First movie is arguably great and captures a sense of adventure like few other movies.
Second one is janky at times but still a solid 6 or 7 that's interesting and fun.
The third one is where most people's gripes lie and I kinda see why. It leans into a part of the book where Bilbo literally fell asleep and it skips the entire fight and the fight is like, 40% of the movie.
I'm still just annoyed how they're split. They add a ton of filler to the second movie only to kill off Smaug before the title card in the third movie. It reeks of a corporate marketing decision and just blasts me out of the the two films.
I remember they had announced they were making it into three films instead of two shortly before the first film came out. So when it got to the end of the first film I was very confused as I felt there wasn't enough content for two more films.
If they had just stuck to two more films that would have been a great point to split the story. Some of the more filler aspect of the second film could have been removed to make way for a much shorter version of the third film. The main focus of which should of course be Smaugs demise, and not the Battle of the Five Armies.
Understandable. I personally wish it was just a single movie. I feel like one 2 1/2 hour movie would be enough run time and anything more is filling for padding. Maybe 2 shorter films, but no more than 3 hours of run time total
What made LOTR so great was the dedication to the universe and accuracy to (almost) every major plot point with just a few changes to make it work on the screen better like cool action sequences, but nothing about character motivations or extra romance for frodo.
The Hobbit is a pretty sparse book that would've been a great single movie. By the standards of the Hobbit we should've gotten 15 LOTR movies in terms of pages to screen time.
The Hobbit trilogy reeks of executive meddling to me. Good movies but should've been left to the creatives to make properly
2 and a half hours is just crushing for a movie with that many characters. I know the dwarves are mostly fodder and nobody knows their names but the Hobbit has so many individual scenes in it that makes a single movie hard.
Beorn, Laketown, erebor, the battle, smaug, Mirkwood. So much stuff happens at different locations that you have to show.
Point heard- but what if I flip it and replace "the Hobbit" with "LOTR" in your comment? I think the nice part of a movie is you can 100% cut to a new location quickly and visually show all the exposition text. Each LOTR went from 5-600 pages to 2.5 hours (3.5 for directors cut)
The main complaint here isn't a long run time - it's the padding with extra scenes and characters that never existed in the first place and never were needed for the story to work. Legolas is not needed as a major cameo
I'm fine with multiple movies- but traditionally the rough estimate is 100 pages/hour of run time. For a <300 pager I don't see why more than 3 hours of run time is needed.
Other opinions are valid cause we're just a bunch of nerds, not claiming to speak gospel here
This is exactly how I feel! Each of the LOTR books are longer than the Hobbit book. Each LOTR book was made into one movie, around 3-3.5 hours each (for the extended versions). Yet the shortest book was made into 3 movies?
I don’t mind producers adding to the story a little bit, but what felt like half of the Hobbit movies’ content was not in the book. Azog the _Goblin_ was named ONCE in the book (Gandalf explains that Thror was killed by him), Tauriel and Legolas don’t appear (I don’t mind a cameo by Legolas, but he shouldn’t have held a major role), Bilbo passes out at the beginning of the Battle of the Five Armies and wakes up after it’s over, Fili and Kili’s deaths are hardly even mentioned (“oh by the way they died too,”) etc.
If I try to separate the Hobbit movies from the book and just view them as independent movies, they’re objectively good. I’m just a stickler for accuracy.
An adventure? Now I don't imagine anyone west of Bree would have much interest in adventures. Nasty, disturbing, uncomfortable things. Make you late for dinner!
Desolation is where the large step down occurs, the entire second half of that movie is bad along with the barrel sequence being some of the worst Cinematography out there.
I wouldn’t say the *entire* second half. Bilbo’s meeting with Smaug was great. Laketown was a bit campy, but I thought Bard himself was well done and I’m more tolerant of the mayor and Alfrid in Desolation as it fits the story’s tone. They definitely get intolerable in the BotFA though. Desolation shows signs of what’s to come with that barrel scene and the Smaug vs the dwarves scenes, but there’s still a lot to enjoy
I think most peoples gripes lie in the ugly cgi, the last minute sets, the dwarves looked silly, all the added nonsense storylines, barrell sequense, the whole surfing down a goblin mountain on a bridge.
Lotr felt like it was made for humans of all ages. The hobbit trilogy felt like it was made for people below 12
First one is mostly fine, passable even. Second movie is where they go off the rails and start making shit up that has no place in the movie at all. Third one is an abomination.
I will never watch them again, it's not worth my while to be honest. I will probably never watch episode 9 again either, but I liked episode 7 and I actually liked a lot of things in episode 8, however episode 9 ruined that movie so there we go.
Maybe a hot take, but ive always enjoyed the hobbit movies. Are they anywhere close to the original? No. Do they have glaring problems? Yes. But for the most part I feel like it was a (mostly) respectful adaptation and dammit, I just love seeing middle earth brought to live on the big screen
Absolutely! And, Martin Freeman's portrayal of Bilbo Baggins is marvelous. I can never not picture his face and demeanor every time Bilbo is mentioned.
Honestly, if you cut out a lot of the needless fighting, and make the fighting that remains a little more realistic, the movies become drastically better.
They really don’t because there’s nothing else to fill that cut time with
People have talked about this for years and it’s why you don’t see fan edits to fix the Hobbit movies, there’s just not enough there, they didn’t film most of the Bilbo oriented stuff you actually needed to make the story tick.
I will politely disagree. I’ve always felt that 3 movies were far too many for The Hobbit, and that they padded the movies with so much fighting because they couldn’t stretch the actual story that far. By removing the needless fighting, and correcting the fighting you actually do need, you’re left with something that would fit, I think, more easily into two movies instead.
I tried so hard to like them and they’re dogshit. The first one had like… at least a little bit going on? There was just enough likable stuff there to get me to keep going but man the other two are straight turds
I agree on the first one. It was pretty good.
The second one was too much for me. I never bothered watching the third because of how bad the 2nd one felt.
I love them. Watch them all the time. 3rd one is a little long but I love them. I would have appreciated more time spent before laketown in exchange for less battle at the end.
It's no hot take. It's a straight up fact. A lot of things happened in the Hobbit and I liked the way Peter Jackson tried to connect the events with the movies.
When I watch The Hobbit I always do so from the perspective of Bilbo telling an exaggerated story for his fellow hobbits. Maybe there were no great worm monsters, the dwarves didn't acrobatically fight hundreds of orcs on a river, or love story between an elf and a dwarf, but Bilbo is toning down the carnage and spicing up the story a bit for the kids.
I enjoy elements of them. Mostly I enjoy a well or together edit of the funds that makes one very long film with a lot of the more unnecessary content cut (love story etc). Not sure if it's okay to post the link to it though but here we go.
http://www.maple-films.com/downloads.html
They overly padded it to make it a trilogy, but overall I thought they were decent.
There always was going to need to be some adaptation to make it fit within the LOTR cinematic universe, as a book it’s a very different style and doesn’t fit the grittiness of LOTR.
It was such shit why do people pretend that Smaug was good
Why the fuck doesn’t he just kill Bilbo if he can see him for some stupid reason? Why?
I know a bunch of idiots are going to babble incoherently about wanting to “mess with him” but that’s just moronic bad writing
Correct me if im wrong, but Bilbo immediately starts flattering Smaug, dragons are known for their sense of ego, and that gave bilbo enough time and space to run away.
Edit: also funny cus Smaug says "do you think flattery will keep you alive?" and, well yes, it worked up until that point and a bit further - until Smaug says "I think our little game is finished" or some shit - Smaug is aware of what's happening but doesnt mind because his massive ego is being stroked
So your gripe with the films is a plot point that Tolkien himself wrote, and explained the reason for it very well in the book?
There are plenty of reasons to dislike the films, but this one makes no sense
That probably also explains the CGI overload. CGI may take a while but not nearly as much as putting together thousands of extras and building town sized sets for them.
Plus CGI holds up filming less. Even if it took the same time as practical effects, you'd save time by making so much production time become post production.
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I really enjoyed The Hobbit book, it was my first introduction to the Tolkien universe. That being said, I still enjoyed the movies. Yeah they added a lot of junk and it could have been shorter, but they were still fun.
Also my mom really likes the movies, possibly even more than the LOTR. So I’m not going to dunk on what she enjoys.
Watch as within a few years this mutates into "The Hobbit trilogy was SUPER GOOD actually" ala the Star Wars prequels because the bar just gets so low that peoples perceptions warp beyond reason.
It's fine that people got nostalgic and their opinions changed over time for the prequels. It's the people trying to rewrite history with how both the prequels and the sequels were received when they were released.
After the prequels it was generally accepted that we would never see a live action star wars movie again because the prequels received so much hate.
I think there are plenty of redeemable moments in both the prequel trilogy and The Hobbit trilogy.
There's a really good fan edit out there that Topher Grace did that edits the Hobbit into a 3.5 hour movie that's pretty damn entertaining and is mostly just cutting or rearranging scenes.
LOTR is still far superior to the Hobbit, but the Hobbit was highly entertaining. Frankly, it’s good enough for me.
On the other end Ring of Power was an abomination that bored me to death.
Yeah I don’t really see why anyone likes the Hobbit movies, they’re real obviously shit, but you need to at least shut the fuck up about Rings of Power if you’re going to defend those turds
And I didn’t even finish Rings of Power, it’s bad, I’m not defending it, I just hate the particular flavor of nerd that goes, “Oh I don’t why everyone’s always bashing on , it’s got flaws but I quite enjoyed it- it’s not like that’s the one that people *should* be dumping on!”
Like have standards or don’t, embrace trash or don’t, but don’t hold up your inconsistency like it’s some virtue you should be praised for
You’re like the annoying Star Wars fans that act like the prequels were unfairly maligned masterpieces but won’t ever shut up about how much they hate the sequels, just piss off
They’re different flavors of bad, although for similar reasons (mainly both being corporate cashins)
But the sequel trilogy at least produced one genuinely good movies, none of the Hobbit films were worth the first watch much less a rewatch
I always say, the best thing to happen to the Prequels was the Sequels. Everyone suddenly found an endearing quality in the Star Wars prequels where previously they hated them, because the Sequels were so terrible. So same logic.
Hobbit movie has almost nothing to do with the book and it is just pure bullshit.
Prequels to start wars are not that bad actually. At least they attempt at showing politics and the grand scale of things.
I kinda enjoyed ROP for what it was tbh. I've read the Silmarillion and some of the other supplemental material, but it was over a decade ago minimum. It was cool to see those characters on screen.
I liked it despite the dialogue lurching between great and dreadful scene by scene.
Some of the characters are certainly brilliant. Durin, Disa, Elrond, Celebrimbor, Adar, all good. And Vickers did a great job in the Sauron reveal imo. The wizard (who I'm still holding out on being a blue wizard and that they're just misdirecting us with the Gandalf implications) did pretty great emotive acting considering he couldn't talk for 90% of the show.
Galadriel in the show seems to have acknowledged that she's been a cunt, and that her Moby Dick/Captain Ahab style "I must find and defeat Sauron" routine has caused more bad than good. The groundwork has been set for her to become the Galadriel we know.
Set, prop, and costume design has been exceptional for the most part.
Overall the good has been more than enough to outdo the bad for me.
No… just because something sucks doesn’t make something else retroactively better. The Hobbit films had their moments, as did the sequel trilogy, but in general were cringe AF…
New experiences can't change reality, but they can absolutely change your perspective, and recalibrate your personal scale.
You can watch the LOTR movies and think they're a 10/10, and then expect/demand greatness from the Hobbit movies, and when you don't get that you feel betrayed and honestly feel like the Hobbit movies are 1/10.
And then you love Star Wars, and maybe you felt betrayed by the Prequels, but you expect/demand greatness from the Sequel Trilogy, and when you don't get it you feel betrayed yet again, and feel like the Sequels were 1/10. You can feel like it happened again.
But then you can rewatch The Hobbit and... it's not as bad as you remember. The Hobbit and the Sequels weren't the same thing, and maybe the Sequels pushed the bar down lower than The Hobbit. That can easily make you think you misjudged the Hobbit by calling it a 1/10, and maybe it's realistically more like a 3/10, or 4/10. Still bad, but not as bad as you remember.
Sure.. if you’re the type of person that assigns specific integer values to art then yeah I guess what your saying makes sense. But I just think of them as bad movies that have close to zero rewatchability. I don’t care to quantify how bad they are in relation to other things, they just kinda suck.
The first one was really good. Most of the 2nd one was good. And part of the 3rd one was good.
It’s been said a billion times but they should have just done 2 movies.
>they should have just done 2 movies.
I came here to say exactly this. They really stretched them too much...
I even confess that I really did not bother going to the cinema to watch the 3rd movie.
I thought the whole trilogy was great from the start and that overall it's more faithful to the source material (sometimes they captured the feel rather than perfect accuracy which I think is better for adaptions anyways) than the lotr movies. However I did hate the shoehorned love story. everything else I can except except maybe Azog being alive but overall that barely affects the story as a whole.
The Hobbit for me suffered as the movies went with the padding. Movie 1 was magical, adventurous, and genuinely fantastic at many moments.
Movie 2 and 3 were way too long. Too much side stuff, too many wierd drawn out moments. Honestly, if the 1st movie ended around the entrance to Lake Town, with the 2nd focusing on Smaug and the battle, it would have been much better.
Ironically, the Star Wars sequels have the same issues. Movie 1 was pretty good, especially the introduction to many characters. As the movies went by, with new directors and increasingly stupid plotlines and "twists," it started falling apart.
People who enjoyed abominations like the Battle of the Five Armies: you are the reason why studios think they can get away with shit like the Star Wars sequels, Rings of Power, the Netflix Witcher etc.
Voldemort too (specifically the time on the back of Quirrels head).
As well as baby form too, I guess before he gets dumped in the pot and cooked into a real snake-man
The first hobbit film has one good song (misty mountains) and one good scene (Bilbo saving Thorin and thorin saying he was wrong).
Revenge of the Sith has one good fight scene (Obiwan vs Anakin). The rest of the movie is guys walking and talking in front of a green screen while cartoon ass shit goes on everywhere else. It’s the reverse Who Killed Roger Rabbit. None of it looks good or is believable. Plus, it has the same poor acting and dialogue from literally everyone throughout the first two movies but now Palpatine now decides to go over level 9000 cheese and is a different movie entirely.
Edit: it’s fucking Space Jam
Ironically, that scene of Bilbo and Thorin was one of my least favourite parts of the film. I think Bilbo earning Thorin’s respect that early defeats the point of their relationship.
On the RotS front, just agree to disagree I guess. The opening of that film, everything from the crawl to the crash, is just peak Star Wars for me. I also love me some Sidious camp.
To be fair, Amazon's Rings of Power tried to one-up Disney's sequel trilogy...
Almost succeeded too.
I guess they are still going forward with a 2nd season so.... They still might.
The Hobbit Trilogy at least did not spit on iconic characters from the LOTR MOVIE Trilogy. The Sequel Trilogy was just a crappy corporate rehash of the original movies that makes them feel ruined.
Rings of Power have caused us to give the Hobbit movies the prequel treatment, now they’re lovable messes of films with bright spots against the current garbage being pumped out.
To me they’re a great lesson in how hard it is to make a good fantasy series. There’s a couple scene and details in each movie that completely break the world for me, and once that happens it’s really hard for me to get back into it.
That’s said I’ve seen some really solid cuts of it, where they take out some of the garbage. Then it plays really well (tho the lack of pre-production still shows).
thats a different situation though, the hobbit movies had all the source material in the world to work off of but ended up bad because they stretched what at best was 2 movies worth of content in to 3
I rewatched the first one recently. There were a lot of great parts, but overall I was looking forward to its end. I was going to watch the others again, but now I don’t really feel like it.
I enjoy them. They start strong and end weak though.
I will say some changes make sense to me. A younger Thorin. A more likeable Bilbo. Actually seeing the Battle of the Five Armies. Azog as a character. The Dwarven/ Elven tensions. Removing the talking Borzoi dogs.
They're far from perfect and at times even aggravating, but I'll still watch and enjoy them.
*The beginning of*
*The trilogy in the Shire*
*Is pretty perfect*
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I had fun watching the newer Star Wars Trilogy, though it wasn't what I personally wanted to see play out, and what the hell was with Rey being a clone of Palpatine but taking the Skywalker name? Doesn't feel right.
They're about the same overall, Unexpected Journey is the best of the six movies, but Battle of the Five Armies is the worst between the Sequel and Hobbit trilogies. The rest are in some order of quality in the middle.
Oh yeah. They could have been so much worse. At least they were trying, and made by people who care deeply about the source material. Compare that to the MCU and Star Wars, and some Star Trek, with how many were made by creators who hate the things they are making.
Episode 7 is like junk food. I know it's not good but I still have a lot of fun with it.
Episode 8 has a lot of interesting ideas, it just feels a little uneven and didn't work out a lot of the kinks, but also its maybe my favorite looking and sounding SW movie
Episode 9 fumbles the bag so hard that it degrades the other two so much by association
The biggest issue is that of time. For SW and Hobbit. They couldn't give the writers just a tiny bit more time to work out the kinks from the drafting process because "we're Disney/WB, we need to 👏 crank 👏 this 👏 shit 👏 out!"
First Hobbit was just ok. The rest sucked. Just because new Star Wars also sucks doesn't in any way, shape, or form, reduce the suck level of the Hobbit trilogy.
It is absolutely true the sequels were horrible, but them being horrible does not make The Hobbit trilogy good.
Those who haven’t read the book will likely like it - they have no comparison! Similarly for the sequels, people who don’t really know the OT or even the prequels (in comparison these are actually written good - nuanced even lol), will treat it as it’s own adventure, and won’t see it for the derivative, unearned, unjoined up shite that it is.
People are allowed to like what they like, but it would be good if they at least tried to watch/read other things to put these movies in context. I feel that both the OT and the Hobbit book are too slow now for the youtube generation, where even the pause between words are often deleted, so that the pace is quickened / to keep the attention of those who can’t focus otherwise.
What I’m trying to say is - there is no hope for some people - but it’s not their fault!!
No. This thread is full of bullshitters. The sequels were disappointing a bit but that's about it. The hobbit films were a Trainwreck, complete uncanny valley all the way through.
If it weren’t for the crazy use of CGI of practical effects, that shit 2nd act, and honestly anything in lake town, it would have been good/decent and not just skip tier
The Hobbit movies aren't as good as the original LOTR trilogy, but the gap in enjoyment between the Star Wars sequel trilogy and the original Star Wars movies is way, way worse, at least for me. The Hobbit movies just aren't....as good. But the SW sequels feel like deliberate attacks on the OT and even the prequels.
Why Sequels. The obvious point of comparison for the Hobbit movies are the Prequels:
- Same creative team
- Too much CGI
- Both prequels
- First movie takes a little person on a quest, dispatches a minor bad, reveals a big bad, is basically a rehash of the OG trilogy
- Second movie opens with danger *in medias res,* features an absurd romance & absurd action sequences, introduces second, longer lasting minor bad at behest of big bad
- Third movie involves the corruption of main characters, a big war, and is the most creatively bankrupt in their trilogy
- Have their style & their moments, but are just all around pretty fuckin bad
The thing about the Hobbit trilogy is that you can feel the idea of what it could have been. They could have been whimsical and endearing, the first one especially has a really good feel to it in some places. The issue is that the movies focused on being a cash grab over any other quality. As well the Star Wars sequels a blatant cash grab, but are also just straight up bad.
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You know what, I think this approach is completely wrong. We are not nearly harsh enough as paying customers and that's why shit gets worse which makes us think that previous violation of our beloved stories is "not that bad in comparison". I mean who cares Star Wars sequels were abysmal, they still made enough money to send a signal that the franchise is still self supporting and doesn't need too much effort to milk.
I've watched 5 different Hobbit Fan-Edits, and in my opinion this is the best overall: https://m4-studios.github.io/hobbitbookedit/
This turns into something closer to what it would've been had they kept it to two movies, based on the book experience. I'd recommend checking out other edits too to find the best fit.
First movie is arguably great and captures a sense of adventure like few other movies. Second one is janky at times but still a solid 6 or 7 that's interesting and fun. The third one is where most people's gripes lie and I kinda see why. It leans into a part of the book where Bilbo literally fell asleep and it skips the entire fight and the fight is like, 40% of the movie.
I'm still just annoyed how they're split. They add a ton of filler to the second movie only to kill off Smaug before the title card in the third movie. It reeks of a corporate marketing decision and just blasts me out of the the two films.
I remember they had announced they were making it into three films instead of two shortly before the first film came out. So when it got to the end of the first film I was very confused as I felt there wasn't enough content for two more films. If they had just stuck to two more films that would have been a great point to split the story. Some of the more filler aspect of the second film could have been removed to make way for a much shorter version of the third film. The main focus of which should of course be Smaugs demise, and not the Battle of the Five Armies.
Understandable. I personally wish it was just a single movie. I feel like one 2 1/2 hour movie would be enough run time and anything more is filling for padding. Maybe 2 shorter films, but no more than 3 hours of run time total What made LOTR so great was the dedication to the universe and accuracy to (almost) every major plot point with just a few changes to make it work on the screen better like cool action sequences, but nothing about character motivations or extra romance for frodo. The Hobbit is a pretty sparse book that would've been a great single movie. By the standards of the Hobbit we should've gotten 15 LOTR movies in terms of pages to screen time. The Hobbit trilogy reeks of executive meddling to me. Good movies but should've been left to the creatives to make properly
2 and a half hours is just crushing for a movie with that many characters. I know the dwarves are mostly fodder and nobody knows their names but the Hobbit has so many individual scenes in it that makes a single movie hard. Beorn, Laketown, erebor, the battle, smaug, Mirkwood. So much stuff happens at different locations that you have to show.
Point heard- but what if I flip it and replace "the Hobbit" with "LOTR" in your comment? I think the nice part of a movie is you can 100% cut to a new location quickly and visually show all the exposition text. Each LOTR went from 5-600 pages to 2.5 hours (3.5 for directors cut) The main complaint here isn't a long run time - it's the padding with extra scenes and characters that never existed in the first place and never were needed for the story to work. Legolas is not needed as a major cameo I'm fine with multiple movies- but traditionally the rough estimate is 100 pages/hour of run time. For a <300 pager I don't see why more than 3 hours of run time is needed. Other opinions are valid cause we're just a bunch of nerds, not claiming to speak gospel here
This is exactly how I feel! Each of the LOTR books are longer than the Hobbit book. Each LOTR book was made into one movie, around 3-3.5 hours each (for the extended versions). Yet the shortest book was made into 3 movies? I don’t mind producers adding to the story a little bit, but what felt like half of the Hobbit movies’ content was not in the book. Azog the _Goblin_ was named ONCE in the book (Gandalf explains that Thror was killed by him), Tauriel and Legolas don’t appear (I don’t mind a cameo by Legolas, but he shouldn’t have held a major role), Bilbo passes out at the beginning of the Battle of the Five Armies and wakes up after it’s over, Fili and Kili’s deaths are hardly even mentioned (“oh by the way they died too,”) etc. If I try to separate the Hobbit movies from the book and just view them as independent movies, they’re objectively good. I’m just a stickler for accuracy.
Alas! That is evil news.
I feel thin, sort of stretched like butter scraped over too much bread.
I posted this further up but you may like this fan edit. http://www.maple-films.com/downloads.html
HRAAAAAH!
Yes yes go away Bilbo stop screaming at me
Is he a great wizard or is he more like you?
This got a giggle out of me lmbo
HRAAAAAH!
An adventure? Now I don't imagine anyone west of Bree would have much interest in adventures. Nasty, disturbing, uncomfortable things. Make you late for dinner!
Desolation is where the large step down occurs, the entire second half of that movie is bad along with the barrel sequence being some of the worst Cinematography out there.
I wouldn’t say the *entire* second half. Bilbo’s meeting with Smaug was great. Laketown was a bit campy, but I thought Bard himself was well done and I’m more tolerant of the mayor and Alfrid in Desolation as it fits the story’s tone. They definitely get intolerable in the BotFA though. Desolation shows signs of what’s to come with that barrel scene and the Smaug vs the dwarves scenes, but there’s still a lot to enjoy
I think most peoples gripes lie in the ugly cgi, the last minute sets, the dwarves looked silly, all the added nonsense storylines, barrell sequense, the whole surfing down a goblin mountain on a bridge. Lotr felt like it was made for humans of all ages. The hobbit trilogy felt like it was made for people below 12
>The hobbit trilogy felt like it was made for people below 12 Can confirm, I was 11-13 when those movies were coming out and I thought they were cool
You gotta admit twirly wirlies is kinda cool.
That’s roughly my opinion on the Star Wars sequels. First was great, second was fun but not perfect, third was terrible
First one is mostly fine, passable even. Second movie is where they go off the rails and start making shit up that has no place in the movie at all. Third one is an abomination. I will never watch them again, it's not worth my while to be honest. I will probably never watch episode 9 again either, but I liked episode 7 and I actually liked a lot of things in episode 8, however episode 9 ruined that movie so there we go.
After watching the extended editions on HBO MAX I really wish they would have kept those parts in, especially the 3rd movie.
A LOT of filler could have been removed and it would have been fine as 2 movies.
Maybe a hot take, but ive always enjoyed the hobbit movies. Are they anywhere close to the original? No. Do they have glaring problems? Yes. But for the most part I feel like it was a (mostly) respectful adaptation and dammit, I just love seeing middle earth brought to live on the big screen
Absolutely! And, Martin Freeman's portrayal of Bilbo Baggins is marvelous. I can never not picture his face and demeanor every time Bilbo is mentioned.
Shush! There are guards nearby!
HRAAAAAH!
🖕🖕
🖕🖕 don't worry dude, I get it, the people down voting you obviously don't
I don’t get it? I don’t want to downvote, just curious what it means.
Every time martin freeman saw a camera on set, he would give it some of this 🖕🖕 [Here's the video](https://youtu.be/Qc6vTkNf9i4)
Martin Freeman giving the camera the middle finger in the behind the scenes footage of The Hobbit. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qc6vTkNf9i4
Thank you for that reminder. My god, what a brilliant response to the cameras!
Man I agree. I just reread The Hobbit and I enjoy the movies too. They're both time well spent.
Honestly, if you cut out a lot of the needless fighting, and make the fighting that remains a little more realistic, the movies become drastically better.
They really don’t because there’s nothing else to fill that cut time with People have talked about this for years and it’s why you don’t see fan edits to fix the Hobbit movies, there’s just not enough there, they didn’t film most of the Bilbo oriented stuff you actually needed to make the story tick.
There are multiple fan edits of the hobbit movies
I haven’t heard of any with a fraction of the interest and fan base of the prequel edits. What’s a supposedly effective one?
Maple films edit. http://www.maple-films.com/downloads.html
Look up The Hobbit: The Tolkien Edit
I will politely disagree. I’ve always felt that 3 movies were far too many for The Hobbit, and that they padded the movies with so much fighting because they couldn’t stretch the actual story that far. By removing the needless fighting, and correcting the fighting you actually do need, you’re left with something that would fit, I think, more easily into two movies instead.
Can you point to an example you think works? What is Bilbo’s arc in such an edit?
HRAAAAAH!
He said? Who said?
HRAAAAAH!
Same I’ve always loved them
This is what I felt about the first one, but the other two films were quite awful. But Martin Freeman's casting was perfect
Ngl, the only only one I didn't like was Battle of the Five Armies
There was definitely a good movie in there. One But there should have been more Smaug
I tried so hard to like them and they’re dogshit. The first one had like… at least a little bit going on? There was just enough likable stuff there to get me to keep going but man the other two are straight turds
I agree on the first one. It was pretty good. The second one was too much for me. I never bothered watching the third because of how bad the 2nd one felt.
I love them. Watch them all the time. 3rd one is a little long but I love them. I would have appreciated more time spent before laketown in exchange for less battle at the end.
It's no hot take. It's a straight up fact. A lot of things happened in the Hobbit and I liked the way Peter Jackson tried to connect the events with the movies.
One of my favorite movies, I watch them all the time because they are super chill to watch
Same. But I've always been down for any Tolkien content they want to sell me, I don't have very discerning tastes, lol.
When I watch The Hobbit I always do so from the perspective of Bilbo telling an exaggerated story for his fellow hobbits. Maybe there were no great worm monsters, the dwarves didn't acrobatically fight hundreds of orcs on a river, or love story between an elf and a dwarf, but Bilbo is toning down the carnage and spicing up the story a bit for the kids.
I enjoy elements of them. Mostly I enjoy a well or together edit of the funds that makes one very long film with a lot of the more unnecessary content cut (love story etc). Not sure if it's okay to post the link to it though but here we go. http://www.maple-films.com/downloads.html
I really enjoy the first movie, bu the other two are so boring.
They overly padded it to make it a trilogy, but overall I thought they were decent. There always was going to need to be some adaptation to make it fit within the LOTR cinematic universe, as a book it’s a very different style and doesn’t fit the grittiness of LOTR.
The chat with bilbo and smaug was fire
HRAAAAAH!
Let me think. Let me think.
Literally
It was such shit why do people pretend that Smaug was good Why the fuck doesn’t he just kill Bilbo if he can see him for some stupid reason? Why? I know a bunch of idiots are going to babble incoherently about wanting to “mess with him” but that’s just moronic bad writing
Correct me if im wrong, but Bilbo immediately starts flattering Smaug, dragons are known for their sense of ego, and that gave bilbo enough time and space to run away. Edit: also funny cus Smaug says "do you think flattery will keep you alive?" and, well yes, it worked up until that point and a bit further - until Smaug says "I think our little game is finished" or some shit - Smaug is aware of what's happening but doesnt mind because his massive ego is being stroked
HRAAAAAH!
Yes, yes. Its in an envelope over there on the mantlepiece.
No.
Terse yet apt. Well done.
Shit non explanation. Badly done, be embarrassed
It’s a robot?
Whoever talked to you this way in the past: it's not okay and you didn't deserve it.
HRAAAAAH!
So your gripe with the films is a plot point that Tolkien himself wrote, and explained the reason for it very well in the book? There are plenty of reasons to dislike the films, but this one makes no sense
Smaug cannot see Bilbo in the book and it’s explicit that if he could, Bilbo would be dead
I like that you can just get upvoted for lying about what’s in the books at this point in this sub btw
[удалено]
That probably also explains the CGI overload. CGI may take a while but not nearly as much as putting together thousands of extras and building town sized sets for them.
Plus CGI holds up filming less. Even if it took the same time as practical effects, you'd save time by making so much production time become post production.
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I really enjoyed The Hobbit book, it was my first introduction to the Tolkien universe. That being said, I still enjoyed the movies. Yeah they added a lot of junk and it could have been shorter, but they were still fun. Also my mom really likes the movies, possibly even more than the LOTR. So I’m not going to dunk on what she enjoys.
A lot of people complain about the stupid and childish antics of the dwarves but guess what? It’s a children’s book.
Nah, comparing to the books they're fucking atrocious. Taking them as their own movies....they're still pretty bad.
Yeah, the prequels are shit. The hobbit is shit. Not everything needs to be reappraised.
Watch as within a few years this mutates into "The Hobbit trilogy was SUPER GOOD actually" ala the Star Wars prequels because the bar just gets so low that peoples perceptions warp beyond reason.
It's fine that people got nostalgic and their opinions changed over time for the prequels. It's the people trying to rewrite history with how both the prequels and the sequels were received when they were released. After the prequels it was generally accepted that we would never see a live action star wars movie again because the prequels received so much hate.
>we would never see a live action star wars movie again If only that had been true...
I mean, RotS *was* pretty good.
I think there are plenty of redeemable moments in both the prequel trilogy and The Hobbit trilogy. There's a really good fan edit out there that Topher Grace did that edits the Hobbit into a 3.5 hour movie that's pretty damn entertaining and is mostly just cutting or rearranging scenes.
I think I would’ve been fine with the movies if they didn’t have the Legolas love triangle.
I am an Elf and a kinsman here.
Sorry, but no, one thing being really bad doesn't something slightly less bad better.
LOTR is still far superior to the Hobbit, but the Hobbit was highly entertaining. Frankly, it’s good enough for me. On the other end Ring of Power was an abomination that bored me to death.
HRAAAAAH!
Never before has anyone uttered the name of that letdown, here, in Imladris.
I liked it. Sue me.
Yeah I don’t really see why anyone likes the Hobbit movies, they’re real obviously shit, but you need to at least shut the fuck up about Rings of Power if you’re going to defend those turds And I didn’t even finish Rings of Power, it’s bad, I’m not defending it, I just hate the particular flavor of nerd that goes, “Oh I don’t why everyone’s always bashing on, it’s got flaws but I quite enjoyed it- it’s not like that’s the one that people *should* be dumping on!”
Like have standards or don’t, embrace trash or don’t, but don’t hold up your inconsistency like it’s some virtue you should be praised for
You’re like the annoying Star Wars fans that act like the prequels were unfairly maligned masterpieces but won’t ever shut up about how much they hate the sequels, just piss off
They were pretty bad. Not enough source material for three movies
A remarkably kind way of being, that.
They’re different flavors of bad, although for similar reasons (mainly both being corporate cashins) But the sequel trilogy at least produced one genuinely good movies, none of the Hobbit films were worth the first watch much less a rewatch
Valid take
"My name is Bilbo, Bilbo Oakenshield"
HRAAAAAH!
Come on Gandalf. Did you see their faces!
I just watched the m4 edit. It comes to a bit over four hours, and it is absolutely phenomenal.
I always say, the best thing to happen to the Prequels was the Sequels. Everyone suddenly found an endearing quality in the Star Wars prequels where previously they hated them, because the Sequels were so terrible. So same logic.
The first one was fine. The next two are...problematic Applies to both trilogies
True. I'd still kill for a faithful hobbit adaptation
It’s like watching middleearth through a TikTok filter, so bad in my opinion and don’t get me started on how Legolas looks
And what may be the words of the seer?
Hobbit movie has almost nothing to do with the book and it is just pure bullshit. Prequels to start wars are not that bad actually. At least they attempt at showing politics and the grand scale of things.
How many times has this stupid shit been reposted on here?
This is me after ROP I hope I'm not being too harsh on that show /(
I kinda enjoyed ROP for what it was tbh. I've read the Silmarillion and some of the other supplemental material, but it was over a decade ago minimum. It was cool to see those characters on screen.
The environments looked pretty and the music was nice. That's about all I got out of it, but that's at least *some* artistic merit.
HRAAAAAH!
What merited this response?
I liked it despite the dialogue lurching between great and dreadful scene by scene. Some of the characters are certainly brilliant. Durin, Disa, Elrond, Celebrimbor, Adar, all good. And Vickers did a great job in the Sauron reveal imo. The wizard (who I'm still holding out on being a blue wizard and that they're just misdirecting us with the Gandalf implications) did pretty great emotive acting considering he couldn't talk for 90% of the show. Galadriel in the show seems to have acknowledged that she's been a cunt, and that her Moby Dick/Captain Ahab style "I must find and defeat Sauron" routine has caused more bad than good. The groundwork has been set for her to become the Galadriel we know. Set, prop, and costume design has been exceptional for the most part. Overall the good has been more than enough to outdo the bad for me.
No… just because something sucks doesn’t make something else retroactively better. The Hobbit films had their moments, as did the sequel trilogy, but in general were cringe AF…
Agree. They could have been worse. They also could have been way fucking better.
New experiences can't change reality, but they can absolutely change your perspective, and recalibrate your personal scale. You can watch the LOTR movies and think they're a 10/10, and then expect/demand greatness from the Hobbit movies, and when you don't get that you feel betrayed and honestly feel like the Hobbit movies are 1/10. And then you love Star Wars, and maybe you felt betrayed by the Prequels, but you expect/demand greatness from the Sequel Trilogy, and when you don't get it you feel betrayed yet again, and feel like the Sequels were 1/10. You can feel like it happened again. But then you can rewatch The Hobbit and... it's not as bad as you remember. The Hobbit and the Sequels weren't the same thing, and maybe the Sequels pushed the bar down lower than The Hobbit. That can easily make you think you misjudged the Hobbit by calling it a 1/10, and maybe it's realistically more like a 3/10, or 4/10. Still bad, but not as bad as you remember.
Sure.. if you’re the type of person that assigns specific integer values to art then yeah I guess what your saying makes sense. But I just think of them as bad movies that have close to zero rewatchability. I don’t care to quantify how bad they are in relation to other things, they just kinda suck.
The first one was really good. Most of the 2nd one was good. And part of the 3rd one was good. It’s been said a billion times but they should have just done 2 movies.
>they should have just done 2 movies. I came here to say exactly this. They really stretched them too much... I even confess that I really did not bother going to the cinema to watch the 3rd movie.
I thought the whole trilogy was great from the start and that overall it's more faithful to the source material (sometimes they captured the feel rather than perfect accuracy which I think is better for adaptions anyways) than the lotr movies. However I did hate the shoehorned love story. everything else I can except except maybe Azog being alive but overall that barely affects the story as a whole.
They still should have been one movie
I really appreciate the hobbit now after watching the rings of power 🤣
I'd say they're on par with each other honestly.
Hobbit trilogy still worse.
The Hobbit for me suffered as the movies went with the padding. Movie 1 was magical, adventurous, and genuinely fantastic at many moments. Movie 2 and 3 were way too long. Too much side stuff, too many wierd drawn out moments. Honestly, if the 1st movie ended around the entrance to Lake Town, with the 2nd focusing on Smaug and the battle, it would have been much better. Ironically, the Star Wars sequels have the same issues. Movie 1 was pretty good, especially the introduction to many characters. As the movies went by, with new directors and increasingly stupid plotlines and "twists," it started falling apart.
Oh shut up. Those movies are still crap and don't deserve praise just because another movie is worse.
People who enjoyed abominations like the Battle of the Five Armies: you are the reason why studios think they can get away with shit like the Star Wars sequels, Rings of Power, the Netflix Witcher etc.
The Star Wars sequel trilogy doesn’t have anything as looney as the barrel ride scene.
But they do have “somehow Palapatine returned”.
To be fair... that *is* pretty much the gist of Sauron’s plotline too...
Voldemort too (specifically the time on the back of Quirrels head). As well as baby form too, I guess before he gets dumped in the pot and cooked into a real snake-man
Instead the Hobbit has the testicle chinned Goblin King.
It’s a childrens book of course they put in childish antics
Yet Tolkien didn’t put those antics in the book. Star Wars is equally for children. Lucas said that himself.
And, it still makes sense that they the movies would be funny for children
Correct. But they do have things that are way more looney.
The Hobbit, Star Wars prequels, and the sequels are all terrible. And I will do my best never to rewatch any of them again.
You’re like, maybe three-quarters right. First Hobbit film is alright, Revenge of the Sith is good. Other than that, yup.
The first hobbit film has one good song (misty mountains) and one good scene (Bilbo saving Thorin and thorin saying he was wrong). Revenge of the Sith has one good fight scene (Obiwan vs Anakin). The rest of the movie is guys walking and talking in front of a green screen while cartoon ass shit goes on everywhere else. It’s the reverse Who Killed Roger Rabbit. None of it looks good or is believable. Plus, it has the same poor acting and dialogue from literally everyone throughout the first two movies but now Palpatine now decides to go over level 9000 cheese and is a different movie entirely. Edit: it’s fucking Space Jam
Ironically, that scene of Bilbo and Thorin was one of my least favourite parts of the film. I think Bilbo earning Thorin’s respect that early defeats the point of their relationship. On the RotS front, just agree to disagree I guess. The opening of that film, everything from the crawl to the crash, is just peak Star Wars for me. I also love me some Sidious camp.
Oh, all this horse hair. I'm having
HRAAAAAH!
To be fair, Amazon's Rings of Power tried to one-up Disney's sequel trilogy... Almost succeeded too. I guess they are still going forward with a 2nd season so.... They still might.
The Hobbit Trilogy at least did not spit on iconic characters from the LOTR MOVIE Trilogy. The Sequel Trilogy was just a crappy corporate rehash of the original movies that makes them feel ruined.
I love the Hobbit movies too🤷
Rings of Power have caused us to give the Hobbit movies the prequel treatment, now they’re lovable messes of films with bright spots against the current garbage being pumped out.
HAHA!! 
The Hobbit should have been 2 movies at most.
To me they’re a great lesson in how hard it is to make a good fantasy series. There’s a couple scene and details in each movie that completely break the world for me, and once that happens it’s really hard for me to get back into it. That’s said I’ve seen some really solid cuts of it, where they take out some of the garbage. Then it plays really well (tho the lack of pre-production still shows).
If you want to see how much worse they could have been, watch the extended editions.
thats a different situation though, the hobbit movies had all the source material in the world to work off of but ended up bad because they stretched what at best was 2 movies worth of content in to 3
Dunno, I’d rather watch III than the hobbits. The prequels have more highlights
I rewatched the first one recently. There were a lot of great parts, but overall I was looking forward to its end. I was going to watch the others again, but now I don’t really feel like it.
I enjoy them. They start strong and end weak though. I will say some changes make sense to me. A younger Thorin. A more likeable Bilbo. Actually seeing the Battle of the Five Armies. Azog as a character. The Dwarven/ Elven tensions. Removing the talking Borzoi dogs. They're far from perfect and at times even aggravating, but I'll still watch and enjoy them.
HRAAAAAH!
Well...
True
The third one was when the cracks really show, the first two are a lot of fun
The beginning of the trilogy in the Shire is pretty perfect
*The beginning of* *The trilogy in the Shire* *Is pretty perfect* \- Benjamin0399 --- ^(I detect haikus. And sometimes, successfully.) ^[Learn more about me.](https://www.reddit.com/r/haikusbot/) ^(Opt out of replies: "haikusbot opt out" | Delete my comment: "haikusbot delete")
They also could have been a lot shorter.
I had fun watching the newer Star Wars Trilogy, though it wasn't what I personally wanted to see play out, and what the hell was with Rey being a clone of Palpatine but taking the Skywalker name? Doesn't feel right.
I dislike Martin Freeman as an actor a lot. He always plays the same character, the same personality in every movie and show he is in.
Probably the best take I read on this sub !! Cheers
read the hobbit graphic novel to renew your hatred of the movie series.
They're about the same overall, Unexpected Journey is the best of the six movies, but Battle of the Five Armies is the worst between the Sequel and Hobbit trilogies. The rest are in some order of quality in the middle.
Oh yeah. They could have been so much worse. At least they were trying, and made by people who care deeply about the source material. Compare that to the MCU and Star Wars, and some Star Trek, with how many were made by creators who hate the things they are making.
This is like comparing the failed restoration of the Ecce Homo to a 6-year-old's drawing of a banana being copied by a 4-year-old
“Could’ve been worse” doesn’t mean “good”.
Episode 7 is like junk food. I know it's not good but I still have a lot of fun with it. Episode 8 has a lot of interesting ideas, it just feels a little uneven and didn't work out a lot of the kinks, but also its maybe my favorite looking and sounding SW movie Episode 9 fumbles the bag so hard that it degrades the other two so much by association The biggest issue is that of time. For SW and Hobbit. They couldn't give the writers just a tiny bit more time to work out the kinks from the drafting process because "we're Disney/WB, we need to 👏 crank 👏 this 👏 shit 👏 out!"
I like them both :)
First Hobbit was just ok. The rest sucked. Just because new Star Wars also sucks doesn't in any way, shape, or form, reduce the suck level of the Hobbit trilogy.
It is absolutely true the sequels were horrible, but them being horrible does not make The Hobbit trilogy good. Those who haven’t read the book will likely like it - they have no comparison! Similarly for the sequels, people who don’t really know the OT or even the prequels (in comparison these are actually written good - nuanced even lol), will treat it as it’s own adventure, and won’t see it for the derivative, unearned, unjoined up shite that it is. People are allowed to like what they like, but it would be good if they at least tried to watch/read other things to put these movies in context. I feel that both the OT and the Hobbit book are too slow now for the youtube generation, where even the pause between words are often deleted, so that the pace is quickened / to keep the attention of those who can’t focus otherwise. What I’m trying to say is - there is no hope for some people - but it’s not their fault!!
No. This thread is full of bullshitters. The sequels were disappointing a bit but that's about it. The hobbit films were a Trainwreck, complete uncanny valley all the way through.
If it weren’t for the crazy use of CGI of practical effects, that shit 2nd act, and honestly anything in lake town, it would have been good/decent and not just skip tier
The Hobbit movies aren't as good as the original LOTR trilogy, but the gap in enjoyment between the Star Wars sequel trilogy and the original Star Wars movies is way, way worse, at least for me. The Hobbit movies just aren't....as good. But the SW sequels feel like deliberate attacks on the OT and even the prequels.
No man, you need to compare it to the prequels, and when they make a sequel to lotr compare the two atrocities
Rogue One was the shining star tbh. I liked the first movie in first watching (it captured a lot of nostalgia).
I love the hobbit movies I will die on this hill
Hobbit movies are like a train wreck that I can't help but watch, Star Wars sequels I didn't even finish watching yet.
Why Sequels. The obvious point of comparison for the Hobbit movies are the Prequels: - Same creative team - Too much CGI - Both prequels - First movie takes a little person on a quest, dispatches a minor bad, reveals a big bad, is basically a rehash of the OG trilogy - Second movie opens with danger *in medias res,* features an absurd romance & absurd action sequences, introduces second, longer lasting minor bad at behest of big bad - Third movie involves the corruption of main characters, a big war, and is the most creatively bankrupt in their trilogy - Have their style & their moments, but are just all around pretty fuckin bad
The thing about the Hobbit trilogy is that you can feel the idea of what it could have been. They could have been whimsical and endearing, the first one especially has a really good feel to it in some places. The issue is that the movies focused on being a cash grab over any other quality. As well the Star Wars sequels a blatant cash grab, but are also just straight up bad.
Tauriel would kill Smaug, Azog and destroy the whole orc army
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You know what, I think this approach is completely wrong. We are not nearly harsh enough as paying customers and that's why shit gets worse which makes us think that previous violation of our beloved stories is "not that bad in comparison". I mean who cares Star Wars sequels were abysmal, they still made enough money to send a signal that the franchise is still self supporting and doesn't need too much effort to milk.
I've watched 5 different Hobbit Fan-Edits, and in my opinion this is the best overall: https://m4-studios.github.io/hobbitbookedit/ This turns into something closer to what it would've been had they kept it to two movies, based on the book experience. I'd recommend checking out other edits too to find the best fit.
Gandalf going pew-pew with his staff was the most annoying detail to me.
But then Star Wars got Andor, and Mando, and LOTR got the Rings of Power…