Tendo City

Yeah, the movie. Overall, I thought it was really good. The main flaw is that there's obviously only two movies worth of material from this book (the film is quite slow paced compared to the LotR movies and covers half of the book), so I don't know how they're going to manage to find three movies worth of stuff here, but other than that, this is great.

The big question for The Hobbit has been, though, do you like the slower pace, and all of the added stuff in this film? The LotR movies, even though 12 hours in length all combined, cut out a lot of stuff from the books. The Hobbit, in contrast, not only includes nearly everything, but it adds lots of stuff too, like Radigast's scenes. Of course as with the LotR movies they make other changes (adding orcs, adding Saruman, etc.), but that's to be expected. But returning to the issue of pace in The Hobbit, I like the slower pace, myself. I really liked that they did have room this time for stuff like the songs; it was too bad that the LotR movies cut out almost all of that stuff. The song the dwarves sang in Bilbo's home that night was moving and important to the plot, too, but I can't see the LotR movies making time for something like that. So yeah, you can see the "padding", but in this one at least, the padding's so well done that I don't care. It's great.

Oh yeah, they did stretch credulity a bit by having at least three different times when people fell from high heights with no injury... I know they were trying to add some somewhat comic bits, but... some of that stuff was going a bit overboard (in that "movie" kind of way). Ah well, it was fun anyway. :)

So yeah, overall, it's quite good, but I do seriously wonder how they're going to find three movies out of this.

I very much enjoyed it in high-frame rate 3D and am looking forward to watching the second movie when it comes out late this year.

I did see the movie in 3D, but I don't know if anything around here has HFR 3D... anyway, I don't think that theater does. Still though, it was pretty cool to see in 3d, and I liked some of the 3d effects. As usual though, the worst thing about 3d movies is how horrendously uncomfortable those stupid 3d glasses are... those were NOT designed for people who have glasses, that's for sure, and really are physically painful to wear for any length of time.

I watched it in the high frame rate 3D. 3D's charm is wearing off for me at this point though. Perhaps it should be consigned to the 80s where it belongs until the fad returns again in a few decades. I know I've had no interest in getting a 3D TV.

The high frame rate thing looked nice. I think the people complaining just haven't been playing games in high frame rate or it wouldn't be an issue for them either. Radagast moving around on his sled looked like "fast forward" at times, but other than that it only improved the movie.

As for the slow pace... Yeah... The movie isn't perfect by any stretch. They spent something like 15 minutes in LOTR era shire. That was WAY too long! I mean they started off the movie with background setup for the movie, which is necessary and understandable. That's a good chunk of time but then you think you'll be seeing young Bilbo. Nope, suddenly it skips ahead to LOTR times. Okay fine, THIS is the setup for going into the past then. I kept expecting the next line to be the one where he goes back, but no, Frodo shows up and delays everything for an eternity. That whole scene was just a cheap tie in and an excuse to get Frodo on screen. It also kinda throws things off if in a few years I decide to sit down and watch the whole 6 movie set. If I were an editor, I'd cut that whole part out and go straight from setup to Hobbit era Bilbo.

One thing I was really prepared for was the criticism about it being "too childish". Well, that's the Hobbit for ya. It's supposed to be a less serious story, it was originally written for kids! That said, the CG plates bouncing around (very obviously CG, they couldn't just actually DO that?) made the song about what Bilbo Baggins hates come off like "Be Our Guest". I loved the other song though, and yes, the lack of those songs in LOTR was a sticking point (especially the one they sung after Gandalf's fall). Still, meant for kids or no, having a troll use Bilbo as a sneeze rag was going a bit far.

I didn't mind having Bilbo be the one to delay the trolls though. As much as they slowed down the thing, having Bilbo do something to make himself useful earlier was important. The constant fighting and running and fighting and running with the orcs they added wore me down though. Too much of that, finally mercifully ended with them finding the house of Elrond. I will say this, it's rather odd to have this kid's story forcibly inflated to LOTR tone in epicness. I mean it's a story about dwarves getting their home back, not saving the entire world, and yet there's this forced "seriousness" added all over the place where it isn't really deserved. I mean there's some of that in the original book, but not to the extent Jackson attempted here.

This movie wasn't bad, it was pretty fun actually in many parts, but it's got issues, and most of those issues stem from attempting to make it more like LOTR instead of letting it be it's own thing.

The only parts I thought really needed to be trimmed were the opening [like you said], the first scene with Radagast [it was just weird and dumb], and the scene with the council [didn't add anything to the story].

A little less running around from orcs would have been good too.

Other than that, I really didn't like the white orc being entirely CG. Jackson's special effects crew performed some miracles with makeup in the original trilogy, and I had hoped to see that in play here. Instead we got the orcish ghost of Sparta chasing them around all the time. For my money, I don't mind CG, and think it works well when it does what it's best at, which is adding things in the background, like filling out a 10,000 strong army. I'd rather not main characters be entirely CG if it can be avoided. Yeah, Gollum's an exception, because the only other way to make that guy work would be stealing an Ethiopian boy in the night. Ol' Whitey could have been done with makeup though.