PETER JACKSON CONFIRMS THERE WILL BE 63 HOBBIT FILMS

Not sure about this. But so far the first Hobbit film looks great so I'll give Jackson the benefit of the doubt (he did give us The Lord of the Rings masterpiece). And I'd rather 63 Hobbit films than a 4th Rush Hour.

I could barely swallow such a simple tale getting blown up into two films. I can't stomach it taking THREE films and roughly 7.5 hours for Bilbo to return home.

Grouchy McGrouches all up in this thread.

Not grouchy, just with a good memory from the first hour of King Kong.

If "grouchy" is code for realist, then yes indeed Greg is grouchy. Me too.

Ah King Kong wasn't bad. Lovely Bones was. Let's at least wait to see how the first film fares this Christmas.

 

I will say, It'll be weird seeing one of these films in the middle of the summer (the release date for the third is scheduled for summer 2014)

Well, if the movies actually suck I'll the first in line gnashing my teeth and beating my breasts. It's just that I haven't even watched a full trailer or even read a plot synopsis yet.

I think Fellowship was sort of the first and last hurrah in terms of getting a product that was as little Jackson and as much of Tolkien as possible.  At this point I'm inclined just to say "fuck it" and let Jackson go wild with whatever he wants.  With so many reboots and reimaginings these days, I really can't complain about someone doing a big colorful mess of a few films.  Words like, "tight" or "focussed" were probably never going to be used to describe these films.

I'm really trying to wrap my head around how some of you don't see this as a giant red flag.

Two reasons for me. Cause his Lord of the Rings trilogy was a masterpiece. And every piece of footage from, at least, the first Hobbit film looks to be faithful and on the same level as the trilogy. This could all turn to shit but equally I think Jackson should be given the benefit of the doubt.

I'm sure Jackson's made a wonderful Hobbit film, it's the extra five hours of material he's putting around it that befuddle the hell out of me.

On the one hand, I think if this was an original fantasy film, none of us would bat an eye; so why can't we accept that it's possible to make something good spinning off the world that Tolkien created, and that Jackson has established onscreen with such ambition and success?  But then there's another part of me that thinks unless the third film is an absolute home run, there's no way it can avoid the taint of fanfic.

I adore The Lord of the Rings.  The Return of the King might be my flat-out favorite film ever.  But The Hobbit didn't need to be two films, let alone three.  I don't need to spend nine hours with a group of dwarves trying to steal gold from a dragon.

 

Still, I had (and will try to continue to have) faith.  But it's not King Kong that gives me pause about this.  Kong was unwieldy, but it had heart and generally hit the big moments.  What gives me pause here is The Lovely Bones, which was completely tone deaf and a miserable approach to the material.

 

If that's the Jackson who wants to stretch this out for a third film... uh-oh.

 

(But hey, maybe they'll all be awesome!)

LOTR was also three books' worth of material that Jackson trimmed down to make into three movies.  He's doing exactly the opposite with The Hobbit -- taking one book and cramming three films' worth of stuff into it.  To the detriment of the fairy tale simplicity of the story.

This is called a director having carte blanche, and it rarely turns out well.

 

Seriously, The Hobbit should NOT be 3 movies. It just shouldn't

This sounds like the most excruciating, over indulgent approach possible to adapting this story. A four hour cut of the Hobbit could work, but it's simply not the Lord of the Rings, and this sounds like a studio's financial decision abetted by a director with wildly misconceived notions about the nature of his source material and no small amount of personal hubris. Apocalypse Kong: Redux.

I never want any film to be bad, so I will hold out hope this turns out for the best. I just can't shake this feeling though that after we almost got a one film Del Torro Hobbit, we now find ourselves in a hostile, unfriendly timeline.

If this in any way impedes Sherlock, I'm'a cut a bitch.

*Nods in approval*

 

My interest went to the shitter when del Toro left and Jackson took over, and I'm the guy who loves the trilogy and thinks they get better with each installment.

I thought The Hobbit was going to be two films, and the third was the bridge.  Are you guys now saying they've confirmed The Hobbit will cover all three films?

My interest didn't die, but even if these films turn out really well, I'm gonna dream about what a single Del Toro Hobbit film would have been like.

 

I'm the guy with little to no interest in Lord Of The Rings, so it will be fun watching the potential trainwreck and fanboy fallout.  

So this will be Jackson's "Prequel Trilogy" to his "Original Trilogy" I guess.

 

Not complaining since I enjoy Jackson's interpretation of Tolkien's work but the parallels are pretty amusing.

Peter Jackson, fuck off.

 

*BRO HUG!*

Don't be fuckin' gay, man!  (Come on, just not in sight of others...)

 

I wonder how long this has been in the works.  It always struck me as a little weird that the initial teaser was just for An Unexpected Journey and not The Hobbit Parts 1 and 2.

I don't think this will be trainwreck. I think it will be one good movie overstuffed into three with indulgent bullshit that I don't care about.

 

What's sad here is that Peter Jackson is a director I have immense respect for, but he's losing me. I can't believe that he sat back and looked at KING KONG and didn't think to himself, "You know, I could trim a little off of this." Or that he looked at LOVELY BONES and thought it was good. This move seems like a clear indication that he has not learned from his mistakes. At all. 

Not surprised per say. When Jackson said it aloud at Comic-Con, I knew it was gonna happen. Potter and Nolan's Batman are over, Hangover is ending (You laugh but how many straight comedies do $200M domestic?), Sherlock Holmes seems to have fizzled out (Though I imagine a third one might still happen) and Superman is a question mark.

 

This is the only "printing money" machine WB has at the moment.

Very conflicted about this. There are a ton of stories in Middle-earth that would be fantastic to see on screen, but at what point does the addition of those stories become too much of a distraction from the "main" story, a.k.a. The Hobbit? At the moment, I'm very cautiously optimistic, but that's probably because I can't get enough of Tolkien's world.

If Jackson thinks there's so much story to tell why not just exec produce a fucking TV series?

Cause TV sucks.

I take it you don't get AMC or HBO?

 

This question is a very big deal to me.

Jackson's statement sure reads like it's The Hobbit Part 3.

 

Yeah that's basically what he said.

Because you can't get people to wear those fucking 3D glasses without the peer pressure of the theater audience.

In related news!

 

 

 

Thirded. (Seconded?) I was going to make the same point.  I believe this is a bridge movie, not a third Hobbit movie.  As mentioned on another site that I will not name, there is plenty of material in the appendices of LOTR to pull this off just fine.

 

ETA: Nevermind. *sigh*

 

77 goddamn minutes.

 

That would be very disappointing.  The Hobbit Part 3: Gilding the Lily.

They've apparently registered the domain names Riddles in the Dark and The Desolation of Smaug.

This isn't an adaptation anymore...it's fanfic.

 

Wasn't that a Styx album?

But they left Beorn and...um...Rivendell? Therefore, 77 minutes become SIX+ HOURS!

I'm sure HOBBIT VS PREDATOR isn't far behind. Fucking ridiculous.

Hey, did you guys see "Heavenly Creatures"? Shit was fucking great. Whatever happened to the director?

Just curious. He was primed to make some interesting movies once upon a time.

 

They left out Beorn and everything with the Arkenstone.  But added a bunch of musical numbers.  Add all that back in there's still no way this couldn't be a two/two and a half hour film.

 

Like it would be the worst thing if that happened. 

 

Look, no one's saying this sounds like a great idea, but I'm not willing to give up on these quite yet, maybe just because I'd much rather be excited for them than dread them. If they turn out terrible, there'll be plenty of time to be down on them later. And in truth, what I've seen thus far doesn't nearly prove to me this is a doomed enterprise.