The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug

[Mantis]

The third one is an outright abomination of film making. If you haven't seen it I would recommend you save 3 hours of your life and never bother.

[Achtung Englander]

I agree. That and all Smeagol

[Subway Diet]

Shrug
I mean, yeah, they're hardly perfect, but I still quite liked all the Hobbit films.

Edit: Oh, I was expecting some new, candid interview, not a clip from the bonus features.

[Animalmother]

The fact that it made it onto the bonus features is telling. 'Yeah it was a total pain in the arse and we rushed it. But, whatever..'

Type of film you could have on in the background while your doing something else, gave a glance over every so often.

I'd love Jackson to make a proper horror film again or scifi, back to his roots but with a big budget.

[Sly Boots]

This was on Cracked yesterday or the day before (may even have been where AE saw that specific clip)... apparently the whole of the bonus features for The Hobbit are like an extended apology.

[Achtung Englander]

It was from Cracked. My source for news

[Sly Boots]

Pretty much the same

[Wrathbone]

For the record, the LOTR extended extras are exceptional and almost as good as the films themselves. I've only seen the Hobbit extras from the first film, not because the extras are bad - they're really good - but because it's too depressing. The bit that stood out was the troll scene where they were all tied to the tree for hours on end, massively uncomfortable and roasting to death. None of the cast seemed to imply it was worth it. Compare that to Helm's Deep, which was gruelling, torturous work by all accounts, but everyone involved comes cross as being thrilled to have been a part of it.

[Mantis]

I didn't realise that the experience of making these movies was such a nightmare for all involved. I feel a little sorry for Peter Jackson now, knowing that he had so much to live up to after such a successful LOTR trilogy. It's slightly relieving to know that they aren't absolutely terrible movies because he went as mad as George Lucas, but more a result of studio factors and production issues.

He did make Ian McKellen cry on set though. So he doesn't get a free pass.

[Subway Diet]

Is it weird that I consider the Appendices features to be crucial parts of Jackson's Middle Earth movies? Apparently not.
The Hobbit movies are what they are, and I still admit to enjoy them on their own, but understanding what was going on behind the scenes actually elevates the films in my eyes.

Of course, I'm not suggesting that anyone who doesn't like the films needs to watch 18+ hours of documentary to truly "get" the movies or some such nonsense. I'll admit to being an edge case there.

[DjchunKfunK]

I'm slightly astonished by that. By what criteria do you think it's the best?

I thought the third wasn't just a bad Middle Earth film, it was a bad film outright.

The first was just boring and the second was filler nonsense. The action in the final film was at least slightly enjoyable to watch if also rather dumb and I liked the stuff with Bilbo and Thorin. Don't get me wrong I still think it was a bad film, I just found it more interesting than the first two.

Also expectations probably play into this a fair bit, by the third film my expectations were as low as possible.

[Achtung Englander]

Also expectations probably play into this a fair bit, by the third film my expectations were as low as possible.

Great place to start for anything really

[DjchunKfunK]

They were quite low going into the first film after the news that it was being stretch out over three films, so you can imagine how low they were come the final film.

[Achtung Englander]

From that video I came with the fact that Warner Bros really is to blame - what was the hurray ?

Let it stew for another year in pre-planning and Jackson really should of used a lot of the concepts of Guillermo del Toro. It would have been a lot cooler than the CGI mess we got. Sometimes hubris can get in the way of a good work

[DjchunKfunK]

I don't know, as soon as they tried to stretch the story over three films they were in trouble. More time would have probably led to better films, but I don't think it would have made much difference as the story is pretty bad in a lot of places. With more time they might have managed an average set of films, but I don't think they were ever going to make something anywhere near the quality of LOTR.

It's easy after the fact to blame the studio, but some of this feels like Jackson trying to explain away him making a bad set of films.