There's more negative than positive reviews on the old Tomatometer (top critics at least), and many of the positive reviews fall into the damning with faint praise category. Bloat seems to be the main complaint: visually appealing, but lots of issues beyond that.
Just started to read the WaPo review but stopped a few sentences in because I'm going to see it regardless. But damn, those first few sentences were harsh. Ouchy, ooch, ouchy, eech.
I saw it tonight. It's a beautifully crafted film. The characters are initially not likable, but by the last quarter of the film, they become likable. The story is slow at the beginning and the fact that when compared to the LOTR trilogy, one book is being divided into three films, it makes it somewhat too long and painfully obvious that the filmmaker is looking to maximize profit.
Agreed. I liked it okay. However, I'll add that some of the deviations from the actual story annoyed me more in this than they did in LOTR. And some of those deviations certainly seemed, as you've hinted, to have been added to maximize running time and profit.
I actually loved it. I have read The Hobbit several times, but have never managed to read LOTR all the way through, and know nothing about the Silmariliwhatzit. So the "back story" stuff like Radagast, the Necromancer, the history of the dwarves in both the Lonely Mountain and the attempt to take the Misty Mountains, that white orc, etc. all made this hugely enjoyable for me. Helped to place a lot of things into context, thinking about the LOTR to follow. And any comparisons to The Phantom Menace are ridiculous. Put simply, if LOTR had never been released as a (more appropriate) comparison point, people would be raving with delirious wonder about this new film. Even my wife, who normally has no use for fantasy, enjoyed it. My 12-year-old daughter came out proclaiming that it was the best movie EVER!
The same thing could be said about the Phatom Menace. I just saw it and loved it but I never read any of the Tolkien books. It did look a little bloated but I love these types of movie and I'm all for adventures and journey. The thing I disliked the most was the horrible humor of so many scenes.
I thought it was fine. It has the failings of a movie made by a true believer, sure. But the more extravagant additions to the plot, such as the Azog storyline and the high visibility of Radagast, at least made a kind of sense. It is by no stretch a great movie but the nature of some of the reviews makes me wonder if a few critics have had their knives out waiting for Jackson ever since The Hobbit was announced.
I haven't seen the movie yet (I will over the holidays). From a book perspective, I have read both the Hobbit and LOTR. While I loved the LOTR, the Hobbit was excellent on my first read as a teenager in the 70s, but when I read it later, it was just a good book, not great. LOTR has always been great to me. I expect the movies to be the same and suffer from the LOTR being made first. However, I won't have a final judgement until the remaining films are made.
I know this is an unpopular point of view, but the LOTR are crap books. Just terrible. Stale language, thin characters, boring poetry, weird and nonsensical plot deviations and so forth. I really disliked the books but I enjoyed the movies immensely, because they stripped out a lot of the extraneous garbage and actually turned it into a rollicking good yarn that didn't try and be particularly literary. On the other hand I think the book of The Hobbit is an absolute masterpiece. It takes Tolkien's actual strength as a writer - painting a vivid picture of an exotic fantasy world filled with romantic heroes - and puts it in the setting that suits it perfectly: namely, a fairytale for children. In The Hobbit he leaves out all the highfalutin crap and weighty aspirations that his writing can't live up to, and provides a simple and wonderfully immersive story imbued with a great deal of charm and whimsy. I really wish we had this movie first, because then it would have been a movie of The Hobbit - rather than a movie using the plot of The Hobbit and trying to be like the LOTR.
While I disagree with your assessment of the books, I will grant you that Tolkein was a terrible poet. I don't think I've read the "songs" since my very first read. And I will also agree with you re: The Hobbit coming first. The Hobbit trying to be like the Ring Cycle is a travesty...
If they would have cut out Radagast from the movie, it would have been that much better, though granted he was not in the movie for that long. Ridonculous nontheless. Plus I think it take too long to build up the suspense and get it going. First hour of the film was a good sleeping pill.
I don't know. I just found the book full of really poor, shallow characters using stilted language whose motivations and actions didn't really make a lot of sense at times. His writing style was also very uneven - dwelling on trivialities for pages on end and then glossing over fairly major events. I think it's sort of an indictment of the narrative strength of the books that the main adjustment that Jackson made to the books (aside from cutting out a lot of extraneous crap) was to try and make the characters less one-dimensional and give them a few more 'human' flaws. Seriously, every one of Tolkien's major protagonists is a flipping saint. It's boring as batshit. Like I said, I think his real skill is in painting a picture of the world with words that lets people immerse themselves in a perfect, idealised fantasy world - and that's what people love so much about it. It's not possible to identify with any of the protagonists on anything more than the most superficial of levels, because there is nothing very real about them.
Sounds like the problem is that you're looking for a novel when in actuality it has more of the character of the (relative) novelization of a myth. The characters are, for the most part, idealized and larger-than-life (even the hobbits in their archetypal ordinariness), and that's not a flaw in his writing but part of the design, or at least that's how I've always read it. And to me the appeal is that you feel like you're peering into some past mythological world that may have never existed but still feels real.
But that's the whole point. It doesn't feel real because the characters are so artificial and one-dimensional. I don't understand how you don't regard an inability to identify with the protagonists of the story as a flaw in the writing. I mean, even the heroes of Greek mythology were far more flawed and human than these perfectly stereotyped elves and dwarves and men and hobbits.
Well, those of us who like it don't feel that way, they don't always feel "human" in the modern sense, but they still feel real somehow. For me it's less about identifying with the characters than about getting a window into a fantastic world and the forces at play therein.
I loved it. I've seen it 3 times already. Is it flawless? No. Was I entertained thoroughly each time? Yes. Ya I'm a fanboy, sue me. It's nice to feel like you can have part of your childhood back for 3 hours sometimes. FWIW I'm a member of several Tolkien fan sites that have some real serious fans there, and it got almost universal praise there as well. I'm talking people who ripped PJ up and down for a decade over some part of the trilogy.
Yeah, see I don't get that. Part of the reason why I regard the Hobbit as a better story is because Bilbo and Thorin are demonstrably flawed protagonists who make some pretty bad decisions. In a much shorter book they are actually more interesting and identifiable characters, so as the reader I have a much better connection with the story. I just remember reading the Lord of the Rings and thinking, why do I care about any of these people? They are all boringly perfect, they don't need me to root for them because they could not possibly do anything wrong anyway. When Tolkien does have a major character make a bad decision its usually at the end of his arc - e.g. Frodo decides to keep the ring at the last minute, but that's after three books of absolute bloody perfection in terms of honour, optimism and selflessness. Boromir tries to take the ring and gets killed. There's no real growth that comes from anyone's mistakes - they serve plot rather than character progression. It's a shame that some of the character depth given to a relatively marginal character like Gollum wasn't given to the characters we were actually supposed to be interested in.
I saw the first lotr and Didn't get why everyone was so enamored with it. Cinematically it was gorgeous but I couldn't give a flying fig about the characters. Didn't read the books. Tried to watch the second movie multiple times, kept falling asleep, didn't bother to watch the third. The hobbit trailer actually looked interesting so I decided to read the book first. Not bad. Not really a fantasy reader but I really liked bilbo and the dwarves. Saw the movie. Thought it was great. Just enough extra info added into the main story and a good balance between exposition and action. Brought my friend who also fell asleep during the lotr trilogy and she really liked it too. So much better than lotr, but this is coming from someone who is not a fangirl. Can't wait for the next two. I think they'll be even better.
I seriously don't get how you can say you didn't like the characters in LOTR but did in the Hobbit. Of the Dwarves, besides the King Dwarf and Balin, you can't tell apart any of them besides the fat one (and just because he's fat not for any personality). The characters that stood out besides those 2 dwarves were all from the LOTR trilogy.
Saw it last weekend. It was great and very entertaining. I've read all that Prof. Tolkien has written(and his son has published). While I agree it was probably stretched further than it should have been, I loved the little pieces they added from Appendixes and pseudo-from the Simarillion. I can't wait for the other two. I wonder if Smaug will die by the end of Part 2. What will Part 3 be about? The Battle of the 5 Armies? Vs. Necromancer?
I'm guessing Smaug dies either at the end of 2 or the begining of 3. I do have to say there are things about 2 that worry me. Evangeline Lilly's character the primary concern.
Wow! Who expected Jabba the Hutt's cameo as the Goblin King?! And I won't even mention my American Gladiator / Wipeout flashbacks in the Misty Mountain jump and run scene... But overalll I watched it in delight and will continue to be a faithful fanboy!
I watched this the other day and enjoyed it. I had low expectations going in. There were a few laughable scenes. It felt like watching another version of Fellowship of the Ring. The pacing was the same. Started off in the Shire the same as the first one and ended about the same as the first one. It was entertaining though. It felt like a shorter film than nearly three hours worth.