The Hobbit: More Restrictions on Art!
As everyone knows, the director’s cut of a film is never anywhere near as good as the cut released to theaters. You may think you know of an exception, but you’re in error. No shame; we all make mistakes. In some cases — Blade Runner comes to mind — the director’s cut can actually turn a great film into a crashing, solipsistic bore.
And this is not really surprising. Restrictions on art — whether it’s the rigors of the sonnet form or some idiot studio executive screaming, “Make it shorter or you’re fired!” — force artists to use all their skill to say what they can in the space and manner provided. There is a reason no one reads new poetry; a reason paintings, which once served to express the deepest levels of the human experience, can now do little more than decorate bank lobbies. No restrictions. Poems are free form; paintings are abstract. And they suck. Restrictions make artists better, more resourceful, more clever, more artistic. Without them, art becomes free — and dull and meaningless.
Which brings me to The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. When director Peter Jackson made the Lord of the Rings trilogy, I understand the studio forbid him to go over three hours on any one of the three films. The result is a nine hour masterpiece. Unfortunately the success of that film seems to have made Jackson more or less untouchable. Now every movie he makes is essentially a director’s cut. And they’ve suffered for it. Everybody hates Jackson’s King Kong, but watch it again: King Kong would be a terrific movie about manhood and femininity — if you cut twenty seconds to a minute out of every single scene… and then cut some of the scenes.
As for The Hobbit — well, the first seven hours are a little slow, but it picks up in the final third. I mean, really, it’s one book, make one film. Use some skill, make some choices. Be an artist.
That said, the picture, though endless, looks lovely. The final hour really is exciting. And Martin Freeman, who plays Bilbo, is so incredibly good he almost kept me awake through the opening hours. Or days. Or whatever.
Now what they should do is release “The Studio Cut.” Let some executives into the editing room to pare the thing down to the entertaining bits. One hour long and brilliant. Can’t wait.
More perspectives on The Hobbit at PJ Lifestyle:
Absolutely right. LotR was a trilogy, and a dense one, with lots of twists. The Hobbit is a padded-out short story, in essence, and a pretty simple plot when it comes right down to it. How the hell do you get 3 movies out of that?
Probably spends an hour on the goddamn trolls.
Jackson needs to be reined in.
The LOTR sucked, he change the story all around and got rid of some of the greatested dialog ever written. someone should take his oscars away
I liked the trilogy. The Hobbit, not so much. For me, some of the action scenes were way overdone and unoriginal. The part where the tiny band of dwarfs battled thousands of trolls underground was just plain silly. It looked like it was copied from something like “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom”, or some other movie overstuffed with too much action.
That is actually in the book and BTW they are orcs not trolls dolt but knowing Jackson he probably did screw it up
Actually they are goblins. Orcs don’t really show up until LOTR. Although one could read that goblins and orcs are similar. However I do believe their is a line in the Hobbit wherein Tolkien mentions both, so it’s really not clear.
And Jackson butchered major pets of LOTR, particularly the character of Faramir.
And as for a sled pulled by rabbits? Holy Ewok moments. Oh and Radagast was never a major player in any of the books. He shows up once in Fellowship of the Ring.
It would seem the mythology changed a bit by the time LOTR was finished.
Hear! Hear! Nothing rots a good film more than too much film. The story-teller gets too drunk in his own orbit.
I’m waiting for Ken Burn’s 9-part, 18-hour documentary on the making of The Hobbit.
Not to mention Burn’s 39 Episode, 104 hour documentary on the making of the documentary of the Hobbit.
(Sorry, couldn’t resist)
I appreciate the sentiment, but restrictions can be a double-edged sword.
I enjoyed the length of The Hobbit. Why should books be short stories? Why can’t we make them into novels? Longer and more engrossing.
That hypothetical studio executive is trying to respond to market forces (more people will have the time and patience to see a shorter movie). There is a market for longer, epic, and enthralling films.
The way to change art is to change the culture. Our culture, which has no patience for honorable ideas aesthetically portrayed, produces both the art consumer and the artist. Of course, that means we need to break the art-culture-art cycle.
All true, but some (maybe many) directors have a tendency to make long drawn out epics with little or nothing actually happening for the sake of making long drawn out epics, thinking that a long movie is “art” or something.
So they take a 90 minute storyline and insert 3 hours of utterly useless nothing in it in order to stretch it out and get “an epic movie”.
We see the same with authors writing books. Ever more they start out with the idea of writing a trilogy of 3 1500 page volumes, then run out of steam halfway through volume 1 and the other 3750 pages are just rehashing of the same thing.
otoh, Jackson’s work single-handedly re-invigorated New Zealand’s economy, and in the process he gave new life to its movie industry. For several years, he has single=handedly employed several thousand New Zealanders. Employees also had to produce immediate results, often on a very tight schedule…or he fired them and hired someone who could produce results.
Plus, he became very rich…by telling a story that promotes many conservative values.
I wouldn’t be too hard on him. Not if I were a conservative, that is.
And now when the Mrs. and I go to NZ, we have to put up with all kinds of Narnia minutae and everybody has to stop and have their picture taken on Flock Hill. Oh well, I guess it’s good for the economy.
As for myself, I’m quite bored with epic length movies where most of the characters stand still in capes and talk slow.
That’s the paradox of the perception most of us have concerning creativity. Most of us have bought into the myth of needing unfettered possibility before we can be creative. In fact, as you point out, creativity requires limits. The more restrictive the limits, the greater the potential to show real creativity.
But I always look to see how much a principle of this sort can be applied outside its normal domain. For instance, at first glance, it would appear not to apply to God, described in various creeds as “Creator of heaven and earth.” Christian orthodoxy describes an omnipotent God who is the ultimate Creator. No limits there, or so it seems. A closer look, again according to Christian orthodoxy, reveals severe limits. God’s actions are always in keeping with His own character and nature. That would be the character and nature that we humans (believers or otherwise) find it so difficult to live out or comply with in our own lives. Arguably it is the most restrictive set of constraints most of us can imagine. Yet God, acting always in keeping with that character and nature, is responsible for a universe of amazing complexity and beauty. Ultimate set of restrictions = ultimate experience of creativity.
And now I’ll sign off before someone accuses me of having been too influenced by Peter Jackson!
So true. Floating around the Internet somewhere is a version of The Star Wars movie “The Phantom Menace” that has been edited to remove the irritating Jar Jar Binks.
I found it much better than the one that was released. In fact, I saw the edited version before I saw the original. I found the original to be disappointing.
The edit showed that there was no point to the character as far as plot was concerned and actually subtracted from the overall movie
The Phantom Edit? It does improve things, doesn’t it?
I’m sure somebody will do the same for The Hobbit. Cut the story down to the “book cut”. I look forward to seeing that version.
hmm, to me Jar Jar was the single most enjoyable part of the entire Phantom Menace movie…
“Irritating” is too kind a word to use for Jar Jar.
I enjoyed the Hobbit Part 1 and will probably enjoy the next two parts. The more the merrier, I say.
Yeah, Jackson’s “King Kong” was a mess. A full hour into the movie, Jackson is delving into the backstories of not just the two leads but multiple supporting characters on the ship. And we are not even on the island yet! Zzzzzzz. At that point, my friend & I started to hoot: “Bring on the monkey!” (the one time I have ever shouted in a movie theater – not counting Rocky Horror Picture Show)
The 1933 King Kong is 100 minutes and moves like blazes. It is too bad the Spider Pit sequence is lost to history, and Jackson’s (re)creation thereof was well-intentioned, but … like everything in his version of KK, wayyyyy too much.
I had no problem with it’s length, but what it chose to present. The scenes of the panicking herd of dinosaurs and the circus act fight between Kong and the T-Rex’s were unfortunate. Why not a stand up fight without all the acrobatics? The original is far superior and one of America’s all-time great, and compact, adventure films.
As I told my kids, Jackson’s Kong is twice as long and half as good as the original.
Agreed on Martin Freeman.
Knowing the novel had been divided for three movies made every needless addition all the more irritating. I liked many things about the movie, but I wouldn’t go out of my way to see it again as a video release.
I suppose Part 2 will take us to the dragon’s death. Part 3 will be build up to the battle of 5 armies with a lot more unnecessary stuff thrown in. If I’m right, Part 2 will probably be the best of the 3.
I suspect part 2 will take us to Laketown. I suspect Jackson will include the White Council attack on Dol Guldur (which is mentioned in the Hobbit towards the end but never elaborated upon) to bring out the length of part 2. He’ll probably also include more made up psycho drama between the Elves and Dwarves and make up whole reams of BS that Tolkien never wrote about.
I tolerated the things he made up because of the scenes that were from the book nearly verbatim (the “Good morning” at the beginning, and of course Riddles in the Dark). I appreciated the parts he added from the appendices, such as the Necromancer in Dol Guldur. Frankly, that’s the part I’m most excited about seeing, as it’s canon without having been explicitly told.
Historically, the standard length for feature films is 90 minutes. There are multiple reasons for this, but I will point out one that many of you may not be thinking about. Theater owners’ profits are negatively impacted by longer films. It’s really all about putting butts in seats and then getting them out so you can fill them again. Assuming each showing is sold out, if movie A is twice as long as movie B, the theater can only sell half as many tickets per day by showing movie A. Big impact on the theater’s bottom line, and historically a major market pressure on film length.
Have to disagree with you on this one. I liked The Hobbit – both the book and the movie. Although Jackson did embellish some of the parts, he largely remained true to the story. The escape from the Goblin King was embelleshed as Tolkien barely references the escape in the book. Jackson is also pulling some material from other works by Tolkien. The meeting of the White Council was not in The Hobbit but rather chronicled in one of the lost tales. Radagast, the coming of evil to Mirkwood, and the Necromancer are all mentioned in The Hobbit but Jackson elaborated on them because they help set the stage for the later works. Jackson also shortened some portions of the work like the role of the eagles in the escape from the orcs.
Can’t agree — I loved the movie.
But I admit I’m not the average movie-goer on this. I’ve read The Hobbit and LOTR at least two dozen times since I was 9, and even the Silmarillion a couple of times. I was reciting some of the poems/songs along with the movie and have memorized all but the last of the riddles (that one’s always hyped up in the movie versions and I lose sync with it). I was thrilled that they used the word “Istari” in the movie, and wasn’t even bothered by the expansion of Radagast the Brown and the invention of the Orc villain. I get that Jackson’s not just trying to tell “The Hobbit”, but tell the prelude to the LOTR movies.
It was a movie made for people like me.
Your experience with the books mirrors mine – I’ve reread the main trilogy once a year since fourth grade, and the supplemental material a couple times over as well. But I didn’t need PJ’s take on a “prequel”. Feels like fanfiction to me, frankly, which I don’t necessarily mind, but don’t necessarily care to pay money for.
Hear, hear, about Blade Runner… the as-released version with the voiceover is just a better story (which everybody prefers, always has) and the director’s cut (which Ridley Scott was peeved no one liked originally) sucks.
Have to disagree about Blade Runner. First off, there are seven versions. Are we criticizing the 1992 misnamed “Director’s Cut” or the 2007 “Final Cut”? Almost all the versions are withing one minute of each other clocking in at at either 116 or 117 minutes.
I saw the 1982 “rough cut/workprint” at the NuArt in 1991. It is the shortest version of all at 113 minutes and it was simply amazing. No lame voice-over until the very end, no unicorn scenes or happy ending either.
Yeah, I’m not getting the criticism of ‘Blade Runner’s’ Directors Cut. First off, the difference in times and presentation is negligible, really the final scene (sans “happy ending”) is the only significant difference other than…. (sigh) the narration.
Ironic in that Harrison Ford was part of both, but the voice-over narration to ‘Blade Runner’ is damn-near a “let’s have Greedo shoot first” level decision. I read somewhere that the studio forced Scott and Ford to do it (Blade Runner being way “too smart” for people to figure out as it was, I suppose), and that both were mortified to do it. And Ford’s appalling narration is as compelling and dynamic as my DVR’s user manual. I seem to be of the mind that Ford deliberately mono-droned his narration in the hopes that it would be unusable, but of course we all know how that worked out. (I can’t say if that is my own conclusion or if I may have read it somewhere. Either way, I find it quite plausible.)
Sorry, but ‘Blade Runner’ is the exception to the rule here. That narration in the original cut was just plain lame, and I think both Ridley Scott and Harrison Ford would heartily agree.
Like everything so sweeping as your generalization that art needs restrictions, you are both right and wrong. Restrictions can be a very good thing. In music, for example, the rules governing counterpoint add undeniable vigor to a piece, which is one reason why Bach, “rocks” – has drive – and Chopin does not.
On the other hand, anyone who has mastered counterpoint and harmony will inevitably move into free composition, such as with Beethoven: He knew the rules and regulations perfectly, and he also ignored them fairly regularly, especially in his late works. The same was true to a lesser extent with Haydn and Mozart, but by the time of Liszt, “rules” were ignored with leisure. This is one major reason why Romantic era music is more expressive, but less clear than Classical music.
The REAL problem, as I see it, is that nobody bothers to learn the old rules of composition anymore, so their freedom is a know-nothing freedom, which is in actuality futile. This is proven by the fact that post-Romantic music – especially the self-consciously atonal stuff – has almost no audience at all. It’s pretentious balderdash.
So, I would argue that Peter Jackson has mastered the elements of his art and is now a master moviemaker and story teller, and that he is in his era of big bombast, and I happen to like it. For example, I have both the theatrical releases of the LoTR trilogy, and the extended versions. I haven’t watched the theatrical releases since the extended versions came out, and I’ve watched those A LOT.
An apprentice or a journeyman needs restrictions, but a master really needs to be free.
I disagree somewhat. Occasionally, you find a scene on the cutting room floor that makes the rest of the movie better. I, for one, always wondered why they cut the scene from Aliens where Ripley and Burke discuss what happened to Ripley’s actual daughter (died of old age). It sets up the whole maternal instinct thing with Newt later on, especially when Ripley reveals that she was supposed to be back for her daughter’s 11th birthday.
It’s a difficult question when it comes to the idea of somewhat arbitrary restrictions regarding film length or novel length, but an easy one when it comes to the art of it: present what is worth presenting.
Frank Herbert’s seminal science fiction novel “Dune” was considered too long in its day, but in fact it’s quite an economical novel. Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time fantasy series is an unconscionable padded out bore.
The first novel in George R.R. Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire series rightly merited 10 episodes on HBO but “The Hobbit” doesn’t merit the near equivalent simply by default; using the same amount of film time to tell a story 1/5 as long as LOTR is problematic from the beginning. Martin’s novels in his series are long but the third and fifth novels, each about 425,000 words, are completely different novels because one is exciting and eventful and the other boring.
Having said that, the reason the first of Jackson’s three Hobbit films is a bore at almost 3 hours is because he doesn’t really succeed in doing what he ostensibly set out to do: present a nuanced portrait that lovingly and slowly lingers. Well, the film lingers but wastes it’s padded length towards little purpose; the problem is in the telling, not the length; a 100,000 thousand word novel will usually contain much more than a 2 hour film can encompass; it’s not a bad film, just a not very good one – I would say it’s worth seeing simply because of its legacy and the amount of sheer energy poured into the project.
I loved “Once Upon A Time In America” at almost 4 hours and watched it many times. I despised the 2 hour plus version. A good film or novel will leave you with a sense of wanting more, regardless of its length. The recent Dark Knight Rises would be a bore at any length. They micro-managed the pre-production to the point of making sketches of Catwoman’s serrated knife-heels and then gave her nothing to do other than give sensible advice. I wanted wicked.
Today, novels in fantastic literature are routinely over written and conformist bores; the problem is that the writers just don’t have that much to say but want to pad out short stories to 85,000 words because of an arbitrary word-length that defines the word “novel.” Writers forums will go on and on about third person omniscient and blah, blah, blah, a thing Frank Herbert regularly violates in “Dune,” and they lose the art of it with an obsessive sinking into pedantry. “Dune” in no way suffers from breaking this “rule.”
Jackson doesn’t really have that much to say as a film-maker in the first Hobbit film. The movie kind of sits there, and while it certainly has it’s moments, no one is going to be re-watching this film over and over again like the first film in the LOTR trilogy.
I agree restrictions tend to make a work better, but by the same token work gets stretched out to little purpose to fill those length restrictions as well.
As for painting, video gaming has spurred a resurgence in painting, albeit digital, and the best of it (and there’s a lot), is phenomenal. Go online and you’ll find more tutorials about digital and traditional painting than you can shake a stick at.
All art shares 3 factors: technical expertise, vision and design. In Jackson’s first Hobbit film, what is lacking is vision, though the film’s designers come close to filling the gap. Design was of great importance in the first 3 Star Wars films. Sadly, The Hobbit film’s content doesn’t rise to its backdrop.
I enjoyed the director’s cut to the LOTR. It answered the questions of what happened to Saurman and Wormtongue and what happened to the Uruk-Hai after their defeat at Helm’s Deep. And it showed the Mouth of Sauron.
The Star Wars films prove the point. that being able to do as one wishes make one flabby. For Star Wars, Lucas had no guarantees, so it had to be good. For “Empire”, he really had no guarantees (“oh, Star Wars was just a flash in the pan”), so he had to have someone make a great film. That lead to the flabbiness of Return of the Jedi. By the time of Revenge of the Sith, if it hadn’t been a better film than the two before, someone knew his reputation would have been shot, so he tightened ship.
Many sequels are hokey and flabby because the folks making them think the audiences have adopted the characters and are in love with them, and thus they get goofy with them. Too bad. They lose the audience by not being afraid of the audience.
I liked it. Wasn’t bored a bit. Looking forward to two more episodes. The books are always better but they’re still there, aren’t they? No big deal.
I couldn’t agree more on ‘The Hobbit’, but I did love the extended LotR films.
Horseapples.
King Kong was a masterpiece. Especially considering he had nothing to work with but a mildewed black and white chicken flick that predated world war II.
Likewise every MINUTE of the Hobbit was worth the effort.
Your problem with Jackson’s flicks is the problem of this era: an attention span atrophied by decades of fifteen-second commercials, cliffs notes, and schlock tv shows that wrap up everything in 22 minutes or less. It’s the age of people who haven’t got the patience for microwave popcorn, much less a full-length movie.
Yeah, the whole Rad-aghast thing. That character came this close >||< to being the new Jar Jar. C'mon, none of that was in the book.
Jackson eliminated the Tom Bombadil character from TLOTR. I'm wondering what he's going to do with the Beorn character in The Hobbit.
My biggest problem with TLOTR was that Jackson turned an adventure story into a war story. Battle scenes which only lasted a page or two in the book became yawn-inducing, 15-minute long crapola fests.
Sorry, this was intended as a general reply, not a reply to RHJunior.
I loved the film and have paid to see it twice. I can’t remember the last time I did that. I welcome an even longer version on Blu-ray.
I saw The Hobbit the other night: I’m an “old-school” English teacher and have an intact attention span. (Unfortunately, few of my students do.) I agree with Andrew.
For me, the first hour or so could have been reduced to about 15 minutes. I was truly bored by the hour mark. And when the dwarfs began to sing—I usually like basso profundo: my husband’s one—I said to my friend, “I didn’t know this was a musical!” Battle scene after battle scene, orc snarl after orc snarl: less is more frightening. (Less Radegast too, please.) I didn’t so much mind that none of the good guys were EVER killed or, generally, seriously injured—for this movie, at least 2000 or so to 0, I think—but that the battles were so similar and predictable. YAWN.
But, even though the movie, IMO, should have been about an hour shorter, I got more involved as the end approached. The scene with Gollum was really fine and I was also very drawn to Martin Freeman’s (who?) understated Bilbo. I’ve definitely become a fan. Smaug’s eye and bone-chilling growl at the end were also pretty good.
So, now, after nearly three hours, our little company can see Mount Erebor (The Lonely Mountain) in the distance. Will the next movie be three hours of how they travel the distance to the mountain? Yes, I will check it out!
P.S. What I really liked was the aerial views of all kinds: without the technology we now have, humans cannot see from the perspective of moving freely high above the earth and zooming in. I did find such scenes very enjoyable and exhilarating to watch.
“I understand the studio forbid him to go over three hours…”
Forbade.
To Larry E. Beaks:
Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha! Thank you for correcting my English – which stinks.
It’s too soon to draw conclusions about the entire Hobbit trilogy. But I want into the theatre a bit concerned that it would be so lengthy as to be boring. It wasn’t. It could have been shorter and still just as good, but it was not excessively long.
My biggest complaint was with the digital effects, as during many scenes only one area of the screen seemed to be in focus. This might have been a 3D artifact in the 2D presentation. Perhaps if I’d been seated much further away from the screen then it would have been better.
Movies have to be epic in some way or people won’t brave going to the clogged sewer infested with subhumans that is the typical cinema. Paying more than you’d pay for a 100 items of dry cleaning to squirm through some second rate 80 minute wankfest in a diseased mental home of a movie house means the films have to be extraordinary.
And whenever possible extraordinarily long.
WOW! All these years I thought I was the only one who preferred the theatrical Blade Runner to the director’s cut- by a mile! Thanks Andrew for making this point. You made my day.
No, you’re right. And the voice over is good too – links it to noir films of the past and provides that great last line. The director’s cut is just slow and pretentious.
I’m begging to not like PJ media. it’s not the critic who counts. !
I’m begging to not like PJ media. It’s not the critic who counts!
You say Theatrical Cut is alwayse better than Director’s cut. I challenge that to Dare Devil Director’s Cut. I have not seen the teatrical cut, but after watching director’s cut with comentary explaining all that was cut initially, Director’s seems much, much better, since theatrical cut lots of character development and rushed many things. Feel free to disagree with me, but just about every review I’ve read and heard, Director is much better than teatrical.
I agree the Blade Runner original cut was better, but even the director’s cut was better tha the horrible book by PKDick, “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep”. I will never know how such a good movie came from such crap. Dick (aptly named) was clearly on drugs when he wrote about the ‘old guy walking up the hill’ story. Total garbage from a fruit. I’m really surprised anyone bothered to publish it.
Anyay, LOTR movies extended were excellent. I have yet to see the Hobbit, but am reticent due to many reviews like this. That written, I’ll loyally watchthem all and buy the dvd’s as a Tolkien fan. Still, with 3 flicks to tell the story, maybe they coulda started with the birth of Sauron in the Second Age?