Posted on 01/02/2016 9:49:39 PM PST by Perdogg
Back on Nov. 17, Warner Bros. released the long-awaited, extended edition of The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies. The film adds just 20 extra minutes, but packs a lot of emotion into those minutes.
By now, most of us have seen the Hobbit movies and it can probably be agreed that Peter Jackson created amazing pieces of art. However, most of us wished for more in-depth scenes or more face time for a favorite character. With the extended edition, we get both, plus two full discs of bonus features.
A few scenes were extended with just a couple additional camera angles, but there were others that added depth to the story. We learn more about Gandalf as a bearer of the Rings of Power during his capture before being saved by Galadriel. There is also a stunning funeral scene for the dwarfs’ fallen comrades near the end of the movie where each member of the party says their tearful goodbyes to their friends.
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Well, the book sales reached 1 million by 1938, the year before the movie came out.
The Hobbit was published to widespread critical acclaim and won several awards for children's books; its publisher hounded Tolkien for a sequel for more than 15 years.
Like the LOTR, it is a deeply traditional work in the moral and literary tradition of myths and fairy tales, and had not even the slightest hint of counter-cultural overtones.
Let me guess: You liked the Godfather trilogy?
1. Because there was no Internet in 1939.
2. Because, in the meantime, the movie totally overshadows the literary template.
Regards,
Telegraph and teleprinter were teh intarwebs for back then. And of course the venerable snail mail.
I loved the books, and still read them every five years ago or so; for the past 40 years...
Still, I also liked the movies. Their stories were all a twist from the books, but were good by themselves.
Too many critics around here at times.
When the ROTK movie came out, all sorts of people were upset about the absence of the Scouring of the Shire; and they were even more upset when it didn’t appear in the Extended Edition either, saying stuff such as Jackson having more than enough revenue from the previous two LOTR movies to have included it. I do remember those days as if they were yesterday.
Mostly PJ wastes time with over-extended sequences. How much of this is directorial indiscipline and how much a cash-driven desire to cash in on extra movies, I don't know. (The Hobbit would have been excellent as two films.)
Beyond that, most of PJ's adaptations were ok in my book. (Ok, Legolas didn't really need to be entangled in a romance, but teenage girls like that sort of thing, so I'll let it go.) There were, however, two wretched mistakes: the Great Goblin scenes and subsequent escape in Moria, and the nonsensical battle with Smaug in Erebor. There was apparently no adult in the production company with the clout to tell PJ that turning these episodes into video games for ten year olds was not a good idea. I'm almost surprised he didn't work JarJar into the plot.
“This whole thing was bloated into a disaster.
The last thing it needs is more footage.”
Ditto. The first film was excruciatingly boring and badly made. I had no desire to see any more of the films.
“The Hobbit” was a normal sized children’s book. There was no need to bloat it into three films except to make money off of people who enjoyed the “Lord Of The Rings” films.
The comparison is ludicrous.
In the 1930s, people didn't use the telegraph, the teleprinter, or snail mail to establish large-scale forums for the purpose of sharing fan-fiction, conducting flame-wars, developing conspiracy theories, uploading vast glossaries, etc.
Consider the "Star Wars" phenomenon - or just a single facet of it like the "Jar-Jar Binks" issue. Millions of people have access to an open-ended discussion conducted by hundreds or thousands of laypersons about the literary, social, and even political aspects of that single, reviled character.
Such a thing would have been impossible - nay: unthinkable! - in the pre-Internet era.
Regards,
You take the comparison too seriously.
How do you get chopped Orcs?
Put them in to an Orcan grinder
I’ve only seen the first one for a class assignment, so I wouldn’t know. Not that I see the relevance. I just think Jackson dropped the ball on these movies and that Lord Of the Rings was far superior.
Yes, yes... that would be nice.
That depends. Norse myth would be regarded as counter-cultural to Christian culture as defined by the Bible.
I used to have that opinion about most Extended Editions; but, in some areas the additons for The Hobbit help the movie. In The Desolation of Smaug, there was an entire sequence of Gandalf going to Dogal Dur (sp?), and there, finding Thrain alive (Thorin's father). It filled in the time when Gandalf abruptly left the Company, and what happened there. It also showed Thorin as being correct in his belief that his father was not dead.
Also, longer scene in The Prancing Pony between Gandalf and Thorin in which you learn that Thorin walked the battlefield looking for his father, and that he "looked into every face on that battlefield and his father was not there".
I thought that these scenes, and others, helped make the movie more understandable. Perhaps they just edited out the wrong things.
Agreed. I found the funeral scene moving and it should not have been taken out.
The book does not have any part of a plot about Thorins father, him being mentioned in passing if at all.
Well edited, the whole thing should be a two hour fast paced movie.
They badly mucked up too much for this to be possible though.
They tossed most of the humor.
In the final battle it seemed like the blue pixels beat out the read and green pixels.
I'm kind of confused about why so many people cared about what color pixels won.
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