Miscellaneous Movie Musings the Sequel

[innerSpaceman]

The Hobbit wasn't as bad as I feared, despite some really stupid and poorly-timed additions that are not from the book, and a really large plot hole featuring the made-up villain. I call shenanigans on that, because if you are going to make things up that Tolkien never wrote, you might want to make sure it doesn't leave a gaping plot hole that is patently absurd (not to mention lazy, as it could have been fixed with a camera shot or a line of dialogue).*

Other than that, though, when the film was sticking to the book, I found it a perfectly credible - if not spectacular - adaptation of The Hobbit. Not bad, and I have higher hopes for the remaining episodes. In fact, if there's ultimately an "un-extended" director's cut released for home video, it might be rather good.



* The invented bad guy, an albino orc named Azog, is shown harrasing and chasing our heroes on one side of an immense mountain range, the Misty Mountains. Our gang is then shown going through a series of intense adventures and adverse conditions crossing the mountains - - only to find that same bad guy magically and unexplainedly on the other side. WTF?


There was also little need for TWO prologues. The one featuring cast members from LotR was useless and should have been ditched. Oh, and one wholly-invented tangent backstory just as the plot gets going was bad enough. But to have a second one barely five minutes later really stalled the plot just as it was starting to pick up steam.

Another non-book introduction of LotR stars at Rivendell was also stupid. But the sour points were few, and everything else was decidedly Not Bad. I did not brave the 48fps version. The normal, 24fps 2-D film looked suitably pretty.