanky posted:Someone at WB made a deal with the devil for fortune and power, now the deal's coming due and they are desperately trying to renege before time's up. He was in charge of Discovery when it bought WB
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Nov 15, 2023 14:46
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The best new bit of lotr media imo is Andy Serkis' audiobooks. He does an incredible job voicing the huge cast and breaths a lot of life into it (he can't really sing though)
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Nov 15, 2023 14:47
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MonsieurChoc posted:Played by Chris Pratt. Surprisingly, I think John DiFool would be a good role for him, since John isn't meant to be a sympathetic character.
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Nov 15, 2023 15:00
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Well the shareholders seem to like what Zaslav is doing because he hasn't been fired yet despite everything he's done
Feldegast42 fucked around with this message at 15:25 on Nov 15, 2023 |
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Nov 15, 2023 15:22
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Feldegast42 posted:Well the shareholders seem to like what Zaslav is doing because he hasn't been fired yet despite everything he's done The stock is down more than half since the merger. Also the Times just did a big article on him and his troubles today: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/15/magazine/david-zaslav-warner-media-discovery.html
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Nov 15, 2023 15:42
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Zaslav is a true believer in what he's used to- that is, reality TV. I think he's genuinely thrown that people are actually invested in scripted media and don't treat it like interchangeable slop, and that talent actually cares if what they spend months and years working on gets thrown down the drain for pennies.
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Nov 15, 2023 16:01
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dr_rat posted:Pretty sure if you watch the first thirty minutes of the first hobbit movie you've seen the only decent part of the trilogy. I tapped out after the second one. This was my experience. I also remember doing mental gymnastics partway through the first one, trying to convince myself that they were going to do a "Big Fish" style unreliable narrator, and these increasingly ludicrous sequences were going to get examined and challenged by Frodo, maybe with some Sands of Time style ret conning from Bilbo but nah, nope, it's just bad.
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Nov 15, 2023 16:05
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Ghost Leviathan posted:Zaslav is a true believer in what he's used to- that is, reality TV. I think he's genuinely thrown that people are actually invested in scripted media and don't treat it like interchangeable slop, and that talent actually cares if what they spend months and years working on gets thrown down the drain for pennies.
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Nov 15, 2023 16:45
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Pope Corky the IX posted:Has anyone actually watched all three Hobbit movies? If so, why? Because I don't value my time. Also cause HFR 3D is a good combo.
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Nov 15, 2023 16:47
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Ghost Leviathan posted:Zaslav is a true believer in what he's used to- that is, reality TV.
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Nov 15, 2023 17:58
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Remulak posted:Reality TV made him unbelievably rich, I’m sure he loves it. People love things that make them incredibly rich; my favorite example of this is how in Thomas Harris’ work Hannibal Lector slowly turns into a hero. Lector made him rich, the dude can’t be a villain! IIRC the last book was written because they told Harris that either he wrote it or they would just hire someone else to do it.
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Nov 15, 2023 18:41
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FlamingLiberal posted:Zaslav is only in charge because of the merger Thank you for studiously fact-checking my joke take
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Nov 15, 2023 20:40
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Ghost Leviathan posted:Zaslav is a true believer in what he's used to- that is, reality TV. I think he's genuinely thrown that people are actually invested in scripted media and don't treat it like interchangeable slop, and that talent actually cares if what they spend months and years working on gets thrown down the drain for pennies. The important thing is that he was rewarded for turning TLC into a 24 hour a day quiverfull cult pedo enabling channel by becoming one of the most powerful people in media. America is a meritocracy after all.
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Nov 15, 2023 21:37
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So much pedo reality tv for one company too. The Duggars, Honey Boo Boo’s mom shacking back up with a guy who molested one of her daughters, the Sons of Guns idiot is serving 3 life sentences for child rape, and I think someone who was on Cake Boss went to prison too.
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Nov 15, 2023 21:48
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Nightmare Cinema posted:Napoleon theatrical reviews are out and... no surprise... it's uneven as poo poo because it's a Scott theatrical cut. Best review I've seen for it probably: https://uproxx.com/movies/napoleon-review-ridley-scott/ "I cannot take credit for this observation, but a friend of mine who saw the movie said, “It’s like watching Tim Robinson play Napoleon,” and this is pretty dead on."
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Nov 15, 2023 21:55
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Casimir Radon posted:So much pedo reality tv for one company too. The Duggars, Honey Boo Boo’s mom shacking back up with a guy who molested one of her daughters, the Sons of Guns idiot is serving 3 life sentences for child rape, and I think someone who was on Cake Boss went to prison too. I think it's really cool that our current Speaker of the US House of Representatives learned about the Christian way to watch porn with his underaged son from the Duggars!
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Nov 15, 2023 21:56
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Chairman Capone posted:I think it's really cool that our current Speaker of the US House of Representatives learned about the Christian way to watch porn with his underaged son from the Duggars!
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Nov 15, 2023 22:02
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