A few thoughts about the Middle Earth movies (and particularly The Hobbit Trilogy)

[andrewducker]

Watching Order
Having rewatched them all recently, I can honestly say that I think that people coming to it fresh, if they're going to watch all of them, should start with The Hobbit trilogy.

Firstly, they'll be less disappointed with The Hobbit if it's not coming after LOTR. The production on The Hobbit was notoriously rushed, and also messed with by the studios. You can argue about some of the LOTR choices, but it's hard to argue that The Hobbit is better*.

Secondly, several bits of LOTR are improved if you saw The Hobbit first. Having watched them that way this time around, Gollum, the turned-to-stone Trolls, the first meeting with Saruman, Galadriel, and Elrond all come across better having encountered them first in The Hobbit. There's also more of a feeling of Gandalf as being someone with a mission when you see his behaviour across all of the films in the right order. He's clearly the driving force of the overall series.

Fan Edits
I've been reading The Hobbit to Sophia recently. Just a page or two per night, after she spotted an illustrated copy on my shelf. And then she asked some questions about what things looked like in Hobbiton, so I showed her a few scenes of the movie. But I didn't want to show her lots of the violent Orc bits at age 4, which also aren't in the book. Which led me to go looking for fan edits.

There are a *lot* of those for The Hobbit trilogy. An awful lot of people, understandably, feel the movies could be easily improved with a bit of cutting (more on this in a moment). And it was fairly easy to track down a decent Book Edit which we've now watched up to leaving Hobbiton, and will shortly encountering some Trolls in.

That wasn't the first Fan Edit I've watched though. I previously went looking for one which wasn't so oriented on recreating the book, but instead produced something which still had all of the "Prequel to LOTR" stuff in there, while trimming the excesses away. Particularly by reducing the fight scene lengths, and getting rid of as much of the "humour" as possible (particularly Alfrid/The Master, who set my teeth on edge whenever they were on screen). And that led me to this edit, which did an absolutely great job of this. And then, I was delighted to see that the same editor had done versions of the Star Wars prequels which, likewise, removed a lot of the "humour", and so I enjoyed the hell out of those too!

What went wrong
Firstly, I'm not convinced that even if everything had gone right it would have produced movies as good as LOTR. I just don't think that The Hobbit is as good a book, and I don't think that the story or character depth is there. Which is fine, it would still be a fun movie (or TV series).
But everything did not go right. Jackson was dropped into directing a film without any of the set-up time that he had for LOTR and told to make it ASAP. You can see them talking about that right here. There was clearly a bunch of studio interference. And without the time to put it together quietly without the pressure there wasn't the process that LOTR went through where Jackson had an idea and then it was slowly pushed back towards Tolkien. (Not that it got entirely back there - LOTR had many deviations from Tolkien, but The Hobbit was vastly worse.) And on top of that, the use of 3D cameras meant that the framing techniques for different sized characters no longer worked, and with High Frame Rate costumes didn't look as good and more ended up being done on sets and using CGI.
So I'm glad I've got the edits that I've got, which make for a satisfying movie or two. But it's a shame about the process that led there, and that what so many people saw is so much of a mess.

Comments

[mtbc]

It probably doesn't help that half of The Hobbit's charm is the way it's written, which doesn't easily translate. And, yes, goodness, the humour was for me even worse for those movies than it was for Babylon 5, glad to hear it can be mostly excised.

[andrewducker]

Agreed about how writing style makes a difference. I think that's why I love Pratchett, but have never liked an adaptation.

[jack]

That's well described, thank you.

I only saw some of the hobbit movies, but still feel like the hobbit could be good movies if they had a tone like the hobbit, not like the LOTR turned up to 12. Lots of movies have a general theme of "a fractious group of friends go on a road adventure and keep escaping dangerous places" and have "and get caught up in a scorched-earth war" only at the end, not every five minutes throughout. Even fantasy movies.

I guess that does undermine the other point that putting in some information about Gandalf's adventures with the necromancer was a good idea, because that is a bit grimmer in tone, but it doesn't mean the whole thing has to be Peril.

[andrewducker]

Absolutely! You need fun bits along the way. But not the terrible humour that we got.

[fyre]

They lost me with the second film when the dwarves were shunted to the sidelines and all the work done in film one on the characters was just out the window. Let's focus on a love story! No lets have more of the hot human! No how about we shove in comic relief and put him in a dress in completely pointless and cringy scenes! Also, Thorin's death remains the stupidest death they could have given him. There was behind the scenes footage where Fili and Kili died trying to protect him, but that got vetoed because dwarf/elf romance is Vital to the Drama, and whichever of the pair was the blond brother was royally shafted because of it too :(

[andrewducker]

Oh yeah. It was a mess. Very glad to have an edit without all of the awful comedy. And without the romance.

(I like Tauriel. Just not the romance)

[fyre]

As the Gimli scenes in LotR show, comedy in this kind of world is not the strong suit of PJ and his writing team. I enjoyed the first film so much because it got the look of the thing and the dwarves so well. The songs especially delighted me because that's the bits I really remembered in the book. And then... and then the idiocy of the second one and the unnecessary action of the third. Yes, let's burn down a dragon with hot liquid. A creature that literally breathes fire. That'll work. Fantastic plan.

[andrewducker]

I mean, I was delighted that it *didn't* work, but it was pure filler that wasn't even slightly necessary.

A fair number of the edits go straight from the Bilbo/Smaug conversation scene straight to Smaug heading to Laketown. And nothing of value is lost.

[andrewducker]

Oh, and I could really do without lots of jokes that boil down to "Bombur is fat. And likes eating. Isn't that hilarious?"

[fyre]

Yeaaaah. That falls under the same bracket as "lol, Eowyn, a member of the royal household, doesn't know how to cook" -_- The 80s called, they want their jokes back.

[kmusser]

Thanks for pointing out the edit, I've always suspected there might be a decent movie buried in there somewhere, but not cared enough to seek it out.

[calimac]

If I could stand watching any version of the Hobbit movies again, which I probably couldn't, I might be curious about those fan edits. Because I wonder how they're done: it seems to me that if you take out everything that's not in the book, especially in the second and third film, there'd be basically nothing left.

Same, too, if instead of "in the book" your criterion is "good." Again, there'd be nothing left.

Agree that the humour is some of the worst part. These are the first movies that violate the rule that Stephen Fry is the best thing in any film he's in.

[andrewducker]

I really really hope that he's not that bad in the Sandman TV series.

(Not that I blame him for the Hobbit)

[andrewducker]

Oh, and the link above goes to a page which describes the edit in great detail, so you don't need to actually watch anything to see what they left in.

[calimac]

"films inherently need to be more cinematic & dramatic than their book counterpart" The belief that any book exciting enough to read isn't already dramatic enough has led to more idiotic film additions than any other factor. I am not encouraged by the editor proceeding on this principle.

Why is the editor changing scenes to make them more gloomy?

"A fifty-five minute battle has been recut to now just under twenty." That's still about ten times too long.

[mme_n_b]

I think you are generally right on watching order except if the person watching happens to be an emotional child. Apparently the deaths of Fili and Kili are way, way more traumatic than anything that happens in LOTR. I did not remember it that way, but with a kid - yes, they totally are and I should've waited another 20 years or so.

[channelpenguin]

Or used my family's tactic - "what are you crying for? It's just a film, it's not real". :-)

Since I'm exactly 50/50 on whether the effects on me of that were a net gain or loss in how I deal with the world - maybe not !

[andrewducker]

Noted!

[anef]

I feel relieved that I just watched the first Hobbit film (on TV) and didn't bother with the rest.

[andrewducker]

I would definitely recommend the edits. I can sort that for you if it would help.

[anef]

It's a kind offer, but we have a ton of stuff to watch - if this looks like changing I will ask you!

[andrewducker]

I totally understand. I'm in a similar situation myself!