I have now seen "The Hobbit" (part 1)

[jinasphinx]

I think all the flaws have been pretty well addressed by Genevieve Valentine, in her post "Ten Things You Should Know About the Hobbit". Martin Freeman is awesome. Born to play Bilbo.



As glvalentine said, Thorin Oakenshield is posing all over the place; I cracked up a bunch of times during dramatic moments. And like j_cheney said in comments to Valentine's post, the plot feels like not enough story scraped over too much screen time. (I blame the studio, since they requested a trilogy.)

At many points, the action scenes become self-parody. Like the screenwriters were spitballing after too many lattes, "Hey, let's have a big fight with the goblins! Oh yeah, and let's have a goblin king who's giant and gross-looking! Yeah, and let's have the dwarves and Gandalf fighting on suspended walkways that start swinging! Yeah, and then one dwarf cuts the walkway and it drops into a chasm! Oh, and then the dwarves are on a walkway that drops a couple hundred feet! But of course they survive with just bruises, thanks to Dwarven Toughness. And then when they're out, let's have them climb trees that start falling over like dominos! At the edge of a cliff!"

The stuff with Radagast is painfully bad; I could have done without that. And I wish Peter Jackson et al had left Azog the orc dead as in the books, instead of resurrecting him so we can have a nemesis for Thorin. (Like it's not dramatic enough to be chased by orcs and wargs.)


I can't comment on the awesomeness or fake-looking-ness of 48 frames per second, because I watched the movie in 2D. I refuse to wear an extra pair of glasses to watch a movie; wearing one pair is enough of a hassle for me.

But, all that being said, I was just so pleased to see Middle Earth again. Bilbo is great. Gandalf is great. We get to see Elrond and Galadriel again. (Which felt unnecessary to me, but I do like seeing them.) And if Peter Jackson produced a movie called "Hobbits Read the Alphabet", set in the Shire or Rivendell, I would totally pay full price to go see that for 3 hours.

Comments

[georgmi.livejournal.com]

Doesn't Thorin already have a nemesis? Big, scaly guy, name sounds like a form of urban pollution?

[jinasphinx.livejournal.com]

You would think! But, y'know, the audience might get bored during the two movies before we really get into it with Smaug, so we've gotta have another nemesis until then. Besides, if one nemesis is good, two is even more awesome, right?