"The Hobbit: An Expected Journey Into Our Collective Pockets"

We sit only a few hours from the release of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey and I'm not excited about it at all. I never thought I would say that considering I saw each of the three LOTR's films on their opening day and own all three on extended edition DVD. I've sat through the 11 or so hours of all three extended editions back to back and spent two whole hours this past Saturday trying to decide if I was going to go sit through a marathon of all three in a theater before I decided I could just do it at my apartment. Needless to say I'm a big fan of Tolkien and the Middle Earth world. I don't really know what's holding me back from going to see The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey at midnight tonight.

Maybe it's because it's in 3D and I think 3D is just a gimmick that lets the studios us to reach their greedy bastard hands into my pockets.

Maybe it's because it's also in HFR (high frame rate) which is also really stupid.

Maybe it's the fact that it's the first in a trilogy of films adapting a 300 page children's book... Yeah three movies.

Maybe because it's a 2 hour and 46 minute movie that is the first in a trilogy of films adapting a 300 page children's book.


Maybe it's all of those things put together. Yeah, that's it.

Sure I was originally excited when I heard the film was finally getting made and that Peter Jackson was back in the directors chair. Although it was originally supposed to be Guillermo Del Toro directing but MGM was bad at money for awhile and delayed production for so long that he stepped off leaving it open for Jackson to re-fill the chair. At the beginning of production they began releasing production diary videos that got me all giddy seeing the costume designers, set designers and make up artists back at work. All the pieces were back in place and it seemed impossible for them to fuck this up.

Then they made one talking about the fact that it was in 3D. As I already indicated, I am not a fan of 3D. Sometimes it works, but I rarely think that it actually adds to the film experience. Plus I fucking hate shelling out 4-8 extra bucks to see a movie that way. I came to terms with this dumbness and tried to move on.

Then I learned they were splitting the movie into two parts. Seeing the success of the last Harry Potter book and the fact that it was split into two pieces this seemed like an obvious move. This didn't actually bother me because I thought that maybe PJ was just going to split it into two short movies. Sure it means more money for them but a movie around an hour and a half is perfect because sometimes sitting in a theater for 3 hours isn't optimal if you have to take a piss.

Then I heard they were releasing turning the film into three parts and that the first part was 2 hours and 46 minutes long. That was when my expectations began to disappear, and my excitement level completely dissipated. THREE PARTS. THREE PARTS. THREE PARTS. I mean what the fuck. It's a kids book and it's 300 pages long. I'm re-reading the book right now so it's fresh in my mind (of course I'm still gonna see it) and I was past 100 pages after only two hours. I have the reading comprehension of a short bus fifth grader and it only took me two hours to get 100 pages. That's a third of the book so wouldn't that be what this first movie is supposed to encompass? And somehow that first third is nearly 3 hours? At that rate the three put together in what is supposed to be the preface to LOTR, and you have a 9 hour introduction trilogy to a 9 hour movie trilogy. I'm not a mathematician, but that's idiotic.

Sure I've heard that they have apparently inserted lots of back-story on most of the core characters from The Simarillion (is a collection of mythopoetic work that was published after Tolkien passed away) but why is that necessary? Also, I haven't read The Simarillion but I've heard it's extremely difficult to read whereas The Hobbit is written for 10 year olds. I just don't see how they mix, or why they need to be mixed. The source material from The Hobbit may be a little "kiddie," but it's more than enough for a movie.


Lastly, HFR? Really Peter J? You just had to go and George Lucas the shit out of the Middle Earth universe didn't you? For those of you who don't know what high frame rate is, it's when the film is presented at twice the amount of frames per second (48 frames per second as opposed to 24). That still might not mean much to you but film is really just a collection of individual pictures taken and put together at a rate so that it looks like one continual moving piece. Hence why they were originally called "moving pictures". You might think "wouldn't more frames be a better representation of reality?" The answer is no because our eyes don't see that way and it actually makes images look less real. 24 fps is a better representation of what we actually see in every day life so it's unnecessary to enhance it in any way.

They previewed footage of the film at comic con in  San Diego earlier this year and the response was not very good. You would think of the general consensus were that it didn't look good and that it was unnecessary that he would just nix his idea of presenting it in HFR. Unfortunately he's dumb. Maybe when he lost all that weight a few years ago he lost some of his common sense. Who knows.

The early reviews have said that the film looks a lot better in 24 fps than in 48 fps. The main criticisms people have said about HFR are that it looks like you're watching a soap opera. It just doesn't look normal. Other people have said that the slow shots of the landscapes are amazing but anything that involves a lot of CGI or camera movement is too much. It's been described by some as "dizzying" and others have complained that the visual effects are laughable in many scenes because at an enhanced frame rate you can't hide your errors. I guess the overall consensus is that the HFR has had a detrimental effect on the movie itself and that if you see it in regular 24 fps, it's a much better experience.

The other criticisms of the film are that it's got a very deliberate pace and suffers from it. At the beginning there is apparently a lot of back story and it takes forever for them to actually get along on their quest. Apparently it's also extremely repetitive in action running into similar problems around every twist and turn of the world. Still most critics have said it's enjoyable to a degree but it's no where near the quality of any of the LOTR's films.

I'm sure a lot of you reading this will probably see this movie and if you do you'll probably have several options of how to see it. In many theaters you'll have as many as four different ways to see it.
At the theater near me in Burbank there is a regular 24 frame per second presentation of the film, an IMAX 3D HFR version, a 3D HFR version, and a regular 3D version. If you really love 3D I would check out the regular 3D version of the film as opposed to the HFR versions. There's just no reason to see it at the enhanced rate. Still my recommendation is that you just see it in the regular format to keep it consistent with the LOTR's films. I may still see it in HFR because I'm curious but I'll likely just sneak in after paying for another movie next week because I don't want to spend 18 dollars on it.

At least going into this film I have killed my own expectations so I could very well be surprised by the end product. It's tough to have to stack up with the expections that the LOTR's movies set but they had all the tools at their disposal to accomplish that feat. I'll give you my overall thoughts on the film after I see it, but I'm in no rush to get to the theater to check it out. I don't see it being better than Skyfall or the Dark Knight Rises in terms of blockbusters but who knows.

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At one point I actually started to think that maybe all of this bullshit wouldn't have happened and the movie wouldn't look stupid to me of Guillermo Del Toro had actually stayed on. Then I saw this trailer and I think no matter what I would've been disappointed.

Also here's another pile of dog shit Disney hucked 250 million dollars at.

Oh and don't go see Killing Them Softly. Andrew Dominik's film tries to have the style of Drive and the wittiness of a Tarantino movie. It fails to deliver on both. A few bits of good cinematography here and there but not worth your time.