Official 'The Hobbit' Thread - - Part 18

[Marvolo]

You guys want a laugh? Watch the 2012 director's table discussion where Peter Jackson states, with no self-awareness, that he makes films differently than Hollywood.

Maybe he means that he shows up naked on set? Because everything in this trilogy's production is essential Hollywood excess.

He wasnt referring to the content of his films. He was referring to his methods and the atmosphere of his sets and the environment the crew work within. Every actor Ive ever seen discuss his productions talk about the way his productions are.

 

[Tacit Ronin]

Like making Sir Ian cry because he had to act alongside green blankets? Or making most of the crew stand around green and blue blankets for the majority of the shoot? Sounds pretty Hollywood to me.

 

[Marvolo]

Bumped for new page:


Canadian DVD Cover

Canadian 2D Blu-ray Cover

TheDigitalBits has confirmed with inside sources that the Extended Cut adds 36 minutes.

First, while Warner Home Video hasn’t yet announced the Blu-ray and Blu-ray 3D release of The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies – Extended Edition yet (tentatively due on either 11/3, 11/10 or 11/17), we do know a few things about the release. First, it’s going to be about 36 minutes longer than the theatrical cut (in the neighborhood of 180 minutes long) – the most substantial of all The Hobbit: Extended Editions. That comes from Jackson himself, and I’ve managed to confirm it with sources directly involved, who tell me that the footage is “significant” and most of it has been added to the battle at the end. Second, it’s going to be screened in theaters in October, as part of a worldwide, week-long The Hobbit: Extended Edition screening event in theaters (you can see the AMC listing here, which includes the 3 hour run time, and The One Ring.net has more here). The Extended Edition of An Unexpected Journey will screen on 10/5, followed by the EE of The Desolation of Smaug on 10/7, and finally the EE or The Battle of the Five Armies on 10/13. Third, we now know that The Battle of the Five Armies – Extended Edition has received an R-rating from the MPAA (more here at Rope of Silicon). We expect an official Blu-ray release announcement from Warner any time now. Of course, we’ll post the details as soon as we have them.

http://www.thedigitalbits.com/columns/my-two-cents/080615_1345

 

[Boom]

The fact that an R-rated cut of a Hobbit movie even exists is deeply troubling to me. For a book written as a bedtime story for children. Tolkien's grave-spinning must have reached such high velocities that his remains have probably hit the earth's core by now.

And most of the new footage is for the battle that is already profusely over-long? Awesome! Hopefully that means more Alfrid!






Someone please, for the love of God, re-adapt this book in my lifetime.

 

[Marvolo]

Like making Sir Ian cry because he had to act alongside green blankets? Or making most of the crew stand around green and blue blankets for the majority of the shoot? Sounds pretty Hollywood to me.

Oh the old Ian cried story. Ian was stressed out and Jackson helped make it easier and more accomodating. How was Jackson supposed to know that Ian would have a breakdown? What he had Ian doing wasnt some unreasonable request. Set in this section and respond to the actors in another section.

Ian began to get frustrated becauase he couldnt get his timing right and couldnt hear the other actors well. As far as I know nothing like this happened again so to me it seems Ian was just having a bad day. We all do.

And you know what, Ian is an actor who is paid to do a job. So if Jackson needed him to be on another set from thw other actors Jackson and any other director was right to ask him to do it. What matters is how Jackson handled the situation. Jackson didnt tell Ian to **** off and do it anyways. He helped him get through it.

We all get stressed out on our job. Lord, knows I have. Some of us break down, but unlike with Ian when we cry to our boss we dont always get the entire work environment changed to accomodate us.

But yeah Jackson is a tyrant for expecting his actors to be able to do their job and he is the only director that has ever had an actor breakdown on set. I bet he kicks kittens inbetween setups. Other directors ask their actors what they feel like doing and when they arent comfortable doing it well they dont have to, because thats what a loving nurturing director does. Coddles his employees.

 

[Tacit Ronin]

He is not a tyrant. He is a very Hollywood-esque director. Which makes his claim that he does things different from Hollywood hilarious.

I am sure Sir Ian believed Pete too. But his tears are the streaming evidence that he is not, not anymore.

 

[Boom]

Expecting a classically-trained, older actor to step into a green room and act against glowing tennis balls and an earpiece, all but deprived of his senses, in any way that is both convincing and enjoyable is pretty unreasonable to me.

But hey. Anything to force that 3D format that contributed absolutely nothing!

 

[DCW]

The fact that an R-rated cut of a Hobbit movie even exists is deeply troubling to me. For a book written as a bedtime story for children. Tolkien's grave-spinning must have reached such high velocities that his remains have probably hit the earth's core by now.

So true!

 

[Tacit Ronin]

Yes. The reason Sir Ian had to work with Tennis balls and green cloth was because stereoscopic 3D breaks the illusion of Force Perspective, the earlier, more actor friendly way of shooting differently sized people.

Not Hollywood. Says Pete. Not Hollywood indeed.

 

[C. Lee]

I watched one of the extras that addressed Ian's breakdowm that day. Ian was upset because he was having trouble being separated from the other actors and not being able to get the timing of the dialogue right. When they found out it was upsetting him...they shut down production that day, consoled him, gave him time to pull himself together. Then Peter got everyone together and had them redo his dressing area to make it as comfortable and homey as they could and the next morning everyone came and greet him tell him how much they loved and respected him.

Sounds like a terrible boss to me.

 

[Marvolo]

He is not a tyrant. He is a very Hollywood-esque director. Which makes his claim that he does things different from Hollywood hilarious.

I am sure Sir Ian believed Pete too. But his tears are the streaming evidence that he is not, not anymore.

So one old man has a stressful day because of his own hearing problems and Jackson is now the epitome of Hollywood directors? Hyperbole much. Should Jackson redefine his whole outlook on how he does things based around a single incident?

You do realize that all productions even on indie films have stressful days and actor meltdowns, right? The hours are long and the stress is high on every film set. Most films today use green and blue screen also. Neither stress nor green and blue screen is exclusive to hollywood productions. And the fact stress and blue screen exist on Jacksons productions doesnt negate other differences between his NZ productions and a production you might find under a director such as Michael Bay, Ron Howard, Ridley Scott or any other director who has worked in the Hollywood system for decades etc.

Jackson having learned outside of the Hollywood system and so many of his crew being predominantly New Zealanders Im sure there are a number of things that his productions do and dont do that separate them from a typical production in Hollywood.

 

[Boom]

Marvolo, how you can watch the Hobbit films and not smell the stink of Hollywood all over them, I frankly do not understand and I will simply have to agree to disagree.

Playing "Dr. Frankenstein" by putting together pieces of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings Appendices and stitching it up with fan-fiction, all for the sake of stretching a 300-page children's book into a three-film false-epic. That alone reeks of corporate greed.

The insistence on 3D and 48fps and digital, the over-reliance on CG, the over-the-top action pieces that overstay their welcome, forcing fan-favorite characters and references from previously-successful films. That all sounds "Hollywood" to me. Push new technologies above all else and milk what we can out of this once prestigious franchise.

 

[Tacit Ronin]

So one old man has a stressful day because of his own hearing problems and Jackson is now the epitome of Hollywood directors?

He is not the epitome of Hollywood directors, that would be Michael Bay. But he is high up there.

Hyperbole much. Should Jackson redefine his whole outlook on how he does things based around a single incident?

I don't care if he redefines it or not. I just found his self-unawareness in the aforementioned video funny. It's like George Lucas talking about how important story is. He can continue to make his films look fake, artificial and overly laden with CGI, by all means.

You do realize that all productions even on indie films have stressful days and actor meltdowns, right? The hours are long and the stress is high on every film set. Most films today use green and blue screen also. Neither stress nor green and blue screen is exclusive to hollywood productions. And the fact stress and blue screen exist on Jacksons productions doesnt negate other differences between his NZ productions and a production you might find under a director such as Michael Bay, Ron Howard, Ridley Scott or any other director who has worked in the Hollywood system for decades etc.

I think, if Chris Nolan could make a film about different planets, space, wormholes, black holes, five dimensional tessaracts with only one Green Screen shot*, Peter Jackson could've made a film about a world that mostly resembles ours with far less green rag then he ended up using, no? That would be an Unhollywood way on these days. In fact, isn't that what he did, a decade ago?

Jackson having learned outside of the Hollywood system and so many of his crew being predominantly New Zealanders Im sure there are a number of things that his productions do and dont do that separate them from a typical production in Hollywood.

It's a shame that having learned outside of the studio system did not keep him from its bad habits. And whatever methods you claim that they don't do the Hollywood way, do they offset the significant ones that they do?





*It's unbelievable but true. Watch the behind the scenes features. Nolan refused to let the cast look at green rags. He actually projected images of planets for them to interact with.

 

[Marvolo]

Marvolo, how you can watch the Hobbit films and not smell the stink of Hollywood all over them, I frankly do not understand and I will simply have to agree to disagree.

Playing "Dr. Frankenstein" by putting together pieces of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings Appendices and stitching it all up with fan-fiction, all for the sake of stretching a 300-page children's book into a three-film false-epic. That alone reeks of corporate greed.

The insistence on 3D and 48fps and digital, the over-reliance on CG, the over-the-top action pieces that overstay their welcome, forcing fan-favorite characters and references from previously-successful films that were not needed to tell the story at hand. Sounds "Hollywood" to me. Push technologies and milk what we can out of this once prestigious franchise.

Im talking about how he manages the production. You are talking about the finished product.

For instance this is the difference. The company I work for produces the same product as the company beside us. Graded finished lumber. But my boss and my crew dont run the production the same way as the managers of the neighboring company. Sure our products have similarities and the outcome has similarites but our productions and the way we work is very different.

Every director does things and runs their productions in their own way, but if you work outside of the Hollywood studio system it is different than working in Hollywood, CA. Hell, just look at George Lucas's experience. He had complete culture shock when he went to England to film Star Wars. The differences in the way the English crews and studios did things was very different from the crews in Hollywood. Thats the sort of thing Im talking about.

 

[Boom]

.... How he manages the production informs the finished product.

He managed this production by stranding his cast on green-screen island, directing entire scenes from a computer screen, making substantial changes last minute, and basically scripting and shooting sequences on the fly (see DoS's final act). What did the final films look like?

Glossy, CG backgrounds. Weightless, CG characters. Physics-defying scenes built entirely in a computer. Sets that reek of artificiality. The "Tom and Jerry" final act of DoS. I'll stop there.

Christ. One of the video blogs showed the entire SFX team staying the night in a cramped office because they had so many shots to finish and they simply could not leave. Who managed that?

Peter Jackson could be the nicest guy in the world, and he certainly comes across that way. And the New Zealand film industry (hell, New Zealand as a whole) owe him a great deal. I can appreciate why his crew is eager to please him and not let him down. But he's at that point where he has almost no one to rein him in, and it's starting to show. Just seeing how this production was handled and managed, and the final results it produced. I'm sorry, but it looks like a nightmare.

 

[Victarion]

I think the fact that Jackson went straight to the appendices In an attempt to smooth the transition into LOTR shows his love for the material. Granted I get that Jackson is more a fan of the rings novels than the hobbit. In regards to the sfx use...i didn't care for the overuse, but I can't fault Jackson for expecting his artists to do their job. I didn't notice the example you mention Boom, but everyone seemed pretty content in the behind the scenes material.

 

[CGHulk]

 

[regwec]

Marvolo, how you can watch the Hobbit films and not smell the stink of Hollywood all over them, I frankly do not understand and I will simply have to agree to disagree.

Playing "Dr. Frankenstein" by putting together pieces of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings Appendices and stitching it up with fan-fiction, all for the sake of stretching a 300-page children's book into a three-film false-epic. That alone reeks of corporate greed.

The insistence on 3D and 48fps and digital, the over-reliance on CG, the over-the-top action pieces that overstay their welcome, forcing fan-favorite characters and references from previously-successful films. That all sounds "Hollywood" to me. Push new technologies above all else and milk what we can out of this once prestigious franchise.

You missed out the deeply unfunny, peurile "humour" that is always the hallmark of another "demographic" box being ticked in the production of a soulless tent pole movie.

I think the fact that Jackson went straight to the appendices In an attempt to smooth the transition into LOTR shows his love for the material.

He was just mining whatever material he could legitimately exploit. He further supplemented that with a lot of ****** fan fiction which was nowhere in even Tolkien's most esoteric scribblings. The disproportionate and totally disruptive narrative prominence given to the unlovable and wholly newly created characturds of Tauriel and Alfrid shows just how little respect PJ now has for the material.

LOTR was hardly a perfect adaptation from a purist perspective, but it is hard to believe is was directed by the same guy.

 

[vinsanity]

Christ. One of the video blogs showed the entire SFX team staying the night in a cramped office because they had so many shots to finish and they simply could not leave. Who managed that?
.

That happened both in the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings movies as well. If you see the post-productions vids of the appendices you'll see the same situation in almost every movie.

 

[CGHulk]

That even happened at Disney going all the way back to 1936 with the Ink and Paint girls working on Snow White, they wanted to sleep under their desks because they believed they were making magic, and something groundbreaking and they loved it. When I was at Disney Animation back in the nineties we'd never go home as well. When you love something that much it's not a chore. George Lucas would tell his CG artist to go home while working on Episode 1 and they wouldn't listen.

On the Incredibles bonus disc you can see how exhausted the animators are, but trust me they loved every minute of it. They are living the dream!

 

[regwec]

It's a great shame that so much effort went into something as feeble, forgettable and soulless as The Hobbit movies, in my opinion.

 

[Iceman]

They're starting to fade from memory a bit now, even though I like parts of them.

 

[Bruce Malone]

So...

The Hobbit films or the Star Wars prequels?

I honestly think the SW prequels may fare better in public opinion as time goes on.

 

[regwec]

The SW prequels at least didn't carry the stigma of crapping on someone else's work: Lucas was just trashing his own legacy.

 

[Iceman]

But also expectations for The Hobbit films were nowhere near that for the prequels.