The Hobbit: Battle of The Five Armies ends with a 45-minute battle scene

AVclub.com ^

[bakeneko]

No kidding.

We could have had 5 or 6 new Conan movies, some Lovecraft movies, and some Fahfrd and Grey Mouser movies by now.

[sargon]

Peter Jackson, in his stinker version of King Kong, had a 45 minute falling off a cliff scene. Stupidest thing I ever saw in a movie.

You're forgetting the even stupider and longer scene from the same film: the 72-minute Brontosaurus stampede through the canyon, with our heroes dodging the beasts all the while.

Once again, too much self-indulgent CGI, instead of quality content. It happens over and over nowadays. Short-attention-span theater. Look what they've done to the Star Trek franchise. It morphed from character-driven drama into utterly mindless action flicks.

[EternalVigilance]

I’ve tried as hard as I can to forget that movie.

Can’t really though because it was my first date with a brilliant, beautiful lady.

When she found out I hated the flick as much as she did, she married me.

:-)

[Altariel]

I wish Joss Wheedon was in charge instead of Jackson.

[warsaw44]

The most painful to watch music video ever. EVER!

[catnipman]

“The first LOTR was good. The second with the long battle scenes lost me so much I didn’t bother to ever watch the third. “

Ditto. Except I walked out of the second one about half way through.

[RIghtwardHo]

So looking forward to this.

[Sherman Logan]

Right, I remember that. The man is highly talented, but he badly needs somebody to ride herd on him. He’s like a talented author who desperately needs a strict editor.

[Sherman Logan]

Now that there is funny. Exactly the same thought came to me!

Robert Jordan’s early books in the series were great because he apparently had a strict editor. When they were successful his wife became his editor and each book in the series got more text with less story. Then there were more and more books, to the point where it became quite literally a nevery-ending story.

It could have been one of the best series ever if he’d had the discipline, imposed by self or someone else, to keep it to something like 6 books.

I read all the way to the end because I was invested in the characters, but if I’d known what I was getting into I’d never have started.

[Lady Heron]

Maybe the first couple of books of the never ending series but ugh after that.

[LS]

Hmm, I love these-—but I didn’t read the books. BTW, saw “Fury” yesterday. Ok, predictable, but probably the best WW II tank battle ever filmed. They really got Sherman vs Tiger!

[ClearCase_guy]

The books have real grandeur and gravitas. Tolkien was explicitly writing about the struggle of Good against Evil -- and he handled it as a deep and complex problem (which it is).

Jackson has progressively turned it all into a videogame.

[Harold Shea]

We went to see Fury day before yesterday.

THE MACHINE!!!

Really good tank vs tank scenes and that

going round and round with the Tiger to

get behind it was smart.

Better than Pvt Ryan

[Ransomed]

“We could have had 5 or 6 new Conan movies, some Lovecraft movies, and some Fahfrd and Grey Mouser movies by now.”

Pixar or similar studios should have dipped its toe into some of that. I always though the way to really nail a good Conan would be short animated vignettes. They made some good movies, but enough of the rehashed cutesy same thing ALL the time.

FReegards

[LS]

Yeah, no chance with a 75 MM gun head on to a Tiger’s armor.

[Vanders9]

I thought the LOTR movies were excellent - considering it is absolutely impossible to transpose a book directly onto film (they are very different media) - I think Jackson did really well with it. Most of the changes he made frankly make the story better.

But the Hobbit...I agree with you. Its just too different. I think the problem is that LOTR is such a rich creation that it can stand tampering with, but the Hobbit is really quite a short little tale, and to make it into three films really does call for huge amounts to be added, and that fatally weakens it. OTOH, the battle scenes in LOTR are particularly well done, so a climactic 45 minute recreation of the battle of five armies should be excellent.

[DeoVindiceSicSemperTyrannis]

I agree. The LOTR were ok, but the Hobbit ones only seem to be about 10% based on the book. As a big Tolkien fan, I find this extremely annoying and it downright makes me angry sometimes. Especially when they insert fake characters and fake love triangles that never existed. And when they have the dwarves go in the mountain with Bilbo, thus eliminating the need to have brought him along ( I thought he was supposed to be the burglar)? The license the took in the LOTR films can be mostly overlooked, but in the Hobbit it is way too much to overlook, as most of the film is hooey.