Watched "The Hobbit" and I thought it was awful. I'm planning to see Bela Tarr's "Satantango"

The first one wasn't good indeed. Jackson should've kept it at two movies, not three.

The first Hobbit movie I was at times entertained, other times bored, the second one I just hated. Maybe the worst cinema experience I've ever had. And I say this as a big fan of Jackson's LOTR triology, which is underrated if anything. There was just no nerve what so ever in the last Hobbit movie. Every character with a name worth knowing narrowly escaped certain death every 15 seconds and soon you just feel a complete disconnect. The barrel scene was dreadfully overdone and the love triangle storyline was just embarrassing. To make three movies out of this source material was an obvious cashgrab from the start, but to shit the bed this much I would not have expected from Jackson.

I must say the second one was awesome, for my liking. So much better than the first one, that it could almost be compared to the LotR movies without sucking as bad as the first Hobbit.

The Love-Story was indeed a joke. Jackson was lucky to have had one in the LotR Trilogy, but to create such a comical one between an Elb and a Dwarf....well. He wanted too much I assume.

They've tried to replicate the LotR formula.

They've got a few Legolas-like characters, they've got a badass girl elf who looks like Liv Tyler, a massive battle scene coming up in the next one, moody songs … they've created a three-movie antagonist where there wasn't one … the tone is all fucking wrong for the book.

It should be different from LotR and not the same, it's quite faithless for them to put it together the way they have.

Good spot Burnwinter, the only real difference is the setup (CGI and all that), which didn't quite satisfy me, and the humour due to Freeman. I think he's the perfect Bilbo.

He's excellent, I agree. And he's got the right feel. I think the Dwarves are about right as well, as is Cumberbatch as Smaug.

It just feels wrong to me that these films are so similar to the LotR ones. The whole point of the Hobbit is that it feels completely different from the later works. I'm also quite fond of it—my dad read it to me when I was a toddler and I must've read it six times.

Anyway, the new one still looks like plenty of fun in bits so I'll go see it, it's just going to piss me off by being too long and having lots of flat bits.

I'm a lore-fanatic as well, so some of the adaptions for the Hobbit have been quite....interesting, to say the least.

I think the similarity is down to having the same producers - Jackson didn't want to make that movie at first, only after del Torro canceled because of paying-issues, he took over. You can see that with all the new-looks and CGI stuff, Jackson wanted to create something entirely different to the LotR movies, but that alone wasn't enough, I agree.

Little over three weeks until the last one launches, I'm surely going to watch it, even though I'm not sure whether to do that in 3D or not.

Haven't read the book. Neither of the Hobbit movies are close to LotR imo, and it seems like they couldn't decide between the tone from LotR and the Disney "slides everywhere" tone. Freeman is brilliant.

Saw Don Jon yesterday. It was okay I guess, but maybe more should be going on. Scarlett, though.

I think it's okay that they turned it into another Lord of the Rings franchise. They weren't going to do it by the book anyway, so turning it into its own thing might have been for the best.

What I feel slightly sad about is the fact that we lack so much nuance in the commercial cinematic language. There's just no way to faithfully bring a book like The Hobbit to the screen when you paint with a roller instead of a fine point brush.

Burnwinter™ wrote:

He's excellent, I agree. And he's got the right feel. I think the Dwarves are about right as well, as is Cumberbatch as Smaug.

It just feels wrong to me that these films are so similar to the LotR ones. The whole point of the Hobbit is that it feels completely different from the later works. I'm also quite fond of it—my dad read it to me when I was a toddler and I must've read it six times.

Anyway, the new one still looks like plenty of fun in bits so I'll go see it, it's just going to piss me off by being too long and having lots of flat bits.

Pretty much how I feel. My dad didn't read it to me though; in my family everyone had to do the reading by themselves. 6 times seems about right. Read it last just before the release of the first movie.

i watched the desolation of smaug again, the extended cut. the extra stuff felt mostly like filler. the only meaningful addition was gandalf finding thrain in dol guldur. i'm still anticipating the third one, i'm a sucker for these films.

2nd Hobbit was definitely loads better than the cumbersome first one. Barrel scene was excellent.
Still flittered here and there.

jurassic world trailer didn't really impress me, looked like some other franchise using the jurassic name. plus there's no goldblum or neill, so that's an automatic black mark.

I've never really liked Jurassic Park, thought it was just ok. The sequels I did not bother watching. Never worked as a horror show or for shock value, just cheap thrills. Good actors tho, those kids.

Jurassic Park didn't blow me away in the 90s but it's held up surprisingly well. Neill, Dern, Goldblum and Attenborough are all good as are the kids.

Edge of Tomorrow was really pretty good. Wouldn't have minded a bit less alien-battling, but I liked it a lot. On a side note, Emily Blunt absolutely melts the screen in it.

Sort of interesting video game concept (as well as aesthetics) in it. He just keeps at it until he runs out of extra lives.

I enjoyed the way the screenplay occasionally drew you back to a suggested understanding of how many times Cage must have repeated those events—and how many times he must have died. Except for the bum moment where Rita says "300 times" … I felt it should have been tens of thousands at least. I liked the idea that he was probably insane, too damaged to function properly outside that one day.

As you may recall from our discussion of Drive way back whenever Klaus, I'm a big believer that the logic (or illogic) of video games is making its way into traditional narratives.

Indeed, I'm not disagreeing. I just don't see it as a huge positive. I did enjoy Edge of Tomorrow though.

Burnwinter™ wrote:

I liked the idea that he was probably insane, too damaged to function properly outside that one day.

I think this is a pretty cool idea too. Would have been interesting to see them explore it further. It reminds me a little bit of the thematic in System Shock 2, where your character is fighting against this artificial entity that wants to destroy organic matter, and in order to prevent him from dying all the time you need to cybernetically upgrade his body. And so instead of dying he's resetting, and the closer he gets to the goal the further out of touch he is with his own self (which the AI villain happily points out to him). It's an old game, it doesn't do quite as much with the premise as it would have today, but I've always found the idea appealing.