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SW Prequels vs Hobbit trilogy (scores AND films)


WampaRat

Which do you prefer?  

78 members have voted

  1. 1. Which FILM do you prefer? (Part 1s)

    • Phantom Menace
      47
    • Unexpected Journey
      31
  2. 2. Which SCORE do you prefer? (Part 1s)

    • Phantom Menace
      67
    • Unexpected Journey?
      11
  3. 3. Which FILM do you prefer? (Part 2s)

    • Attack of the Clones
      39
    • Desolation of Smaug
      39
  4. 4. Which SCORE do you prefer? (Part 2s)

    • Attack of the Clones
      53
    • Desolation of Smaug
      25
  5. 5. Which FILM do you prefer? (Part 3s)

    • Revenge of the Sith
      70
    • Battle of Five Armies
      8
  6. 6. Which SCORE do you prefer? (Part 3s)

    • Revenge of the Sith
      71
    • Battle of Five Armies
      7


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I voted for The Phantom Menace for score. Otherwise, its The Hobbit in a landslide.

 

There are some similarities that make this comparison not entirely moot, but at the same time I still don't think its a very good comparisons. They're very different film trilogies in terms of sensibilities, themes and so forth.

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1 hour ago, Chen G. said:

I voted for The Phantom Menace for score. Otherwise, its The Hobbit in a landslide.

 

There are some similarities that make this comparison not entirely moot, but at the same time I still don't think its a very good comparisons. They're very different film trilogies in terms of sensibilities, themes and so forth.

 

Agree that The Hobbit movies are far and away superior to the Prequels. It's not even close. The Hobbit movies, for all their flaws, are competently written and directed and feature some fine performances.  Though which scores are superior is admittedly debateable and largely a matter of taste.

 

That said, I disagree that stacking the two trilogies against each other is not a good comparisison. Actually, the comparisons are striking, and there are many of them, right down to both trilogy's big problem...directors who got so powerful that there was no one around who could stop them from indulging their worst, and most indulgent, instincts.

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4 minutes ago, Nick1066 said:

rectors who got so powerful that there was no one around who could stop them from indulging their worst, and most indulgent, instincts.

 

Sorry, but this reads like a second-hand impression of Final Cut.

 

Name one example of someone on either the original Star Wars or on The Lord of the Rings trilogy who told their respective writer/director "no" or stopped them on any creative decision of note.

 

Lucas just is a ho-hum director, and Jackson didn't have enough pre-production time. No need to bring tired arguments about unchecked-human-hubris-gone-amock into it.

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This argument of "directors go bad when success allows them to go unchecked" is one that emerged out of Michael Cimino's conduct during production on Heaven's Gate, as documented in the book Final Cut, written by one of the book's executive producers after the fact.

 

Its an argument that's been applied blindly and through nothing more that pure conjecture onto other directors, including Lucas and Jackson. I've recently seen it being applied to Nolan forTenet. I've even seen it applied to David Lean.

 

In all these cases, its pure conjecture, and largely bollocks. Can't remember about Lucas, but Jackson effectivelly had final cut in The Lord of the Rings from the beginning, and in one incident he told New Line CEO Michael Lynne to go fuck himself when he was calling in the middle of shooting Helm's Deep. So this narrative is clearly misapplied: Jackson was free to do as he wished from the beginning. So, for the most part, was Lucas. I Can't recall a single documented example of someone shooting Lucas' ideas down during production on Star Wars. I don't think anyone told Nolan what to do since at least The Prestige.

 

I don't think overriding the director should be a question: you override the director, you get fired. Directors should have artistic freedom. The only question is whether said director's mindset is one that is beyond reproach or not: will he sieze on a good idea provided by a member of the crew, or will he pig-headedly stick to his own ideas? Jackson isn't like that - he describes his artistic process as waiting for the production crew "to come up with ideas which are better than mine" and I'm not sure Lucas is too different.

 

When it comes down to it, these sorts of movies are complicated enterprises: they can go wrong to varying degrees and for a multitude of reasons, not just because the director goes unchecked. Its the kind of argument that makes for a nice yarn, but it isn't necessarily true: reality has a habit of being more banal than that.

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38 minutes ago, Chen G. said:

Jackson was free to do as he wished from the beginning. So, for the most part, was Lucas. I Can't recall a single example of someone shooting Lucas' ideas down during production on Star Wars.

 

Wow. What's it like being on set? 😉

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With the Star Wars OT, it was less about people saying "no" to him and more about there simply being other voices in the mix. Lucas didn't write and direct all three on his own. Even Star Wars seems to have benefited enormously from the early input of other filmmakers.

 

As for the topic at hand...well, I bothered to watch all three Star Wars prequels, which is more than I can say for The Hobbit. The first one was enough for me. It felt stylistically similar to LOTR yet it fell totally flat for me. Sad to say the HFR presentation was a significant factor. I've seen HFR stuff I really liked, but with that film in that theater, most scenes felt like I was watching the chicken dance on fast-forward. I wish I knew why some stuff feels that way at higher frame rates and some stuff doesn't.

 

EDIT: Oh, and the scores. For The Hobbit, I've only heard the first one, and only during my one viewing of the film. I liked the misty mountains stuff. But the SW PT is a real Williams powerhouse, soooo...

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9 minutes ago, Datameister said:

Lucas didn't write and direct all three on his own.

 

Lucas didn't direct two of them at all, and had a relatively minor role in writing one of them.

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Well, let's see:

 

Part 1s: An Unexpected Journey is not a masterpiece, but it's a far superior film than that piece of boring crap called The Phantom Menace. As for the scores, as much as I like Shore's first Hobbit, I prefer TPM.

 

Part 2s: I chose Desolation of Smaug as a movie, but my correct answer should've been "None Of Them They're All Shite". I chose Williams' score as well, DoS might be my least favorite Middle Earth score.

 

Part 3s: Star Wars for both options. Revenge of the Sith is not great, but it's Citizen Kane when compared with the horrible Battle of the Five Armies.

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For the scores is a clear win for Williams, and by far. I feel the Hobbit trilogy has weak and boring scores. I have tried to listen them many times and I always end up stoping them. They lack the excellence of the Lord of the Rings and precuels scores.

 

The movies... For me, the better movie of the six is the Phantom Menace (unpopular, I know). It feels the better done, there have some things that I dislike but overall is an ok movie. The rest are simply bad movies. My main problem with the Hobbit trilogy is that apart from bad they are also boring. The novel is very entertaining, but making it into an almost 9 hour set of films makes the whole story slow and uninteresting. 

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I should have added this as an option, but taken as a whole body of work, I think I’d take the hobbit scores over the SW prequels scores. Even though post production wrecked havoc on some of Howard’s material, it’s cool to hear him develop different themes over the course of the three films. feels more cohesive “narrative-wise” to me. But the Williams prequel scores are better stand alone listens (and don’t take as long to get through;)

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9 hours ago, GerateWohl said:

Regarding the time when these movies were made I think it makes more sense to compare the SW prequels with the LotR trilogy and the Hobbit with the SW sequels.

 

I suppose that makes sense if you're comparing the SFX only (and LOTR would win hands down on that count), but otherwise, the prequels are much more aptly compared to the Hobbit, in terms of both the films and scores.

 

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There are similarities, some rather striking: the middle film in both trilogies having a mystery/detective plot; the White Council being just a little bit like the Jedi council, with The Necromancer being akin to Darth Sidius; but that's where it ends. On the whole, I think the style and the way they are constructed as trilogies is very different.

 

The Amazon show is likely going to give people much stronger Star Wars prequel vibes (especially Revenge of the Sith), hopefully just in terms of story, rather than the execution.

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The SW prequels win at expanding the univers of the OT also visually and concerning action. In the old films there was no Jedi council, no Jedi fighting armies of droids. The action is really different. In LotR and the Hobbit it is always about fighting orks, trolls or giant spiders.

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2 minutes ago, GerateWohl said:

In the old films there was no Jedi council, no Jedi fighting armies of droids.

Good! They're boring as hell.

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3 hours ago, Chen G. said:

The Amazon show is likely going to give people much stronger Star Wars prequel vibes (especially Revenge of the Sith), hopefully just in terms of story, rather than the execution.


I regard the Amazon show as little more than very expensive fan fiction, and it's going to pretty much have to be the best TV series ever to move me from that position. I just don't see how it can not be a dissapointment.  The troubled history and turnover that the show has had already hasn't exactly filled me with confidence either.

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Troubled history?

 

Thus far, the showrunners had commissioned some reshoots after COVID interrupted the original shoot, and... that's it.

 

Otherwise? I don't see any major problem, and they choose to NOT pull a "Rogue One" by doing Young Aragorn and instead went ambitiously for the Second Age, seems to me to be good.

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On 12/20/2020 at 10:42 PM, Chen G. said:

Troubled history?

 

Thus far, the showrunners had commissioned some reshoots after COVID interrupted the original shoot, and... that's it.

 

Otherwise? I don't see any major problem, and they choose to NOT pull a "Rogue One" by doing Young Aragorn and instead went ambitiously for the Second Age, seems to me to be good.

 

Er, they fired their entire writers room and had to start over. Their Tolkien consultant, Tom Shippey, walked away from the show.  They've had numerous departues in the executive and creative team. And the guy from GOT they got (Cogman) eventually walked away. And if you look at the CV's of their current writer's room, you'll see it's mostly just a bunch of mediocre TV writers that look like they should be writing for Star Trek Discovery. I don't see any hint that there's anyone on that show who understands Tolkien.

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1 hour ago, Nick1066 said:

Er, they fired their entire writers room and had to start over. Their Tolkien consultant, Tom Shippey, walked away from the show.  They've had numerous departues in the executive and creative team.

 

They didn't fire the entire writers' room. This is bollocks.

 

Shippey's involvement isn't clear, but if he had concluded his involvement, it would seem to be because he was only ever needed for the earliest stages of development, which had concluded by the time in which he was reported as having left the production; which would make sense.

 

Quote

the guy from GOT they got (Cogman) eventually walked away.

 

Also not true. Cogman's position was from the beginning an advisory one, and he seems to have been involved with the show to a limited capacity from the beginning.

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On 20/12/2020 at 11:10 PM, Chen G. said:

 

They didn't fire the entire writers' room. This is bollocks.

 

Shippey's involvement isn't clear, but if he had concluded his involvement, it would seem to be because he was only ever needed for the earliest stages of development, which had concluded by the time in which he was reported as having left the production; which would make sense.

 

 

Also not true. Cogman's position was from the beginning an advisory one, and he seems to have been involved with the show to a limited capacity from the beginning.

 

They did fire the entire writer's room back in March (after the first season was scripted), Shippey (who brought some credibility to the show) did walk away, and Cogman has departed the series.  All of this has also been confirmed by TheOneRing, and none of it has been denied by the parties involved.

 

Mate, I've been following this fiasco from day one. It's pricey fan fic, and I have zero faith Amazon knows what they're doing, and I suspect the Tolkien estate feels the same (not that it didn't stop them from taking the cash).

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19 hours ago, Nick1066 said:

 

Well of course most of this is wrong. They did fire the entire writer's room back in March (after the first season was scripted), Shippey (who brought some credibility to the show) did walk away, and Cogman has departed the series.  All of this has also been confirmed by TheOneRing, and none of it has been denied by the parties involved.

 

Mate, I've been following this fiasco from day one.  It's pricey fan fic, and I have zero faith Amazon knows what they're doing, and I suspect the Tolkien estate feels the same (not that it didn't stop them from taking the cash).

 

My worries for the series match yours. I'd love it to be good but it does just seem like Amazon need their Game of Thrones and they've settled on 2nd Age Middle-earth. 

 

I don't mind Jackson's deviations from Tolkien. Whether they all worked or not is open to debate but they were all done in the spirit of better storytelling (for film) but the Amazon series doesn't look like that at all. 

 

I also don't have much faith in JA Boyena either. Seems like he's just friends with the right people in the business. 

 

Hopefully I'm wrong but it looks like a train wreck so far. 

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3 hours ago, Bilbo said:

 

My worries for the series match yours. I'd love it to be good but it does just seem like Amazon need their Game of Thrones and they've settled on 2nd Age Middle-earth. 

 

Tagline: Return to a land of Shires, Hobbits, and Elves (but this time with craploads of gratuitous nudity)

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7 hours ago, Bilbo said:

Also, I believe Howe and Lee are no longer involved? They were with The Hobbit until it was released so there's certainly enough reason to keep them on for a multi season series. 

I think it was only Howe involved, but if he has left too... damn.

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I will always be an avid defender of the SW prequels and the first two HOBBIT movies. The third was a disaster. But ultimately, the SW prequels win all categories, except for DESOLATION OF SMAUG (which I put above ATTACK OF THE CLONES).

 

Score-wise, Williams wins all categories by a landslide.

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The prequels win, without any doubt. 

 

The Hobbit films are more similar to the sequel trilogy of SW, in my opinion: they're fun, harmless films, occasionally interesting and with some good bits here and there, but ultimately flawed at the core and (most importantly) without any reason to exist.

Both SW and TLOTR work better if you ignore the ST and the Hobbit.

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  • 2 years later...

Unsurprisingly, I prefer all of JW's prequel scores to Shore's Hobbit scores. Shore's LOTR scores are a unique achievement in film scoring and are pound for pound better than the OG SW trilogy scores, imo.

 

But the Hobbit scores are kind of bland while the prequel scores are all kinds of exciting.

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1 hour ago, GerateWohl said:

I prefer Williams' prequel scores over Shore's LotR scores.

 

This. I never understood the hype around these scores. LotR and Hobbit scores are very boring ones, imo.

The best ones are the first, the third LotR and Desolation of Smaug. But not in the Level of Williams. Maybe someone will hate it what I say now, but all 9 Star Wars scores are better than LotR and Hobbit combined.

 

For the movies, I think Unexpected Journey and Desolation of Smaug wins the game. Battle of Five Armies is not a good movie. I prefer Revenge of the Sith.

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