Yup. Same problem with the PT lovers. A great film is something with totally awesome CGI fest fights and sweet action, weird acrobatics (SW lightsaber fights - Legolas in The Hobbit), unrealistic nonsense, because it's so awesome those fights that lasts many minutes and have many CGI fighters from kazillion armies... The best fights are the ones that are so dense, that they have so much going on in every frame...
And more crap like that. .
Originally posted by Lord Lucien
Sauron was never depicted in the books as some badass hulk of a super-soldier who knows how to f*ck things up, brah! Magic and the concept of "power" in that universe is subtle. Like the Ring is powerful, but not in the Superhero way of "it can't blow up the galaxy!"
The ring is powerful though. Maybe not in a "can blow up a galaxy" way, but it is powerful in a "can turn a bunch of dudes into an unstoppable ghost army" way.
The Hobbit films' preoccupation with fight scenes ignored that. There was nothing subtle about them. Sauron didn't need to be seen, he didn't need to be fighting the heroes physically and directly. That entire side-quest is only mentioned in the book, and it kept it mysterious and enigmatic. But because these are prequel films, the producers felt no nevermind about blowing that wad and just showing us more Sick Action, Bro! It's f*cking sweet!It was kinda lame.
It has nothing to do with them being prequel films. I mean Sauron didn't actually have a glowing fire eye of doom in the books, the movies added that. Why? Because movies are supposed to be visual.
A lot of things were amped up for the films, not just in the Hobbit movies. You really can't pretend like it wasn't Fellowship, Two Towers, and ROTK doing the same type of crap. Hell just look at the Balrog and how amped up and intense the thing was compared to the book. This may shock you but certain concepts that work for books don't actually work too well in films.
Originally posted by queeq
Yup. Same problem with the PT lovers. A great film is something with totally awesome CGI fest fights and sweet action, weird acrobatics (SW lightsaber fights - Legolas in The Hobbit), unrealistic nonsense, because it's so awesome those fights that lasts many minutes and have many CGI fighters from kazillion armies... The best fights are the ones that are so dense, that they have so much going on in every frame...And more crap like that. .
Except you seem to be getting mixed up. Nobody said the Hobbit movies were great because of CGI action. I said I enjoyed the action in those movies more, there is a difference. I also said it wasn't just flashiness, but it was overall how they made the villain actually more intimidating. Legolas does crazy shit in the original films too: skateboarding down stairs at helms' deep whilst shooting arrows at various people. Or taking down the huge elephant by himself.
Originally posted by SurturI'm not concerned with "preserving" the book, or anything. They cut Tom Bombadil right the f*ck out of Fellowship, and the film was so much better for it.
The ring is powerful though. Maybe not in a "can blow up a galaxy" way, but it is powerful in a "can turn a bunch of dudes into an unstoppable ghost army" way.It has nothing to do with them being prequel films. I mean Sauron didn't actually have a glowing fire eye of doom in the books, the movies added that. Why? Because movies are supposed to be visual.
A lot of things were amped up for the films, not just in the Hobbit movies. You really can't pretend like it wasn't Fellowship, Two Towers, and ROTK doing the same type of crap. Hell just look at the Balrog and how amped up and intense the thing was compared to the book. This may shock you but certain concepts that work for books don't actually work too well in films.
My point was that the Hobbit novel's mention of the Necromancer and Gandalf's absence was very subtle and underplayed. It gave a sense that, despite the big adventure we'd just gone on with Bilbo, there was still a larger, more mysterious world out there with new and different dangers and obstacles. But because the Hobbit films were made post-LotR (hence, prequels), there was no way to preserve that sense of enigma and looming grandeur.
That's not to say they couldn't have done it, but it just wouldn't have fit in to the giant epic trilogy Jackson was trying to create with the Hobbit. And that's where my beef stems: the Hobbit films should not have been done in the style of the Lord of the Rings films. The source material doesn't lend itself to a massive, epic quest in the slightest. But because that's what the bulk of the movie-going audience is familiar with when it comes to the world of Middle-Earth, they had to pander to popular perception for the sake of money. The Sweet Green.
And in so doing, they transformed a simple, single-narrative story about a Hobbit who goes on a charming, exciting adventure of a lifetime... into a wannabe epic that's bloated beyond measure with side-quests, made-up characters, characters from the later Tolkien lore, stories from the lore, CGI filler fight scenes (and CGI filler in general), and the downgrading of the Hobbit himself to a bit-player in his own movie. And the lore itself (which I love outside of the film studios) is used---and very obviously and jarringly so, IMO---as padding and filler for the runtime that the studios demanded of poor Jackson. And the parts that they did leave in from the source material, they robbed of all charm for the sake of either A.) utter goofiness---the ball sack troll king scene, for example, or B.) dark and dreary doom and gloom where once there was joy and fun--see the meeting of Beorn. And that's to say nothing of the problems with the characters, dialogue, pacing, plot direction etc.
F*ck, there's so much more wrong with the Hobbit films than a simple "Oh, you just don't like cuz it didn't perfectly match the books." I could fill several posts with these paragraphs of what stood out as bad, and awful, and out-of-place, and pandering, and shlock... and I have before when the films first came out. There's so much wrong with them.
So much more... they just suck.
I did talk to people who preferred Battle of the Five Armies because of the 'great CGI'.
But for me there's a major difference between LOTR and The Hobbit.
The LOTR movies are a compact and streamlined version of the books. Which actually makes them better than the original books as a narrative, I think. Ditching Tom Bombadil, speeding up the action, especially in Fellowship (that book is quite boring) were excellent choices. Less is more.
I even like the Aragorn-Arwen plot, because it gave Arwen more of a purpose in this story, which she did not have so much in the book.
The Hobbit is a very short novel that got blown up to such epic proportions that what they added was a lot of hot air. The point that Sauron is coming makes it all very heavy...it takes a lot of movie time which isn't very interesting. For some reason they felt it should be exactly LIKE LOTR but it's not. It never was, it never will be. It's a very simple story about a treasure in a mountain guarded by a dragon, but now it's overblown beyond any proportion. More is less.