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andrewduckerWatching 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.
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.
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