The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies (2014)

Well they could have done the elf canooing scenes + orc attack in fellowship full cgi too but they choose not to, for the better in the end.

Drakain_sl said:

There are a lot more character/plot points in the Hobbit that require CGI. Most of the orcs in LotR were uriks that were "man sized" and most of the orcs in the Hobbit are goblin style or are supposed to be larger than life. The nazgul wyvern were CGI. Armies were CGI. Moria was CGI. You could also argue that when they rented land for sets back the first time around the people didn't know better but now that everyone knows how popular the movies are and how much money they've made they're asking for more. (I would)
Now with stuff being glaringly obvious that its CGI... These movies are filmed in crazy HD. LotR was filmed in the early 2000s when HD was just becoming popular. You can't tell me that doesn't have anything to do with it.
story points and stretching them to 3 movies... Yeah... I'm not going to argue that other than I love middle earth and any chance I can be apart of that world makes me happy.

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There is 0 reason the story behind the Hobbit requires more CGI, especially not the actual story that was written and not all the stretch it out to 3 movie additions. It's simply a stupid decision made in production to lean on the technology more.

I don't think you understand what HD Digital filming actually means. LotR was shot on film, there is no increase in resolution from the switch.

"The Hobbit" trilogy has cost almost 750 million dollars to make. The LOTR trilogy cost I think around 300 million to make, and even being made a decade earlier, looks a million times better than the Hobbit movies. Making everything in the movie CGI costs a lot more and looks a lot worse. So why do it? The answer: because it's a lot easier to create everything on a computer than it is to have to get several hundred people together and choreograph fight scenes. When Peter Jackson made the LOTR movies, he was passionate about them and wanted them to be amazing. Now, he's just a lazy, fat piece of shit (see also George Lucas).

etchazz_sl said:

"The Hobbit" trilogy has cost almost 750 million dollars to make. The LOTR trilogy cost I think around 300 million to make, and even being made a decade earlier, looks a million times better than the Hobbit movies. Making everything in the movie CGI costs a lot more and looks a lot worse. So why do it? The answer: because it's a lot easier to create everything on a computer than it is to have to get several hundred people together and choreograph fight scenes. When Peter Jackson made the LOTR movies, he was passionate about them and wanted them to be amazing. Now, he's just a lazy, fat piece of shit (see also George Lucas).

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He was better when fat!

That's surprising to me, just thinking about it, technology advances rapidly & the cost to have all those people in makeup (hours to put on) and choreograph seems like it would be much more expensive.

k^M_sl said:

That's surprising to me, just thinking about it, technology advances rapidly & the cost to have all those people in makeup (hours to put on) and choreograph seems like it would be much more expensive.

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Most people would be in a movie like LOTR (or the Hobbit) for free, or for minimal pay, but you still have days of shooting film and choreographing the scenes, which takes time and money. Much easier to just make the entire thing on a computer (except it looks like shit).

it blows my mind that the hobbit movies have cost so much money, i wonder what it was spent on. yes i know it was done on 48 fps 3d cameras but i don't think having animators have to output twice as many frames as older movies is going to cost an extra $400m, and while having more expensive cameras may cost a few bucks more its not going to be hundreds of millions.

i wonder if jackson funneled a ton of money to kickstart some new CGI companies so he can have a solid backbone for his future movies.

Well he is Weta Digital. So he's done all that already, unless you're saying he's setting up a bunch more.

I still find it odd that the costs are so much larger, as in being 2x 3x times larger!

I mean fuck, here's a good example, as I was thinking of the next sentence to type, my eyes wondered over to my other computer display which has a screen saver which is cycling through a bunch of photos I took in New Zealand a few years ago on holiday. Spectacular country and Vistas!! why spend a much larger amount of money to shoot footage in a studio and have a bunch of CGI nerds try to create a 'world' for you later.

And then have that cost you more money.

"It gives us more freedom artistically"

I remember the maker of District 9 saying in an interview that because he had a background in CGI he knew what to ask for in the way of special effects in order to keep costs down.

But if you have an open cheque book why bother I suppose.

I still believe having restrictions/parameters breeds creativity.

How much does filming in 3D or converting to 3D add to a film?

Noodleface_sl said:

What makes me hate this is the ridiculous action scenes (the fat whirlwind dwarf, the dwarves all falling 8,000,000 feet in the first movie and being crushed by a falling giant, etc), the extremely noticable green screen and fake props, the shitty CGI models, etc. The shitty sets were extremely noticable in 3DHFR.

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This. So much this. I've talked to so many people who thought that shit was good that I was starting to think I was going blind. Thank you for confirming my vision is still in good shape.

Tarrant_sl said:

Meh, I still enjoyed the movies.

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No doubt. They were "enjoyable" they just weren't nearly as good as the LOTR movies, and they should have been; especially since I think "The Hobbit" was actually a better story than the LOTR trilogy.

etchazz_sl said:

No doubt. They were "enjoyable" they just weren't nearly as good as the LOTR movies, and they should have been; especially since I think "The Hobbit" was actually a better story than the LOTR trilogy.

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It was a better story because it was almost fully contained in an of itself that was a classic tale with a good twist...and hell the "foundation" of high fantasy... LOTR was to be something different...but in reality it was the same basic story but filled with insanely large amounts of extra-story information etc.

xadion_sl said:

It was a better story because it was almost fully contained in an of itself that was a classic tale with a good twist...and hell the "foundation" of high fantasy... LOTR was to be something different...but in reality it was the same basic story but filled with insanely large amounts of extra-story information etc.

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Exactly my point. The beauty of "The Hobbit" is its simplicity. If PJ would have stuck to the source material, the movies would have been awesome.

If PJ had stuck to the source material, there wouldn't be three movies.

Also, new Zealand is now hip to the IP. When lotr was filming, no one had any idea exactly how much of a cash cow it was, so NZ didn't charge much to film there. But now? Oh, peter Jackson wants to make more lotr movies here? Let's charge him a premium to do it. New Zealand IS middle earth at this point.

Umm, not really. I was in NZ on a few sets back in March. The original movies were filmed on mostly private land (the entire Shire included). As to the Shire set specifically, it was filmed on a farmer's property specifically for the surrounding hills that obscured any views in onto what they were doing. Also, the massive tree on the pond was what initially drew their interest. When it was to be rebuilt for the Hobbit movies they agreed to make everything more permanent / durable fixtures as a tourist attraction. For everything else, a lot of the sweeping landscape shots were done on open land. I have a ton of photos taken simply from the side of the roads. (Isengard, Boromir getting arrowed in the woods, field Gandalf rode out on to meet the returning men and ward off the Nazghul flying creatures, where Frodo / Sam saw the Olyphants, where the Wargs attacked the Fellowship... I could go on and on. All of it on big sprawling park land and some privately owned.

The LoTR / Hobbit films have been a huge boon to NZ tourism. NZ isn't charging any premiums whatsoever to PJ for filming there. Quite the opposite in that they are welcoming more exposure for future tourism.

Okay, so I read up on it, and apparently MGM just had a ton of issues. They started an actors guild dispute that threatened even filming in NZ. NZ filed a bunch of stuff to redifine some paperwork as filming somewhere else could cost the economy 1.5 billion.

It looks like the majority of the cost came from filming in 3d, though I'm not sure if that was Jackson's choice or the studios

I think it's fair to call PJ a sellout and worse just for agreeing to make the Hobbit into three movies, regardless of what other issues there may have been.