The Hobbit Movies...

[DazzleHP]

I'm guessing we have a few if not many Tolkien fans here so would like to know your opinions on the first two Hobbit movies.

I'm probably going to be lynched for what i'm about to say but i'll say it nonetheless. So far they seem to me to be just a long-winded, outdrawn prologue to the LOTR movies! In my opinion both movies could be mashed into one and cut to around 1hr playtime Before you assume i'm trolling or a "hater" i would like to point out that i love the LOTR trilogy! I've watched them back-to-back more than once (though i won't disclose how many times ) and i really wanted the Hobbit movies to be just as epic. But they're not in the same league as far as i'm concerned.

***SPOILERS***
Take The Desolation of Smaug for instance: you can watch the first 10mins, then cut straight to when they confront Smaug (right at the end) and you'll miss nothing inbetween! Admittedly Smaug himself is worth the wait - probably the most epic dragon i've seen on any medium and certainly dwarfs anything my imagination has come up with in the past of what a dragon should be! As i said though you could just cut straight to the end 30mins and appreciate him just as much as the people who sat through the preceding 1hr 30mins.
***END SPOILERS***

Please don't misunderstand what i'm saying here - they are not bad movies!! If you like Jackson's vision of Middle Earth you'll like these movies too, but considering the LOTR movies are over a decade old and technology has advanced so much i guess i was expecting something... more. Instead all i got was and giant introduction to the LOTR characters which isn't necessary in my opinion.

Anyone agree?

Please be gentle on me - it's just my opinion!

[hansolo77]

Don't get me started. My Dad and Stepmom are furious with it. They're like "Legolas wasn't even in the book, and who is this made up character that's his girlfriend?" and like "There weren't orcs chasing them down rapids with open top barrels in the book, they were sealed barrels, and it was a pleasant ride." I'll give Peter Jackson credit though. I'm glad they expanded it the way they did. It makes the journey much more interesting. It also goes into much more detail to explain where the heck Gandalf kept running off to. Granted, in the book Radagast had like 2 paragraphs, and in the movies so far he's had a good 10 minutes worth of dialog and action. He wasn't there to help rescue the dwarves when they slipped into the cave. Still, I like the way it's running. And they couldn't just cut out the bulk of Desolation by cutting to the last 30 minutes. They went to Laketown, and met Beor. It's some very important plot points for the story as a whole. Movie 3 will show this. If you haven't read the books (including Lord of the Rings), you're probably feeling it's taking way too long. For a fan of the books and the stories, I don't think it's long enough. When the first movie came out, I waited and bought the Extended Edition, and I still feel like there's stuff left out. Same with the Lord of the Rings movies. I bought the first releases but also own the Extended versions, and the Extended versions are the only ones I watch now. Just give it time, it'll all make sense in the end.

[DazzleHP]

I think there lies my problem - i haven't read the books, any of them. And please don't get on my horn about it either I have read just one whole book in my life and there is a good reason for it: i have a rare condition which doesn't affect reading directly, but it does affect how my brain functions so i can only read incredibly slowwwwwwly! I don't only mean slower than average i mean so slow it takes me about 15-20mins to read one page and take it in If you could see my edit lines in most of my posts you'll see they've been edited 4-5 times each coz i just post, then slowly read what i have written and edit it. If i didn't do it that way then i probably wouldn't post much coz y'all would be posting a day before me and i'd just be likely repeating something already said

I've already made this post too long lol. It is strange that you say i'm not appreciating the movies because i haven't read the books! Usually it's people who read the books that complain about the movie!

[hansolo77]

I'm a horribly slow reader too. I took me 8 months to read half of The Hobbit. Then I put it down and forgot about it for like 10 years. Picked it back up, restarted, took about 6 more months to get to the same spot. Put it back down. Then I found an audiobook of it, and listened to it while I read it. Much easier that way I think. Sometimes my eyes will get tired and my vision drifts away and about the room. Long as there is an audiobook version, it keeps chugging along and I can follow it much easier.

On a side note, I've really enjoyed watching the DUNE movie and then the DUNE miniseries. I wanted to read the book (books are always better). So I got it from the library. It took me about 14 months to read it. I had to renew my checkout of it like 6 times. They almost turned me down that last time but I begged and pleaded because I was only 2 chapters away from finishing it.

When Harry Potter came out, everybody was batshit crazy about it, but I had no interest in it because I thought it was a stupid kids book. Then the movies came out, and my neighbor wanted me to get her some copies of them (tv recording (we had cable, she didn't)). I didn't want to watch them while I taped them cause I thought they were sooo dumb looking. Then my birthday a few years ago dad got me the first book. He said it was mine but if I didn't want it he would keep it for himself. He said "Just read the 1st chapter and see what you think." I sat down on the toilet one night and actually read about 3 pages and decided I would give a good try. Finished the first chapter in about an hour. But I couldn't put it away. I was like "Dad? I think I like it but I don't really wanna start another chapter because it'll take me all night to read it." He was just like, "do what you can, it's not a race". I finished 2 more chapters that weekend, and finished the first book in about 3 weeks total. Then I watched the movie and actually got a lot more enjoyment out of it cause I understood what was going on. I then got the 2nd book, read it in about 1.5 months, and watched the 2nd movie. I went like that for about 2 years, finally finishing the series before the last 2 movies were released, and I got to enjoy them by myself in the theater in 3D. I was so mad at myself for doubting the series. It really is a GREAT series, and not at all childish. There's some great and serious stuff in there. I can now really understand all the hype people were going nuts over before. My only problem is that it WAS an easy read for a lot of people compared to other stuff I've tried to read, yet it still took me FOREVER to do it myself.

Lord of the Rings probably took me 5 years in all to read. My stepmom can finish each book in a day, and says she's actually ready all 3 in one day when she was home sick. She's absolutley crazy. I don't know how she can read so much so fast and get ANYTHING out of it. Every day it seems, we're getting a box from Amazon for her with like 3 more books in it. Our house is littered with books.

They're trying to get me to read the "Song of Ice and Fire" series now. In other words, the "Game of Thrones" series. Game of Thrones is actually the first book in the series. The paperback is like 3 inches thick. I got the eBook for my Kindle and the audiobook to go with it. Hopefully I'll have it finished within a year. I looked at the track lengths of the audiobook. The copy I have has each chapter in it's own mp3, so there are like 78 mp3's (78 chapters), and each chapter is about an hour long. It's going to take me FOREVER!!

So yeah, don't feel bad about reading slow. My speed is terrible too. Everybody says it gets better with practice. The more you read the faster you get. Hell, it sometimes takes me 30-45 minutes to read a comic book! All I can say is give it a try, and try to find an audiobook to go with it. They include things like sound effects, music, and the good ones have the reader throwing his voice to give each character a different voice. I just read the "Thrawn Trilogy" from Star Wars. It took me about a year to finish it too, going with an audiobook. My biggest problem though is finding the time to sit down or lay in bed and dedicate time to just reading/listening.

Hope you get along!

[Draco1962]

There are classes, software, etc. that can help you with reading speed and comprehension. I took a course back in my freshmen college year that taught some of the more popular techniques at the time. When initially tested, I was reading at the age of 18 at around 500-600 WPM (I was an avid reader long before then). By the end of the semester, I was reading well into the 800+ WPM range for easy reading material (most fiction falls into this area) with a a slightly lower rate for more complex reading (manuals, etc.). I am probably actually closer to what I was at 18 as my pleasure reading has decreased over the years. I can still chew through a 500 page book over the course of several days. It does take practice and repetition.

[nullPointer]

... It took me 8 months to read half of The Hobbit. Then I put it down and forgot about it for like 10 years. Picked it back up, restarted, took about 6 more months to get to the same spot. Put it back down. Then I found an audiobook of it, and listened to it while I read it. Much easier that way I think. Sometimes my eyes will get tired and my vision drifts away and about the room. Long as there is an audiobook version, it keeps chugging along and I can follow it much easier.

Oh dude this totally gave me a flashback. I've mentioned before on the forums how I grew up in Wyoming. When I was a kid my Mom and I would take these epic road trips from Northern Wyoming down into West-Central Colorado to visit my aunt (her sister). The first time I was ever exposed to the Lord of the Rings was in the form of an audio book on one of those road trips. We listened to all three books back to back over the course of that trip. I just remember how cool it was as a kid listening to the details of the epic journey of the Fellowship while actually being on an epic journey myself.

Now the first time I was ever exposed to The Hobbit was during one summer as a kid that I spent at my Grandpa's cabin in the San Juan mountains of Colorado. His cabin sat on the north shore of a small-ish lake that was stocked with Trout. Any hoo I remember remember the Hobbit so clearly because one of my Grandpa's neighbors from across the lake rowed clear across in his row boat so that he could bestow this book upon me. It really was a nice gesture; I was the perfect age for the book, and you couldn't beat a mountain setting like that for reading about the adventures of Bilbo and the gang. But ... I never read the book that summer! Heck, I was in the San Juan mountains for Pete's sake! I had tree forts to build, fish to catch, slingshots to shoot, pocket valleys to explore, etc. I didn't have time to sit around and read! At any rate, it planted the seed of curiosity about this mysterious book that I had chosen to ignore.

So back to the topic at hand. I've enjoyed the Hobbit movies from what I've seen (only the first thus far), but yeah I'm still sort of surprised they opted for a trilogy. It's the shortest book in the entire series (by a big margin), and a prologue to boot! Obvious cash grab is obvious, but hey it's the sort of cash grab that can grab my cash no questions asked.

[hansolo77]

Yeah it is interesting that Lord of the Rings was 3 books. 3 books = 3 movies. The Hobbit is 1 book. 1 book = 3 movies? Doesn't quite make sense. But when you look at all the extra stuff added, it works. Granted, they could have gotten away with 2 movies (get to the mountain, then the fight at the end (spoilers/still to come, sorry:)). But other versions that have come before of The Hobbit (the animated feature) really fell short and was not a very good adaptation at all.

[nullPointer]

Yeah it is interesting that Lord of the Rings was 3 books. 3 books = 3 movies. The Hobbit is 1 book. 1 book = 3 movies? Doesn't quite make sense. But when you look at all the extra stuff added, it works. Granted, they could have gotten away with 2 movies (get to the mountain, then the fight at the end (spoilers/still to come, sorry:)). But other versions that have come before of The Hobbit (the animated feature) really fell short and was not a very good adaptation at all.

Yeah I totally agree that the recent in-progress trilogy is the best adaption of the Hobbit, but ... oh me and oh my ... you wound me with your comments about the animated feature! Naturally the passage of time has not been kind the original animated feature of The Hobbit, and viewed through modern eyes it definitely appears antiquated. But as a kid I thought that movie was awesome. It was not a super faithful adaptation or anything, but I would say that one thing the animated feature captured more accurately than the feature films is all the singing. You wouldn't know it from watching the movies, but the characters in the book(s) are breaking into one song or another at the drop of the hat, Truth be known I always found these sections of the book(s) to be a bit tedious, because as a somewhat musical person I couldn't just read the song lyrics and move on, I had to envision what each song might actually sound like (tune, harmony, tempo, time signature etc.). It would take me forever just to get through one song! At any rate I think if nothing else the animated feature did a pretty good job with that aspect (I believe it even stayed pretty close to the actual song lyrics from the book IIRC although it's certainly been a while.)

[hansolo77]

I liked the dwarve's cleaning up song and the goblin king's 'goblin town' song in the movie. The "quest" song about going to the mountain was awesome too. You're right though, there is a TON of music in the book, and I'm really surprised there's not more of it in the movies.