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The Hobbit


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I dunno. When I was younger, The Hobbit was the Tolkien story I liked most. Why? Because it wasn't a ginormous, overwritten mess. You could make sense of its narrative. It had way too many characters, but most of them were pretty much ignored, so it was okay.

This seems to be making The Hobbit into the Prequel Trilogy for Lord of the Rings...which I'm still not sold on. It might be good. It -could- be done well. I guess we'll find out. Jackson's risking the full wrath of the Geekverse on this one...his meteoric rise may just be a precursor to a fall the likes of which we haven't seen since Lucas did Phantom Menace.

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The Hobbit was much better than I had anticipated. I heard a lot of mixed to bad reviews so I wasn't sure what to expect. The story isn't as interesting as LotR and I would still say that it is the 4th best film, but at least it isn't an episode 1. I can see how the beginning would be hard to follow for those not familiar with the source material. They didn't do a good job of differentiating the dwarves, but I didn't think there would be any way they could do that anyway. There are probably 5 that are in the foreground.

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I felt like Peter Jackson couldn't decide whether or not to make the movie a light-hearted adventure or a something more in line with the RINGS films. For example, the escape from the goblin section felt particularly Jackie Chan-esque in the manner of the dwarves escape, but then other scenes, such as the White Council in Rivendell, seem to try and import the same somber seriousness of the prior films. I felt some of the action scenes suffered a bit as a result. Movie had a whole-bunch of speechifying as well.

For the most part, though, I really enjoyed it. I felt the riddle scene was well done, as was the moment Bilbo stayed his hand when the opportunity to kill Gollum was present.

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My wife and I both enjoyed the movie. My wife read Hobbit a long time ago and doesn't remember much, but she's specifically not re-reading it until all the movies have come out. I think it has the same grand (though not quite epic) scale and feeling as the first movie and the LotR trilogy. I myself wonder how much is from the books and how much is from Peter Jackson, but not enough to actually read the books or ask around to find out.

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Star, I'm much in the same boat. I read the Hobbit ages ago in the dark, dark days of high school and I only vaguely recall the story. I enjoyed the movie much more for that reason - I didn't have a memory of what I pictured the story to be anymore. At this point, the Hobbit is very padded but at the same time, it's been entertaining to me. That's the biggest thing I ask from a movie.

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********SPOILER ALERT********** You've been warned.

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I've read the Hobbit probably 25 or 30 times. It was the first fantasy novel I read, and what got me hooked on reading. When the weather changes and we get the first cool snap of fall, my heart always feels the pull to reread the story.

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From that you would think I would naturally HATE, in big flaming capital letters the movies. They go off the rails early on, and never come close to getting back to the original work. I went into the first movie with a bit of trepidation, and I was disappointed and more than a little annoyed by the changes to the story, fairly minor that they were in the first movie. So this time around I went in with the understanding and expectation of hating it, because I knew from the previews that the changes were going to be massive and even more off-book than what came in the first installment.

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I will agree with the sentement above that the movie gives a theatrical case of blue balls. That was a rather abrupt ending to the movie, and one I wasn't actually expecting. I don't know how I missed it, but I had not realized they were breaking it up into three. I had expected the movie to wrap up and be finished. So for it to just suddenly end where it did shocked me to say the least.

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That said, I didn't hate it. It was a drastic and in my opinion unnecessary adulteration of my favorite story, but Peter Jackson did it well, except for the ending, or lack thereof. He has taken the original work, the Hobbit, and completely rewritten it and turned it into a trilogy, with a much more adult focus, and plot. It mostly retains the same basic concept, and as a movie completely divorced from the original work, I can appreciate it. It is visually pretty stunning, it's got good action, and the dragon is pretty damned cool. I didn't hate it.

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Still, there were some things that just went completely against the grain, and should never have been. Period! An elf falling in love with a dwarf and vice versa? Oh fuck no! Pardon my language, but seriously, that is something that would never happen in Tolkien's world. There have only been two unions between elves and humans in all of history, and those were epic big deals, and those two races don't have any built in animosity, unlike Elves and Dwarves who have thousands of years of not quite trusting each other. (*edit* Ok, 3 when you count Aragorn and Arwen at the end of LoTR...) It was what made Gimli and Legolas' friendship... FRIENDSHIP, so impressive and unique in LoTR.

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Then there were other issues like bilbo rescuing the dwarves from the spiders, which in the book was a much more impressive feat, and really showed his growth as a character. Bilbo is a much flatter character in the movie than the book. I did love the Elven King's hall though, that was pretty neat visually.

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All in all, it is a good story, and decently done with some exceptions, it's not however, the story Tolkien told.

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Well, a dwarf having the hots for arguably the hottest elf in Middle Earth is understandable, but "having the hots" for her might not be entirely accurate. "In awe of", might be more accurate, and that would indeed be understandable, she is one of the oldest living and most powerful elves outside the blessed realms. She lived in the light of the two trees, she saw the Simarils and probably held them in her hands before they were lost, she sat at the feet of the gods/angels, whatever you want to call them, for thousands of years. Then when Melkor, Sauron's master, destroyed the trees, she returned to Middle Earth to make war on him along with her kin. She lived through the entire war and the destruction of Angband that resulted in half a continent being sunk beneath the ocean. She was the cousin of the guy, who along with Sauron, created the rings of power. She also watched the enitre history of Middle Earth pass by as she lived there. Yeah, I'd be impressed too, even if I were a dwarf.

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To me she is one of the most interesting characters in Tolkien's books, despite her minor role in them. In a moment of familial loyalty/heat of the moment, she left the land of the gods (I use that term loosely, knowing it's not truly accurate), and swore a terrible oath to make war on the most powerful and evil of all the gods, and all his minions which included Sauron, balrogs, Ungolant, the mother of all giant spiders, and dragons. Although she did not personally take part in the kin-slaying that earned her branch of the elves the displeasure of the gods, she and her family didn't turn back despite being stranded by Feanor's sons. Instead, they walked back to Middle Earth via an ice covered land bridge, in the dark the whole way since the Sun and Moon didn't exist yet. They arrived in Bereland finally just as the Sun came up for the very first time ever, and flowers sprang up at their feet, and that evil god, cowered in his fortress at their coming. That's pretty hardcore badass right there. She then lived through a losing war for centuries watching more and more of her people die. Saw the arrival of the first humans. Witnessed the attacks of dragons. Saw the pairing of Beren and Luthien, then later of Dior and Elendil, then about 6 thousand years later, of Aragorn and Arwen. She saw the rise and fall of Numenor, and pretty much all of history, and along the way she hid the three Elven rings of power from Sauron, to keep him from gaining total dominion. And stubbornly refused to go back to the land of the gods even though she could have done so, until Sauron and the last of the remaining evil of the first age was broken and gone.

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