The first Hobbit movie

[steuard]

I saw The Hobbit a few days ago, and I enjoyed it. I started to write up some brief comments on the movie to post here, but they got a bit out of hand, so I've posted them on my Tolkien website instead. For those who are interested, have a look at my full review; comments are welcome!

Comments

[robbbbbb.livejournal.com]

I took the "Thranduil marches his whole army to the Lonely Mountain" scene to be metaphorical, at best. No, Thranduil isn't going to bring a bunch of elves out to The Mountain like that. It's a visual representation of something that would otherwise be very difficult to do in a montage like that.

I'm trying to figure out why Peter Jackson felt the need to add the Necromancer's story to this tale. It seems out-of-place, unless it's way that Jackson's justifying Gandalf's disappearance in the second half of the tale.

Also: I'm not sure there's enough material here for three movies, unless there's a huge expansion of the Necromancer half of the tale in the middle of the next movie. Which decision would leave me uneasy.

And Radagast is a mess.

[steuard.livejournal.com]

In fact, it's been made quite explicit that the whole "White Council drives the Necromancer out of Dol Guldur" storyline will be shown live on screen. (Making time to show "the Battle of Dol Guldur" was even one explicit reason that Jackson gave for making three movies instead of two.) I'm actually okay with the idea of embedding the Dwarves' quest story in its larger context for these movies (à la "The Quest of Erebor"). But using it as an excuse to focus on a bunch of additional big battle scenes bugs me.

And yeah, I guess it's reasonable to treat that scene with Thranduil as symbolic. But somehow that's harder for me to accept on screen, when you actually see it happen.

[feuervogel]

Peter Jackson sure does love him some Epic Battle Scenes and Comic Mischief. Bleh.