My God, what an overlong, bloated, stupid and pointlessly loud movie. Most of it is just watching nameless sailors getting picked off by Weta Workshop's CGI monstrosities in overly elaborate action scenes (which brought to mind the worst parts of the Hobbit trilogy).
Also, Jack Black's character should've gotten his head torn off by Kong. The character was a massive piece of shit, all of the deaths were his fault but noo, we're supposed to think he's funny. He even gets to deliver the awful final solemn line the movie ends on.
Between this and the Hobbit movies it's a miracle his LOTR trilogy ended up being as good as it was. What a hack fraud
You can see glimpses of the bottomless pit of CGI excess he would fall into in some of the later battle sequences in LOTR (Legolas taking down the Mumakil comes to mind) and some of the comedy is just bad (most involving Gimli and most of added in the Extended editions), but they're still legitimately great movies. Recently rewatched them and dang if I didn't tear up at several points even as an adult.
You were arguably still in the good part of that movie. It was uncomfortable watching it in the theater for the first time "Oh boy, they're sure spending a lot of time in Bag End, huh? Well, it's not like there'll be more movies after this so I guess we should be glad they're being generous, ha ha" You hadn't even seen a single CGI orc or any the overblown video game action sequences, or Orlando Bloom needlessly being a major character in the two latter movies, or the dwarf-elf love triangle he's involved in, or...
If I watched the opening right now - I might think it wasn't that bad. I'd make a terrible critic. If I get disappointed - I'm already halfway to hating what I'm watching.
The last movie I saw in a theater was Dawn of the Dead (2004) which I really liked. I decided to go out on a high note. I got very tired of giving money to Hollywood and them giving me crap back in return.
Good grief. Is there a Youtube fan edit of just that? I might really like it.
There's the opposite: "Hobbit: The Tolkien Edit" which you can find here: https://tolkieneditor.wordpress.com/. It removes the stupid elf woman and all of the non-canon related idiocy. Like the theme park ride through the rapids and the attack on Dol Guldur. It does remove "That's What Bilbo Baggins Hates" which is canon, which is a pity.
In general, the Hobbiton stuff (minus the pointless and distracting Fellowship-era bookending sequences), the Gollum sequence as well as Bilbo's encounter with Smaug (before it transitions into a convoluted terrible action set piece) as well as some bits here and there are the Actually Really Good Parts of the movie that really capture the feel of the original novel. It's just such a shame since the cast, especially Martin Freeman as Bilbo, were on point. You can occasionally squint and see the movies that could've been
I rather enjoyed the experience of going to the theater a couple of times a year in the bEfOrE tImEs
Pretty sure all fanedits of the Hobbit deliberately cut that part out
Edit: Here's the how that awful sideplot ends. It's so unbelieveably cringe-worthy I can't believe the same creative team made the LOTR movies
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