There's a new movie reviewer in town.

Saw "Mr. Peabody And Sherman" today.

There's an astounding amount of "rude humor" in the film.

It's got a fairly solid plot and raises a number of very good questions, but these questions are almost buried beneath the "rude humor", awful puns, and product placement.

That, and they have Mr. Peabody come off as a Mary Sue type.

edit - There are also some fairly dark sequences in there that younger kids might be frightened by or made upset over.

somebody somewhere won't. and then they will complain.

finally got Frozen watched, and I agree it was very well done. I agree the mickey mouse short got a bit cheezy in the middle.

I was pleased that they broke the standard mold to make the story of Frozen.

I bet that you didn't realise that most of the Orcs you see on screen were CGI, and I don't just mean in the widescreen shots.

From the commentary on the Hobbit it seems that they started off with the intention of using actors in Orc suits, as they did with LOTR. However fairly quickly they realised that technology had progressed to the point that they could make CGI Orcs not just for the wideshots but even close ups...and this in many cases made the Orcs look more realistic.

The catch however seems to be that this change resulted in them having to do more CGI effects than they'd planned on. Peter Jackson noted that for the first film the worst effects shot was at the end of the film, where we see Smaug sleeping in his horde. The reason for this was quite simple - they finished the shots a day before the premier.


As for the third film. There are three big battles they have to get out of the way.

The battle for Laketown with Smaug, the Battle of the Five armies and between them driving Sauron out of the fortress in Mirkwood. (I would not be too surprised if they start with Gandalf being rescued from the fortress rather than with Smaug).

They also need to include Beorn being elected as the leader of Laketown and raising an army to go to the mountain, the Elves of Mirkwood deciding to go to the mountain, the Dwarves turning up with their army, the arrival of the Orcs and the arrival of Gandalf. Then they will probably want to show the downfall of Sauruman*, a growing suspicion from Gandalf about the ring Bilbo found (at this point he doesn't even know about the ring, but he does by the Fellowship so he has to be told) and the realisation that Sauron is back.
So that is a lot of main plots to get through, without dealing with Legolas and his female friend who has a crush on a young dwarf.

(*Trivia; One thing Jackson noted was that the Morgal blade Radagast recovered in the first film, and which Gandalf later presents to the council, is the same blade used to stab Frodo in LOTR. He let slip that we'd see how this blade ended up back in the hands of the Lord of the Nazgul - best guess would be that Sauruman returns it.)

So content wise there is a lot to go through, most of which has nothing to do with Smaug - who even in the book is more of a theoretical threat than an actual one and is killed off fairly quickly after we really get to 'see' him.

Warning: The following may contain spoilers. SO If you don't want to know, Skip my post.

Hobbit 2 ended with Smaug headed for Laketown. So they could have the rescue/escape of Gandalf first thing, but they will need to quickly get to the Battle with Smaug.

I guess what I worry about is Jackson is tending to the JJ Abrams style of film making for people with ADD where it is constantly jumping from one battle/fight to the next without letting up. (ala Star Trek) The there are multiple problems with this. You never get a chance to enjoy the scenery or story. (Maybe intentionally not giving the audience a time to realize how bad the story is?) In the end, the movie is draining to watch.

I can see your point, but I can also see what Jackson has in mind in regards the 'series' as a whole.

What he, unlike Abrams, is trying to do is (re)create the world with as much of its history as possible intact. Sure, they have had to cut a LOT of material out, trim others and add scenes and plots that didn't exist in the books. But this is partly because of the medium - as I keep trying to point out to people (not on TC but elsewhere) what works in one media doesn't always work in another*/**. There is also the matter of making the material more accessible and easier to understand for those who haven't read the books. Jackson has used slightly modified versions of things Tolken wrote to tell us the history in places - the principal examples come at the very start of Fellowship where we have Galadriel telling us the history of the world and the one ring, followed by Bilbo's 'Concerning Hobbit's' speech. In other cases he has come to the conclusion that the history of a place or person doesn't need to be told, as it isn't really important for the story as a whole - so we don't get told the history of Rivendell.

(*Think about this in terms of comics. The banter that takes place during fights works well in a comic, but slows down fights on film and makes them somewhat absurd unless used sparingly)

(**This is also why adaptations of TV series to film tend not to work well. Star Trek The Next Generation worked well as a TV series due to the large main cast. But what was a strength for a TV series proved a drawback when trying to make TNG films. Ironically TOS faired better as a film series because it had tended to concentrate on three principal characters - Kirk, Spock and McCoy.)

Adding fight scenes is understandable, in part (again) because of the medium and the need to appeal to people who will have not read any of the books. But also because if you translated the books too accurately you'd end up with a very dull story, or at least long periods in which nothing happens. You could get away with this if you have strong characters, but in the case of the Hobbit you have a lot of dwarves the majority of whom lack any real personality as written. You need to give them all individual personalties that an audience can relate to and like, and you can't do that with so many characters without putting an audience into a coma. LOTR had something of an advantage in that we get introduced to the main characters in chunks, rather than all together. So we are introduced to the Hobbits and Gandalf and get to know them for a while, then Aragorn turns up and then we get introduced to the rest of the Fellowship halfway through.
If you watch Fellowship closely from the halfway mark you'll notice that except for Frodo the Hobbit's largely take a back-seat from this point on. The focus shifting to the 'new' characters, and even here Legolas and Gimli are for the most part extras (Gimli does get some good scenes and is used more than Legolas, especially in Moria). In books and film there is a limit to how many characters you can focus on at any given moment before things start to get confusing. But in books you can take your time, so (ironically) switch focus more often without loosing pace.

One major difference between Abrams and Jackson is that the latter is able and willing (at least in the Hobbit and LOTR) to give actors scenes that rely on 'pure' acting talent. The scene between Bilbo and Gollum in Unexpected Journey is almost 10 minutes long*, and was shot as one continuous take**. As was an earlier scene at Bag End where all the Dwarves are milling around making dinner. Likewise the scene between Frodo and Boromir in Fellowship where Boromir attempts to take the ring was a single take.

(*Trivia; Andy Sirkis, who played Gollum, did this scene as Gollum right at the start of filming. Two days later he was working as the second unit director.)

(**They used multiple cameras to capture all the angles, which means that the cuts we see in that scene are just switching from one camera to another rather than from one take to another.)

reminds me of my snarky suggestion that I ought to pitch a series to HBO in which you start with a large ensemble cast, and each episode a computer randomly assigns hookups, alliances, rivalries, and hatreds, and in each episode, one character gets raped, one gets tortured, and one gets killed. - also selected at random. it should be a top hit, because that is the main theme of nearly every hit show that I've seen in the past 3 years.

I would much rather see (firefly creator) Joss Whedon do Star Wars, because I believe he has the comprehension of the genre that Abrams lacks.

I think one problem we have is that the nature of entertainment is fluid, and currently, storytelling is out of fashion. we still have a few directors who are storytellers, but Abrams and Bay, are basically choreographers. they put together an elaborate spectacle, and people watch it and say "wow, that was awesome" and I have to agree it was. In the same way a two hour fireworks show is awesome.

but it isn't a story, and I want a story. I want to care about the characters - even if what I feel about some of them is hate. (case in point, Alan Rickman's Sheriff of Nottingham in Dances With Merry Men - I absolutely loved hating the guy. he was my favorite character.)

If it is a good book, its a good story.
Why for the need to "Add" to it?...



And some things are better left unexplained.
Like why we got Wabbits in the first place.

I think the point Silver is making is that the Hobbit stands well on its own, and can certainly make a 2½ hour Peter Jackson epic without leaving out any of the important stuff. I certainly didn't feel the urge to skip over whole chapters of geography lessons like I did in Return of the King. It was certainly not meant to be a prequel to LOTR, When Tolkien originally wrote it. that is what the Silmarillion is. in The Hobbit, Bilbo's journey is the only real "translatable" part. everything else is not needed and too slow. (The Necromancer, Radagast the Brown, Legolas, a half hour on the history of the lonely mountain, another half hour on the history of the Oakenshield name, etc)