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The Hobbit: The Battle of the Underwhelming Prequels


Quintus

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Gambon isnt as good an actor as Harris? What the hell?

He may be as good an actor as Harris (I wouldn't know, I haven't seen any of his films apart from the Potter ones), but as Dumbledore, he was pretty much miscast (or not well guided by the directors).

For sure. Harris was spot-on. Gambon wasn't . . . and further suffered from having to follow Harris up. Not his fault—and I'm sure he is a very good actor. He's just not Dumbledore to me.

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Wrong thread?

Actually . . . looking at the subject line, this fits in this thread much better than the current line of conversation. . . .

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Actually . . . looking at the subject line, this fits in this thread much better than the current line of conversation. . . .

Come on! Everybody knows that at JWFAN, we talk about the actual topic of the thread only in the first page, and then move to something else in the next pages.

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Man, I had just the opposite reaction of everybody here. I didn't care at all for Harris in the first two - his performance was very...lethargic, I guess, to me. Gambon's performance made the character come to life for me. We rewatched the Potter movies this year, for the first time since they came out theatrically, and my opinion hasn't changed about that.

I actually found myself liking the first two more than I remembered. They're still a bit overlong and could have chopped some of the stuff out, but they lay the groundwork nicely for a movie series that could easily have gone off the rails if Columbus hadn't built the world so well early on.

(I'm also surprised to hear everyone's negative feelings towards these movies and the acting in them, as I enjoyed them all quite a bit. I guess with my absence from this board which coincided with the releases of parts 3-8, I missed all of this snark the first time)

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Which, in your opinion, is the most lacklustre entry out of the three most recent franchise prestige damaging movies?

BOFA is easily the most lackluster.

Too many "shot inside in front of green screen instead of just shooting outside, and it looks like it!" scenes, bad pacing, bad CGI, and unresolved plot threads.

You can forgive a lot of the problems the first two films had, especially the strange and unexplained stuff, by thinking "oh, well that will be explained in the next film, so it doesn't matter that it doesn't make sense now". But now that all is said and done, it's clear the split into 3 films was not justified, and the directing skills of Peter Jackson have taken a huge dive from the great heights they once were at.

Shame.

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The frustrating part is that it contain's some of the trilogy's best moments, but they are usually followed by some of the trilogy's worst moments.

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Too many "shot inside in front of green screen instead of just shooting outside, and it looks like it!" scenes, bad pacing, bad CGI, and unresolved plot threads.

Well the unresolved plot threads are just as much a result of the bad writing in the first two films.

Basically it's a far bigger version of the Arwen storyline in LOTR, which was set up with some fanfare in the first two, went through endless script revisions, including having Arwen do battle at Helms deep, and when it came time to wrap it up in ROTK, they really just did that...wrap it up, without much purpose or dramatic impact. "Arwen is suddenly dying for no obvious reason".

The Hobbit has so much of that invented stuff! And I'm really not opposed to that at all. I understand that there were possibilities with this trilogy to expand beyond what Tolkien had written originally and applaud the film makers for doing that.

But so much of it just peters out....

The Nazgul, the rise of Sauron, Tauriel, the siege on Dol Guldur. All of it isnt dealt with in a satisfactory way.And it's simply because they started out with these threads without having a clear idea where to take them.

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I don't really have a problem with much of the invented stuff either, though I don't understand why some cool stuff in the books that have an inherent cinematic quality where left out.

But the unresolved plot thread issue will HOPEFULLY be resolved by the EE. But that doesn't make the TC any less satisfying.

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I dont see really how the banishment of Sauron to the east, the appearance of the Nine and the Death of Smaug can be wrapped up with more satisfaction just by adding to those scenes.

The weird thing is that in the book the Battle Of The Five Armies is like a little bonus, added right at the end of the story, while in the trilogy it's where everything seems to be leading too.

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And it's simply because they started out with these threads without having a clear idea where to take them.

Like most of the threads around here!

The weird thing is that in the book the Battle Of The Five Armies is like a little bonus, added right at the end of the story, while in the trilogy it's where everything seems to be leading too.

That's not just a weird thing. That's the problem. Through the course of these movies, PJ has become too enamored of massive battle scenes. He always wanted to do a Zulu-esque epic, and that's fine. He accomplished that with the Helm's Deep sequence, which was a small masterpiece: beautifully filmed, clear in its direction, easy to follow and understand. He had to top it with the Pelennor Fields, of course, because the book demanded as much—and he did just fine with it. But he's been itching for that same rush ever since, and obviously the only place that offered in The Hobbit was battle at the foot of the Lonely Mountain. So this being his last chance to pile on, he couldn't pass up the chance to bury us in the warfare. That there was no point in doing so never seemed to have occurred to him.

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So everyone hates this new Hobbit movie except gkgyver?

I haven't seen it yet

since there's so many threads and hobbit avatars I thought everyone loved these film unconditionally

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I'm seeing it Friday. My expectations of this one, like the previous one, are tempered by reviews and prior experience with the series, but my guess will be that I WILL enjoy it - as a piece of fun entertainment and not too much more (much like the two others).

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Harris is fine in the first, but clearly dying in the second.

Yes. And Gambon was great in PoA, but completely missed the mark in GoF (for which I blame Newell, who went overboard on pretty much anything on that movie). He was fine in the other Potters.

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I loved it!

Very entertaining preposterous action/fantasy! Like Thor: The Dark World, yet far more interesting.


Yes. And Gambon was great in PoA, but completely missed the mark in GoF (for which I blame Newell, who went overboard on pretty much anything on that movie). He was fine in the other Potters.

I always love it when I get to GoF in a Potter Marathon! Everyone is suddenly completely over the top. Everything is turned up to 11. The hair styling is hilarious!

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So everyone hates this new Hobbit movie except gkgyver?

I haven't seen it yet

since there's so many threads and hobbit avatars I thought everyone loved these film unconditionally

Well it just opened in the USA today, so there's that.

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why have so many people seen it already?

I thought it came out last week

I said "In the US".

It opened in Europe last week.

It's playing already in Canada

Yes. It opened in the USA and Canada today.

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