Peter Jackson directs "The Hobbit"

Then maybe it was 9 minutes. But it certainly felt like 20. Altogether, the trailers before the movie actually started lasted 40 minutes. I did check my watch for that, because I was wondering if we'd be able to see the end of the movie before having to pick up the kids.

tuffalobuffalo wrote:

I went and watched it again last night with my brother. I still enjoyed it quite a bit! Saw it in 3D HFR again. Went with the smaller size theater, and I liked it even better. You pretty can't have a bad viewing angle on one of the smaller screens. It's great because everyone else tries to go to the bigger screens, so the small one wasn't crowded at all!

Yup, the AMC in Newport by me is always ridiculously overcroweded. It also sits on top of a shopping and bar scene area, along with the metropolitan area's big aquarium. For the last batman movie, I had to park nearly 10 blocks away and hoof it. For the Hobbit, on Sunday afternoon, we went to a smaller theater in Amelia and had our choice of seats and the parking lot was barely half full. Plus, that AMC always has the volume up so loud that you can barely keep yourself from getting a nosebleed.

Demosthenes wrote:
tuffalobuffalo wrote:

I went and watched it again last night with my brother. I still enjoyed it quite a bit! Saw it in 3D HFR again. Went with the smaller size theater, and I liked it even better. You pretty can't have a bad viewing angle on one of the smaller screens. It's great because everyone else tries to go to the bigger screens, so the small one wasn't crowded at all!

Yup, the AMC in Newport by me is always ridiculously overcroweded. It also sits on top of a shopping and bar scene area, along with the metropolitan area's big aquarium. For the last batman movie, I had to park nearly 10 blocks away and hoof it. For the Hobbit, on Sunday afternoon, we went to a smaller theater in Amelia and had our choice of seats and the parking lot was barely half full. Plus, that AMC always has the volume up so loud that you can barely keep yourself from getting a nosebleed. :P

To be clear, I was talking about choosing the smaller of 2 screens in the same Cinema/Theater. The theater attendant asked me if I would like to wait 30 minutes for the bigger screen. After thinking about it for a sec, I said no. However, what you're talking about is essentially the same thing. I really like all the second run theaters around Portland. They are cheap, have a certain amount of charm, and aren't usually overcrowded. If there was one within close walking distance, I would probably go to a second run theater all the time.

Also, the second run theaters usually have beer.

tuffalobuffalo wrote:
Demosthenes wrote:
tuffalobuffalo wrote:

I went and watched it again last night with my brother. I still enjoyed it quite a bit! Saw it in 3D HFR again. Went with the smaller size theater, and I liked it even better. You pretty can't have a bad viewing angle on one of the smaller screens. It's great because everyone else tries to go to the bigger screens, so the small one wasn't crowded at all!

Yup, the AMC in Newport by me is always ridiculously overcroweded. It also sits on top of a shopping and bar scene area, along with the metropolitan area's big aquarium. For the last batman movie, I had to park nearly 10 blocks away and hoof it. For the Hobbit, on Sunday afternoon, we went to a smaller theater in Amelia and had our choice of seats and the parking lot was barely half full. Plus, that AMC always has the volume up so loud that you can barely keep yourself from getting a nosebleed. :P

To be clear, I was talking about choosing the smaller of 2 screens in the same Cinema/Theater. The theater attendant asked me if I would like to wait 30 minutes for the bigger screen. After thinking about it for a sec, I said no. However, what you're talking about is essentially the same thing. I really like all the second run theaters around Portland. They are cheap, have a certain amount of charm, and aren't usually overcrowded. If there was one within close walking distance, I would probably go to a second run theater all the time.

Also, the second run theaters usually have beer.

Ours isn't even second run, just outside of the regular metropolitan area and getting into a podunk section of town, so people going to see nerd films like we do aren't as numerous, along with lower attendence for the theater as a whole.

After having just seen it in 3D HFR, I'm a little down on the film. I'm not a film maker, of course, so I don't know jack sh*t about the craftsmanship of films, but it seemed to me that the action and the writing took a fairly major hit. There were already hints of bad action film stuff in LOTR. Full bore in Hobbit.

complexmath wrote:

Then maybe it was 9 minutes. But it certainly felt like 20. Altogether, the trailers before the movie actually started lasted 40 minutes. I did check my watch for that, because I was wondering if we'd be able to see the end of the movie before having to pick up the kids.

One of the things I enjoy about going to see a movie at the theater is watching the trailers for other upcoming movies. But that's within moderation. 3-5 minute previews apiece, with a total of around 15 minutes of previews before the movie starts; that's pretty much ideal for me. More than that starts to feel a bit frustrating.

What really gets me frustrated is the amount of crappy car, pop, body spray, etc bullsh*t commercials they tack on before movies keeps increasing. If this was playing prior to the advertised start time, I wouldn't care. Put all that crap you want out there, then start with the actual movie previews at the advertised start time of my showing, followed by the actual movie starting within 15 minutes.

If they did this, and if audiences weren't generally so heavily populated with inconsiderate assholes anymore, I'd go to watch movies in the theater more often again. I used to go to 1-2 movies a month because I enjoyed it. Now it's rare for me to go to more than 1-2 movies a year, and then only because I just really really want to see the movie on a big screen with full sound. When I own a home and have my own private sizable 3d-capable screen and sound system I can crank up, I won't go to the theater at all anymore unless things improve.

Wow this movie rocks on the HFR thing, it's amazing and I can't wait for the new ones : )

No ads, a couple of previews for movies, great sound and effects, 10/10.

I read the book a long time ago, but I don't care about it being different besides the movie hitting some beats in that story.

I usually don't complain about "Oh so and so was different than written", because well, one is a book and one is a movie.

Demosthenes wrote:
Demosthenes wrote:

Yup, the AMC in Newport by me is always ridiculously overcroweded. It also sits on top of a shopping and bar scene area, along with the metropolitan area's big aquarium. For the last batman movie, I had to park nearly 10 blocks away and hoof it. For the Hobbit, on Sunday afternoon, we went to a smaller theater in Amelia and had our choice of seats and the parking lot was barely half full. Plus, that AMC always has the volume up so loud that you can barely keep yourself from getting a nosebleed. :P

...

Ours isn't even second run, just outside of the regular metropolitan area and getting into a podunk section of town, so people going to see nerd films like we do aren't as numerous, along with lower attendence for the theater as a whole. :D

Demosthenes, I'ma need to find out that Amelia theater. My wife and I saw The Dark Knight Rises at AMC on the Levee and waited 45 minutes...

...to leave the parking garage.

We went to Rave in West Chester Saturday morning at 11:45 a.m. having already bought tickets online and everything worked out nicely. But I like the idea of a smaller first-run theater. Is it Pierce Point Cinema 10, by chance? Seems like a decent place.

Also, hi there, Cincinnatian!

Pierce Point 10 is the place. It has been pretty low key and good other than a busy day for the Avengers which resulted in it starting about 15 minutes late... digital picture and a large soda and popcorn are only 9.50. The only reason we went to AMC was that we were going with my boss but yeah... that place was a nightmare opening weekend.

My girlfriend and I decided to do this one with the full Deluxe; high frame rate, IMAX, etc. We went to see it in Knoxville (a two hour drive, but that's where my parents live, so they got a nice surprise visit after the flick!)

Some truly stunning scenes, and it was nice to see a 3D movie that was actually *clear* and *bright!* I haven't seen too many 3D movies, but usually they seem dark and blurry to me. This one did not. Was it the IMAX? Was it the high frame rate? I don't know! Whatever the case, it was a nice change of pace.

Like a lot of the folks here, I haven't read the Hobbit since I was pre-pubescent. I didn't remember the stone giant monsters at all. I thought the giant eagles were pretty bad-ass, but I didn't much like the whole segment with the orc/goblin king; way too much cartoon-y/superhero stuff going on. Surfing down on collapsing wooden walkways/killing dozens of orcs by merely running past them and wiggling an appendage; it seemed a little cheap. I had no problems with the pale orc.

I wish it had featured about a third less action and a third more dialog.
That said, I might take that back; there were some pretty bad "action movie" one liners in there. Maybe more dialog with the elves.

Saw it in 3D HFR and loved it, especially the way it was shot in 3D and the crispness that HFR brought to the visuals. I really hope more movies are released in HFR. I like that Peter Jackson made the movie into its own thing. I think a faithful filming of The Hobbit would make a horrible movie. I don't have any young ones to take to it, but I was still disappointed in how intense the violence was. That said, as an adult, I did like the action sequences, even the silly stuff. I guess I'm just an action whore. It did have a weird juxtaposition of goofball and serious combat, though.

I wish it was playing in IMAX 3D HFR in Tucson. I'll probably see it again soon. The visuals were very dense, so I think I'd enjoy a second viewing.

I skimmed.

While I liked the movie quite a bit. I was unable to get a completely clear picture while watching in 3D, unless it was a still shot of some of the absolutely amazing vistas. I don't know if there are theaters that are showing 3D in 24 frames but it didn't feel any different from any other movie to me.

I don't know if it was my 3D glasses, my glasses interacting with the 3D glasses, or my position in the theater. My father and I were the first in the theater and we sat just past half way up the rows and we sat right in the center. I was sitting directly behind the left projector and my father was behind the right. I noticed that the far right of the screen still had a double image through the glasses and most movement in the movie was quite blurry and hard for me to focus on.

This is the first time I've had difficulties while watching a 3D movie. I've seen Thor, the last Harry Potter, and Beowulf in 3D with no problems seeing things clearly. Did anyone else experience anything like this?

Honestly, this proves to me even more that 3D isn't really worth it to me and I'd much rather my local Imax screen was incapable of 3D.

The HFR 3d version makes all the difference. I don't think I'll see a non HFR 3d movie ever again. I'll stick with 2d in that case and even then, I bet that if it was 2d HFR it would be better.

Gimpy_Butzke wrote:

I skimmed.

While I liked the movie quite a bit. I was unable to get a completely clear picture while watching in 3D, unless it was a still shot of some of the absolutely amazing vistas. I don't know if there are theaters that are showing 3D in 24 frames but it didn't feel any different from any other movie to me.

I don't know if it was my 3D glasses, my glasses interacting with the 3D glasses, or my position in the theater. My father and I were the first in the theater and we sat just past half way up the rows and we sat right in the center. I was sitting directly behind the left projector and my father was behind the right. I noticed that the far right of the screen still had a double image through the glasses and most movement in the movie was quite blurry and hard for me to focus on.

This is the first time I've had difficulties while watching a 3D movie. I've seen Thor, the last Harry Potter, and Beowulf in 3D with no problems seeing things clearly. Did anyone else experience anything like this?

Honestly, this proves to me even more that 3D isn't really worth it to me and I'd much rather my local Imax screen was incapable of 3D.

Was the theater specifically labeling it as the Hobbit HFR? If not, then the reason you may not have seen the difference is because there wasn't one. I didn't see it in HFR myself, but I'm really not worried about that either.

Went to see this today -- my kid wanted a movie outing with a friend for his birthday, and the rest of the family came along (and sat in a different part of the theater.)

Enjoyed it, but it really felt too long to me. I'm not sure if that's inherent to the movie though. It was certainly exacerbated because a) I'm coming down with a cold b) we arrived almost 40 minutes early to beat expected crowds c) we went to an older theater, specifically to avoid going anywhere near a mall three days before Christmas, and it's not showing it's age well -- the seats were feeling decidedly lumpy by the time we left.

I liked the addition of the layers of frame story at the beginning:

Spoiler:

How many layers were there? -- Bilbo speaking to Frodo, the on-screen interactions between Bilbo writing and Frodo getting ready for the party, "once upon a time there was a city named Dale"... very nicely done, I thought.

I caught the Wilhelm scream, partly thanks to Groan mentioning it upthread.

The part I found most jarringly different from my mental image of the book was the Wargs and the pine trees.

Spoiler:

My mental image was a grove of pine trees, and did not involve any sort of cliff, not to mention silly dominoing falling trees. I was a little disappointed that they used the common "out of the frying pan, into the fire" phrase, rather than Bilbo's "escaping goblins to be caught by wolves"... though of course there were goblins with the wolves already, in the movie.

Those are excellent points, LarryC.

I am always against starting a story with exposition. Exposition is never interesting, and as you're not yet emotionally invested in the characters you cannot yet be invested in their world. You're right, Larry, it would have been better to have simply blended a sort of montage into Thorin's song. If you're going to have Tolkien's music, you may as well make use of it effectively.

For example...

Spoiler:

I was a bit disappointed the Orcs weren't singing as the Dwarves were in the trees. In fact, if I remember they started to set fire to the trees. The joyous singing and the lyrics of dwarf bone cracking in the heat is the sort of morale killing stuff that would have added some additional flair to the proceedings.

While I still smiled at hearing the line, this film should have opened up with "In a hole in the ground, there lived a hobbit..." There's a reason that opening is memorable and exposition is, well, exposition.

Was just watching the beginning of Fellowship of the Ring and Bilbo is telling some kids about the 3 trolls story. Cool!

karmajay wrote:

Was just watching the beginning of Fellowship of the Ring and Bilbo is telling some kids about the 3 trolls story. Cool! :)

I love that scene. I also love when the fellowship camps by the stone trolls in the extended edition.

There's a bunch of missed opportunities and commonplace - I suppose you might call them missteps - in the film that's noticeable. IMO, from long experience with overly long action scenes from Hong Kong fare, a good action piece has two defining elements:

1. It must advance the overarching story in some way, either by revealing many character or world points, or by advancing the plot itself dramatically

2. It must have a narrative of its own within the action segment that justifies its length and complexity.

Without these two characteristics, action scenes feel long and indulgent because the splendor of the action isn't matched by mental activity - you see bombastic explosions, but there's nothing to be seen that needs to be processed and understood. In small doses, visual fanservice can serve as an effective spice to pace story points coming in too fast in quick succession. In excess, you eventually wonder what the point of it all really is.

I think I would really enjoy a master edit of this work.

As an example of what I would have wanted:

I did not think that the narration of the history of Erebor, Dale, and the dwarves was effective as a layered story coming from Bilbo. In The Hobbit, we hear about all of that in the song led by Thorin about the Lonely Mountain and the plight of their people; and their deep abiding desire for the treasure that was theirs by right.

In the book, Bilbo felt that desire. The dwarves sang their jealous love of all things cunning and beautiful made by craft (you might say gadget-love), and it was this song that first awakens Bilbo to adventure. Since Bilbo is the straight man, I was thinking that it's the role of the director in this piece to evoke the same feelings in us, much through the same device. A great song here, interspersed with scenes of Dale and Erebor being awesome and great, and then being stolen, and then possibly lying open and unclaimed - that's a solid Call to Adventure right there. Bilbo narrating what should have been a moving emotional moment doesn't have the same impact.

I did not feel the call of the road in the current film adaptation by Jackson of The Hobbit. If you didn't read the book, you could be forgiven for openly wondering why Bilbo changed his mind all of a sudden, when you should have strongly felt the call of the road yourself (and been disappointed by Bilbo if he had refused it).

Took the wife and daughter to see the HFR version yesterday afternoon. It was my daughter's second viewing, as she saw it in regular 3D with friends earlier in the week.

We all enjoyed the hell out of it. The HFR was pretty awesome, but I still would prefer to see 2D movies. I'm definitely glad I took the time to see te new tech.

I'm a heathen that never read any of the books, and just love the films. My wife and daughter love the books, and my daughter is now vowing to plow through every Tolkien story she can get her hands on. From listening to their discussions, I feel like PJ has done a nice job of making the film work on both levels.

We already watch the LOtR trilogy every year, usually over Thanksgiving. It will be interesting to see how this gets added in.

Jayhawker wrote:

We already watch the LOtR trilogy every year, usually over Thanksgiving. It will be interesting to see how this gets added in.

I know, right? A 6 movie marathon is just going to get a bit out of hand. You would pretty much have to do it over 2 days. I still need to buy LOTR on blu-ray one of these days.

tuffalobuffalo wrote:
Jayhawker wrote:

We already watch the LOtR trilogy every year, usually over Thanksgiving. It will be interesting to see how this gets added in.

I know, right? A 6 movie marathon is just going to get a bit out of hand. You would pretty much have to do it over 2 days. I still need to buy LOTR on blu-ray one of these days.

Well, we watch LOtR (extended editions, even) over Thanksgiving, one each night, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. Maybe we'll run a combo over Christmas, too. But which trilogy will come first?

I almost feel like you would have to watch LOTR first. Fellowship introduces the world perfectly. That's still my favorite movie of the whole bunch. I can nitpick about all the other movies including The Hobbit, but I feel like Fellowship is just about perfect.

Agreed; almost every legitimate complaint I had about Fellowship was addressed in the Extended Edition.

Dagnabbed double-posts

Saw it today in 2D with my two youngest sons (16 and 9). They both enjoyed it. I thought it was ok, although I really wondered what the point of the storm giants sequence was.

MacBrave wrote:

Saw it today in 2D with my two youngest sons (16 and 9). They both enjoyed it. I thought it was ok, although I really wondered what the point of the storm giants sequence was.

The dwarves and Bilbo were trying to cross the mountains and the rock giants were rowdy enough to make that troublesome... thus giving them a reason to hide in a cave that happened to be a goblin stronghold? Cool if really loud narrative device to get them to the goblin section. All from the book.

Got the soundtrack from mom for Christmas. It has an extended version of the Song of the Misty Mountain... but sung by someone else. Thinking full version may not be out there from the cast. :'(

Demosthenes wrote:

Got the soundtrack from mom for Christmas. It has an extended version of the Song of the Misty Mountain... but sung by someone else. Thinking full version may not be out there from the cast. :'(

Just wait till the third movie. That is the theme for the company, so they probably won't bust the full version out until the 2nd or 3rd movie (or 2nd or 3rd score to be precise).

tuffalobuffalo wrote:
Demosthenes wrote:

Got the soundtrack from mom for Christmas. It has an extended version of the Song of the Misty Mountain... but sung by someone else. Thinking full version may not be out there from the cast. :'(

Just wait till the third movie. That is the theme for the company, so they probably won't bust the full version out until the 2nd or 3rd movie (or 2nd or 3rd score to be precise).

Bah!