[Spoilsport Stonny]

The SW prequels are insulting to the themselves, after all.

[polishgenius]

I was, I admit, being slightly mischievous when I wrote that. I haven't even seen the second Hobbit yet, so I can't properly judge it.

But while they may not be worse than the PT, they do make me angrier. Maybe because I grew up with Tolkien in a way I never really did with SW.

[Traveller]

polishgenius, on 31 July 2014 - 05:44 AM, said:

But while they may not be worse than the PT, they do make me angrier. Maybe because I grew up with Tolkien in a way I never really did with SW.

I think that's why I find it very difficult to just watch the Hobbit movies without feeling let down - when you've read something every couple of years ever since you learned to read, seeing someone else reduce all the sublety and meaning in it to a series of action sequences is harder to take.

Especially when those sequences are at the expense of the actual material, which would make for some really good cinema in the hands of the right person.

[Spoilsport Stonny]

polishgenius, on 31 July 2014 - 05:44 AM, said:

I was, I admit, being slightly mischievous when I wrote that. I haven't even seen the second Hobbit yet, so I can't properly judge it.

But while they may not be worse than the PT, they do make me angrier. Maybe because I grew up with Tolkien in a way I never really did with SW.

Fair enough. I remember being a kid and talking with my friends about star wars movies that took place when "Darth Vader and Obi Wan Kenobi" were babies. And as I said above, I loved the Bakshi LoTR, and even the Rankin & Bass Hobbit movie.Guess I grew up with both.

There's really no comparing though. Take away the quality of SFX available at the time of each trilogy, and one is incomprehensible garbage, the other is exploitation of a beloved story with a dedicated fan base to sell more tickets to people who otherwise wouldn't have given a shit.

Terrible atrocities both, but at least The Hobbit story makes sense.

[Traveller]

I find the Hobbit movies no longer make sense though.

Bilbo is hired as a burglar. As hobbits are naturally quiet and they want someone to SNEAK into the dragons lair.

Using the ring to free the dwarves from the spiders, creep around the Elves without detection, and organise the escape in the barrels without getting caught are all sequences that go towards him becoming an effective burglar, as well as giving him the confidence in himself and his own ability.

Turning all these events into noisy action theme park rides culminating in all the dwarves just piling into the Lonely Mountain to take on Smaug directly totally undermines the reason for Bilbo being there in the first place, and puts him as a secondary character as his journey no longer makes any sense. As well as turning Smaug from the malicious raging destroyer of entire cities into an incompetent worm bumbling about falling over things.

(I hold a bit of a grudge as Jackson did the same thing to Kong - took a well-loved movie, packed it with unnecessary and ridiculous scenes (worms in the pit, and THE most awful awful dino-stampede ever) and then turned what would have been a good T-Rex/ Kong encounter into yet another overlong, over-chase sequence. And then there was ice skating..)

This post has been edited by Traveller: 31 July 2014 - 12:27 PM

[Spoilsport Stonny]

Another good point, although I have no allegiance to King Kong at all. I guess all THE HOBBIT needs is a racist diner alien and a shapeshifting assassin that doesn't use their shapeshifting abilities to hide from two Jedi knights pulling double duty as CSI-Coruscant detectives.

[QuickTidal]

Traveller, on 31 July 2014 - 12:15 PM, said:

(I hold a bit of a grudge as Jackson did the same thing to Kong - took a well-loved movie, packed it with unnecessary and ridiculous scenes (worms in the pit, and THE most awful awful dino-stampede ever) and then turned what would have been a good T-Rex/ Kong encounter into yet another overlong, over-chase sequence. And then there was ice skating..)

See, but there is no way that you could re-make classic King Kong exactly as it was. We are talking about the difference between movie-going audiences from the 1930's and movie-going audiences of the 21st century. The two are totally different, and separated by years of filmic lore, effects, story and direction. So whereas in the 1930's film was still relatively fresh, and stories like KONG were pretty much amazing realizations of things that only existed in books to that point...add special effects that brought them to life, and audiences were DAZZLED just by that. In 2005 (PJ's KONG) audiences expect SO much more than the original film/story provided. The effects need a massive update, the story needs an overhaul or audiences would call it "simple" (remember that this is the same set of summer blockbuster watchers who went to AVATAR and said the story was too simplistic), this required some additions (the pit with the insects, the dino chase). Those are not "unnecessary scenes". They are wholly necessary by simple virtue of needing to add more meat to a formula that was nearly 80 years old.

Look at JOHN CARTER. For fans of the Burroughs books, the film version was almost exactly identical to the tale in A PRINCESS OF MARS. Andrew Stanton was such a diehard fan of the books that he adapted the first one and stuck about as close to the source material from 100 years ago as he could. And look what happened. 2012 audiences pissed all over it by disparaging it, not seeing it, or critiquing it by comparing it to all the sci-fi that came AFTER Burroughs work in the 20th century. They either didn't know, or didn't care. The bottom line though is that a directly adapted tale from 100 years previous without embellishments, or story modifications...can VERY easily fall flat with modern audiences. It matters not even a little bit that you or I love Burroughs books (I personally do....but then I liked JOHN CARTER for the most part), the masses rule and films must kowtow to those trends.

[Spoilsport Stonny]

"Wholly necessary" doesn't automatically mean that the end result was of quality, though.

JOHN CARTER suffered from a lack of pop culture recognition. Everyone I know who has actually seen it has said it's pretty good, as far as what it attempted to do (action/adventure story). Lots of people I know saw LotR because of the hype and the grand scale of production. Most of my adult friends who had never read the books, or weren't big fantasy fans, thought it was stupid and the non-action parts were lame as fuck (and I can see their point...how many times are the hobbits gonna dance and hug upon being reunited; the Aragorn/Arwen meant nothing to them). Young folks who watched them ended up loving them, but that's to be expected. What do they know?

Eh, whatever. I think it can be agreed by all that THE HOBBIT can be and should be better, if not in the adherence to source material, at least they could tone down the cartooniness.

[Silencer]

QuickTidal, on 31 July 2014 - 12:57 PM, said:

Traveller, on 31 July 2014 - 12:15 PM, said:

(I hold a bit of a grudge as Jackson did the same thing to Kong - took a well-loved movie, packed it with unnecessary and ridiculous scenes (worms in the pit, and THE most awful awful dino-stampede ever) and then turned what would have been a good T-Rex/ Kong encounter into yet another overlong, over-chase sequence. And then there was ice skating..)

See, but there is no way that you could re-make classic King Kong exactly as it was. We are talking about the difference between movie-going audiences from the 1930's and movie-going audiences of the 21st century. The two are totally different, and separated by years of filmic lore, effects, story and direction. So whereas in the 1930's film was still relatively fresh, and stories like KONG were pretty much amazing realizations of things that only existed in books to that point...add special effects that brought them to life, and audiences were DAZZLED just by that. In 2005 (PJ's KONG) audiences expect SO much more than the original film/story provided. The effects need a massive update, the story needs an overhaul or audiences would call it "simple" (remember that this is the same set of summer blockbuster watchers who went to AVATAR and said the story was too simplistic), this required some additions (the pit with the insects, the dino chase). Those are not "unnecessary scenes". They are wholly necessary by simple virtue of needing to add more meat to a formula that was nearly 80 years old.

Look at JOHN CARTER. For fans of the Burroughs books, the film version was almost exactly identical to the tale in A PRINCESS OF MARS. Andrew Stanton was such a diehard fan of the books that he adapted the first one and stuck about as close to the source material from 100 years ago as he could. And look what happened. 2012 audiences pissed all over it by disparaging it, not seeing it, or critiquing it by comparing it to all the sci-fi that came AFTER Burroughs work in the 20th century. They either didn't know, or didn't care. The bottom line though is that a directly adapted tale from 100 years previous without embellishments, or story modifications...can VERY easily fall flat with modern audiences. It matters not even a little bit that you or I love Burroughs books (I personally do....but then I liked JOHN CARTER for the most part), the masses rule and films must kowtow to those trends.

Whoa whoa whoa.

1. John Carter was good. It was just horrendously advertised and panned by critics for god knows what reason, and they blew the budget on advertising SOMEHOW for something that was barely advertised at all. It wasn't unsuccessful because people didn't like it - it was unsuccessful because people weren't pulled in to go see it.

2. Avatar's story wasn't "too simple", it was non-existent. Or, to be more accurate, it was copy-pasted from Pocahontas/Fern Gully. Which is both lazy and not the point of the movie, but that's besides the point. Audiences don't automatically hate "simple" storylines. Cliched, overused, boring storylines? Yes. Simple? Not necessarily.
Judge Dredd had a simple storyline. Bare-bones, even. But it did fine.

3. I think you're taking the outcome, and constructing an argument that fits around it, QT.
It's very similar to the anti-piracy logic used by the film industry. "Our sales are down, so piracy is the root of all evil!" IGNORES the fact that successful, good movies are making shitloads of money. It ignores other factors like rising cost of entry, economic depression, and the simple law of price being determined by supply/demand.
Similarly, and yes, the film industry does this - that doesn't make them RIGHT - you're making vast assumptions about "what the masses want". Transformers, for example, does this egregiously. "If we made a Transformers movie the way people remembered, they'd hate it!"
Really? Have they...tried? No. What they're doing is making assumptions, having those confirmed (maybe) by focus groups, and continuing to play it safe.
This sense of confirmation bias - "What do people want? Big action explodey Transformers!" *makes big action explodey Transformers which sells like hotcakes* "See, we were right!" -> ignore underlying desire for Transformers in general/the fact that yours is the only product on the market which scratches that itch - is a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Take the internet backlash when Microsoft finally came out and TOLD consumers what they wanted. MS got blasted. Really hard. Saying that "modern audiences want X" when X is all that is on offer is the same thing - people just ain't figured it out yet.





There is also an argument to be made about quality. There are ways of doing changes and even, yes, chase sequences, that are not so obvious and jarring. To not do so is unfair to the consumers - even to the point of patronising us, by acting as if we have no taste for subtlety or depth or sleight-of-hand. That's insulting. And I think your argument that King Kong "needed to be made more complex" kind of defeats your argument about the Hobbit needing on-rails action moments to replace the detailed lore or sensible character progression.



Hell, look at the Godzilla reboot. Lauded for going BACK to the original style.


Point is: lumping everyone's desires and expectations into "the masses want X" doesn't sell. There's way too much variety in what kinds of films do well for that one to wash, IMO.

[QuickTidal]

Silencer, on 31 July 2014 - 01:22 PM, said:

Point is: lumping everyone's desires and expectations into "the masses want X" doesn't sell. There's way too much variety in what kinds of films do well for that one to wash, IMO.

Except (and this has been my point from the beginning) that's not how Hollywood works.

Hollywood works on assumption, prediction, and audience money.

I'm not saying that I personally support such things. I'm flat out telling you that Hollywood does not care what we in a groupthink situation about it...think.

TF4 is more of the same as the first three (albeit much better IMHO) because people keep shelling out dough to see it and causing the box office to go bananas (every movie made scads of money regardless of what people "claimed" to think about it). This translates to producers and studios in Hollywood as CASH COMES FROM THIS. So they keep making them.

FIFTY SHADES OF GREY is atrocious. A book series that started life as porno-lite Twilight fanfic. It made money with a LOT of women, like a LOT. So they've made a movie. Why, when the general consensus seems to be that it's awful? Everywhere I looked I saw bad to scathing reviews of it. But Hollywood looked at book sales and buzz and made a movie series. Not because it's good. Or because it SHOULD be made. But because it will make money with the same people who liked the books.

Hollywood in general makes what's in the wind. YA fantasy stories are popular? SNOW WHITE & THE HUNTSMAN. YA Sci-fi stories are popular? DIVERGENT. Nostalgic 80's cartoon properties? GI JOE, TF, TMNT.

So while you don't want to believe that lumping everyone's desires and expectations into one bucket...(nor do I really)...this is exactly what Hollywood studios do. It's what they MUST do. Taking a chance on things that may or may not be successful is a gamble that those with the money will balk at unless the right person is behind it. You can't throw 100 million dollars at something that may or may not be successful. They need more of a guarantee than that. Check what is popular and go with that.

If you want to believe that Hollywood is more altruistic and interested in high art than this...you're welcome to believe that. I don't have the faith in Hollywood to allow them that quarter. They are moneymakers first and foremost and everything is a survey to them of what's popular.

Had they been more about the art over money then TERMINATOR: SALVATION would have been WAY better.

[Silencer]

QuickTidal, on 31 July 2014 - 01:43 PM, said:

Silencer, on 31 July 2014 - 01:22 PM, said:

Point is: lumping everyone's desires and expectations into "the masses want X" doesn't sell. There's way too much variety in what kinds of films do well for that one to wash, IMO.

Except (and this has been my point from the beginning) that's not how Hollywood works.

Hollywood works on assumption, prediction, and audience money.

I'm not saying that I personally support such things. I'm flat out telling you that Hollywood does not care what we in a groupthink situation about it...think.

TF4 is more of the same as the first three (albeit much better IMHO) because people keep shelling out dough to see it and causing the box office to go bananas (every movie made scads of money regardless of what people "claimed" to think about it). This translates to producers and studios in Hollywood as CASH COMES FROM THIS. So they keep making them.

FIFTY SHADES OF GREY is atrocious. A book series that started life as porno-lite Twilight fanfic. It made money with a LOT of women, like a LOT. So they've made a movie. Why, when the general consensus seems to be that it's awful? Everywhere I looked I saw bad to scathing reviews of it. But Hollywood looked at book sales and buzz and made a movie series. Not because it's good. Or because it SHOULD be made. But because it will make money with the same people who liked the books.

Hollywood in general makes what's in the wind. YA fantasy stories are popular? SNOW WHITE & THE HUNTSMAN. YA Sci-fi stories are popular? DIVERGENT. Nostalgic 80's cartoon properties? GI JOE, TF, TMNT.

So while you don't want to believe that lumping everyone's desires and expectations into one bucket...(nor do I really)...this is exactly what Hollywood studios do. It's what they MUST do. Taking a chance on things that may or may not be successful is a gamble that those with the money will balk at unless the right person is behind it. You can't throw 100 million dollars at something that may or may not be successful. They need more of a guarantee than that. Check what is popular and go with that.

If you want to believe that Hollywood is more altruistic and interested in high art than this...you're welcome to believe that. I don't have the faith in Hollywood to allow them that quarter. They are moneymakers first and foremost and everything is a survey to them of what's popular.

Had they been more about the art over money then TERMINATOR: SALVATION would have been WAY better.

Yes; and them being like that isn't an excuse for them to be like that.


Besides, all those safe bets? Explain to me the hundreds of SHIT movies - and I'm not talking "hated but makes millions" shit, I'm talking "doesn't make it's budget back" - that get made every year? You know, the ones that Hollywood keeps churning out despite terrible returns.

Explain to me how these "safe bets" are so horribly ineffective at making up for piracy.



The point is: Hollywood is a pile of garbage. Hollywood consists of a bunch of idiots. Peter Jackson is not Hollywood. He had way less credibility, less budget, less freedom making LotR than making the Hobbit. I'd put money on that. He's involved top to bottom in writing the scripts and directing.


So my question is: did "Hollywood" stick their mitts in and tell him to put in more cookie-cutter action scenes - despite the epic success of Lord of the Rings - or did Peter Jackson decide that's what "the masses" want - again, despite the massive success of LotR, Inception, the Dark Knight, do I need to list them all?

One or both of those parties are responsible. Someone has to wear the blame. SOMEONE decided what the audiences want. Despite heavy evidence to the contrary. So either it's PJ's fault and he's gotten lazy and is pandering, or it's Hollywood's fault and they're interfering for no apparent reason whatsoever and are a pile of idiots so large they should all actually, literally, be rounded up and shot for sheer stupidity, and PJ should be ashamed of himself for giving in to that.



I KNOW it's not an ideal world. I KNOW it's not clear-cut, easy-answer-to-everything kind of deal. BUT that doesn't change the fact that someone thought the Hobbit needed more on-rails sequences. And you've been saying that this is the case for the past few pages, so, I want to know who made that decision. I want to know who decided to say "fuck it" in the face of the biggest blockbusters of the past few years, against the proven track record of the SAME FRANCHISES PREVIOUSLY SUCCESSFUL ADAPTATION OF A DIFFERENT STORY, and decided, "Yup, what we need for the barrel scene is:..." and came up with what it was.
Who decided that it was a good idea to turn Smaug into a, to quote, "incompetent worm bumbling about falling over things".



Tell me, so that I can appropriately direct my ire. Because currently it's aimed at you and I don't think that's fair when you're basically playing Devil's Advocate. Heck. I enjoyed the movies. I just think they were average because of the poor handling of those select few scenes and things. And I guess that's kind of my point - looking at sales as the only marker is so hilariously stupid it deserves it's own Darwin Award. High sales =/= perfection. And assuming one can attribute the rampant success of the Hobbit films to more on-rails scenes is, IMO, not justifiable. I literally think that there is zero way to prove that those scenes put bums on seats.

I'd even go so far, as to imply that there is zero way those scenes sold people on the films - because you don't *see* the film until you go to the cinema. Ergo, 90% of the sales of the first Hobbit film were off the strength of LotR. So why mess with what worked?



I'm quite serious. Please. Explain this to me. How this Hollywood logic you're proposing actually works. Moreover: how it hasn't horrendously backfired on them and destroyed the entire industry long before Piracy was even a thing. Because what you've basically described is blind gambling. Which, as we all know, doesn't end up with happy gamblers. XD


Note: Any rampant use of emotional language or aggressive phrasing is purely for effect. I'm not taking this debate personally at all. XD

[Illuyankas]

Look. Look. I've got it. What if we, get this, what if we, ok, what if we play the poem OVER the cart chase scene?!

[QuickTidal]

Silencer, on 31 July 2014 - 02:10 PM, said:

I'm quite serious. Please. Explain this to me. How this Hollywood logic you're proposing actually works. Moreover: how it hasn't horrendously backfired on them and destroyed the entire industry long before Piracy was even a thing. Because what you've basically described is blind gambling. Which, as we all know, doesn't end up with happy gamblers. XD


Note: Any rampant use of emotional language or aggressive phrasing is purely for effect. I'm not taking this debate personally at all. XD

I can't explain it. Bad movies get made all the time. Hell, bad movies get made over good movies in most cases. Those are instances where Hollywood assumed and predicted and failed miserably. Happens all the time. It's (as you've said) blind gambling and the result is a Russian roulette outcome. They think they know what's blowing in the wind, so they throw shit at the wall and see if it will stick. It's not a good system, but it's how they work.

With Jackson and LOTR and HOBBIT. Those action sequences are more than likely his idea, not the studio. He's a fan of those types of action and effect sequences and always has been. His film career is peppered with such things (THE FRIGHTENERS).

And I'll be quite honest that I not only don't mind those sequences, I like them. Yup. I'm the audience he's impressed with them. The barrel ride was an absolute blast to watch! So while you and others may dislike them, I'm sure there are also people like me who DO like them. The escape from the Goblins looked great in HD 48fps. I was entertained. Which is what I paid for with my ticket.

Note: Oh I got that your phrasing is for effect, I know you well enough by now Silencer to know that you enjoy discussion as much as I. No worries.

[Traveller]

I get a bit fed up hearing 'It's what the modern audiences want' and 'people don't want that.' I am the modern audience!

I wanted a modern version of Kong with updated effects that retained the original's bittersweet tragedy, aimed at people who won't ever see the original simply because its black and white. The slow build and reveal in the original is still way better than a lot of recent efforts, the only recent film to even attempt it was Godzilla and it worked really well.

As to the movies success, I still can't see why with the huge budget and rights to an already famous story, the films have to be turned into action flicks to make a quick buck, instead of something deeper, richer and more memorable - especially with the calibre of the actors involved. (Imagine getting an actor like Ian McKellan and putting him in front of a green screen, running away in a variety of different ways for the majority of three movies..)

A lot of movies make more money on dvd sales etc, but only if they're worth rewatching. And after I saw Desolation of Smaug, I've not seen it again - it's the first of the series I can't bring myself to buy, simply because I don't want to watch it again. At this point, based on that trailer, I won't be going to see the last one either, so if they're trying to make money, it's not working.

This post has been edited by Traveller: 31 July 2014 - 04:16 PM

[QuickTidal]

Nor do I, but the best we can hope for is that there are those in Hollywood high ups who TRY to get those films made despite studio and producer interference/trend-watchers.

Gareth Edwards is obviously one (I loved his GODZILLA), I think JJ Abrams achieved that sort of thing with SUPER 8, and other younger directors are attempting to give us this...but they have a HUGE uphill battle to fight, especially when it comes to audiences who ONLY like action-splodey.

SNOWPIERCER is a good example of this. A Great film that was bought by the Weinsteins...who are notorious for buying films JUST to sit on them so no one else can see them....OR in the case of SNOWPIERCER they will buy it, meddle HEAVILY with it, and then release it a few years later.

And I think it's key to point out that LEGENDARY PICTURES are helping as they have over the last few years released some of the richest and best films we've seen this century so far. GODZILLA included. They take chances more than anyone else.

It should also be noted that they have SKULL ISLAND forthcoming. A KONG prequel. So make of that what you may.

http://www.forbes.co...s-monster-mash/

I want more young auteurs like Edwards, and his ilk to make films as they want to make them. Bucking the "trend" as it were. Another step in the right direction? Hiring Rian Johnson to direct STAR WARS: EPISODE VIII. I think they MIGHT be learning, but it's long road.

[Traveller]

So isn't Athelas only useful as a cure for morgal wounds when in the hands of the King... 'Kingsfoil?'

Or can any old elf use it?

[Macros]

people needed a pointless love interest, near death made it REAL

[Jakovasaurus]

[Jakovasaurus]

[Morgoth]

The movies are acceptably entertaining, but unlike the LOTR trilogy they will hardly be spoken of in ten years.