Oh, Radagast
The Hobbit. I saw it. And, if you've been looking at reviews, everything you've heard is true. Unfortunately.
Um.
I didn't hate it -- it's not that. It was fun! I enjoyed it. I, just.
For one thing, it's outrageous that they are going to drag this book out into three movies, all three hours long. The Hobbit is shorter than any of the individual installments of LOTR, and they managed to fit those into single movie-units. The Hobbit is not a trilogy -- it's just not.
I can (and probably will later) go into detail about the flaws that distracted me from just being in love with the movie the way I wanted to be.
But my overall takeaway from the experience is... Actually? Heightened sympathy for original Star Wars trilogy fans. lol. I always got that the prequels officially sucked and all that, but that wasn't how I experienced it. I grew up liking Star Wars -- it was a fun, engaging set of movies, but beyond that, I knew it was cool, to my parents and to nerds across generations. The Phantom Menace trailers started showing when I was 10. I was ready to love the prequels -- and I did. I just accepted and defended them. The original trilogy was never sacred to me.
The Hobbit is not the abomination that the prequels must be to original Star Wars fans -- I'm not saying that. It's really not even bad. (Well. Not, really bad? Ugh, guys, the thing is -- it's really not a good movie and I can't see any non-Tolkien fans liking it at all.) My main worry is that its existence might tarnish the LOTR trilogy in a way... All the tricks -- the narrow escapes, the pithy speeches, the music swells, the one-liners, etc. -- really feel formulaic and tired in this movie. Because we've already seen the same setup, over and over again, and with more payoff, before, in The Lord of the Rings, but that was a story with more at stake, with greater danger, with characters we knew better and cared about more. It all feels cheap and predictable now. And I just worry that... now I will see LOTR that way too. Now that the Hobbit has made it so obvious where all the seams are, I won't be able to view any of it the same way. The Hobbit just might have detracted from all of the other movies for me...
But. No, I don't think anything could really make me feel anything but love for Fellowship.
And, there were many good things! I just wish... they'd been willing to... edit down a little? God, what I really want to do is fucking have all the Hobbit movies on my computer right now and edit it down to just the gold stuff and turn it into one feature-length piece. An arrogant impulse I guess, but I'm sure I'm not the only one fantasizing about this.
Um.
I didn't hate it -- it's not that. It was fun! I enjoyed it. I, just.
For one thing, it's outrageous that they are going to drag this book out into three movies, all three hours long. The Hobbit is shorter than any of the individual installments of LOTR, and they managed to fit those into single movie-units. The Hobbit is not a trilogy -- it's just not.
I can (and probably will later) go into detail about the flaws that distracted me from just being in love with the movie the way I wanted to be.
But my overall takeaway from the experience is... Actually? Heightened sympathy for original Star Wars trilogy fans. lol. I always got that the prequels officially sucked and all that, but that wasn't how I experienced it. I grew up liking Star Wars -- it was a fun, engaging set of movies, but beyond that, I knew it was cool, to my parents and to nerds across generations. The Phantom Menace trailers started showing when I was 10. I was ready to love the prequels -- and I did. I just accepted and defended them. The original trilogy was never sacred to me.
The Hobbit is not the abomination that the prequels must be to original Star Wars fans -- I'm not saying that. It's really not even bad. (Well. Not, really bad? Ugh, guys, the thing is -- it's really not a good movie and I can't see any non-Tolkien fans liking it at all.) My main worry is that its existence might tarnish the LOTR trilogy in a way... All the tricks -- the narrow escapes, the pithy speeches, the music swells, the one-liners, etc. -- really feel formulaic and tired in this movie. Because we've already seen the same setup, over and over again, and with more payoff, before, in The Lord of the Rings, but that was a story with more at stake, with greater danger, with characters we knew better and cared about more. It all feels cheap and predictable now. And I just worry that... now I will see LOTR that way too. Now that the Hobbit has made it so obvious where all the seams are, I won't be able to view any of it the same way. The Hobbit just might have detracted from all of the other movies for me...
But. No, I don't think anything could really make me feel anything but love for Fellowship.
And, there were many good things! I just wish... they'd been willing to... edit down a little? God, what I really want to do is fucking have all the Hobbit movies on my computer right now and edit it down to just the gold stuff and turn it into one feature-length piece. An arrogant impulse I guess, but I'm sure I'm not the only one fantasizing about this.