The Hobbit Opening Day in the US
I am immensely looking forward to seeing this. My family and I will not see the film until next weekend, after my son finishes up finals at the U of I. That is a good thing, because when the trilogy came out we saw each portion on the weekend before Christmas, so we will be keeping up a family tradition. Feel free to post here reactions to the film, although no plot spoilers please.
12 Responses to The Hobbit Opening Day in the US
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I’m taking my kids to see it at 5:00 this evening.
Very much looking forward to seeing it, though when that will actually happen is an open question.
That being said, watching the previews (and also listening to a review on Catholic radio the other night) it appears as though the tone of the movie will be very much like Lord of the Rings. That’s a bit of a shame since the Hobbit was a much more lighthearted book. Hopefully Jackson wasn’t too heavy-handed with this one.
Keep the ent in Advent!
Seeing it at 9:30 PM EST with one of my sons tonight. Looking forward to it immensely. Very curious as to how Jackson’s casting decision of Morgan Freeman as Bilbo works out…
Seems out of sequence, but there is no mistaking the genius of Peter Jackson’s direction.
Haven’t seen it yet – waiting for the rush to subside. The world premiere was held in Wellington last week – what bugs me is all the politicians and hi-so bigheads who prance down the red carpet – what a load of bollocks.
Anyway, I’m sure it will be great. Hobbiton is about 35 miles away – just outside a town called Matamata in the Waikato region of the North Isalnd.
The volcano scenes ( the real ones) are shot in our central north Island mountains, where the three of them, Tongariro, Ngaruahoe and Ruapehu are all active volcanoes – Tongariro has erupted twice in the past few months.
The other mountain scenes are shot in the central South Island high country, around Lake Wanaka and Mt. Aspiring, and Lake Wakatipu and Queenstown and Coronet Peak – all of these areas are popular ski-resort areas.
The Wellintonians all claim that Wellington is Middle Earth – but half them wouldn’t know the countryside and the great outdoors if it jumped up and bit ‘em on the butt – bunch of tossers
Enjoy the Kiwiana
I liked the movie overall. And I’m glad that Jackson added the backstory from the Appendix and from “The Quest for Erebor” in Unfinished Tales. They nicely tie the story to The Lord of the Rings, which, let’s face it, is the primary reason Jackson wanted to do The Hobbit.
But to the extent I was disappointed, it was in the fact that Jackson didn’t think sticking to Tolkien’s canon was good enough and added a bunch of extra-canonical stuff that, quite frankly, was complete crapola and added absolutely NOTHING to the story. This could have easily been done in two movies of about 2-and-a-half-hour in length – even with the added backstory information – had Jackson not sought to embellish, with stuff he pulled out of his arse, a tale that didn’t need embellishing.
There’s enough good stuff in An Unexpected Journey that makes it worth seeing and enjoying. (In no way is this movie as bad as the unwatchable – at least for me – Two Towers.) But one of the ways I was able to enjoy An Unexpected Journey as much as I did was by pretending Jackson’s extra-canonical additions weren’t actually happening.
Helpful hint for those who haven’t seen it:
It’s a 3-hour-long movie, and if you’re like me and you buy the large-sized re-fillable drinks for you and your family, you’ll need to get up at times during the movie to re-fill the drink and to empty your bladder. I found those parts of the movie in which extra-canonical stuff was taking place an excellent time to do these things.
A stark reminder of how far we’ve fallen from God’s Grace and become selfish, arrogant, full of oneself, inconsiderate and blind to truth, goodness, beauty and the love of God and neighbor. This type of tale can stir the desire for the quest and the calling that God has given us to build up His Kingdom for if we don’t respond with courage, generosity and faithfulness we risk to lose our soul by clinging to inertia we become the very evil just described. As always we must take up and by the Help of God’s Grace fight the good fight for this is spiritual warfare that can not be ignored. Penance, penance, penance! Those minions on earth who do the devil’s bidding have become confident but forgetful that their ultimate defeat grows nearer and nearer for the gates of hell will never triumph against our Holy Mother Catholic Church!
Saw it, enjoyed it.
Some parts had me wanting to bang my head against things– the pipeweed-being-smoked-like-weed-not-tobacco thing, for example– but all and all, not too bad. They kept some of the lighthearted stuff. Someone needs to hit whoever wrote Sauroman’s lines with a large stick, and tell him the guy’s supposed to be a Great Wizard, not a cardboard scold.
SOME of the ever popular bones-can’t-break stuff going on, but it was usually dwarves at the bottom of a pile, so perhaps justified.
I want to adopt Fili and Kili, and possibly Bofur. MOST of them wouldn’t look out of place at a family reunion for mom’s side! (Thorin has a bit much hair on his head for that, but eh.)
While walking out, I summed up to my husband: “That was really enjoyable. If we take mom to see it, we need to make sure she’s had a few stiff drinks.” (She’s an original Tolkien geek.)
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