The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug

[Chuckman]

It's an actual subplot, it's not just a sight gag for twenty seconds or something? Christ, Jackson.

Humanity needs to find a way to travel to parallel universes just so that the version of The Hobbit directed by Guillermo del Toro can be recovered.

If that same universe has Alejandro Jodorowsky's 12 hour adapation of Dune with production design by H.R. Giger and Moebius, and Salvador Dali as the Emperor, sign me the fuck up.

Del Toro's Smaug design was pretty bad, though. On the other hand, I think part of the reason I found Unexpected Journey so boring is that it's so visually close to the LotR movies.

[Bagheera]

After watching King Kong and The Lovely Bones, I had a feeling LoTR was a very happy accident. So I went back and watched Peter Jackson's The Frighteners, Meet the Feebles, and Bad Taste, and my suspicions were confirmed. By all accounts LoTR shouldn't have been as good as it was, and The Hobbit was to be expected.

Gotta agree here. One scene from King Kong is emblematic of the whole problem: humans show up on isolated island, encounter dinosaurs. Fine, whatever. One of said dinosaurs kills another, and is in the process of eating it when it spots the humans. It drops the food in its mouth and abandons its nice, big, dinosaur-sized meal to chase the humans. I mean, seriously, what the fuck? It's bad enough when dinos even give humans the time of day -- we're like rats to them, really, not an idea food source -- but to go over the top like that just killed my interest in the movie. And, surprise surprise, the rest followed suit.

[Reichu]

It drops the food in its mouth and abandons its nice, big, dinosaur-sized meal to chase the humans.

This is written into the contracts of nearly all Hollywood carnivores/monsters, and is more representative of "Hollywood doesn't get / care about biology" than emblematic of Jackson's particular directorial woes.

[Rei IV]

All the nay saying about The Hobbit movies makes me want to revisit the LOTR, for some odd reason and has put me off the new film series as well. Looks like I'll wait for a home video release to watch it instead.

[Bagheera]

This is written into the contracts of nearly all Hollywood carnivores/monsters, and is more representative of "Hollywood doesn't get / care about biology" than emblematic of Jackson's particular directorial woes.

It was particularly egregious in this case, though. I mean, the dinos don't normally stop eating to chase humans. It's like Jackson said "this is a dumb trope, how can I make it even dumber?"

[Xard]

Pffft, as if you've ever seen living dinosaur Bagsie. You can't just expect dinos to act like predatory animals looking for food. They might just as well have been embodiments of pure evil.

[Reichu]

Pffft, as if you've ever seen living dinosaur Bagsie.

Just FYI, thousands of species are still alive. There is even a living dinosaur looking at me right now. :p Not that it actually matters far as this topic is concerned.

I mean, the dinos don't normally stop eating to chase humans.

It happened in Jurassic Park III. Too lazy to comb TV Tropes for the inevitable list of other examples.

[Bagheera]

Pffft, as if you've ever seen living dinosaur Bagsie. You can't just expect dinos to act like predatory animals looking for food. They might just as well have been embodiments of pure evil.

I see dinosaurs every day, flying through the sky and pooping on cars. They seem pretty ordinary to me.

It happened in Jurassic Park III. Too lazy to comb TV Tropes for the inevitable list of other examples.

Not to the same extent, though. Heck, TVTropes even points this out. But yeah, JPIII was pretty stupid all around; dino reactions to humans were a lot more sensible in the first two.

[Chuckman]

JPIII was a lame cash in that used unused sequences from the books. It's basically dino scenes that didn't fit in the first two, strung together with a plot they made up as they went along.

The real offense of Jurassic Park III is that it means that the gloriously insane Jurrassic Park script with sentient human dinosaur hybrid mercenaries that fight Somali pirates will never be made.

[Defectron]

So yeah saw this the other day. I liked the first hobbit movie a lot better then this one. I still enjoyed the film but it had a lot of problems.

So yeah the problems, well as other people mentioned the whole dwarf love subplot was kind ehhh... yeah it couldve done without that. Also there was too much Legolas fanservice in this movie

Another issue is some parts seemed to try way to hard, good examples of this are the scenes where they are riding away in the barrels as well as the last scene where Smaug is chasing them around the mountain. Both scenes tried way too hard! Also seemed to try too hard to add in lord of the rings subplots into this. The first movie did this too but it didn't beat you over the head with it so I was ok with it then, but here its just BAM all over the place!

That being said there were some good things too, I really liked Smaug and the spiders.

[Sailor Star Dust]

Ugh. I was looking forward to seeing The Hobbit movies when I first heard about them a few years back. To hear they're screwing things up so badly is just a disappointment.

I guess I'll have to wait for an HD fan edit myself.

[UrsusArctos]

How the hot dwarf suddenly makes sense because he's given a romance with the elf who likes short guys?

To this, I believe the appropriate response is-

What the fuck?

XenArwen from LotR was corny and questionable, but THIS! The very mention of this is horrifying. Jackson, there is no curse in Elvish, Entish, or the Tongues of Men fitting for this sacrilege.

[Chuckman]

I'm not a big fan of Christopher Tolkien by any means, but I just learned that New Line Cinema effectively refused to pay what was owed to Tolkine's estate for the trilogy, claiming the films didn't turn a profit. They also refused to meet their contractual obligations to donate to the estate's charitable trust. Eventually they settled with the estate for $150 million, which sounds like a lot, but is a small fraction of the money the films brought in.

On top of that, Christopher Tolkien was fighting hard to get the rights to the Hobbit voided so they wouldn't make these awful movies, but the legal frustrations of dealing with a Hollywood distributor's legal challenges forced him to give up.

Fuck these movies. I regret paying the PPV fee for the first one now.

[TomasJC]

The main reason I don't like these new films is probably because of the candy-ass, sequenced-as-fuck action scenes. The first warning was probably in The Adventures of Tintin where it looked a lot like the game Uncharted, but fortunately it works for the medium (MoCap). In the Hobbit it seems like Jackson is just trying to show off Weta Digital's skills in an attempt to gain even more global attention (more than we even need here in New Zealand). To top it off, there is less respect for the original source material, as has been pointed out numerous times. That's probably why LoTR was so good- the visuals told the story and the story itself was more faithful. Peter Jackson has become an overachieved businessman who has the New Zealand Government sucking on his Bil-balls.

[Lavinius]

I'm not a big fan of Christopher Tolkien by any means,

May I ask why? I mean, he seems like a pretty decent manager of the literary heritage to me (though I don't know much), and compared to Brian Herbert he's a fucking major saint.

[Chuckman]

Now that you ask, I can't actually remember why. I guess I'm just persnickety.

[soul.assassin]

The movie is good for those who actually haven't read the original book, but for those who did (like everyone else here)...

I didn't care much about the behind-the-scenes custody battle, lore debates and such, just that I feel that a story needs to be told.

Again, when in doubt, we pick up the book itself.

[UrsusArctos]

Sounds like New Line Cinema has been behaving in the classic hollywood gangster fashion. Utter garbage, truly. As for Christopher Tolkien, I remember looking at the Children of Hurin and finding it somewhat disappointing for reasons I couldn't completely fathom. Maybe it's because he uses his father's later-discarded title of Narn i Hin Hurin rather than the original and restored Narn i Chin Hurin, among other things. (Tolkien changed the spelling from "chin" to "hin" because he thought people would pronounce it as 'chin' rather than 'kheen'.)

[Guy Nacks]

Also the Frighteners is a damn good movie even if the effects are dated.

This.

Honestly, the pacing in these movies is pretty awful. I watched AUJ at home and it was a snooze-fest until Gollum and the same with DOS until Smaug shows up. It's painfully obvious that they're just trying to shove in as much stuff as possible to pad it out to a 160-180 minute movie AND, even more egregiously, a trilogy.

With LOTR it made more sense. 3 books, three movies.

The Hobbit is only one book and it's SHORTER than any of the three LOTR books.

Jackson's not a bad filmmaker, but these movies really needed the old hack/slash treatment in editing. Or better yet, a rewrite, tightening things up. I am still looking forward to his Tintin sequel, nonetheless, hoping it'll be better than the first one, though I don't think it'll come close to topping the early 90's Nelvana/Ellipse TV series.

[thewayneiac]

What an idiot Jackson is. The thing that leaped out at me that I don't think has been mentioned here yet is that in this movie

SPOILER: Show

Bard already knows about the hole in Smaug's armor! It's part of the "Legend of Smaug". So the main character is no longer the one who figures out how to kill the dragon.

What was he thinking?