Threerings Rewatches The Hobbit
Hi, yes, I never come here anymore. But since I wrote this up, I thought I'd post it.
I saw The Hobbit for the first time in the theater in 3D. I was really, really disappointed. Mostly by the 3D and the way everything looked. It looked horribly fake, and the super high def (I saw it in 48 fps or whatever) made the styrofoam rocks and wigs really stand out to me as fake. I was very disappointed, but had heard it was better without 3D by people who had seen both.
So I rented the DVD and watched it.
And, yes, it looks much better without 3D and super high-def. I was only occasionally thrown out by poor effects. But they were still there. Whoever did the wigs really needs a talking to, because they LOOK LIKE WIGS. I NEVER thought that in LOTR. But with the ultra-crisp style of this one, they stand out a mile. Then there are a bunch of mediocre CGI effects like the scene of Radagast on the sled where it's totally obvious that he was shot on a green screen, that the rabbits and wargs and whatnot are cgi, and it's all laid over real footage. I should not be thinking about this stuff while watching!! (My husband spontaneously pointed out that scene as horrible cgi, too.) But, ok, fine, I stand by my statement that fantasy isn't meant to be shown in super high def crispness, because without some fog and obfuscation it just looks cheesy. And a bit like a BBC drama. But it's better in this form.
But honestly that just made the narrative problems stand out all the more. The main problem, of course, is that this movie is WAY TOO LONG and doesn't cover enough of the story. Making this three movies is one of the worst decisions in the history of filmmaking. I stand by that. And nothing proves that more than the fact that the strongest scenes in this film are the ones that are closest to Tolkien and the weakest scenes are those wholly invented. (We'll get there.)
Hands down the best part of the movie is the Riddles in the Dark scene. It's amazing. I love everything it chooses to be. And honestly it came so late in the movie that I was SICK OF WATCHING IT before I got there and was still spellbound. It showed up so much of what was around it by being so utterly brilliant. Other strong points are the dwarves coming to Bilbo's home and that whole scene, and the stuff in Rivendell (although my Elrond crush means I'm totally biased by his presence.)
The worst parts are the stuff with Mr. White Scary Orc on a White Warg guy. I figured out what he is. He's a video game villain. He shows up just offscreen of the action and is ominously evil in a completely cliched and boring way. Seriously, he's horrible. And he makes Thorin's story all weird because Thorin is now this broody guy who is obsessed with the orc who killed his dad. Actually, I want to reread the book just to see if any of Thorin's weird mood swings are in there, cause he just feels weird to me.
But anyway, there's SO MUCH PADDING via action scenes. Action scene after action scene, but they are BORING action scenes. There's no STORY or CHARACTER in them, they are just big CGI fests. Orcs attack. Then Orcs attack again. Then they fall into orcs. And all the fight scenes are just...people fighting. Partly they suffer from having 13 dwarves and therefore mostly just a mob instead of characters to follow. But I was paying attention in the mountain orc fight, and you almost never even see anyone's faces. It's just bodies, and often cgi bodies. Every single time Gandalf fought in LOTR, I got excited. (Because I'm a huge Gandalf fangirl.) But here Gandalf is fighting all over the place and I'm bored. Because (and I was watching) you never see his face once. It's just a grey-cloaked body with a hat in the distance hacking at cgi goblins. The camera is too busy doing cgi swoops and showing off all the scenery to focus on any of the characters or their emotions? Emotions? Occasionally one of the dwarves looks scared or proud of killing something. That's as deep as we get. I'm comparing this mountain fight with FOTR, where there was an equally long action scene with the cave troll/goblins/balrog and it's night and fucking day. One fight is all about the characters and their emotions and individuality and one is all about "look at this cool stuff we can do."
So much action padding. Meanwhile, this fight is cutting back and forth to the Bilbo/gollum stuff, which is actually interesting because it's about characters and emotions.
I really tried to go into this viewing open minded. But two hours into it I was so incredibly bored I decided to turn it off and come back another day. It's an exhausting movie, filled with almost nothing but people sitting around talking or overblown action sequences. We finished it today, and I guess the last hour is better, but still.
The thing it reminds me of the most is the Star Wars prequels. It's what happens when someone is wildly sucessful and suddenly doesn't have to worry about criticism. They are totally unrestrained in all the worst ways. Yes, let's give the goblin king a ridiculous goiter because I think that's funny. You know that thing we did with the staircase in FOTR where we took something simple and made it an over-the-top action sequence? Let's do that with EVERY SINGLE SCENE. Watching it this time, I said, "I can't wait for someone to make a fan-edit of the whole thing where they trim it back to something watchable." There's such good stuff SOMEWHERE IN THERE and it pains me that it's set off by video game villains and video game action sequences.
Yeah, so, I needed to get that out. I don't really want to have an argument with anyone, because I've already gotten into some arguments with fans of the movie, and ultimately you can't argue a matter of taste, anyway. I mean, you know, if you need to respond do, but you're not going to convince me it's brilliant.
I saw The Hobbit for the first time in the theater in 3D. I was really, really disappointed. Mostly by the 3D and the way everything looked. It looked horribly fake, and the super high def (I saw it in 48 fps or whatever) made the styrofoam rocks and wigs really stand out to me as fake. I was very disappointed, but had heard it was better without 3D by people who had seen both.
So I rented the DVD and watched it.
And, yes, it looks much better without 3D and super high-def. I was only occasionally thrown out by poor effects. But they were still there. Whoever did the wigs really needs a talking to, because they LOOK LIKE WIGS. I NEVER thought that in LOTR. But with the ultra-crisp style of this one, they stand out a mile. Then there are a bunch of mediocre CGI effects like the scene of Radagast on the sled where it's totally obvious that he was shot on a green screen, that the rabbits and wargs and whatnot are cgi, and it's all laid over real footage. I should not be thinking about this stuff while watching!! (My husband spontaneously pointed out that scene as horrible cgi, too.) But, ok, fine, I stand by my statement that fantasy isn't meant to be shown in super high def crispness, because without some fog and obfuscation it just looks cheesy. And a bit like a BBC drama. But it's better in this form.
But honestly that just made the narrative problems stand out all the more. The main problem, of course, is that this movie is WAY TOO LONG and doesn't cover enough of the story. Making this three movies is one of the worst decisions in the history of filmmaking. I stand by that. And nothing proves that more than the fact that the strongest scenes in this film are the ones that are closest to Tolkien and the weakest scenes are those wholly invented. (We'll get there.)
Hands down the best part of the movie is the Riddles in the Dark scene. It's amazing. I love everything it chooses to be. And honestly it came so late in the movie that I was SICK OF WATCHING IT before I got there and was still spellbound. It showed up so much of what was around it by being so utterly brilliant. Other strong points are the dwarves coming to Bilbo's home and that whole scene, and the stuff in Rivendell (although my Elrond crush means I'm totally biased by his presence.)
The worst parts are the stuff with Mr. White Scary Orc on a White Warg guy. I figured out what he is. He's a video game villain. He shows up just offscreen of the action and is ominously evil in a completely cliched and boring way. Seriously, he's horrible. And he makes Thorin's story all weird because Thorin is now this broody guy who is obsessed with the orc who killed his dad. Actually, I want to reread the book just to see if any of Thorin's weird mood swings are in there, cause he just feels weird to me.
But anyway, there's SO MUCH PADDING via action scenes. Action scene after action scene, but they are BORING action scenes. There's no STORY or CHARACTER in them, they are just big CGI fests. Orcs attack. Then Orcs attack again. Then they fall into orcs. And all the fight scenes are just...people fighting. Partly they suffer from having 13 dwarves and therefore mostly just a mob instead of characters to follow. But I was paying attention in the mountain orc fight, and you almost never even see anyone's faces. It's just bodies, and often cgi bodies. Every single time Gandalf fought in LOTR, I got excited. (Because I'm a huge Gandalf fangirl.) But here Gandalf is fighting all over the place and I'm bored. Because (and I was watching) you never see his face once. It's just a grey-cloaked body with a hat in the distance hacking at cgi goblins. The camera is too busy doing cgi swoops and showing off all the scenery to focus on any of the characters or their emotions? Emotions? Occasionally one of the dwarves looks scared or proud of killing something. That's as deep as we get. I'm comparing this mountain fight with FOTR, where there was an equally long action scene with the cave troll/goblins/balrog and it's night and fucking day. One fight is all about the characters and their emotions and individuality and one is all about "look at this cool stuff we can do."
So much action padding. Meanwhile, this fight is cutting back and forth to the Bilbo/gollum stuff, which is actually interesting because it's about characters and emotions.
I really tried to go into this viewing open minded. But two hours into it I was so incredibly bored I decided to turn it off and come back another day. It's an exhausting movie, filled with almost nothing but people sitting around talking or overblown action sequences. We finished it today, and I guess the last hour is better, but still.
The thing it reminds me of the most is the Star Wars prequels. It's what happens when someone is wildly sucessful and suddenly doesn't have to worry about criticism. They are totally unrestrained in all the worst ways. Yes, let's give the goblin king a ridiculous goiter because I think that's funny. You know that thing we did with the staircase in FOTR where we took something simple and made it an over-the-top action sequence? Let's do that with EVERY SINGLE SCENE. Watching it this time, I said, "I can't wait for someone to make a fan-edit of the whole thing where they trim it back to something watchable." There's such good stuff SOMEWHERE IN THERE and it pains me that it's set off by video game villains and video game action sequences.
Yeah, so, I needed to get that out. I don't really want to have an argument with anyone, because I've already gotten into some arguments with fans of the movie, and ultimately you can't argue a matter of taste, anyway. I mean, you know, if you need to respond do, but you're not going to convince me it's brilliant.