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The Hobbit

Michael Martinez has been speculating and answering questions on Tolkien material for a couple of decades now. This is just the latest home for his site. I don't agree with everything he says, but it's always thought-provoking.

And he thought "Desolation of Smaug" stunk. I wonder what he'd think of the various fanedits.
 
And, comrades, never forget: instead of three Hobbit movies, we could have had none:




Thanks a lot, Elrond. :p
 
:lol:

I've got to use *kick* sometime when I get stuck.
 
With so many talented faneditors participating in this thread, I have no doubt that the work begun by that "tolkieneditor" guy is just a blip on the radar. It has many problems (legality notwithstanding). Once all three extended versions are available in HD, I am sure many of those who have already posted here will feel an itch to try cutting them back into a more intimate story without acrobatic fights, Legolas/Sauron/Galadriel reveals (which weaken their subsequent introduction in LOTR)... and most importantly, no Tauriel/Fili romance.

Cheers, guys!
 
The AV Club reports on The Battle of Dul Guldur, a 45-minute hobbit-free Hobbit fan edit. It actually sounds kinda promising...
 
It doesn't add up in my ears. Del Toro is probably exaggerating to rationalise his choice, or he's adding in an estimate of the time it would take for the MGM situation to clear up.
 
So even though the BOFTA EE press release hasn't come out yet. Details are coming in.

Firstly the entire Hobbit extended trilogy is coming to theatres this OCtober, as AMC and other theatre event sites are reporting.

Secondly, the runtime is aprox. 164 min, meaning 20 minutes of extra EE footage. Less than the 30 minutes PJ originally mentioned for the EE. There are rumors running about that Jackson was disatisfied with TE he saw at the premiere, apparently having never seen the whole movie together up until that point. And because of this Jackson is taking the extra time he has now to do a deeper re-edit of the movie, essentially re-framing the movie. If this is true, than they'll be more than 20 minutes of new material.

Finally, the big deal is that the BOFTA EE is going to be Rated-R, which seems crazy considering this is an adaptation of a children's book. Jackson previously mentioned how he had to cut some "brutal orc killings" to make PG-13. It also should be mentioned that a certain dwarf death originally involved a beheading, but it's unsure whether it was filmed. My guess is that the R material has to do with Beorn's cut action sequence. It does note the rating is for "some violence" so we can be assured we won't get any Game Of Thrones style scene with Tauriel and Kili. :p
 
I've read elsewhere that the runtime is 174. Also, that R rating is hard to believe. It could easily be a mistake. Anyway, it's a few months away so it's hard to know for sure either. Better just to wait and see.

I myself am really looking forward to the BOTFA extended edition, mostly because I'm really hoping it saves a rather lackluster film that had quite a bit of potential. My main gripe with the theatrical cut was that it seemed Jackson went too far trying to cut the film down, and we were left with a two hour actioner without the epic scope and depth of the other films. I can only hope the EE is an improvement.
 
DominicCobb said:
I've read elsewhere that the runtime is 174. Also, that R rating is hard to believe. It could easily be a mistake. Anyway, it's a few months away so it's hard to know for sure either. Better just to wait and see.
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The R-rating has to be official since it comes directly from the MPAA.
 
Some bits and pieces from the Appendices in the BOFA EE disc, with various crew members (including PJ) explaining how rushed and sloppy everything was while making these flicks. Kudos to them for not just doing a gushing puff-piece about how great everybody is and how awesome the movies are.


Choice quotes from Jackson:

"Because Guillermo Del Toro had to leave and I jumped in and took over, we didn’t wind the clock back a year and a half and give me a year and a half prep to design the movie I was going to make, which was different to what he was doing."

"It was impossible, and as a result of it being impossible I just started shooting the movie with most of it not prepped at all."

"You’re going on to a set, very complicated, and you’re winging it, no storyboards, no pre-vis, you’ve got these massively complicated scenes and you’re making it up there and then on the spot."

"I spent so much of The Hobbit feeling like I was not on top of it, the fact that I didn't have much prep and I was making it up as I went along. Even from a script point of view [we] hadn't really got the entire script written all the way through to our satsifaction."

"Simply, I didn't know what the hell I was doing. I mean, there's no magical answer for it and that's the truth of it."
 
I wonder if Jackson had been given the time and planning he really needed if they would have turned out "better" (so to speak) and more on par with the Rings trilogy.
 
Why having the visual designers recreating everything from scratch when Del Toro left?
I understand Del Toro's vision was maybe not 100% on par with Peter's style, but damn, you don't ask your crew to redo everything at the last minute. I love Peter Jackon's extravaganzas but this sounds a bit like a Diva's whim. Or maybe like someone too self confident.
 
TMBTM said:
I understand Del Toro's vision was maybe not 100% on par with Peter's style
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I doubt it was 1% on par with Peter's style ;-). Del Toro has a very unique visual style and it would have been visually interesting no doubt but I think everybody (Including me) wanted to see Hobbit movies that matched up exactly with Peter's LOTR trilogy. I imagine it would be hard for a Director to work for 4 years on a project if he felt like it wasn't what he wanted to see. Plus I suspect Peter took over as Director reluctantly because all his companies, friends and colleagues would have been left in the lurch. Correct me if I'm wrong but the project wasn't greenlit until Peter signed. So it would have been a lot of unemployed Kiwis if he hadn't. I think he just had to make the best of a difficult situation. I can't wait to see all these bonus materials to see what really went on behind the scenes.

It might put a totally different spin on the "3-movies-not-2" thing. Maybe it wasn't an excess of ambition (Or whatever) at all. If when movie 1 was down and Peter had zero clue about how to end the next movie, it might have seemed like a great idea to put that ending off for another year. Play around in Middle Earth for a bit in movie 2, then hopefully have a plan for movie 3 later.
 
Aztek463 said:
I wonder if Jackson had been given the time and planning he really needed if they would have turned out "better" (so to speak) and more on par with the Rings trilogy.
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That depends on how you qualify "better." The narratives would've been likely more consistent and the films better edited. But I'm 100 percent sure they still would've made 3 movies and everyone who was expecting a simple 1-film take on The Hobbit would've jumped the 'bash the bloated trilogy' bandwagon. Plus, we wouldn't have nearly as many Hobbit fan cuts as we do now.
 
TMBTM said:
Why having the visual designers recreating everything from scratch when Del Toro left?
I understand Del Toro's vision was maybe not 100% on par with Peter's style, but damn, you don't ask your crew to redo everything at the last minute. I love Peter Jackon's extravaganzas but this sounds a bit like a Diva's whim. Or maybe like someone too self confident.
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You have to understand - Del Toro has a very different style and a fundamentally different approach in general. He's very much into dark gothic fantasy and some of the designs that weren't used for his take on The Hobbit are said to be pretty out there.
(Not to mention, Toro doens't care that much for plot and character - he's a visualist first and foremost.)

Jackson couldn't direct another man's vision, so he had to start from scratch. But the system already had a locked in release date. And he had to step in, because the project was on the verge of getting shut down many times - there were rights issues, MGM was going bankrupt, then the project only got a greenlight after Del Toro bolted, but New Zealand unions went on strike.

Really, this sort of last-minute change thing is not uncommon. Lucas changed a whole lotta stuff during post on every Star Wars movie he directed. When JJ and Kasdan got to rewriting the script for Force Awakens, they tossed the draft Arndt had been working on for a year out the window, even though they had little to no time with Christmas 2015 on the horizon.
 
I'm not buying it completely. My problem with the movies was the rampant number of scenes that were over the top and cartoonish. I don't think more time would have changed that - they made a decision to take the children's entertainment" route. I get trying to make it a bit more lighthearted than LOTR, but this was ridiculous. Seems to me he could have insisted on two movies if he wanted to, or have shorter movies - anything to get rid of 15 minute barrel ride scenes.

But it's really the way all action/adventures are going. Find new heights of outrageous unbelievable scenes just for the spectacle.
 
Thankfully some wonderful fanedits have made the movies thoroughly watchable and more in the spirit of the LOTR movies! I wish everyone knew about fanedits and could experience the movies this way.
 
kellenpure said:
I'm not buying it completely. My problem with the movies was the rampant number of scenes that were over the top and cartoonish. I don't think more time would have changed that - they made a decision to take the children's entertainment" route. I get trying to make it a bit more lighthearted than LOTR, but this was ridiculous. Seems to me he could have insisted on two movies if he wanted to, or have shorter movies - anything to get rid of 15 minute barrel ride scenes.

But it's really the way all action/adventures are going. Find new heights of outrageous unbelievable scenes just for the spectacle.
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This. So much this. I haven't seen these interview just the quotes posted above. But it strikes me as revisionist history because the movies weren't as well received as the LotR films. Jackson was showing signs of the worst tendencies of the Hobbit movies even in the LotR trilogy. The bigger, faster, more intense tendencies. It has reminded me of how the signs for the Star Wars prequels were all there in Jedi. In fact, coincidentally, Lucas seems to be engaged in the same revisionist history this week as well. Both film makers made some incredible movies, but both seem incapable of accepting that people simply don't like their later efforts.
 
But it strikes me as revisionist history because the movies weren't as well received as the LotR films.
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What are you talking about? Jackson had been candid about the fact that he had no prep time and had to wing a whole lot of stuff during production since before the release of AUJ. Nobody in this doc is talking about the films' quality or trying to come up with a reason for why the movies were 'bad' as every headline that runs this doc is making it out to seem. They are discussing the rushed schedule of the films and how the lack of planning necessitated a lot of on-the-spot improvisation. That the films had a super-rushed production, without finished scripts and all, was obvious to anyone who followed its development period, interviews, etc.
 
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