Patron-exclusive: The Hobbit Trilogy

Thanks for the great podcast! For me, the biggest problem with the Hobbit trilogy is that the story doesn't justify it's existence. We're expected to sit through 12 hours of movies to watch dwarves try to get some gold. I never feel like the movies have stakes that I care about, because, unlike in LOTR, it seems like the main characters could turn back and return to their normal lives without consequence. This could have been improved if they had done more to show how hard the dwarve's lives outside of the Lonely Mountain were, but instead, they seem pretty well off. In the book, I care about the story because it centers around Bilbo's character arc, but in the movies, particularly The Five Armies, he's pushed to a background character.

SORRY new patron, I’m catching up on all the exclusive stuff 😂

Martin Freeman’s performance as Bilbo reminds me of Eddie Redmayne’s performance as Newt Scamander in the Fantastic Beasts franchise. Both franchises are very messy, inflated and sort of soulless-however these actors managed to make these more sensitive, nontraditional heroic characters as charming as all hell -with their own quirks, idiosyncrasies, and nervous ticks that made me connect with them on some level which I have to give the actors credit for.

THANK YOU for mentioning the Dune worms, that's always my go-to example of how bizarre and random these movies are, I always test if people remember them and NO ONE does haha, man these movies are weird... and tat goblin song broke something deep inside me that probably will never heal.

100%

Alex Calleros

One of the things that really bothered me in these movies was the way they handled my three favorite scenes from the book. They are all great dialogue scenes where Bilbo uses his wits and a bit of luck to outsmart and survive an antagonist: the trolls, Gollum, and Smaug. I really didn't like how the films couldn't leave well enough alone and insisted on turning them into bouncy mini action set pieces (the trolls one made sense but was kind of goofy, the Gollum one was okay but could have been a lot better, the Smaug one was a total waste). I feel like the good version of these movies would have had these scenes be quiet moments where you really concentrate on the dialogue and where the stillness adds to the tension, but instead it feels like they were like "You kids aren't going to pay attention to boring adults talking! Here, look at this! It's bouncy!"

Ben Detrixhe

It’s truly the worst. Like, I was in shock in the theater when that plot devolved all the way into cross dressing stuffing gold coins into his bosom antics.

Alex Calleros

Thanks, Benjamin! I would LOVE to talk about The Godfathers.

Brian Bitner

The Maple Films cut ("JRR Tolkien's The Hobbit") seems to be the fan favorite. I'm planning on watching it the next time I dive into these films. I watched "The Two Hour Fan-Edit" after watching the trilogy and found it to be a really satisfying way to hit all the major plot points without getting bogged down in all the extra stuff. That cut is a little messy, but it also does some cool things with editing I found fascinating.

Brian Bitner

https://www.reddit.com/r/TheHobbit/comments/82zg0q/what_is_the_best_fanedit_of_the_hobbit_trilogy/

Brian Bitner

Also, can you tell me more about the different fan edits and where one could find them?

I was sitting in my car listening to you guys and thinking: "Why are they not talking about the idiotic subplot of Alfrid and the Mayor?! That was the worst part!!" And then finally someone mentioned it close to the end, and I felt really relieved :D Every time I watch these movies I'm like "Why is this in here? What purpose does this serve?"

Because of this trilogy and the fellowship podcasts. I’m revisiting them starting tonight haha

That's probably a lot of it. Mass increases exponentially, so any larger-than-life things are going to start looking less-than-real pretty quick. I think that's what's so great about the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park, you can really feel their weight. --MT

Beyond the Screenplay

They did high frame rate for PR2??

Beyond the Screenplay

Welcome! Better late than never :P

Beyond the Screenplay

I can't believe I didn't find out about this podcast until just now.

The camera movement issue is also why Pacific Rim looks so much better and feels more real than Pacific Rim 2 (among other reasons).

andrew

Regarding your conversion about establishing the world and rules (the “bouncing around” combat physics), I think the LOTR combat physics is well established in the Moria battle. It features humans, hobbits, an elf, and a dwarf, and we can see the very practical, heavy nature of combat and the weight of steel (armor, swords, chains) and the environment (boulders falling, arcing arrows, movement of the enemies). Even Gandalf’s stand on the bridge feels grounded (pardon the pun). This was carried through the climax battle in the forest and the battle of Helms Deep (for the most part). It began to break in the RotK battles, especially with the ghost army and with Legolas and the elephants. It just may be that as scale and movement increases and CG is introduced to a greater extent, the physics get lost.

andrew

Thank you for the series everybody, I've been looking forward to it since I subscribed this summer! LOTR is my favorite movie and the reason why my best friend and I became so close when we were 11. I appreciated every second of the last four episodes. I recently rewatched the Godfather trilogy - maybe that could be a fun goal for 1000 subscribers! I've always thought the first movie is sturdy and excellently done but I've never been very emotionally connected to any of them. I imagine the lot of you would have a range of interesting opinions about them all and I'd love to hear them.

Fun fact: I saw Desolation of Smaug on 35mm and the GoPro footage was still very obvious.

Robert Launder