As a book reader, I still don’t get it. The LOTR movies are probably the best book adaptations of all time. I can’t think of very much they could have done better. The extended editions really make the trilogy sing. Would a book reader want this to have been MORE than 13 hours? That’s ridiculous.
I’ll always miss the scouring of The Shire. I know the movie didn’t need more endings, but it is a big part of Frodo’s end and it’s the big payoff for Merry and Pippin
I’ve thought this for a long time, I thought the movies were bad, like actually bad, and the first one, despite being the most boring, was actually probably the best one. This year I watched the extended version of the first movie and it was the first time I enjoyed it, but the others felt like large set piece battles and some simple, high fantasy plot as glue.
The trick is this to have genuinely held opinions without publishing poorly written articles about it. I do that all the time, and I can warmly recommend others to try it, too!
Calling people who disagree with you misguided when it comes to purely matter of tastes is not just talking about one’s opinion, but is in fact insulting other people for no reason. So fuck the author of this particular article.
Well, I think it’s funny. I appreciate an author who has style and passion, it keeps me invested. It’s not like anyone’s opinion of the lord of the rings matters, so I couldn’t possibly be offended no matter what I thought of the movies.
You do get the difference between talking and publishing though, right? And the fact that not all opinions are worth sharing? The “whole world” was a figure of speech.
Some of these websites are so simple that publishing an article takes as much effort as posting a Lemmy comment. There used to be a difference, but there isn’t anymore.
There are some sadly misguided individuals who think LotR movies are actually good. This post will dispel that unfortunate delusion.
That tone of arrogant superiority is why. This is clearly rage baiting, it would have made it to the second sentence without insulting its potential audience if it wasn’t.
Maybe the author is just really upset and feels the need to be mean about it. I don’t see the need to be mean back, condescension in an article never hurt anyone.
Calling out bigots and assholes isn’t “feeding.” That’s the problem. Telling people to ignore outright bastards just leads the bastards to escalate. You should absolutely identify their bullshit and bluntly tell them where to shove it - and more importantly, forums need to allow calling out bullshit.
Any moderator demanding “respect” and “civility” is creating an environment where cautious monsters have free reign, unless they also proactively fight politely-phrased abuse. If someone has good reason to say “fuck off,” and you remove the response but not the cause, you are a force multiplier for that abuse.
But this schmuck? Yeah, ignore that. It is of low quality.
I saw a pretty good three hour cut of all three Hobbit movies. I don’t remember what it was called, but I think they only used like 20 min of the last movie.
Maple Films’ edit is pretty good. Chops out the majority of the dwarf backstory, all of the wizard side quests, and significantly cuts down the superfluous action sequences, resulting in a strong narrative which follows Bilbo’s story exclusively, as it should.
But in all seriousness, while I do think the films are alright, they are nothing compared to the books. People should definitely read them before watching the adaptation, it really is an experience.
I think the movies are the best adaptation we could have gotten. The books a hard read and most of it wouldn’t translate well to film. All the songs, the long winded dialogs, descriptive parts, the ending, etc. I can understand Christopher Tolkien though, especially since he grew up and old with these stories, and probably nothing would ever do it justice compared to what he imagined his whole life.
Having read the books long ago, and recently listened to them narrated by Andy serkis, holy shit the books do NOT translate into movie form.
Maybe a miniseries like Battlestar Galactica, but the budget for it would have to be insane.
People don’t seem to understand that nobody is going to fimund their dream movie adaptation, because their dream movie adaptation has a larger budget than most countries’ GDP.
I would LOVE to have seen Tom Bombadil and the barrow wights. I’d love to have gotten to see everything in the book, but let’s be realistic here.
Go back in time with a few metric tons of gold, fund it however you see fit. I think if given proper funding, and more strict guidelines to keep the funding, he’d make as perfect an adaptation live-action could get in a miniseries. Make it like 90-100 minutes per “episode” and stretch it out however long it takes.
Do people not realize he was told initially it would have to be shown in ONE movie? And he fought to have at LEAST two, and that the studio we finally got insisted on 3 because this story is too long and complex (and lucrative) to be only two movies?
It could have been much, much worse. But hot damn do I wish it were better, even recognizing how good it was.
I read the books as a child and young adult multiple times before the films came out. The films are fantastic and a solid adaptation for a different medium, they got the feeling down even if some parts were left out as part of the change to the other medium.
The Hobbit movies are hot garbage though, and I blame studio meddling for those.
On the Hobbit movies, I don’t even think studio meddling was the biggest issue.
Peter Jackson had so much time to prepare for the original trilogy, where as he took over the Hobbit movies quite soon before they were scheduled to shoot and he couldn’t use the preparation the previous director had done.
So he had no time to prepare and basically had to wing it with 3 movies and little to no prep.
That lack of time is a direct result of studio meddling. The studios pushed Guillermo del Toro out, threatened Peter Jackson with removing the production from New Zealand to force him into coming on as director, and tried to force him to keep to a similar timetable as the GDT production.
I liked the hobbit movies, but I’m not going to argue that they were good. I even reread the book in preparation. The movie hit all of the points I was curious to see illustrated visually. I thought the new characters ramped up the tension nicely, and the barrel scene was genuinely joyous. I was also glad the singing was such a big part of the theming, including the wonderful opening, where Bilbo is beset by the Dwarfs and has to host them against his will.
Anyway, I’m not saying I’m right, or that my view is objective, but I enjoyed all of Peter Jackson’s Tolkien movies more than I thought I ever would. Clear evidence that we don’t live in the darkest timeline, at least.
Interestingly, the added characters and the barrel scene are exactly (some of) the reasons why I don’t like the movies and IMO symptoms for why they’re bad.
Unnecessary and don’t fit well into the story, they feel tacked on and seem to be there mostly to make the movies more appealing to an action audience.
Can’t judge that assessment but often enough I feel that I dislike the hobbit movies even more than most, so maybe we’re both not quite the mainstream.
I would say my only gripe with the barrel scene is that CGI characters don’t age well and the animation seems weird these days but even the LOTR trilogy has many scenes that look bad to my eyes (lighting is weird, characters look too “clean”…)
Well, now you have. The Hobbit is a silly, whimsical, and fun book. The barrels are awesome. I also like the singing and the dwarves giving Bilbo anxiety. My biggest gripe with the movies was that elf who romances a dwarf, I thought that plotline was boring.
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