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

Zignor 3_sl said:

He was pissed off over LoTR long before The Hobbit. I doubt highly that he's seen even a second of any of The Hobbit movies, at least not on purpose.

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LoTR, by most accounts, was done as well as possible for a book to film adaptation; especially considering the EE versions. How can you get that much sand in the vagina over the LoTR? Arwen wasn't necessary, but it wasn't terrible either. The guy IS a whiny cunt.

Feanor_sl said:

I haven't seen the Hobbit movies. I meant to, but it hasn't happened yet.


We could go to the Thirsty Scholar on Wakefield and talk about it, or the Whitworth on Moss Lane, but first we'd have to travel back in time.

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What the fuck did you just google places near where I live? Nobody says that the Thirsty Scholar is "on Wakefield" by the way.

Eh, I hate a lot of the small changes to the LotR trilogy too. Like, I'm not gonna go full nerd rage and claim that they ruin the entire story, but they do add up to a few significant changes. Like the Hobbits basically getting zero character development and remaining comic relief throughout the trilogy.

But if I really wanted to quibble, I would bitch about the one missing word from the argument between Gandalf and Denethor. In the movie Denethor says 'but you have not wisdom' and in the book Denethor says 'but you have not all wisdom'. Those two phrases mean very different things. It's like ESL versions of Romeo and Juliet translating 'Wherefore art thou Romeo' as 'Where are you Romeo' instead of 'Why are you Romeo'

Jysin_sl said:

LoTR, by most accounts, was done as well as possible for a book to film adaptation; especially considering the EE versions. How can you get that much sand in the vagina over the LoTR? Arwen wasn't necessary, but it wasn't terrible either. The guy IS a whiny cunt.

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His complaint was that LoTR was basically a collection of action movies that focused on battle and fight scenes instead of the broader themes of the books. In other words, he wasn't going to be happy with any big budget, modern day film adaption. That doesn't make him a whiny cunt, just detached from reality.

Royal_sl said:

His complaint was that LoTR was basically a collection of action movies that focused on battle and fight scenes instead of the broader themes of the books. In other words, he wasn't going to be happy with any big budget, modern day film adaption. That doesn't make him a whiny cunt, just detached from reality.

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That's because a true adaptation of the LotR trilogy would be BORING. No seriously, think about it. What makes the books great is how rich and fleshed out the world is. There is a vast depth to the history of all of the characters that is really unrivaled in fiction. But to relay all of that information would require hours of expository monologs to the point where it would be more of documentary than a story. Then, the real point of the actual story is to show what a vast and impossible journey the fellowship had to undertake to get to Mount Doom. There are hundreds of (imo mind numbing) pages whose point is to relay the vastness of the distances covered, while the action is over relatively quickly in comparison. This is a tool Tolkien used in the books that would make a movie unwatchable.

etchazz_sl said:

He does a ton of charity work. And if PJ fucked up my father's brilliant work as much as Jackson did on "The Hobbit", I'd be pretty pissed off too.

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who cares how much of his daddy's money he has given away?

I remember hating a lot of little things from the original trilogy when it came out. At the same time I used to have this joke going on where I would still "hate it" after the 10th viewing in a month. Even today, there are a few things that irk me when I watch them, but I just roll with it. That feeling prepped me for this movie too, knowing that there would be things that would irk me, but just enjoy them for what they are.

I surely like the LoTR trilogy much more than the Hobbit, but I think many people forget how they really felt after things like no Tom Bombadil, Scouring of the Shire, Healing Houses, etc. etc, etc. I think where I feel that the Hobbit really fails compared to LoTR is that adapting LoTR is understandably difficult and an enormous task, yet what PJ gave us with that, though not perfect, was a fantastic job. The Hobbit however shouldn't have been as difficult to adapt, and yet we end up with some bizarre choices that many don't think should have even been considered. It wasn't the special effects, it wasn't the fact that The Hobbit is not as climactic as LoTR or the tone is different, it's the choices that feel like they were made behind a studio executive chair for the sake of business and audience baiting, and not the choices of someone who wants to adapt the story the very best he can with what he has. But it's done. At the end of the day, this movies don't corrupt my personal enjoyment of the books and story. I do enjoy them for what they are, and I'll just keep rolling my eyes and groan at the parts that irk me.

Uh, I'm glad they didn't try to work the stuff with the Barrow Downs and Tom Bombadil into the movie, although I guess I wouldn't have minded it in an extended edition. The Scouring of the Shire would be kind of pointless since the Hobbits never got the kind of character development they needed to build up to the Scouring, and I think Saruman died in the Two Towers extended edition anyway. The shit with the healing houses was just more of Eowen's childish 'I wish I was a real boy' nonsense, which wouldn't have meshed well with the ham handed way they did movie Eowen.

Oh, I'm not saying it was a mistake to skip those things, but that many people missed them and wished they were there. If I was to bitch about something the movies changed from the books was the attitude of the elves and Elrond's attitude towards certain things, Frodo lying to Faramir, Faramir's attitude towards the ring and Frodo, Sam abandoning Frodo due to Gollum's deception, among a few other things, however I do understand that a lot of these changes were made for the sake of drama, pacing and gravitas towards the one ring, I could write a very long reason of why I hate that the Scouring of the Shire is not part of the movie, but I know that it would just have not worked at all in movie form. Could some of these examples have been truer to the book in an adaptation? Maybe, but again, the did a damn good job at adapting those changes for the sake of the movie.

The Hobbit's deviations are not as easily forgivable though (at least that's my opinion). Though there were a few things that I certainly loved about them, such as the back story of Erebor and the battle of Azanulbizar, Gandalf visiting Dol Guldur (all things that are very enjoyable to piece together in the timeline and the section of "Durin's Folk" in the RoTK Appendix, we get to see more of Bard, the depiction of Smaug is great (not so much the chase inside Erebor which was obviously added once they knew it was going to be 3 films). You can tell there is a huge disconnect on how both LoTR and the Hobbit were adapted.

But like I said, I still enjoy them, despite the changes.

The changes make less and less sense as the 6 films progress. It's all down to success removing the need for them to be careful.

Fellowship of the Ring had the most changes of the first three, yet they all made sense and improved the story because the first half of that book is unreadable. The Two Towers needed few if any changes but you started to see a few modifictions which really didn't make any sense like not including the ending or not much Eomer while having room for a warg battle. Return of the King started to have retarded things like ghosts winning Minas Tirith and a million endings. Hobbit went full retard with rabbit sleds and ringwraith redesigns.

Feien_sl said:

I think many people forget how they really felt after things like no Tom Bombadil

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Pretty relieved? Tom Bombadil has no business in any movie.

Arakkis_sl said:

That's because a true adaptation of the LotR trilogy would be BORING. No seriously, think about it. What makes the books great is how rich and fleshed out the world is. There is a vast depth to the history of all of the characters that is really unrivaled in fiction. But to relay all of that information would require hours of expository monologs to the point where it would be more of documentary than a story. Then, the real point of the actual story is to show what a vast and impossible journey the fellowship had to undertake to get to Mount Doom. There are hundreds of (imo mind numbing) pages whose point is to relay the vastness of the distances covered, while the action is over relatively quickly in comparison. This is a tool Tolkien used in the books that would make a movie unwatchable.

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I wasn't saying the guy was on point or that I agreed with all of his reasons for being pissed off, just explaining his rationale.

The Ancient_sl said:

Pretty relieved? Tom Bombadil has no business in any movie.

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Agreed. It was probably the most obvious candidate for blanket omission.

There were some reasonable changes in the LotR movies, but there was a lot of added or changed stuff that made the movie worse. Aragorn falling off a cliff. Really?

Mudcrush Durtfeet_sl said:

There were some reasonable changes in the LotR movies, but there was a lot of added or changed stuff that made the movie worse. Aragorn falling off a cliff. Really?

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Yeah, that still ranks as my most despised addition across all six movies. TTT overall I thought was rather disappointing when it first released. The EE was much, much better.

There was definitely no shortage of nerd-rage for each of the LoTR films when they came out. I think a lot of people have forgotten about that, or are too young to have paid enough attention. If anything, the hate then was even more intense, but of course that's mostly to do with the fact that the source material is held in much higher esteem by most, and not because those films are actually worse than the new ones.

I think once a few years have gone by, and the EEs have been viewed, The Hobbit movies will be appreciated a bit more, as has happened with LoTR. Clearly, they are still inferior, but too many people put the earlier films on some untouchable pedestal in order bolster their eviscerations of The Hobbit. I've watched both trilogies recently, and the gulf just isn't that massive.

Mudcrush Durtfeet_sl said:

Aragorn falling off a cliff. Really?

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Man I forgot about this. This is definitely one of those changes my brain likes to block out.

Feien_sl said:

This doesn't ring true to me. In fact, I don't know if PJ has ever properly met with the Tolkien estate. I know he has met with some of the Tolkien family, such as JRR's grandson who had cameos in both RoTK and The Hobbit, but Christopher Tolkien, who controls the Tolkien Estate, has never been on board and even gave a pretty harsh interview against the movies a few years ago. All the "extra stuff" is found on the Appendices at the end of Return of the King, which is why they are able to make it part of the story without having to deal with property right violations from other sources that they don't hold the rights to.

However I may be wrong. But I'm almost certain PJ only has the blessing from Tolkien's grandson who at the end of the day has no say regarding the legality of the Tolkien estate.

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That sounds about right and what I could find online after looking into it further. Seems across the board though that people do not care much for Christopher Tolkien. Apparently he has a reputation that precedes the movies of not being easy to work with.

mures_sl said:

Have to sadly say I'm in the boat of people who believe this hobbit movie was the worst one. The beginning was just awful, it got a bit better after the dragon madness ended, but it had already left a salty taste in my mouth by that point.

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yeah they should have used a real dragon instead of all the cgi stuff also i dont like watching giant aerial scenes with dragons destroying cities its too scary like when bambis mom died

Arakkis_sl said:

yeah they should have used a real dragon instead of all the cgi stuff also i dont like watching giant aerial scenes with dragons destroying cities its too scary like when bambis mom died

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Or you could just make the dragon and everything else in the movie animated, then shorten it to one good hour and a half movie that's actually watchable. Oops, they already did that in 1977. But judging by your idiotic responses, that was probably 20 years before you were born, and you definitely don't have the taste in good movies to have actually watched it.

I'll agree about Bombadil, but the character could've been done right. Not necessarily goofy as most have opined. It probably would've been a slow couple of scenes, though. I saw some theory online a while ago that said Tom might not be a nature spirit or Maia, but the personification of the Music of the Ainur itself, or its remnant on Middle-Earth in human form. Which is an interesting take on it.

The Scouring would've been great, but would've added another 45 mins at least.

Casual movie goers and non-book readers would have lost their shit wanting to know who the fuck the enigma of Bombadill was. The entire trilogy builds up this fear of the power of Sauron and the corrupting power of the Ring. You'd have the scene where Bombadill just puts the ring on and shrugs his shoulders as if it was just some trinket of junk completely unaffected by it. Zero explanation given whatsoever = doesn't translate well to film.