Barnald

Stealing other people's work now? A new low

I'm not judging anyone (I was being somewhat facetious anyway, and when it comes to liking many aspects of these films, I'm clearly going against the grain round here as it is). I'm not against fan edits either. I guess my point is this: if we define bloat as something unnecessary (which I imagine one does), what if you enjoy that unnecessary something? Is all 'bloat' by definition bad? I think this is my issue with the blanket use of that particular term.

One man's 'bloat' is another man's treasure. Who are we to judge 'bloat'? In recent years the term seems to have become little more than a euphemism for parts of a film people don't like, and an extremely lazy 'form' of criticism. Erm.... no

You beat me to it.

You left out Conrad Pope

Can't we just cut to the chase and blame everyone's favourite Bishop of Rome again? It's much easier

Not to my knowledge.

They (people at WETA) spoke of wanting to do 'Chronicles' style books for the LOTR films, but obviously these wouldn't really be what you're looking for. Still, at least it shows they haven't given up on releasing books about the films.

I did read that, but then one could argue that they're never going to say 'Oh the studio wanted this so our hands were tied'. For example, that Jackson spoke about Tauriel being a 'cold-blooded decision' seriously makes you wonder if this was a character the writers truly wanted in their films, or merely a box they had to tick. Speculative of course, but then the behind-the-scenes materials on the DVDs/Blu-rays are never going to tell the real story.

I'm still convinced the idiotic Strider mention stunk of studio insistence, just incase they feel like exploring spin-off territory within the next few years.

I think we're just going to have to accept that these are gone and never coming back. I feel for those who don't have them, but tough shit. I cuddle up next to mine every night. They're more important to me than family now.

I did like the troll in the Alfrid scene, I must admit

I wept when Madril died. No one cared about Percy or Hilda.

In terms of backstory, adapting an expanded Hobbit is, in theory, trickier than LOTR. With LOTR you can do a fairly narrow prologue, along the lines of FOTR (it could be longer, it could be shorter, but the gist is simple - the history of the Ring). With this Hobbit however, you've got quite a bit of relevant backstory to address: the attack on Erebor, the death of Thror, the subsequent wars and battle of Azanulbizar, the disappearance of Thrain, Gandalf finding Thrain at Dol Guldur and coming across the map and key, his consequent meetings with Thorin, etc. A faithful prologue in that respect would have taken a good 15-20 minutes to address surely. Even so, the Necromancer strand is essentially separate from the Dwarven one in terms of how the story will progress, so do you really want to set-up the White Council storyline this early in the story? The film of course decided to add, change and move around some elements in order to accomodate this telling of the backstory. I'm not going to pass judgment on this (some aspects were well done, others not), but it is a tricky one when it comes to adapting The Hobbit. How would you lot go about it? Tell it all in a prologue? Save some bits for later (Bag End, other films)? Or just omit aspects entirely? (I realize this is probably the wrong thread to talk about such matters, but it's too late, you'll just have to deal with it)

I'd have been quite happy for them to spend another 10-15 minutes in Hobbiton.

The healing scenes in DoS. Anything involving Kili and Tauriel in general really.

True, but I suppose we'd all seen the film by that point and the writing was on the wall for the Baggins/Took theme at least. Two points about Doug's comments: Would I be right in thinking there's actually only one French horn rendition in the film (Axe or Sword)? Wonder if something went unused. I'm surprised Doug didn't mention The Unexpected Party when citing examples of the 'Fussy' theme.

Evidently Conrad Pope has managed to clone himself, 19 times no less!

For me this takes some beating: This is obviously sensational: Unfortunately I can't find 'The Major Alone' on YouTube, so I'm going to have to put up the whole scene (it works even better with the visuals anyway): Admittedly I find it hard to look past 'Final Duel' from OUATITW in terms of 'epicness', but this is just as good:

Well at SDCC a couple of years back he certainly didn't rule out the prospect of extending the films further

As a chronic DVD/Blu-ray buyer I hope you are right.

Well it would be quite an achievement to have the deleted (probably unfinished) scenes with music (unless tracked). I'll take them however I can, but of course I'd love to see them cleaned up. I don't believe Jackson was suggesting they would be restored to the films, if that's what you're suggesting. Warner wouldn't even pay for additional recording sessions for the EE, so no way they would for this, even if the scenes were indeed restored to the films (unless there's some kind of change in management before then).

And I just noticed that Jackson said 25th anniversary rather than 20th. That has to be a pisstake. The chances of physical media still being alive then are surely minimal. 2021 seems a stretch right now. And you don't want to be morbid, but a lot can happen in ten years in that regard too (I'm referring to people involved here, not myself this time. Look at poor old Andrew Lesnie).

Pfff. At that price I've ordered two. And yes, the other is your Christmas present. You've been a good boy this year (well, better than usual). It's also intriguing because in that video Monaghan claimed that Jackson asked fans on social media what their favourite Hobbit scenes were in relation to this release. Someone noted that they follow him on social media and have no memory of him doing it. I have to say I don't either. And I was particularly suspicious that said fans would choose the barrel escape as their favourite scene... Smells like bullshit to me.

I think there's quite a bit of interesting DoS music we're missing. Off the top of my head: - The original composition for the flashback to Azanulbizar during the opening (Jay teased something more elaborate than what we got, and Jim suggested the original sequence may have been longer, and that the accompanying music was very likely recorded) - Meeting Beorn - The extended Mirkwood stuff - The full barrel escape piece - The extended Laketown material plus existing stuff not on the OST (nice renditions of Laketown and House of Durin in here) - Complete/alternate High Fells (bits heard in the appendices) - More Dol Guldur (including Gandalf's theme when entering, and the nice rendition of the DG theme Faleel unearthed from somewhere) There's probably other bits and pieces I'm forgetting, and who knows what unused/alternate stuff there might be.