The Glade 4.0

Yeah, that map at the beginning of the book was awesome. It used standard anglo-saxon runes instead of Tolkien's made-up ones (which I assume he did later). Having learned anglo-saxon thanks to an alphabet found in the manual of Ultima V (so my friend and I could write messages to each other in class and not worry about interceptions by teacher), I was happy to find I could read everything on Tolkien's Hobbit map.

And the cartoon botched it. When Elrond is reading "Stand by the gray stone, when the thrush knocks..." the camera shows some runic words. But they are the wrong ones. It shows "Five feet high the door and three may walk abreast."

In recent years I discovered, through watching prison reality shows, that inmate white supremacists write back and forth to each other in said runes. I was a little saddened at this, but I suppose it makes sense in their minds. I paused Netflix on one particular letter and found that, indeed, I could still read it. It was a contract out on another inmate's life.

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Les Zombis et les Loups-Garous!

Be prepared to disagree with me, and I'll preemptively say that I don't give a flying ****.

I never thought I'd be saying this but... The Hobbit was the best movie I've seen all year. And yes, I am including movies like The Avengers with that statement.

Holy balls I hope that 48 FPS is here to stay. My only concern going in was the movie not looking epic enough. That wasn't the case.

When I read a book, my imagination is extremely vivid. Holodeck-real, practically. Which is why darker things in books disturb me far more than seeing them depicted onscreen. As I watched The Hobbit, I kept thinking "This is really damn close to how it feels when I read a book." There was far, far less of a disconnect between myself and the movie which generally happens in all other movies. I love movies, but they never evoked feelings I get when reading a book. Until tonight, that is.

I counted no less than half a dozen times when I mouthed to myself "This is freaking awesome!" during the movie. And it wasn't generally during big action scenes. Even just in normal, mundane, "everyone else has tuned out the FPS and 3D stuff now" moments.

The plot itself, *shrug*. It was fine. I was fine with the liberties taken with the book. But with the visual setting and style, 3D, and higher frame rate? I could have easily sat through another 6 hours of that. EASILY.

For me, this movie destroyed all the other Lord of the Rings movies combined. And I enjoyed those movies. But, again, none of them immersed me as well as the books. It took a new technology, not a visual direction, to do that. Had I seen this movie at 24 FPS (3D or no), I'd probably have enjoyed it, but nearly as much, andl ranked it on par or just slightly less than the LOTR trilogy.

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Les Zombis et les Loups-Garous!

I enjoyed it, but the stone giant bit was boring and should have been cut in a movie that is close to 3 hours long with no intermission.

I also think the troll bit needed changed for a movie and a little battle to interrupt a long bit of exposition and etc isn't a bad idea. But, I think it was improbable that the would-be Dwarf king would save Bilbo from being torn apart by trolls, so they they could then all be eaten. And this was way before Thorin and Bilbo become BFFs.

I also think Radagast could use his close fellowship with birds to request they not poop in hair, right?

Anyway, I'm looking forward to Beorn.

I reread The Hobbit before seeing it and I'm really glad there's no tra-la-la lelay crap. I like the dwarf song, but a lot of J.R.R.T's poetry is... not great. Sorry.

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"...the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?" -Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

To be fair, he wasn't writing Tolkien poetry, he was writing hobbit and dwarf poetry...

And to be more fair: his rhythm, cadence, pentameter, and rhyming was quite good.

The dwarves of yore made mighty spells
While hammers fell like ringing bells
In places deep, where dark things sleep
In hallowed halls beneath the fells

Goblets they carved there for themselves
And harps of gold where no man delves
There lay they long, and many a song
Was sung unheard by men or elves

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Les Zombis et les Loups-Garous!

I'm fairly certain Tolkien made deliberate use of Hymnal Stanzas for a variety of reasons, none of which had to do with any pentameter -- those quatrains are written in iambic tetrameter.

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I watched The Hobbit this weekend. I'm not sure how to express my disappointment, especially after Numbuk's glowing review. Actually, I do...



Seriously.

I have no idea how they're going to get 6 more hours of movie out of the rest of the story.

Good god it was so long.

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Holy shitsnacks!

I imagine the second movie will be all about Smaug. The last movie is going to be about the big battle and they're gonna top it off with bridging content from The Silmarillion between The Hobbit and Fellowship.

/\ That's what I expect as well.

Which makes the first movie of the trilogy completely skippable, with the 2nd probably being the best, and the third being a disappointment.

In other words, the opposite of the LoTR trilogy.

Still haven't seen it. Trying to decide between the cheap matinee place down the street, or high-def big screen (and big bucks) in Hollywood or somewhere.

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This cold and dark tormented hell
Is all I`ll ever know
So when you get to heaven
May the devil be the judge

Weird. I didn't think it was long at all. There were a couple spots that were slow (such as the dwarves' introduction scene) but overall I thought it was very well paced and I was surprised it was over already when it ended.

As far as only showing Smaug's eyeball? Ummm...what did you expect? In the book you don't see anything of the dragon until they all get to the lonely mountain much later.

I was hoping that you'd actually get to see a reveal for the antagonist after 3 hours. This book has no business being three movies long. Don't act like they didn't have enough time to reveal him.

Ok, so is your issue that it is 3 movies, or is it that Smaug doesn't show up in the first. The first issue has merit, but I am reserving judgement until I've seen all three films. The first one was a promising start IMO. Your second issue has absolutely no merit. It would have been a stupid move to show Smaug in the first film. Especially when he doesn't show up in the story until much later.

I'm going to go off on a limb here and just say that it's exactly like Lord of the Rings. The movies are better than the book.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

They start the freaking movie by showing his shadow destroying all the dwarves. I was hoping to put a little more definition on that shadow after three hours. It's not like we had no idea who the main antagonist was supposed to be, and then there was a huge reveal at the end. You know from the very beginning and you never even get to see him.

It's classic "Don't fully reveal the monster in the first act." I was surprised we saw as much of Smaug as we did.

Smaug is a tangible threat in this trilogy, and revealing him slowly makes the full reveal and eventual showdown that much more climactic and threatening. Or, in your own words, "The opposite of the LoTR trilogy."

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Les Zombis et les Loups-Garous!

I guess you just take issue with Movie Making 101 concepts. That is fine, but those concepts are there, and used so frequently, because they work for the audience. A skilled director can do that in certain situations for certain movies, but a movie like The Hobbit ignores them at their own risk.

Ok, so I'm currently reading the book to my 4-year old. I have to say, the book moves incredibly fast. If the movie moved at the same pace, it would be a whirlwind of "wait, WTF was that?". God help you if you had to take a leak.

As I watched The Hobbit I kept wanting to see Smaug, like I'm sure we all did, and I felt a tinge of disappointment when he wasn't shown; but by the end of it, I was actually glad Peter Jackson actually got something right and didn't reveal him yet.

I didn't expect to see Smaug in the first movie. I expected to see (in no order): trolls, hobbits, dwarves, eagles, wizards, elves, goblins, and Gollum.

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Caught this last night and thought it was awesome. The stuff Jackson added in didn't detract except for the one line, "that'll do it".

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... and the entire Goblin sequence. It should have felt like Moria from the first trilogy.

The Silmarillion is the mythological history of Middlearth. it's hundreds and even thousands of years prior to LotR/The Hobbit.

The content is from appendices in LotR and "Histories of Middlearth" notes, and extrapolation of things that were mentioned but never detailed in the actual book The Hobbit. They are events that actually were, according to Tolkien himself, happening in that timeframe and tied into the story, but were not detailed in the book itself.

As for the feel of the goblin king, they rather perfectly captured the feel of that sequence in the book, I think...

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
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