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Why is Orlando Bloom in this? Why is he in anything? He has yet to convincingly portray genuine emotion, and has none of Keanu Reeves’ charm.

WHY IS ORLANDO BLOOM IN THINGS?

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So it seems like Thranduil is just going to be straight-up evil in this, and not only do we have a tacked-on Legolas, but a tacked-on love interest to the tacked-on Legolas?

Would it… Christ. I have no problem with them adding in a Necromancer plotline. That’s at least something that actually HAPPENED in the book, albeit offscreen. But would it have killed them to limit Legolas to a cameo? He could just stand next to his dad while the dwarves are brought before him and it would be a nice little thing. You know, subtle.

But I guess not.

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I know that present nerd consensus is that the Hobbit trilogy is fundamentally flawed, but dammit I liked the first movie in the new trilogy

Before I ever saw the first movie of the The Hobbit, I didn’t think there was enough story in the book for three movies, especially considering that they’d probably be longer than average. Maybe it would be too long for one movie, but it’s not long enough for three. Then I watched it, and it sure, was action-packed with impressive effects, like almost any fantasy movie with a big budget and big names.

However, they put in everything that happened in The Hobbit but was told indirectly, everything that was mentioned in the Lord of the Rings and its appendices as happening during the events of The Hobbit, basically everything that could plausibly have happened on Middle-Earth during that period… and they still found room to turn a character who was only mentioned in one sentence in the original into a serious villain of the movie.

I’ll see the next two and expect to enjoy them, but I don’t think my original judgment was wrong.

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Edgar Allan Poe said on October 1st, 2013 at 3:41 pm

Rankin-Bass did it in 77 minutes. If the the length of An Unexpected Journey is anything to judge by, Peter Jackson’s version will run 8-9 hours, and maybe half of that time will be dedicated to slapstick and improbable stunts that involve people plummeting off the edge of things, because apparently Peter Jackson forgot how to stage an action sequence that doesn’t involve someone dangling over a cliff.

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highlyverbal said on October 1st, 2013 at 5:01 pm

Slapstick CGI trolls & cave orcs suck. Period. Jar-jar Binks all over again.

It took George Lucas a few decades to tarnish his original trilogy. I guess Peter Jackson is just a better director.

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Citizen Bacillus said on October 1st, 2013 at 7:33 pm

‘Fundamentally flawed’ and ‘enjoyable’ aren’t mutually exclusive. Plenty of bloated, overlong, would-be blockbusters come out every year, but most of them look like they had an accounting spreadsheet instead of a screenplay. The Hobbit trilogy is also bloated and overlong, yet it doesn’t lack for passion. The sheer enthusiasm & love Jackson and his crew have for Middle Earth illuminated the first film.

I wish it had been a *better* movie, but I still liked the one we got. I suspect I’ll feel the same about this one. (Unless they mess up Smaug, in which case I am totally gonna say mean things on the internet.)

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Corrin Radd said on October 1st, 2013 at 9:06 pm

Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit: Bilbo and Gandalf split up. Bilbo gets into a precarious situation and is seconds away from death. Gandalf shows up at the last possible instant and saves Bilbo. Repeat.

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they expanded on the Hobbit novel by adding backstory material from the Lord of the Rings in order to make this a full prequel (Tolkien had forced to make the Hobbit fit into his larger opus, which involved some rewriting of the original Hobbit novel).

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Maybe it’s because I was much younger when I saw Fellowship of the Ring for the first time, but that first movie just felt real. Like, Peter Jackson found Middle Earth, and there it is in the film. There was an easy suspension of disbelief that carried through the films.

The Hobbit just felt ridiculous. It felt like they were trying to one-up LotR in epic-ness and grandeur at every turn. And it just felt cheesy and forced. And a lot of minor changes from the book just seemed changed for the sake of changing. I don’t know, maybe I’m just old and cynical, but it really wasn’t enjoyable to me.

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My only complaint with The Hobbit is that they spend a lot of time building up the LotR prequel bits, when I know they aren’t going to have an impact on the story I’m watching right now. It’s a lot of sturm und drang for, essentially, fan service.

However, I motherfucking love the shit out of some motherfucking CGI goblin antics.

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I’ll be honest, I have not seen the first movie. Movie theaters are tough to get to around where I live, and from what I heard there was no dragon in it, plus CGI goblins and slapstick, so bleh.
This one, though, I will likely see, since the dragon will actually be in it. I have to ask, though, are the orcs/goblins still cgi? I didn’t get a good enough look to tell.
Also, is she-Link in any of the back story anywhere, or is she made up?

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All this emphasis on the elves when all I give a damn about is Beorn.

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… why did all the people complaining about slapstick go see a movie based on the Hobbit?

The book had a shit-ton of slapstick in it.

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The first movie suffered a lot from problems of tone: The Hobbit was, first and foremost, a wacky children’s adventure book.

Lord of the Ring was an Epic, capital E, that told a long, dramatic story filled with angst and sacrifice.

Two great tastes that are just weird when mulched together. Like bacon cupcakes.

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For me, I like the LOTR books, but The Hobbit has a special near and dear place to my heart that they just don’t. So, I can live with Jackson not quite “getting” LOTR, but the tone of The Hobbit being wildly off is much more distracting/annoying/etc to me.

I didn’t hate the first movie or anything, but I’m not dripping with anticipation for parts 2 and 3.

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DensityDuck said on October 7th, 2013 at 1:49 am

It’s too bad Tim Curry had a stroke because Smaug’s voice is basically ripping off the Prince of Darkness from “Legend”.

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The Hobbit is a wacky children’s book where Bilbo and the dwarves are sometimes on the brink of starvation, they have a scary run-in with the goblins, Gollum is creepy as all get out, they almost get killed by giant spiders, a full-blown war breaks out over Smaug’s treasure that results in people who should be on the same side killing each other and Bilbo goes home with a mild to moderate case of PTSD. And some of the silly dwarves who sing funny songs and throw Bilbo’s dishes around get killed in battle (spoiler alert, I guess).

Just because there is some humor and whimsy in there, it doesn’t mean it doesn’t also have a lot of dark and grim stuff that could be used in the movies.

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highlyverbal said on October 27th, 2013 at 2:30 pm

But there’s slapstick and then there’s Jar-Jar Binks.

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