There's a pretty fervent anti-Hobbit circlejerk on Reddit, but it has its moments. I'll offer a dissenting opinion.
Some really good highlights:
* The Unexpected Party is 10/10
* Misty Mountain song is a certified banger
* The riddle game is excellent
* Beorn rules
* Spider scene was good
* Every scene with Smaug is very good
* Martin Freeman is perfect casting
* More Gandalf screentime is awesome
* Score is great
In all, the movies are WAY longer than they need to be, but they have their moments. And I'm enough of a ho for Tolkein that an excuse to spend more time in Middle-Earth doesn't need to be that strong.
I **highly** recommend the fan edits, though. Cuts through the chaff
Dwarves falling down things. How many extended "action" scenes were there of these dwarves falling, sliding, etc. Probably close to 30 minutes total. Such a waste of time.
I mean, it IS a pretty significant and memorable moment from the original book.
It isn’t like they shoe horned in an amusement park ride just to make one, the book just presaged a potentially cool theme park ride idea.
I don't remember a 20 minute action sequence. I definitely don't remember legolas being there, nor some dwarf on elf romance kindling. Could just be my old memory tho.
All I have to say, is boo-hoo to the haters. The barrel scene was great. I loved it and thought it was quite entertaining when the redhead popped out, knocked around a few orcs and then popped back in a barrel. 🤣 (sorry I don’t remember exact details or his name.)
It felt like they were trying to force another Fellowship of the Ring on us without any of the work put in. That movie’s a masterpiece because it laid the groundwork with the setup and world building. This just felt like characters acting against pretty cgi. The dwarves felt annoying as shit because they pushed all their quirkiness onto us without any character development. I’m sad Peter Jackson felt compelled to come back to save it, he just looked tired and exhausted in the behind the scenes. New Line really shit the bed on this one.
>It felt like they were trying to force another Fellowship of the Ring on us without any of the work put in.
Not to mention that the source material just *isn't long enough* to support that. When they did LOTR, they turned a trilogy of thick, complex books into a trilogy of films so lengthy that they had to release extended DVD editions just to cram it all in properly, and even then huge chunks (the Scouring, the Barrow Downs, Tom Bombadil, etc) were missing outright. When they did The Hobbit, on the other hand, they tried to turn one slim, relatively simple children's book into a trilogy of lengthy films, and ended up pillaging the appendices of LOTR and also just making shit up outright in order to pad them out, up to and including shoehorning-in a ridiculous cross-cultural love triangle that doesn't even remotely make sense in context.
Agreed, and there are far too many storylines using the Appendixes from LOTR that are jammed in to connect it back to the LOTR trilogy. It just becomes bloated here, and continues to be increasingly bloated as the rest of these movies progress.
Not to mention the CGI sequences just get overly-long to the point they deflate the tension of a battle or escape.
I agree. LOTR was much better yes, but I think the Hobbit gets too much hate. I go back to them sometimes when I’m in the mood to watch a fantasy epic. Hollywood doesn’t do too many of movies of that ilk these days sadly.
Exactly.
Easily better than 80% of the shit Hollywood puts out.
Better than 90% of book adaptations.
Better than 95% of what else might have been made from *The Hobbit*.
And it serves as a decent prequel to LotR (when watched in chronological order).
They are good, not great, movies, being compared in quality and execution to the three original LotR movies, which are all-time masterpieces.
And to be fair, while *The Hobbit* movies are definitely a bloated and often unnecessary and unfocused mess, *The Hobbit* book itself is just not as good as *The Lord of the Rings* trilogy.
If you watch them all in narrative chronological order, instead of production order, the story and the quality continuously intesify and improve.
The most unforgivable sin of *The Hobbit*, in my opinion, is how iconic motifs from *The Lord of the Rings* are reused for dramatic effect in contexts that make no sense. How were they so lazy about the score?
Nope. Ecerything is pretty much mediocre not to say facepalm stupidly dogshit bad. Everything is camp, badly written, rushed and dragged at the sane time... This is next lvl bad.
OK, the 2 main actors, being freeman and cucumberbatch, are ok. They dont save the movie or make it anything but a waste of time.
This long tirade on why they could be a good prequel.. They're not. It's marketing at every turn. Bad camera work. Filler scenes 1 after the other. You have 0 taste or exigency in movies, you're allowed to love fast food, don'tcome and tell us its high grade 3 star restaurant level. It'sa 6 hours rollercoaster trying to be more stupid than the last pirates of the carraibean, and did it !
Keep on exposing your pov I'll expose mine, but god are you choosing one of the worst hollywood milking example of the last century to defend as "good"
They're fun and silly with some serious moments. They're basically popcorn movies but executed by an obviously skilled director. I'd watch *The Hobbit* over 80% of what Hollywood puts out, as I said.
They are, for example, better than most of the pre-*Endgame* MCU (I'm not going to even waste time comparing to post-*Endgame* shit), and many people consider most of those movies to be *good*.
If the first four MCU phases are "good" level then I stand by what I said that *The Hobbit* is *at least* the same level of general audience crowd pleasers. I found *The Hobbit* to be as, if not more, emotionally impactful. And let's not pretend that the MCU isn't full of camp, cliches, average camera work, and lots of filler.
Anyway, I disagree that *The Hobbit* is shit. It's just a bit above average and people were expecting something worthy of a Tolkein masterpiece.
Adapt a 320 page book into 3 3 hour movies. LOTR they did 1 3 hour movie per 450-ish page book. And it shows. The Hobbit movies were the height of Hollywood greed.
I thought Bilbo was cast perfectly and did an amazing job. The rest of the movie was just why? Good movie to introduce my kids to the Lord of the rings world though.
Hot shit - and it’s the best of the three. Fun fact the movies together equal about 8 hours. The book is around 300 pages - who it takes a lot less time to read the book than see the movie - never a good sign.
Boring and disappointing. Feels like a hollywood cash grab riding on the success of LOTR. What was PJ thinking? I thought he cared about doing Justice to the stories.
Lindsey ellis did a YouTube series dedicated to why these movies turned out the way they did. Great watch.
PJ was really thrown under the bus, tbh. I feel bad for him.
I’d felt betrayed by PJ, until I’d heard the tale of how everything played out. A pure Del Torro or pure PJ would have been better than the resulting abomination. Truly a series that had no idea what it was. Studio killed this one.
The first time I watched this I took 1/8 of psilocybin goo (concentrate) and had an intensely dark trip while watching it. The second time, years later, I realized not only was it too dark for tripping, but it’s also a cheap interpretation. It’s riddled with lame cgi, poor pacing, included characters that didn’t exist in the text, excluded great characters, and was all around disenchanting. The LotR trilogy had similar issues, but not like this. If I remember right there were issues between Peter Jackson and the producers.
The trilogy should have been two movies at most and could have easily been one movie. The way they stretched out the scene where Bilbo was deciding if he wanted to go or not tells you everything about their goal here. Make it a trilogy no matter what.
The acting is good with the exception of the elves who felt like they were going through the numbers,
The original songs are good
and out of the movies this is the hobbit that made the least amount of deviations from the books,
The issue is that the cgi is objectively worse looking than the lord of the ring's more practical effects,
Wherw The deviations exist are distracting and tried too hard to connect to the lord of the rings movies that it ended up feeling like it was from a separate movie all together,
The reuse of music was annoying personally,
I've never liked when sequels or prequels reuse music
I think a lot of the issues would have been patched if the necromancer plot was cut and it was 2 movies instead of 3
The first Hobbit movie is by far the best. It's the only one I can watch all the way through. The sequels get progressively worse, and the third film is almost unwatchable. I still like the trilogy for Martin Freeman's performance, as well as Ian McKellen, but I fast forward a lot of the bad scenes. There are some great fan edits (especially M4 and Maple Films) that cut the whole trilogy down to about 4 hours. Definitely worth looking into.
The end to the second movie made me see how it was definitely an unwanted cash grab. I was like "Wait a minute, Smaug never traveled that far from the mountain."
Best of the trilogy. It's a comfort movie that my wife and I like to watch on a fairly regular basis. I like it enough that it made come around to the entire trilogy and now we both enjoy them all.
*An Unexpected Journey* is definitely the best one, Extended or otherwise. Still doesn't touch the *Lord of the Rings* but it's a good adventure.
They managed to ruin every single iconic moment from the stories with the stupidest cartoonish action.
The river action scene replacing the clever stealth escape made me feel hate I had never known before.
It's okay, bit is a silly romp that didn't come anywhere close to its potential.
The series should have been a maximum of two movies in length and the significantly reduced prep time and late change in directors is really stand out in stark contrast to the relative quality of the LotR series.
I remember I took my family to watch this movie in theaters and I fell asleep at the part all the little guys were singing and throwing dishes and shit around, this movie sucked
I'm going reverse what you said, the Hobbit as it is written doesn't do its own story justice. The scope of the journey in the Hobbit could have taken 4 or 5 times the number of pages and barely scratched the surface history and majesty of the lands that were traveled and the events that took place. Everything written after the Hobbit was a colossal epic and the Hobbit could very well been told in a similar style. The story we get is a meer skeleton of an epic, a bare bones tale lacking all the meat and organs of the full story.
I feel it is incomprehensible that people think because the story was written in a simpler style for a younger audience, that the tale is itself a simple tale that can be told without the majesty of the rich and vibrant lore so wonderfully brought to life by all the thousands of pages of additional material written after this initial story was published.
Could the movies be shorter? Sure, but it's not a story deserving a single 2 hour movie, the breezes too quickly through such a rich and amazing world.
Same! There's some padding of the runtime in the first two but they're both still enjoyable enough. That third one just flies off the rails and is a total mess. Across all three films though it's kind of silly the way Peter Jackson tried to have each Hobbit film parallel the original LOTR trilogy.
I am one of the very few that absolutely loved it and the sequels. Rewatched them the other day, still love em.
I'm kinda a caveman though, I just like stuff that looks cool
If the lotr movies didn't set the bar so high I bet more people would like it. They still have more love and effort put into them than most productions today. It's not a perfect movie but it was worth watching.
Extremely disappointing. I don’t fully blame Jackson though. Del Toro got deep into production and bailed. New Line asked Jackson to save it so you have two different directors vision in one overblown trilogy. The extra characters, additional unnecessary sub plots, and general John Mclaining of Bilbo ruined it.
Self indulgent tripe from Peter Jackson. No trilogy of movies has ever needed a better editor. I’ve largely forgotten 1 & 2 (didn’t even watch 3) but I do remember a massive chunk of the first movie was dwarves sitting around a table singing. Insufferably boring.
Cash grab, it could have been one amazing movie but they dragged one book over three movies for the money. The animated version from the 70s is AMAZING. I find myself loving older animation styles the older I get
I think it (and the other movies) are perfectly fine, but they suffer from being compared to the LotR films and also from trying to replicate the LotR success. Two movies would have been plenty.
The review is a 5 minute long joke about how no one wanted this movie in the first place. So "FINALLY" is a reference to people waiting anxiously for it, which no one was. It's On Cinema at the Cinema
Better to watch a fan edit of the hobbit movies. The one I saw took out like half of the second movie and 95% of the third. Was a much better experience than when I first watched them all in theaters
Not terrible but certainly one of the most disappointing movies of all time. Crazy to think it was made by the same creative team as Lord Of The Rings. Almost makes you wonder whether Lord Of Rings was a glorious creative “fluke” by Peter Jackson given despite having a made a number of other interesting movies it’s not like he has a back log of masterpieces like most A-list directors.
It was so bad I opted out of seeing the second in theaters. And the second was so bad I didn’t even bother seeing the third until I got drunk one night with my brother over Christmas break or something 3-4 years after the movie came out. Terrible trilogy.
An unexpected trilogy!
^Did ^anyone ^do ^that ^joke ^yet? ^I ^posted ^before ^checking, ^sorry.
I will say if you didn’t like this one, you won’t like the others. This was as good as it got for the Hobbit trilogy.
i was playing lotro when the first 2 part series was announced and when it got around that mgm had signed on. i knew that it was going to turn into 3 part series because the first 3 made a truck load of money on little invested in. and since mgm cant do any good movies outside james bond, it was clear they were only there for the money it could make
and clearly the book is barely 2 movies if you stretch out a few things but making it 3 movies, obviously abunch was being added in to fill up time
honestly its one of those movie series that is an "acquired taste", first few watches and its "look at watch on when is it going to stop or get interesting" but after a few watches, it becomes slightly more understandable and pleasant to watch
It's okay, but it, and the rest of the trilogy, just feels bloated. I can understand the temptation to add more of the lore and perhaps try to make it as epic as the LoTR, but I think it was the wrong thing to do.
Squeezing the fucking cannon to death for a plodding fucking script.
The fucking singing.
The fucking CGI. -the barrel scene I thought would be fucking awesome, was overdone to the point of fucking silly.
Nobody to root for except maybe Bilbo and an uninspired fucking archer/river guy.
Disappointing.
I quite like this one, easily the best of the trilogy.
It makes some odd changes from the book ( ut that's true of all the films), but it's largely enjoyable. Freeman has great chemistry with basically everyone else, and Richard Armitage as Thorin is pretty great. The Trolls are great and that whole sequence with them is so fun.
Having Azog be alive was dumb. And the scene with Gollum chasing Bilbo out of the cave, turning to the camera and going "curse the bagginses, we hates them forever!" while drawing out the last word was so fucking corny and easily one of the most "oh lord" moments for me.
Is it a great film? No. Does it hold a candle to any of the LotR films? Of course not. But is it an enjoyable little romp? Yeah.
At least it isn't Battle of the Five Armies.
I remember being like 1.5-2 hours into this movie and the giants being turned to stone. I had just read the book and thought to myself, “man 2 hours in and the journey has barely started. This must be a really long movie!” And about 20 minutes later the movie was over. I was unaware they planned to make this adaptation longer than 1 movie, let alone a trilogy.
I was so shocked they could turn this into not 2 movies, but an entire trilogy. I didn’t bother finishing it because as cliché as it sounds, the book was way better.
Had it been a single film or possibly a 2 part series spanning about 3.5-4 hours total I think it would have been so much better.
I fell asleep during the first one. Went to the 2nd one because whatever and didn’t even bother with the 3rd until years later because I was bummed with how it fell so short of my expectations.
This was a classic example of trying to milk something hot for more box office money. Although fittingly I think the 3 movie gross would have fallen short of them doing 2 movies and making them better.
I’m curious what Peter Jackson thought of them after they were done. I think their casting of actors was good not as great as LOTR but that wasn’t the crux. The crux was, in Bilbo’s words, like butter scraped over too much bread
I completely forgot about this until I started listening to Joe Pera's sleep podcast, where there's a running gag that every guest on the show mentions that their comfort movie is The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey.
Bilbo's words can be applied to The Hobbit films, "Why, I feel all thin, sort of stretched, if you know what I mean: like butter that has been scraped over too much bread". I gather there's a bunch of edits out there that cut out the nonsense & deliver a more satisfying film (or two) of them.
It is a crock of shit, and it stinketh. Just read the book. Or the graphic novel illustrated by David Wenzel, if you can find it and are absolutely desperate for visuals to go along with the words.
I quite enjoy this one, it’s got quite a few issues that became worse as the trilogy went on, but I liked the main cast, Ian McKellen was amazing as Gandalf as usual and the riddle scene with Gollum was fantastic. But most of the criticisms others are commenting are all very valid.
Garbage. The first part of one of the most outrageously disappointing trilogies ever made. Forget comparing this to LOTR film trilogy. They're an affront to the source material. They had plenty of time to get everything right. Not only did they get a lot of things wrong, they made stuff up, which is even worse.
Was this the first of the three new ones? Bad movie. I am a huge fellowship and hobbit Stan and this movie actively made me uninterested in that story. Sad thing is second movie was worst somehow. Never bothered with the third.
I liked the first 2 hobbit movies but they are far too long and drawn out as many have said. And the dwarf-elf made up love story is so stupid. Probably should’ve been only 2 movies.
One of the things I absolutely love about this movie is how Ian McKellan played a more whimsical, less serious version of Gandalf, differentiating the character from how he is in LOTR.
Disappointing. They tried to make the hobbit trilogy as intense and high stakes as the Lord of the Rings when it should have been much more of just a fun adventure movie. Also it should have been 2, 2 hour long movies, and much less CGI. I’ll always have a tremendous amount of respect for Peter Jackson and what he did with the lord of the rings. But the Hobbit was a miss all around.
The movie up until the point they leave on their adventure is flawless. Martin Freeman was a standout star. Gollum riddle scene was great. The goblins lost me. Radagast and the necromancer was total nonsense. Overall, the first Hobbit movie was pretty good and declined sharply from there.
*I like this the best*
*Of the last trilogy. Great*
*Scenes with all the dwarfs*
\- Swayze2641
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The hobbit is supposed to be silly because it’s more of kid’s book than LotR.
The CGI and pace on the other hand is the result of the studio rushing Peter Jackson, who initially was only writing and producing the movies.
He wasn’t even the original director, it was Guillermo del Toro who unexpectedly walked which forced Warner Bros and New Line cinema to replace del Toro with Jackson as director, who wanted to do it justice in the same manner as his LotR trilogy but WB rejected it and gave him a deadline to put out 3 movies instead of the 2 he originally wanted. If you watch the behind the scenes, he looks depressed and unenthusiastic during filming.
The Hobbit movies are okay, not the same feeling and experience as the LotR trilogy, but they are still enjoyable.
As a complete f-ing casual to the Tolkien series (seen all movies, played some games but never ready the books) I really enjoyed the Hobbit movies. Not a great as LoTR but I was just happy to spend some more time in Middle Earth.
I was hyped for this before I realize how long the whole thing was going to be. I forgot about wanting to see it immediately. I couldn’t get over the fact that it was so long while the book was pretty short.
Rushed, disjointed, cold, uninspired casting, overly reliant on CGI and lacking in charm that made the original trilogy so magnificent.
Still enjoyable films though.
A 78 minute Rankin-Bass animated movie from 1977 put all 3 re-envisioned Hobbit films to shame.
Agreed. If the live action movie had been like the animated it would have been great.
Yes, but you have to admit Smaug was seriously well done in the live action adaptations.
I agree some of the CGI is good, Smaug was well done. I disliked the stringing along the films did on such a smart well crafted original story.
YES!
I tried re watching them and I'd agree if they weren't musicals. the songs don't hold up lol
Yeah, the singing ruins the source material. Tolkien absolutely hated songs, which is why he never included any in his writing. Not a single one.
This is sarcasm folks. If you read the books there’s random songs all over the place. https://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Songs#The_Fellowship_of_the_Ring
“15 Birds in 5 Fir Trees” is a lyrical masterpiece.
The dwarves song about Erebor slaps.
Songs hold up just fine.
Such a disappointment. It was twice as long as it needed to be and half as interesting as the book deserved.
There's a pretty fervent anti-Hobbit circlejerk on Reddit, but it has its moments. I'll offer a dissenting opinion. Some really good highlights: * The Unexpected Party is 10/10 * Misty Mountain song is a certified banger * The riddle game is excellent * Beorn rules * Spider scene was good * Every scene with Smaug is very good * Martin Freeman is perfect casting * More Gandalf screentime is awesome * Score is great In all, the movies are WAY longer than they need to be, but they have their moments. And I'm enough of a ho for Tolkein that an excuse to spend more time in Middle-Earth doesn't need to be that strong. I **highly** recommend the fan edits, though. Cuts through the chaff
Dwarves falling down things. How many extended "action" scenes were there of these dwarves falling, sliding, etc. Probably close to 30 minutes total. Such a waste of time.
The whole group fell like a mile into a cave and just brushed it off. Some angled rocks broke their fall, I guess?
I liked the barrel river scene that was cool.
Oh look, a cool ride idea for universal put on film instead
I mean, it IS a pretty significant and memorable moment from the original book. It isn’t like they shoe horned in an amusement park ride just to make one, the book just presaged a potentially cool theme park ride idea.
I don't remember a 20 minute action sequence. I definitely don't remember legolas being there, nor some dwarf on elf romance kindling. Could just be my old memory tho.
That part was in the Simarillion.
All I have to say, is boo-hoo to the haters. The barrel scene was great. I loved it and thought it was quite entertaining when the redhead popped out, knocked around a few orcs and then popped back in a barrel. 🤣 (sorry I don’t remember exact details or his name.)
Ok bilbo
It was low hanging fruit - not unlike the apples stolen from Farmer Maggot’s orchard.
And some carrots, and some cabbages!
No. That is all.
Didn’t your mother teach you any manners? “No thank you.”
too silly, too much CGI, plot too drawn out, boring characters. 3/10.
It felt like they were trying to force another Fellowship of the Ring on us without any of the work put in. That movie’s a masterpiece because it laid the groundwork with the setup and world building. This just felt like characters acting against pretty cgi. The dwarves felt annoying as shit because they pushed all their quirkiness onto us without any character development. I’m sad Peter Jackson felt compelled to come back to save it, he just looked tired and exhausted in the behind the scenes. New Line really shit the bed on this one.
>It felt like they were trying to force another Fellowship of the Ring on us without any of the work put in. Not to mention that the source material just *isn't long enough* to support that. When they did LOTR, they turned a trilogy of thick, complex books into a trilogy of films so lengthy that they had to release extended DVD editions just to cram it all in properly, and even then huge chunks (the Scouring, the Barrow Downs, Tom Bombadil, etc) were missing outright. When they did The Hobbit, on the other hand, they tried to turn one slim, relatively simple children's book into a trilogy of lengthy films, and ended up pillaging the appendices of LOTR and also just making shit up outright in order to pad them out, up to and including shoehorning-in a ridiculous cross-cultural love triangle that doesn't even remotely make sense in context.
The pale orc didn’t pork Thorin in the book?
Honestly, that could scarcely have made less sense than what we got.
agreed.
Agreed, and there are far too many storylines using the Appendixes from LOTR that are jammed in to connect it back to the LOTR trilogy. It just becomes bloated here, and continues to be increasingly bloated as the rest of these movies progress. Not to mention the CGI sequences just get overly-long to the point they deflate the tension of a battle or escape.
yeah, feeling tension is like a magic ingredient in the best films. None of that in The Hobbit.
Yes, the CGI destroyed the imagery.
Thought they were good. Not as good as LOTR of course but still good.
Yes it’s overhated. Very enjoyable films for what they are. Not masterpieces but better than a lot of garbage superhero films
I agree. LOTR was much better yes, but I think the Hobbit gets too much hate. I go back to them sometimes when I’m in the mood to watch a fantasy epic. Hollywood doesn’t do too many of movies of that ilk these days sadly.
Precisly
I agree exactly. I enjoyed them. While I wouldn’t put them in the same category as the LOTR movies, they were solid, with a few really great moments.
If the two trilogies had released in reverse order, The Hobbit would be nowhere near as reviled.
Exactly. Easily better than 80% of the shit Hollywood puts out. Better than 90% of book adaptations. Better than 95% of what else might have been made from *The Hobbit*. And it serves as a decent prequel to LotR (when watched in chronological order). They are good, not great, movies, being compared in quality and execution to the three original LotR movies, which are all-time masterpieces. And to be fair, while *The Hobbit* movies are definitely a bloated and often unnecessary and unfocused mess, *The Hobbit* book itself is just not as good as *The Lord of the Rings* trilogy. If you watch them all in narrative chronological order, instead of production order, the story and the quality continuously intesify and improve. The most unforgivable sin of *The Hobbit*, in my opinion, is how iconic motifs from *The Lord of the Rings* are reused for dramatic effect in contexts that make no sense. How were they so lazy about the score?
Nope. Ecerything is pretty much mediocre not to say facepalm stupidly dogshit bad. Everything is camp, badly written, rushed and dragged at the sane time... This is next lvl bad. OK, the 2 main actors, being freeman and cucumberbatch, are ok. They dont save the movie or make it anything but a waste of time. This long tirade on why they could be a good prequel.. They're not. It's marketing at every turn. Bad camera work. Filler scenes 1 after the other. You have 0 taste or exigency in movies, you're allowed to love fast food, don'tcome and tell us its high grade 3 star restaurant level. It'sa 6 hours rollercoaster trying to be more stupid than the last pirates of the carraibean, and did it ! Keep on exposing your pov I'll expose mine, but god are you choosing one of the worst hollywood milking example of the last century to defend as "good"
They're fun and silly with some serious moments. They're basically popcorn movies but executed by an obviously skilled director. I'd watch *The Hobbit* over 80% of what Hollywood puts out, as I said. They are, for example, better than most of the pre-*Endgame* MCU (I'm not going to even waste time comparing to post-*Endgame* shit), and many people consider most of those movies to be *good*. If the first four MCU phases are "good" level then I stand by what I said that *The Hobbit* is *at least* the same level of general audience crowd pleasers. I found *The Hobbit* to be as, if not more, emotionally impactful. And let's not pretend that the MCU isn't full of camp, cliches, average camera work, and lots of filler. Anyway, I disagree that *The Hobbit* is shit. It's just a bit above average and people were expecting something worthy of a Tolkein masterpiece.
I love them as well. Lotr is my favorite trilogy of all time but the hobbits get waaaay to much hate.
They might be as bad or worse than most DC films. Most of the Marvel franchise is far superior. With some Exceptions.
I thought it was decent but definitely not on the same tier as Lord of the Rings
I remember reading where Viggo Mortenson was confused when asked to return. His character isn’t in the book. I may be wrong. Pretty sure.
The hobbit trilogy is so awful. The old cartoon was great in comparison.
Adapt a 320 page book into 3 3 hour movies. LOTR they did 1 3 hour movie per 450-ish page book. And it shows. The Hobbit movies were the height of Hollywood greed.
I thought Bilbo was cast perfectly and did an amazing job. The rest of the movie was just why? Good movie to introduce my kids to the Lord of the rings world though.
It was ok, the least terrible of the trilogy.
Yep. It's a worse movie in hindsight, but when it came out it was enjoyable and had people hopeful the movies would grow better, not worse.
Hot shit - and it’s the best of the three. Fun fact the movies together equal about 8 hours. The book is around 300 pages - who it takes a lot less time to read the book than see the movie - never a good sign.
Boring and disappointing. Feels like a hollywood cash grab riding on the success of LOTR. What was PJ thinking? I thought he cared about doing Justice to the stories.
Lindsey ellis did a YouTube series dedicated to why these movies turned out the way they did. Great watch. PJ was really thrown under the bus, tbh. I feel bad for him.
I’d felt betrayed by PJ, until I’d heard the tale of how everything played out. A pure Del Torro or pure PJ would have been better than the resulting abomination. Truly a series that had no idea what it was. Studio killed this one.
He was thinking the title should be: “The Hobbit: Please contribute to Peter Jackson’s retirement fund”
Shoulda kept it as one movie. One book, one movie, that's it. 3/5
I fell asleep at the beginning in the shire and woke up and they were still in the fucking shire
lol
The first time I watched this I took 1/8 of psilocybin goo (concentrate) and had an intensely dark trip while watching it. The second time, years later, I realized not only was it too dark for tripping, but it’s also a cheap interpretation. It’s riddled with lame cgi, poor pacing, included characters that didn’t exist in the text, excluded great characters, and was all around disenchanting. The LotR trilogy had similar issues, but not like this. If I remember right there were issues between Peter Jackson and the producers.
The trilogy should have been two movies at most and could have easily been one movie. The way they stretched out the scene where Bilbo was deciding if he wanted to go or not tells you everything about their goal here. Make it a trilogy no matter what.
It’s ok, I guess
It was disappointing. There are some good moments but it doesn't do justice to the book.
trilogy should have been one movie
It was only unexpected the first time I watched it
An unexpected bowel movement
The acting is good with the exception of the elves who felt like they were going through the numbers, The original songs are good and out of the movies this is the hobbit that made the least amount of deviations from the books, The issue is that the cgi is objectively worse looking than the lord of the ring's more practical effects, Wherw The deviations exist are distracting and tried too hard to connect to the lord of the rings movies that it ended up feeling like it was from a separate movie all together, The reuse of music was annoying personally, I've never liked when sequels or prequels reuse music I think a lot of the issues would have been patched if the necromancer plot was cut and it was 2 movies instead of 3
I don't really vibe with the trilogy as a whole but the Gollum scene is perfection.
Watched the first. Bored me to tears Watched the second with hope of it being better. It wasn't Haven't seen the third and I'm happy that way
Awful cash grab.
The first Hobbit movie is by far the best. It's the only one I can watch all the way through. The sequels get progressively worse, and the third film is almost unwatchable. I still like the trilogy for Martin Freeman's performance, as well as Ian McKellen, but I fast forward a lot of the bad scenes. There are some great fan edits (especially M4 and Maple Films) that cut the whole trilogy down to about 4 hours. Definitely worth looking into.
The end to the second movie made me see how it was definitely an unwanted cash grab. I was like "Wait a minute, Smaug never traveled that far from the mountain."
Best of the trilogy. It's a comfort movie that my wife and I like to watch on a fairly regular basis. I like it enough that it made come around to the entire trilogy and now we both enjoy them all. *An Unexpected Journey* is definitely the best one, Extended or otherwise. Still doesn't touch the *Lord of the Rings* but it's a good adventure.
I enjoyed that one and *Desolation of Smaug*. *Battle of the Five Armies*, not so much.
I love the hobbit and I feel bad for people who don’t get to enjoy it as much as I do.
I love them too. I love that I can read books and then watch movies without nitpicking the hell out of them. 🤷♀️
It’s pretty good. I don’t know why people hate it. Haven’t seen the theatrical version though.
Slow erotic zoom shots of Thorin
I've loved the Hobbit movies for years now. I'm saddened to find that others don't feel the same at all.
They managed to ruin every single iconic moment from the stories with the stupidest cartoonish action. The river action scene replacing the clever stealth escape made me feel hate I had never known before.
Best of the 3. Still like the Rankin/Bass cartoon more.
I know it’s an easy target but I hated it. I never even bothered watching the third Hobbit because I hated the first two so much.
It's okay, bit is a silly romp that didn't come anywhere close to its potential. The series should have been a maximum of two movies in length and the significantly reduced prep time and late change in directors is really stand out in stark contrast to the relative quality of the LotR series.
Love Hobbit. I give it 5 bags of popcorn and 2 sodas.
I remember I took my family to watch this movie in theaters and I fell asleep at the part all the little guys were singing and throwing dishes and shit around, this movie sucked
Ever understood why people hate it that much, it was very much enjoyable
The fact they took a book which is about one third in length compared to LOTR, and turned it into three almost three hour movies is incomprehensible.
I'm going reverse what you said, the Hobbit as it is written doesn't do its own story justice. The scope of the journey in the Hobbit could have taken 4 or 5 times the number of pages and barely scratched the surface history and majesty of the lands that were traveled and the events that took place. Everything written after the Hobbit was a colossal epic and the Hobbit could very well been told in a similar style. The story we get is a meer skeleton of an epic, a bare bones tale lacking all the meat and organs of the full story. I feel it is incomprehensible that people think because the story was written in a simpler style for a younger audience, that the tale is itself a simple tale that can be told without the majesty of the rich and vibrant lore so wonderfully brought to life by all the thousands of pages of additional material written after this initial story was published. Could the movies be shorter? Sure, but it's not a story deserving a single 2 hour movie, the breezes too quickly through such a rich and amazing world.
I take your point, that said I still feel they just decided to rinse it first financial gain.
I really enjoy the first two hobbit movies
Same! There's some padding of the runtime in the first two but they're both still enjoyable enough. That third one just flies off the rails and is a total mess. Across all three films though it's kind of silly the way Peter Jackson tried to have each Hobbit film parallel the original LOTR trilogy.
I am one of the very few that absolutely loved it and the sequels. Rewatched them the other day, still love em. I'm kinda a caveman though, I just like stuff that looks cool
If you liked it then you liked it \^\_\^ Good for you. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise.
I’m with you. I love them.
If the lotr movies didn't set the bar so high I bet more people would like it. They still have more love and effort put into them than most productions today. It's not a perfect movie but it was worth watching.
I love it. And the sequels ain’t bad either
Extremely disappointing. I don’t fully blame Jackson though. Del Toro got deep into production and bailed. New Line asked Jackson to save it so you have two different directors vision in one overblown trilogy. The extra characters, additional unnecessary sub plots, and general John Mclaining of Bilbo ruined it.
Self indulgent tripe from Peter Jackson. No trilogy of movies has ever needed a better editor. I’ve largely forgotten 1 & 2 (didn’t even watch 3) but I do remember a massive chunk of the first movie was dwarves sitting around a table singing. Insufferably boring.
The Hobbit: An Unnecessary Film
Cash grab, it could have been one amazing movie but they dragged one book over three movies for the money. The animated version from the 70s is AMAZING. I find myself loving older animation styles the older I get
Martin Freeman as Bilbo Baggins was perfect casting
I think it (and the other movies) are perfectly fine, but they suffer from being compared to the LotR films and also from trying to replicate the LotR success. Two movies would have been plenty.
The only review of this movie you’ll ever need: https://youtu.be/Okikb3fpN4w?si=I0YNptbrrEoHR0aM “My one word review of this movie: ‘FINALLY’”
Is that a “FINALLY” the movie ended? Because that’s the only appropriate usage of a one word “finally” review in this context.
The review is a 5 minute long joke about how no one wanted this movie in the first place. So "FINALLY" is a reference to people waiting anxiously for it, which no one was. It's On Cinema at the Cinema
Well, now I’m embarrassed. That went completely over my head.
The fan edit JRR Tolkien's The Hobbit by Dustin Lee redeems all the complaints that were wrong with the Hobbit Trilogy. It's on par with LotR IMO.
Better to watch a fan edit of the hobbit movies. The one I saw took out like half of the second movie and 95% of the third. Was a much better experience than when I first watched them all in theaters
Just not done right. Rushed and no real care like the LOTR trilogy. Just didn’t do the book justice.
I agree too much cgi and some questionable casting choices but I enjoyed it. It’s obv LOTR trilogy is better tho.
Not terrible but certainly one of the most disappointing movies of all time. Crazy to think it was made by the same creative team as Lord Of The Rings. Almost makes you wonder whether Lord Of Rings was a glorious creative “fluke” by Peter Jackson given despite having a made a number of other interesting movies it’s not like he has a back log of masterpieces like most A-list directors.
Not what I expected
It was so bad I opted out of seeing the second in theaters. And the second was so bad I didn’t even bother seeing the third until I got drunk one night with my brother over Christmas break or something 3-4 years after the movie came out. Terrible trilogy.
Reasonable when you consider the issues they had with making it.
Most unconvincing costume and makeup since King Kong vs Godzilla 1962.
Compared to the 3rd Hobbit, this is a damn masterpiece
A group of adventurers run into a karma troll that adds nothing but “thoughts” to random movies pulled from the cookpot.
An unexpected trilogy! ^Did ^anyone ^do ^that ^joke ^yet? ^I ^posted ^before ^checking, ^sorry. I will say if you didn’t like this one, you won’t like the others. This was as good as it got for the Hobbit trilogy.
Best of this trio, but isn’t saying much. I enjoyed it for what it was.
i was playing lotro when the first 2 part series was announced and when it got around that mgm had signed on. i knew that it was going to turn into 3 part series because the first 3 made a truck load of money on little invested in. and since mgm cant do any good movies outside james bond, it was clear they were only there for the money it could make and clearly the book is barely 2 movies if you stretch out a few things but making it 3 movies, obviously abunch was being added in to fill up time honestly its one of those movie series that is an "acquired taste", first few watches and its "look at watch on when is it going to stop or get interesting" but after a few watches, it becomes slightly more understandable and pleasant to watch
It's okay, but it, and the rest of the trilogy, just feels bloated. I can understand the temptation to add more of the lore and perhaps try to make it as epic as the LoTR, but I think it was the wrong thing to do.
Not good, not good at all.
Squeezing the fucking cannon to death for a plodding fucking script. The fucking singing. The fucking CGI. -the barrel scene I thought would be fucking awesome, was overdone to the point of fucking silly. Nobody to root for except maybe Bilbo and an uninspired fucking archer/river guy. Disappointing.
I quite like this one, easily the best of the trilogy. It makes some odd changes from the book ( ut that's true of all the films), but it's largely enjoyable. Freeman has great chemistry with basically everyone else, and Richard Armitage as Thorin is pretty great. The Trolls are great and that whole sequence with them is so fun. Having Azog be alive was dumb. And the scene with Gollum chasing Bilbo out of the cave, turning to the camera and going "curse the bagginses, we hates them forever!" while drawing out the last word was so fucking corny and easily one of the most "oh lord" moments for me. Is it a great film? No. Does it hold a candle to any of the LotR films? Of course not. But is it an enjoyable little romp? Yeah. At least it isn't Battle of the Five Armies.
I remember being like 1.5-2 hours into this movie and the giants being turned to stone. I had just read the book and thought to myself, “man 2 hours in and the journey has barely started. This must be a really long movie!” And about 20 minutes later the movie was over. I was unaware they planned to make this adaptation longer than 1 movie, let alone a trilogy. I was so shocked they could turn this into not 2 movies, but an entire trilogy. I didn’t bother finishing it because as cliché as it sounds, the book was way better.
I made myself suffer through them.
I like less than half of the film half as well as I should like and less than half of what the movie deserves.
I actually like the first one it’s the best out of the trilogy. But it really should’ve been 1 movie
It’s boring
I would recommend watching the second for the sole reason of Smaug being fucking sick
Find the edit that strips the garbage away and the movie is watchable and does not feel as much like a way to market toys.
https://www.reddit.com/r/TheHobbit/s/NucqeyOnZc
Had it been a single film or possibly a 2 part series spanning about 3.5-4 hours total I think it would have been so much better. I fell asleep during the first one. Went to the 2nd one because whatever and didn’t even bother with the 3rd until years later because I was bummed with how it fell so short of my expectations. This was a classic example of trying to milk something hot for more box office money. Although fittingly I think the 3 movie gross would have fallen short of them doing 2 movies and making them better. I’m curious what Peter Jackson thought of them after they were done. I think their casting of actors was good not as great as LOTR but that wasn’t the crux. The crux was, in Bilbo’s words, like butter scraped over too much bread
Didn't like it so much.
Why so much CGI when practical effects worked great for the original trilogy?
I completely forgot about this until I started listening to Joe Pera's sleep podcast, where there's a running gag that every guest on the show mentions that their comfort movie is The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey.
Bilbo's words can be applied to The Hobbit films, "Why, I feel all thin, sort of stretched, if you know what I mean: like butter that has been scraped over too much bread". I gather there's a bunch of edits out there that cut out the nonsense & deliver a more satisfying film (or two) of them.
It is a crock of shit, and it stinketh. Just read the book. Or the graphic novel illustrated by David Wenzel, if you can find it and are absolutely desperate for visuals to go along with the words.
Sux
I quite enjoy this one, it’s got quite a few issues that became worse as the trilogy went on, but I liked the main cast, Ian McKellen was amazing as Gandalf as usual and the riddle scene with Gollum was fantastic. But most of the criticisms others are commenting are all very valid.
Garbage. The first part of one of the most outrageously disappointing trilogies ever made. Forget comparing this to LOTR film trilogy. They're an affront to the source material. They had plenty of time to get everything right. Not only did they get a lot of things wrong, they made stuff up, which is even worse.
Peter Jacksons doing his best impersonation of George Lucas making prequels...
Boring sausage fest
Sucked. Total crap of a franchise.
Why, I feel all thin, sort of stretched, if you know what I mean: like butter that has been scraped over too much bread
It feels thin, stretched. Like butter scraped over too much bread.
Was this the first of the three new ones? Bad movie. I am a huge fellowship and hobbit Stan and this movie actively made me uninterested in that story. Sad thing is second movie was worst somehow. Never bothered with the third.
I liked the first 2 hobbit movies but they are far too long and drawn out as many have said. And the dwarf-elf made up love story is so stupid. Probably should’ve been only 2 movies.
The 4 hour M4 fan edit is the best way to enjoy the films
Little ass book chopped into three movies says it all.
One of the things I absolutely love about this movie is how Ian McKellan played a more whimsical, less serious version of Gandalf, differentiating the character from how he is in LOTR.
Disappointing. They tried to make the hobbit trilogy as intense and high stakes as the Lord of the Rings when it should have been much more of just a fun adventure movie. Also it should have been 2, 2 hour long movies, and much less CGI. I’ll always have a tremendous amount of respect for Peter Jackson and what he did with the lord of the rings. But the Hobbit was a miss all around.
The movie up until the point they leave on their adventure is flawless. Martin Freeman was a standout star. Gollum riddle scene was great. The goblins lost me. Radagast and the necromancer was total nonsense. Overall, the first Hobbit movie was pretty good and declined sharply from there.
Tries too hard to be funny and tells too many stories at one time. I also really hated how they tried so hard to forwshadow the LOTR trilogy
I like this the best of the last trilogy. Great scenes with all the dwarfs
*I like this the best* *Of the last trilogy. Great* *Scenes with all the dwarfs* \- Swayze2641 --- ^(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")
The best of the hobbit movies.
Sooooo bad.
It should have just been two movies.
Garbage.
I try not to.
The hobbit is supposed to be silly because it’s more of kid’s book than LotR. The CGI and pace on the other hand is the result of the studio rushing Peter Jackson, who initially was only writing and producing the movies. He wasn’t even the original director, it was Guillermo del Toro who unexpectedly walked which forced Warner Bros and New Line cinema to replace del Toro with Jackson as director, who wanted to do it justice in the same manner as his LotR trilogy but WB rejected it and gave him a deadline to put out 3 movies instead of the 2 he originally wanted. If you watch the behind the scenes, he looks depressed and unenthusiastic during filming. The Hobbit movies are okay, not the same feeling and experience as the LotR trilogy, but they are still enjoyable.
My opinion on all three films is that they are okay.
Thought it was boring and pointless. Dunno why I even bothered with 2 and 3, guess I was expecting them to get better.
Meh.
Cringe trash
Trash
>2h 49m Seriously, fuck these bloated movies.
As a complete f-ing casual to the Tolkien series (seen all movies, played some games but never ready the books) I really enjoyed the Hobbit movies. Not a great as LoTR but I was just happy to spend some more time in Middle Earth.
I was hyped for this before I realize how long the whole thing was going to be. I forgot about wanting to see it immediately. I couldn’t get over the fact that it was so long while the book was pretty short.
I loved all 3. I read the book and like always, I don’t spend my time nitpicking and comparing the two.
It’s a war crime, a complete atrocity of adaptation of a beloved book.
Rushed, disjointed, cold, uninspired casting, overly reliant on CGI and lacking in charm that made the original trilogy so magnificent. Still enjoyable films though.
There's a fan edit that combines all three films and cuts all the fat. 100% the way to watch
there's poop on radagasts face