‘The Hobbit: The Battle Of The Five Armies’ To End Trilogy On A High Note?..

Inquistr ^

[Perdogg]

It’s less than a week until The Hobbit: The Battle Of The Five Armies hits the theaters, putting an end to the six-part Middle Earth saga that began with The Lord Of The Rings trilogy in 2001, and continued with The Hobbit trilogy in 2012. So does the series do a good job of tying up all the loose ends in the franchise? Early reviews seem to indicate the third Hobbit film to be not only the best in the trilogy, but on par with that of the original trilogy.

[tumblindice]

Yeah, substituting Laurence Fishburne for Bilbo, in order to have a Tolkien black character ...
And Bilbo raising the Arkenstone from Smaug’s dwarf hoard, with the ‘shout out’: “Bling bling! Fo’ shizzle mah nizzle!”.
Well, call me old fashioned but blah blah blah blah blah.

They could have spent more time on the battles in the Shire following Saruman and bad men seizing control, after Morder crumbled. “Hobbit trilogy”: those of us who read everything, and The Silmarillion, will keep our expectations very, ahem, conservative and reasonable.

[minnesota_bound]

#3 The movies are pretty good but in my opinion just way too long. Plus Hobbits are funny looking when next to humans.

[minnesota_bound]

#5 & 6 Arthur Dent in: The Battle Of The Five Armies

[minnesota_bound]

#7 In the old days a name such as Benedict Cumberbatch would have been changed to John Wayne (Marion Robert Morrison) or Cary Grant (Archibald Alexander Leach).

[Sawdring]

Peter Jackson should just step back, shut up and start making the Silmarillion. Three more movies please!

[tumblindice]

And in reading The Hobbit or the LOR, I never imagined dwarves resembling GQ models, like Thorin Oakinshield and a couple others, particularly the one that caught out-of-nowhere she-elf Evangeline’s character’s attention.
And Legolas and Gimli’s elders met in The Hobbit movie, but despised one another in The Fellowship of the Ring?
OK, most of them look like Gimli. It’s all good, some great, some so-so.
I passed LOR nerdliness some time ago and am now in Poindexter territory ... The end

[minnesota_bound]

It is their large feet that always made me laugh : )

[coincheck]

YES. The Silmarillion would tie up the other things alluded to in the scripts of the first six movies. I wonder if he would include the kin slaying an the betrayal at the ice flows. That would be cool too. Galadrial was one of those who survived crossing the ice in the north and came into middle earth. So many things to choose from...where to start.

[Unam Sanctam]

I would love to see Gondolin, Nargothrond, Beren and Luthien, and the fall of Numenor. However, Jackson doesn’t hav e the movie rights to the Silmarillion, and I believe Christooher Tolkien won’t sell them.

[Unam Sanctam]

Of course, the Silmarillion is not a continuous narrative — perhaps it could be done as a series of hour long shorts?

[Caipirabob]

Perhaps Samuel L. Jackson?

"I HAVE HAD ENOUGH OF THESE @#$% WRAITHS IN THE SHIRE!!!"

[katana]

Probably money had a lot to do with it. Three films, especially from source material which is known and beloved by millions of aging Tolkien fans from the sixties and seventies (like yours truly) as well as a younger generation who know Jackson’s LOTR and crave more of Middle Earth, is a three year cash stream on a gargantuan scale.

[ExGeeEye]

Because it included information found in the LotR Appendices, expanded events hinted at in the Hobbit (book), and included events spoken of in LotR (books) when Gandalf spoke to Frodo and others about past events, etc., etc., etc.

I suspect interpolations from the Book(s) of Lost Tales, Unfinished Tales, and a smidge of the Silmarillion. Since PJ does not have film rights to those books, He’ll never say so :p

[ExGeeEye]

Unfortunately, the Tolkein Estate hasn’t sold the rights to any more material than JRR did in the 1950s.

There was a question early on of the Hobbit getting filmed at all because MGM, Warner Bros and New Line each held portions of the rights and were reluctant to share...which is why the Hobbit films start with the logos for all three entities.

[central_va]

My only complaint is no Tom Bombadil.....

[ExGeeEye]

I’ll have to get my volume of Tolkein’s letters out again, but I think I remember him writing to someone that Bombadil was one of his favorite stand-alone stories and he basically shoehorned it into LotR.

Cinematically it would be a 10-15 minute digression, at least...

Although, some of us wouldn’t have complained much about a 36-hour LotR film series that included Bombadil and the Scouring, as long as it didn’t include too much molten-gold surfing (my biggest complaint about TH:DoS).

[dljordan]

“They could have spent more time on the battles in the Shire following Saruman and bad men seizing control, after Morder crumbled.”

The ‘Cleansing of the Shire’ was a very important part that I understand was left out of the new film. It really provides closure to the tale and shows what a bunch of hard-cases the fellowship has become.

[mylife]

Thanks, I did not know about this movie.

Watching it now.

[SkyPilot]

Viggo Mortensen said in a recent interview that Peter Jackson is a genius, but the last 3 Hobbit films have gone overboard with CGI, because Jackson is "addicted" to it.

Having seen the last 2 Hobbit films and the trailer for the third, I must admit Mortensen is correct.

‘Lord of the Rings’ Star Critiques ‘The Hobbit’ Films’ Reliance on CGI

Also, Peter was always a geek in terms of technology but, once he had the means to do it, and the evolution of the technology really took off, he never looked back. In the first movie, yes, there’s Rivendell, and Mordor, but there’s sort of an organic quality to it, actors acting with each other, and real landscapes; it’s grittier. The second movie already started ballooning, for my taste, and then by the third one, there were a lot of special effects. It was grandiose, and all that, but whatever was subtle, in the first movie, gradually got lost in the second and third. Now with The Hobbit, one and two, it’s like that to the power of 10.

The LOTR movies used a lot of CGI, that is true. But they interspersed that with brilliant acting and sets as well. When I watch the Hobbit movies, I feel like my visual senses are being assaulted by computer graphics....period.

[Hoosier-Daddy]

I would agree with you there. Jackson did a fantastic job, but he left out much of the whimsy which appears in the LOTR and the Hobbit, especially in the beginning.