Amph "The Hobbit" Movie Thread: Fan's Photos from Hobbiton

That trailer is just GORGEOUS.

And Martin Freeman is PERFECT.

THAT IS ALL.

 

I like the low-energy vibe, actually. In an era of endless quick-cut LOOK BIG SPLOSIONS trailers for every would-be blockbuster out there, we've got a pretty gentle trailer that gets across the pure affection for the characters and children's-story sense of adventure that The Hobbit is all about. I love it.

 

I agree Jackson seemed to thread that needle deftly, appealing to LOTR movie fans and acknowledging the source material as children's literature. But I think it's the authenticity of Jackson's style and his ability to convey a sense of childlike wonder for the characters and places and stories of Middle Earth that makes his movies work, so I don't think he has to tweak his LOTR style much to deliver The Hobbit.

I love the trailer, particularly the orchestral score built around Thorin's song. Hope that's staying for the film.

 

The Hobbit Part I is going to be plenty action packed. I'm glad they restrained the trailer and hid some of the good stuff, even if only because they haven't filmed it yet. The marketing goals are 1) let everyone know that this is a return to the Middle Earth of the LOTR film trilogy and 2) give comfort and joy to fans of the book. The trailer does all that spectacularly.

I've never made a secret of the fact that I'm a bigger Hobbit fan than a LOTR trilogy fan, so I'm terribly biased beyond any hope of impartiality. But I wouldn't have had any particular reason to be happy with Jackson heading the project if he hadn't succeeded so wildly with his LOTR trilogy.

Jackson is bringing along a global movie audience of people who have immense goodwill toward the original film trilogy. It's a direct comparison to George Lucas when Trailer A for TPM hit. The only difference is that the potential audience for The Hobbit is far more global than the audience for the Star Wars prequel trilogy.

Add 3D and IMAX and you have a movie event that, just maybe, will rival Titanic numbers. Jackson probably can't touch Avatar, even though I expect his movie to be better.

And if Hobbit part 1 delivers, then really there is almost no box office upper limit for part 2. It could take on Cameron.

 

I agree, and loved it, too. I already want it on my iPod.

 

The Hobbit takes place over the course of roughly a year, about 60 years before The Lord of the Rings, and about 478 years after Gollum finds the ring.

 

I'm curious because LOTR's prologue clearly shows Ian as Bilbo obtaining the ring from Gollum's cave. Have they talked about reshooting that shot with the new actor (which would be odd since LOTR took care to make all those little cutaway shots add up)? Or is there an existing story justification (length of time that passes, effects of using the Ring accelerates his age, etc) to help explain how they could transition between actors to have Ian in that scene?

They'll reshoot it. The obvious solution is just to let it hang out there, unchanged as a minor point of discontinuity between the films, inevitable as the result of the ages of the actors involved and the characters they play, the way Jackson let the change in the design of Gollum between FOTR and TTT hang there unedited and uncorrected. It just adds to the depth of future movie trivia games.

 

The events of the Hobbit happen during a little over a year, with an epilogue couple of years later. Between that and the beginning of LOTR there's almost 60 years, during which Bilbo grew old slowly, as the ring slowed his aging.

I can't really see them keeping Ian's scene as it is, especially because Bilbo actually finds the ring and has a conversation with Gollum before he finds out it's missing. I'd say that reshooting the shot of LOTR would be a better way. They could call it "Special Edition" version or something, I see no harm in that.

Edit: It seems like two people beat me in this. Well, everything in the trailer was awesome, and I really like that they have links between the movies. Except that this means that in marathons, there are five long movies to watch.

 

I think a reshoot for a one second shot in FOTR is pointless and unnecessary. The prologue in FOTR is just supposed to introduce the viewer to The Ring and explain that Bilbo found it deep underground. It doesn't have to match, shot for shot, a movie released more than a decade after it. PJ isn't Lucas.

 

For me the three most important 20th century books of children's fantasy literature are The Hobbit, the Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe and A Wizard of Earthsea.

When the film comes out The Hobbit will have been in print continuously for 75 years. Even without LOTR I would have set its box office potential at close to The first Narnia movie ($745 million worldwide). But since it will sell like a sequel to ROTK, $1.1 billion, plus ticket price inflation, plus 3D, and people have been waiting since Avatar for a standout top budget 3D megablockbuster, though of course the novelty has worn off.

If Jackson can successfully bridge the gap between the Narnia family audience and the harder-core, more violence friendly LOTR audience, then $1.3 billion will be a cakewalk. I'm not convinced he'll be entirely successful and if the commercial exigencies of the venture win out then he'll be willing to alienate some of the family audience of adults hoping to bring their children out to experience The Hobbit.

But still, I've read "The Hobbit" aloud to both my sons. My mother read it to me. That's the kind of multi-generational appeal we're talking about here. Also, the box office potential of the Narnia movies was marred by how mediocre the films were. If they'd been LOTR good the numbers would have been Harry Potter big.

 

Did I see Aragorn in the trailer in Bag End?

 

no, that was Kili apparently.

 

Yeah, I would hope they wouldn't do it. The tinkering urge rarely leads anywhere good. The audience can understand that the movies made later used a different actor who looked very similar, and staged a more extensive scene. You might as well reshoot all Gandalf's FOTR scenes to make sure he doesn't look older in The Hobbit than he does there. It's the movies. The audience knows it's the movies.

 

Plus, the Prologue to FotR isn't supposed to be a lengthy telling; it's an overview of the myth about the Ring, while the Hobbit is an actual telling of some events that brush up against the story of the Ring. It actually makes the films seem more mythic for the versions to not be totally perfect. It's all about the storytelling; Middle Earth was never about a work of history - it was about a work of legend. Legends need to have those little flaws in there that clue you in that they aren't intended to be fully factual representations of what happened.

 

I have a feeling the orchestral version of the song, if it stays (which I hope it will), will be used either as the equivalent of the Fellowship theme - used mainly with the sweeping shots of the Company walking/riding across spectacular New Zealand scenery - or as the theme of the Lonely Mountain (the equivalent of the Moria theme).

 

Aragorn is still a snotty teenager called Estel running around Rivendell at this time...

 

Now that's a trailer. No violence, blood, quick cuts or nudity; and it features a dwarf sing-a-long. And I can't wait to see it.

And Martin Freeman is indeed perfect.

 

Looking at the three big trailer reveals of the past few days: Dark Knight Rises, Prometheus and Hobbit, here are the summaries at a glance:

DNR trailer

Very Important Director
Characters You Recognize
Some you don't. They don't get along.
Behold our F/X budget!
A franchise you love


The Hobbit trailer

Characters you recognize
some you don't
they're going on a journey
staged by a Very Important Director
Behold our F/X budget!
in a franchise you love

Prometheus

A Very Important Director
Wants you to Behold our F/X budget
in a random series of images!
(it may be a franchise you love)

 

Oh, basically.