THE HOBBIT - AN UNEXPECTED JOURNEY (2012)

[ChaosTheory]

The length didn't bother me, but then I did watch it at home rather than at the theater. There were plenty of parts that could've been pared down although the only part that really began to annoy me was that bit with the trolls' dinner discussion.  That seemed like it would never end.  I really love the way this one was cast though.  Richard Armitage (Thorin) and James Nesbitt (Bofur) were particularly great. 
  I kind of get the sense with this whole thing that Jackson decided, "OK Tolkein fanboys, you did nothing but b!tch about how I left this, that, and the other detail out of LOTR.  This time around we're going to get ALL THE DETAILS IN EXISTENCE! Because f*ck you, I'm Peter Jackson!"

Fanboys ruin everything, is what I'm saying.

[zelmo73]

I agree, fanboys can ruin a lot, especially when egomaniacal directors like Peter Jackson heed their b***hing and give them what they want. Lesson learned: A director known for his excesses + fanboys that want no stone left unturned = overindulgence that must be beared by the rest of us casual folk.

I made the mistake of dragging my pregnant and near-popping wife out to see this at the 3D theater when it came out last December. What I didn't anticipate was the vertigo that many of the 3D action scenes would cause. What I also didn't anticipate was that pregnant women are not compatible with vertigo, for nausea reasons! This is my basic take on the technical aspects of the film.

What also bothered me about the technical aspects of The Hobbit (2012) is that it relied a bit too much on CGI action. The human eye is rarely fooled by CGI scenes in films anymore. Whereas the LOTR movies had a lot of CGI in them, the majority of the action scenes were done with practical effects; our heroes were fighting with real-live orcs, or people dressed as orcs. Not flailing their swords at empty air with computer-generated images incorporated into those scenes later on, as they obviously were in this film. The Hobbit (2012) would have benefited more from scenes with live actors more than it did with computer-generated ones. The Uruk-hai leader in The Fellowship of the Ring (2001) was a real-live dude, this guy...

...who coincidentally, did eventually find employment later on in the first Pirates of the Caribbean (2003) movie. Azog the White Orc, however, was completely CGI and definitely looked like it. Plus, I was a little miffed when I found out that Azog wasn't even in the book. I hate write-in movie characters that aren't in the original books, like Sandra Bullock's character in A Time To Kill (1995), for example. Why do it?

But I was impressed with what they did include from the book, which thankfully was a lot. We got to see the famous riddle segment between Gollum and Bilbo, which was well-done from what I read out of the book. And while I was also glad that they kept Radagast the Brown in the story, he was about as annoying as Tom Bombadil was in the LOTR books, which made me grateful that they didn't include Bombadil in those movies; could you imagine all of that annoying singing that we would have had to have put up with?  

As much as I hate to say it though, I actually enjoyed this movie more on home video and in 2D. I rented it recently and was able to enjoy it more without the 3D vertigo that I had experienced in the 3D theater from last December. Maybe it's just my view of 3D movies in general, which I honestly don't see replacing practical movies any time soon. 3D is more of a distraction than anything else.