The creature in the feast in Pan’s Labyrinth with the eyes in its hands is the freakiest thing I have ever seen in a film. I too wonder what his Hobbit would have been.
I still feel so much for Evangeline Lily... That she so loved The Hobbit and knew that a random female character created for the films had the potential to be so bad and uncomfortable that she was willing to turn it down, and that she SPECIFICALLY asked that there be no love triangle... And then they fuckin tied her up into a contract and threw her into a love triangle. I would have been completely hurt and furious.
Absolutely! Couldn’t agree more. In fact, all the actors and artisans of this derailed trilogy have my sympathies. I feel for all of them. They put everything into these movies _they were asked_ and did it flawlessly-the problem was that they were asked to do some pretty stupid shit.
I wonder if some of these studio- created problems could be improved by fan-edits. The question then is if characters like Evangeline Lilly's would even really be in the story if all the terrible love scenes were cut. What the anti-feminist edit of endgame really showed people is women might be in movies now, but they aren't treated as an important part of them. Very disappointing.
It reminds me of his unsuccessful attempts to get into making Video Games do to loving the Medium that kept ending badly til he finally gave up. As someone with Ambitions of being a writer, I can only imagine how horrible it is to feel like to have a vision for something great only for it to get shafted
In an interview he gave about The Shape of Water at the University of Guadalajara (in Spanish), me mentioned that his means of negotiating had to be to give several completely overblown pitches at first - for instance, for The Shape of Water he said it'd be in black and white or a silent film or something of the sort. Don't quite remember, it was quite a long time ago. Did he really want it that way? No. It was something that he knew would be rejected, but that's how he could eventually make the things he wanted: by making them seem comparatively conservative. Now, I know this isn't new by any means, but I get the feeling that certain experiences might have made him settle more firmly for this type of approach...
It's funny, cause South Park used to do the same thing, include some completely over the top, gratuitous jokes they knew would never fly, and make everything else look tame by comparison.
He's so passionate and so darned *nice* (at least, he seems to be) and the industry seems intent on just slapping his hand over and over. "Hellboy 3!" *slap* "The Hobbit!" *slap* "At the Mountains of Madness!" *slap*
God that interview with John Callen broke my heart. That's exactly what the movie should have focused on... The dwarves and the relationship with Bilbo.
I was so confused why, with three movies that were hours long, they apparently didn't have time for any of the core relationships between characters in the book. Like, so much great material just handed to them on a silver platter. But no, we need to focus on video game like battle sequences and random characters who have nothing to do with the primary characters.
This makes me think of that appalling ad bromancing up The LOTR. That was another band of brothers, with a core membership of two. The treatment of gays is an urgent matter now, as it was around the original publication of the LOTR, when the great computer scientist Alan Turing committed suicide. But Tolkien's legacy is no place for these arguments, and sexing up these characters just does the audience a big disservice.
The way Guillermo's voice broke when talking about having to leave the project, you could tell he was putting his heart into it, what a missed opportunity.
Dude he compared the situation with having recently lost your wife and having to talk about how she died. I am pretty goddamn sure the dude really suffered with the whole thing. That part of the video made me really sad
Maybe. I appreciate the enthusiasm, but I don't think that making the movie more like a fairy tale and less like Lord of the Rings would make a better movie. The world of the Hobbit needs to have the same feel as Lord of the Rings.
@@blob22201 But they are supposed to be in the same universe. I know that Tolkien wrote the Hobbit as a children's story and the Lord of the Rings for adults, but when he wrote the Hobbit, I don't think he had planned to write the Lord of the Rings so he had to change things not only in the original Hobbit but also the fictional world at large in order for the Lord of the Rings to work. We can have different types of stories, but they both need to fit an overarching world, especially when dealing with characters we've seen before. It is better if the Hobbit is treated as a prequel to the Lord of the Rings even if that is not how the book was originally written. That way you can tie the movies together more.
+ Sofia Irene; At present I'm writing the definitive work on the subject. So I want you to be totally honest with me on how that quote makes you feel. What did it do to you? Tell me. And remember, this is for posterity, so be honest - how do you feel?
The fact that they not only add all that nonsense with Legolas and his mother but _ignore the fact that elves are fucking immortal_ is seriously dumb. Legolas acts like his mother is dead and gone as if she were from the race of men but Legolas is full-elf, his mother was an elf, therefore if she were slain, she's either in the Halls of Mandos in Valinor awaiting judgement and resurrection, or she's already been resurrected (possibly resurrected long ago) and is alive and well in Valinor _and literally will be until the end of Arda._ Legolas would know this and would know that he would one day be reunited with his mother in Valinor once he decided to sail West.
Exactly, this is what happens when people who don’t care about the actual lore make brain-dead adaptations. If they actually cared then the Hobbit would have been an animated children’s movie, like how the book reads. Maybe a miniseries, that would fit the story of the book well.
"Women in movies need a justification for being women, otherwise they might as well just be men amirite?" Is probably the best quote on female representation in film anyone will ever state. Precisely sums it up.
@Kvothe Windrunner I dunno reckon there is a valid critique of Princess Leia as a character in the original trilogy being some form a female trope. Damsel in distress? At least that's how the male characters originally perceived her. I dunno. Not a big Star Wars fan so can't really comment. How I interpreted the comment was that female characters are written as female first and characters after. Its like writers say "what makes this character a woman" rather than "who is this character". I'm sure there are lots of examples you could come up with of female characters that are well written without falling into tropes but the majority are sadly not.
In brief the reason is "patriarchy". The power structure in most societies tended to favour men over women. The reasons of this is manifold and hotly debated but some of it had to with food production and childrearing For most of Western history (as this isn't universal in all societies), political power and wealth were seen as exclusively male things. Women couldn't own property or hold high office (or vote once elections became a thing). They were tied to the home. Therefore men tended to play the active role in stories while women usually took more passive roles, even when they are the protagonist. Until recently literacy rates were lower among women than men so a lot of classical literature wasn't written by or for them. People tend to like to read and write about people who are like themselves. People also tend to hire people like themselves, which makes it difficult for women or minorities or poor people get a foot in the door in industries dominated by rich white men. Even when female writers emerged on the scene they were often stigmatized and confined to perceived "female genres" like romance novels. There has been historical exceptions of course and things are improving but the delineation still exist. Stories told by men, and a small group of men at that, had a disproportionately wider reach than stories told by other groups for thousands of years. It's no wonder that their stories are seen as universal while stories told by women and minority voices are seen as niche.
SethDakotaS “Written as female first and characters after” “‘what makes the character a woman?’ Instead of ‘who is this character?’” Man, your comments hit the nail on the head
It is very true that both Thorin and Kili don't really look all that Dwarvish... which is why that I love that some of the fandom have decided that among dwarves they're considered unattractive lol.
Veereble Atsim I like that meme where the dwarves have been captured by the elves and they have a conversation about how to identify the females of each group. The dwarves think Taurel is a man and the elves Fili, Killi, and Thorin are women
I think Tolkien had a pretty good understanding of the horrors of war given his experience in the first world war. In fact Eowyn goes from idolising heroism to realising how horrendous war is and that for everyone a simple life of peace is more rewarding.
I think Peter Jackson realised this as well, and it was a big reason he cast Elijah Wood as Frodo - his big blue eyes and fresh face really captured the look of the teenage boys sent to war with no idea what they were getting into.
Thus! And the same goes for Faramir who might at this point decide to be just a good husband as well, leaving behind all the horror and madness of war that had been forced onto him , robbed him of his beloved brother and drove his father insane.
Seems entirely in line with her character. While not strictly such, a part of her glorification of warlike valour had to do with the men she loved - Theodred, Eomer, Theodin, Aragorn. I mean, she always wanted reciprocated love, and aswell had to with love of her Kinfolk, the want to keep and protect them, to feel validated in service to them. Faramir provides all of that - not to chalk it all up to sheer utility ofc, as that could lead down a dark n dreary mountain path, but in terms of consistent within the universe n all it completely makes sense that she'd marry the son of the Stewart of the Gondor and sing songs, grow plants, tend to the people, etc.
lmao this reminds me of when I watched this video with my boyfriend and at some point he yelled "OH GOD WHY DOES SHE KEEP SHOWING THAT, IT'S SO CRINGE"
It's honestly heartbreaking, the fact that we had such a promising start with a great story of relationships, heritage, struggles, but remaining strong and not wanting to give up was just ugh, a knife through the heart really
To be fair to Mr. Jackson - if there's anything that would burn out someone's creative juices, I would imagine that filming the Lord of the Rings would be it.
The dwarf actor, John Callen... was he ever a teacher? He's got SUCH an arresting voice and presence. I could listen to him talk about absolutely anything!
agreed, he's fantastic! there's not a huge amount of info online about him, but it looks like he's pretty much worked in theater/tv/movies straight through since the mid 70s.
The Hobbit sold me when I saw the trailer with the goosebumps-inducing singing of "Far Over the Misty Mountains Cold". There was so much promise in that scene, and that moment captured something special. It all steadily fell apart from there. What a damn shame.
I have never been so keen for a movie as I was after hearing that song in the trailer. Some friends saw the movie before I was planning to go and told me it was trash so I waited til it was available to stream and I fell asleep before I got to the end and never tried finishing it, watching it again or watching the sequels. It looks like they were even worse than the first one.
The only moment in the Hobbit films that really had the LotR feeling for me.. That moment had me really thinking it would be a return to that same feeling I had when first seeing the Fellowship of the Ring.. Yes, that fell apart very quickly. It is still the only scene in all three films that I actually enjoyed.
God me and my brothers were so excited, I was like 12? my baby brother’s voice had just started to drop and we’d sing it nonstop, I started reading the books & just threw myself into all things Tolkien in anticipation. Such a souls crushing let down :/
For the scenes in the Shire for the first movie the entire cinema were struggling to contain their cheers of joy and mirth, we were all so happy. The second half was not as great and the ending very rushed. The crowd was still enthusiastic upon leaving afterwards though, I was very happy myself. Until I started watching the second one, now that is when I was truly disillusioned and the cinema this time was not cheering or happy at all. In fact there was a palpable feeling of disgust, as people jeered and booed, which is very, very uncommon.
That interview with the actor is heart breaking. Imagine a hobbit movie where the Dwarves come to the conclusion that the real treasure was the friendship they had right from the start. I envy the alternative universe that got a Hobbit movie entirely focused on Bilbo and the Dwarves like in the book.
Well, the treasure was also their share of the giant horde of gold as well, so much that Bilbo took two boxes of gold home and that was considered a shocking step down from his contractually obliged 1/15th share.
John Callen’s disappointment is so tangible, it’s pretty heartbreaking to see. But what an honour to have had access to such insight into the process and how the cast felt about it!
My headcanon is that The Hobbit movies are the story as told by Gimli. That's why Legolas is so prominent and does so many ridiculous things, because he wants to tell everyone how cool his elf bro is. Legolas has long since given up trying to tell him that no, that's not how it happened, he wasn't even _there_ for that part.
Angelo Cruz - Right. They're stories that Gloin told Gimli, and now Gimli's telling other people an embellished version of them. And on top of the Legolas stuff, he added all the unnecessary Lord of the Rings connections to tie it into all the stories he tells about his own adventures.
I think you've completely misjudged Gimli as a character and the relationship he had with Legolas. Please respect all of the work an author puts into creating their characters/relationships
Whether this would fit Gimli's character or not, if they'd done this as a sort of Epilogue reveal then it might've made the changes feel more justified; it's an unreliable narrator relaying his interpretation of events that he wasn't present for.
Del Toro would have been perfect for these movies. Not only because I love the bastard, but the way this guys sees a story, that simple yet incredible look his movies have, would have worked so well for a tale like this one.
Truly cannot believe anybody thinks this. Even before the trilogy ended I was in contact with people connected to the production who attested to Del Toro's incompetence. Then the making of videos came out showing Del Toro's outlandish and quite frabkly absurd designs for Mirkwood, Smaug (a giant iguana) which made me happy that the bullet was dodged there. But forget behind the scene whisperings and silly set designs. The reason Del Toro would have been a terrible choice as director is the fact that he completely ditched the product 6 months in. Left the entire crew and cast high and dry, forcing them to start from scratch. Nobody who would do any justice to this story would do that, imo. Its hard to see as anything but an act of pure scorn.
Seriously! The dude is a visionary but every time he gets his hands on a project he actually wants to do, someone else fucks him over. Same thing happened with the remake of Silent Hill. He and motherfucking Hideo Kojima were teaming up for that one and then Konami cancelled it at the eleventh hour again!
@@vsGoliath96 True, forgot about Silent Hill, but H.P. Lovecraft's "Mountains of Madness" came to mind, which he prepaired while Ridley Scott's "Prometheus" was released and Del Toro said he can't go on with it, since Prometheus had basically the same story.
@@0428733 I know that too, I just also figured out that the numbering was supposed to represent the fact that only 2 Hobbit movies were planned initially 😂
Eva played Tauriel under literally ONE condition. No love triangles. And everything was fine, and no love was shed between characters... ... And then came the reshoots...
Lindsay, this is truly an elevation of the film video essay. The time and effort to travel to the set and even get an actor who went through the production ordeal makes this so much more than another RUclips armchair analysis. This was definitely worth the wait. Thank you and thanks to all involved.
Seriously all of the video essay channels are so boring. It's just a timeline of what happened mixed with "analysis" which is usually just basic observation. It's just boring overall.
The only things even close to what Lindsay is doing that I can think of off the top of my head are maybe moviebob's Really That Good series or the 20,000 word essays of FilmCritHulk.
Moovieboy I have loved this series and this video as well... although I started liking it a little less when it became a video about how Tolkien was a supporter of the patriarchy and stuff like that I liked it a little less. Series was still awesome though, I definitely give it a thumbs up myself!
‘Her character wasn’t strong female representation. It was a cynical sales pitch.’ This analysis is so accurate I’d list it next to the raw production cost numbers.
It probably would have captured the feel of the book a lot better. The Hobbit films are a really terrible adaption. They stretched the story until it broke. I guess we'll have to wait for the definitive Hobbit film version.
Christopher Tolkien: Tell me one random thing that they added in the movies Me: Kili tries to get a female elf to grab his dick Christopher Tolkien: NOPE IM OUT
In the Lord of the Rings Aragon's nickname "Strider" is explicitly something he was identified in Bree, not something the Elves or anyone outside of that calls him. The Elves gave him a different name that Bilbo calls him in Fellowship. It's weird seeing the Elves call him something that only some dumb hillbillies near the Shire called him.
Also, "Go north." The hell is Legolas gonna find north of Erebor? THE ONLY THING NORTH OF THE LONELY MOUNTAIN IS THE GREY MOUNTAINS AND FORODWAITH. No ten-year-old prince of the Dúnedain has any business there when "Goblins, Hobgoblins, and Orcs of the worst description" have occupied those mountains for centuries. The geography in BoFA is a mess.
Absolutely and this was the thing that annoyed me the most about the movies (as well as the method of filming was disorientating especially the first 10-20 minutes-just like Lyndsey mentions it gave me headaches). Two scenes in particular- When the survivors gather by the shore and Bard says "Where is the Master?" a lady replied "Halfway down the Anduin by now" The Anduin is nowhere near Lake town/Erebor. Likewise the motivation for the evil armies to attack the Lonely Mountain was not for the treasure but to "open the door to rebuild the realm of Angmar" Gundabad and Angmar are nowhere near the Lonely Mountain (they are north of Moria and closer to the Shire). It's like someone looked up place names of Middle Earth (Anduin and Angmar being mentioned in LOTR) and just threw them into the script. It happens in The Two Towers as well. When chasing the Uruk-hai, Legolas says "The Uruks turn North-east. They are taking the hobbits to Isengard" on their current path, turning North East would take them away from Isengard. Finally how did the Elvin force lead by Haldir make it to Helm's Deep before the Uruk-hai army as Isengard is much closer to Helm's Deep then Lothlorien is. Aragorn even saw the army on the march meaning he must have gotten washed quite far down the river and would have had to backtrack to Helm's Deep.
He's a grown up. He can take care of himself. And honestly, did you see what he was planning? Terrible stuff, so un-Tolkien. Fine for his own movies, but absolutely wrong for The Hobbit.
@@Serai3 - Where can I find these "un-Tolkien" things he was planning? I've always felt like I'd love to see his vision for The Hobbit, but didn't know anything he'd planned was public. Other than the supposed film structure of having a "There and Back Again" movie paired with, "Where the Fuck was Gandalf", which clearly isn't something only he could do, but would have been a massive improvement on the films.
Referring to the heart-breaking interviews by the actors, let me just add something here as a Scandinavian LOTR fan. Mikael Persbrandt, a renowned Swedish actor who was casted to play Beorn, tells in his autobiography how utterly ridiculous the production culture was. At first, he was flown there from Sweden and this respected theater actor spent his first evening on the set hanging from ropes for hours and hours, without any senior actors around, talking to bottles or melons or some other CGI markers of actual persons I can't recall right now. He said that Sir Ian McKellen tried to bring some decency to this faceless monster of an production, but mostly it was just waiting, hanging like a clown, or flying back and forth to New Zealand without knowing whether Persbrandt would actually be used in the movie. Edit: In "Sir Ian" I mean Sir Ian McKellen
Sir Ian who? What do you mean he brought decency? Your comment just raises more questions man. Finish the whole thought if you're going to post such a giant paragraph.
@@Supersquigi English is not my native language, apologies for any unclear phrases. No need to get upset :) In "bringing decency" I meant that Sir Ian (McKellen) tried to add proper, actor friendly production culture to the set - what term would you recommend instead?
It sadly happens a lot to him. He was going to direct The Mountain of Madness before Universal demanded that the movie has a happy ending and a love interest.
so fucking sad. one of the best directors of our generation still isn't trusted with full control over their movie. art is made by artists, not by focus groups
@@MajinCCBThePrince Yeah, in a Lovecraftian movie. Because, no studio execs understand source materials apparently. Except for a select few and that's after a lot of struggle for control.
Tamaki742 Which makes at least four movies that an alternate universe has as a one up on us with. Del Toro's Hobbit (one and two), Pinocchio, and Mountain of Madness movies.
Yeah, he gets shafted by various bankrollers depressingly often. Here's hoping that winning all those Oscars means that the At the Mountains of Madness film he wanted to do can be finally made.
Same. I'm hoping to hell that The Shape of Water's wins --even if it wasn't what I thought was the strongest movie of last year-- will maybe??? allow him to do what he wants??? Because his vision is wonderful and the "The studios fucked up by dismissing GDT" narrative is only going to increase as the Hobbit movies continue aging poorly and his films continue holding true.
"The Great Love Triangulation of Tauriel" really frustrates me. Like it's *so asinine* that you can't help but realize the studio was out of their mind. It's like they realized they accidentally forgot to give her *anything to do* and forced her into a love triangle to justify her existence entirely.
I love how the actor playing Kili openly looks like he wants to die when he says the "I could have anything down my trousers" line. He knows how terrible it is.
HAHAHAHA!!! Poor Aidan Turner! Deserved so much better! It is true as the older actor says that he is "good looking" but he also has some damn good acting to back it up. He is amazing in Poldark.
The pain in del Toro's voice after leaving the project shows how utterly committed to the movies he was and how much he wanted to do it. What a phenomenal swing and a miss on account of the studios by driving him away. Peter Jackson didn't have his heart in this trilogy...he didn't want to direct it. Being forced to because 'he was the only one who could', and then being ridden by the studios and kept on a tight leash completely destroyed the spark, life, and charisma he brought to the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Those movies were his dreams realized. The Hobbit trilogy was more akin to a nightmare.
Yeah, that's a rare fuck up by Howard Shore. I don't know why he dropped that theme. It was iconic in the first movie. It'd be like if he had dropped the Shire theme from Two Towers and Return of the King.
Clamavi de Profundis produced an epic 20 minute edition of the full Lonely Mountain song set to that music (including related songs from the Hobbit and Lotr). ruclips.net/video/LY0lLcz3Qis/видео.html
Mr Callen sounds like such a respectful, heartfelt professional. Him and his collegues deserved better treatment for how much effort and good will they put into their work despite the circumstances.
MrDman21 yeah probably. But both trilogies can’t compare with the drama behind Justice League. Oh boy! I hope some day some one tackles that. ... Although there’s also an interesting drama behind the sequel Star Wars trilogy and it’s spin offs.
That interview clip with John Callen near the end broke my heart. I also grew up with the hobbit and was bored to tears by the movies. But I never thought about the actors of the Dwarves and how important it was that they got pushed aside. The hobbit could have been amazing if it was this band of actors, dressed like dwarves, trying to reclaim their culture and finding out what that really means. It's a pure idea, and ironically it was corrupted by greed... you reminded me what I loved about the book! :'(
that and combined with Guillermo's heartbreak we would have had a whismacal film about a band of brothers on an adventure ahhhhhhhhhh fuck warner brothers
I still say there's a really good three-hour movie buried under all that ridiculous crap. A good editor could dig it out. I hope some fan will do so eventually, because the parts that are good are just so damn good, they deserve to be set in a decent movie instead of this endless self-indulgent mess of yaya and jumping about.
In college, one of my professors claimed to have worked on the CGI for The Hobbit (which had just come out at the time.) When he was talking about it he was very frustrated, because his department wasn't given enough time to render their effects. Thus his department was forced to render everything in way lower definition, and even had to forgo the higher fps they were supposed to use while animating. I was pleasantly surprised this got brought up in this video.
I feel so bad for the fantastic actors whose potential was wasted. The dwarves should have been the highlight of their career. Instead they got barely any screen time and what they did do was infront of some damn green screen.
Eowyn didn't give up wanting to be a warrior because she decided it's a man's thing after all. She had a romanticised idea of war as something glorious and heroic without much concern for the horror, the suffering and the pain it brings. This was why she almost seemed to have contempt for tasks that involved caring for others. Not surprising considering she grew up among men who boasted of their battle glories. She was in a way like Trish from Jessica Jones who claimed she wanted to help others from a purely selfless heroism when the truth is that all she wanted was personal glory. She could have helped so many people using her voice as a celebrity if her main intention really was to just help. Instead she wanted to be a 'hero'. Eowyn fulfilled her destiny of destroying the Night King, and through that ordeal dispelled the illusions she had about going to war and realised that taking on a nurturing and healing role is no less, if not more, glorious than killing in war.
It should also be noted that the reason she travelled to the Pelennor Fields in disguise is not because women in Middle Earth don't fight, but rather because Theoden had expressly forbidden it on the grounds that he wanted her to govern Rohan until his return, or that of Eomer, and failing that, in perpetuity. 'Dernhelm's' ride probably caused quite a bit of upheaval in Rohan while the Muster was away, what with the designated head of state MYSTERIOUSLY VANISHING OVERNIGHT
Makes a lot of sense comming from an author who grew up in a time where war and glory was romanticised to hell, then he took part in WWI and the Somme, and then settled down teaching English to the younger generations and writing awesome books.
This video was very painful to watch. Not because it was bad, quite the contrary actually, but because it shows us what the hobbit movies could have been. That a lot of heart and talent went into them and yet they were wasted.
OMG my thoughts exactly, just why? The dwarves became just extras in the background and that love story... cringed it in every moment. They are few good and decent scenes and dialogue, but the use of music exclusive made for The lord of the rings (like the ringwraits and the theme of the coronation ofAragorn) used it when Torin hugs Bilbo is horrible. I feel really bad.
I remember when I first saw the third installation of The Hobbit movies, and when Thranduil told Legolas to seek “Strider” I immediately thought to myself, “That makes no fucking sense...”
Yeah, after I read more info on Aragorn's story, I was like "how the hell does Thranduil even know Aragorn exists"? In the books, Aragorn was just being told after hitting 20 years old by Elrond his true name and heritage. He was also told by Elrond to go out into the world. Before that happened, Elrond kept his name and true identity secret while grooming him in Rivendell.
It still hurts me to think of how enthralled I was with the opening scenes while watching the first movie for the first time, just to be totally disillusioned less than an hour later. It breaks my heart everytime.
Ya know what does hurt so much? The fact that Del Toro's vision is exactly what I wanted from The Hobbit movie. Because it's exactly the different vibe the book has from lotr! And he is already my favourite director. I am so sad after discovering that he left, it could have been so good! :(
I mean, Legolas would have been a notable omission, frankly. He's Thranduil's son and elves live for freaking ever; it would be weird if he wasn't at Thranduil's court in Mirkwood. But they did give him way too much to do.
I know this comment is very old, but I can't fight the need to info dump so here it comes: Legolas was actually the last of the Fellowship members to be invented. Originally Tolkien planned to have Glorfindel (Lord of Gondolin who died in a fight with a Balrog during the fall of the city and later rembodied in Valinor but sent back to Middle Earth by the Valar to act as an emmisionary) be the Elf who joins the Fellowship in the Ring Quest. However due to his legendary history Tolkien feared that he'd actually end up overshadowing Aragorn. Also having such a notorious Elf didn't fit the theme of the fading of the elves from Middle Earth and the coming dominion of Men. So Glorfindel's role was reduced to escorting Frodo to Rivendell. Meanwhile Tolkien came up with Legolas for the Elf spot in the Fellowship. However since he was such a late addition his character is notably less fleshed out than the other characters. Making him Thranduil's son was Tolkien's way of giving him kind of an instant backstory as "the son of the Elvenking from The Hobbit". So Legolas' absence in The Hobbit book is due to the character not having been invented at that point in Tolkien's work and the reason why he seems to kind of fade in the backround in comparison to other characters is that he actually was a very late addition.
Sure, but in universe that doesn't make a difference. In The Hobbit Bilbo doesn't spend much time in Thranduil's court and none openly being introduced to people, so there's no reason why any of the members of that court would be featured in the book since it's told from Bilbo's viewpoint. The movie did away with that and focused on other characters, and at that point it would become weird for Legolas to be omitted, from an in-universe perspective.
@@RenegadePaladin I agree that no acknowledgement of Legolas character at all would have been weird would have been a little weird. I just wanted to highlight that given the character's history and little hard canon facts about both his family (aside the little bits about Thranduil and Oropher) and the way the Greenwood operates as a Kingdom make the expansion of his character in the movies (an obvious nostalgia money grab) feel out of place. There's no place for him in this story because he wasn't supposed to be there and that's hard to change retroactively; at least to the extent the producers obviously wanted to. Personally I feel like a short little cameo at Thranduil's court should have been sufficient as both an acknowledgement of his relation to Thranduil as well as a nod to the LotR movies for fanservice. (Don't even get me started on the whole dead mother business; why would they think the good ol' "Mum dead, Dad mad, Kid sad" situation would be the most compelling dynamic to give to those immortal characters?) ((Finally my personal headcanon here since we just don't know and my thoughts aren't any more correct than any other reading of the situation: Given that while Tolkien went back and edited some parts of The Hobbit after the publication of The Lord of the Rings to be more consistent but didn't bother to even mention Legolas once as well as the fact that the focus of Legolas' character in LotR was his relationship with Gimli but despite that he never mentioned a (however brief) collision with the party Gimli's father was a member of (or an ivolvement in the battle of the five armies for that matter) I personally believe Legolas just straight up wasn't there. Since nothing in LotR points to Legolas having had a formal day to day position at Thranduil's court and the fact that Elves operate on such ridiculous timelines that a say 3-5 year stay somewhere else wouldn't be considered "long" I just think that he was occupied elsewhere at this point in time.))
I remember when Gandalf "dies" in Fellowship the big thing with Legolas was that he was experiencing something unfamiliar- death. Jackson specifically directed him to be bewildered by the whole concept of death. So mark that as another nice little touch from Lord of the Rings that the Hobbit totally erodes. He's got a dead mom...for some reason....!
I'm sure you're right about that with respect to the books, but we're talking about the consistencies of the films here. It's certainly a factor in Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings film universe, and it's one he decided to upend for no good reason. The book cannon isn't really relevant to the discussion.
It makes sense for Legolas to be bewildered that Gandalf died, but only because he's the only one in the group likely to have a decent idea of just how powerful Gandalf actually is. As someone above said the idea that he would be unfamiliar with death as a concept is just imbecilic.
Fairy Lives don't matter today because I ate the whole plate, now see how I glitter because it hurts so much! And it's fine... this is fine... it's fine... see? He's fine... this is fine... Save Martha.
I remember seeing the first vlogs that Jackson made during preproduction. Even though I didn't believe in or care for the movie back then, I was impressed by how much effort they put in it, for example by giving a distinct character to each of the dwarves. I started to think that maybe it could be a good movie. I still don't care about the trilogy, but now I understand John and the other dwarf actors, and my heart goes out to them
You can tell it's all true by the behind the scenes stuff too. And he was right - the dwarves became these caricatures. The little friggin yokels in Snow White were better developed and had more lines, jfc
My fix for Tauriel is pretty simple: She be-friends Kili. That's it. No romance. She DOES love him and grieve for him, but as a friend only. I feel like this also adds a layer to Legolas's disdain for dwarves. Through Tauriel, Bilbo, and Gandalf's grief, he's seen the consequences of what caring for mortals can be.
And it’d be a fresh take in Hollywood overall tbf. Last time a big blockbuster really did that was in Shang-Chi perhaps? Or the whole love triangle being upturned in Hunchback for example. Its used so little, the concept of becoming friends with a woman and not falling in loving with them. It would really help with the people who grow up with films like these. Its so miserable when you see on social media how many dudes think its impossible to befriend women like wtf
15:01 unfortunately, CGI Dáin was due in large part to Billy Connolly’s health problems; battling both prostate cancer and advancing Parkinson’s disease. Due to the huge number of changes, he would have been required for numerous reshoots, which he could not do due to medical commitments. This was a real shame, but spare a thought for all the ork actors who had to learn how to move like orks, only to be replaced by CGI.
@@meg-a-watt5404 He is, he went through a surgery or two, but last stated he's mulled over the idea of retirement for health and personal reasons. I believe he is still making artwork though.
I never understood why critics said that the 2nd and 3rd were a step up from An Unexpected Journey. It was pretty clear that the most coherent and focused film was the first. Of course there were some absolutely horrible decisions there, too, but the sequences in the Shire and Riddles in the Dark were done to perfection.
After the first one, I actually came out of the theater mostly satisfied and feeling good about what we'd seen and where things were heading. Not so much for the next 2.
I even defended the film, including the somewhat goofy fights and the cgi goblins. I thought it gave those scenes a more child-friendly, fun tone, which meshed with the book. I even wish they had kept in the Great Goblin's song because it would have stayed true to that tone.
Yeah, I liked the first one, and saw it again. Though, it was mostly because in the first I was made ot see it in 3d and my glasses were so scratched I couldn't see through them but hey.
Yeah, I agree. The first film was the best of the three - most coherent, most loyal to the book in tone and content, and certainly the most focused. I was hopeful for the second one after seeing the first, but I was hoping they would get better, not worse. I understand some of the changes they made from the point of plot and narrative in movies 2 and 3, but that doesn't make them good.
The Hobbit filming in NZ lead to the govt basically outlawing the actors and screen workers unions (the legislation is literally referred to as 'the hobbit law') citing pressure from the companies bankrolling the production who threatened to go elsewhere if we didn't relax our workers rights law. It was obviously an empty threat, there was no way they were going to move production out of NZ, but it was pushed through and as of 2018 it's still yet to be repealed. The whole production was a horrifying example of the pressure large corporations are allowed to place on governments.
you are wrong the would have, they get taxbrakes and other incentives, the question is if it was worth it for NZ and it wasn´t probably. the taxpayers just cofinance the movie^^
22:00 I think you're being a bit unfair to Tolkien. Of course, in the books the change happens a bit abruptly. But I believe Eowyn sought death in a battle, and the point of Tolkien was to have her embrace life. I bet for Tolkien, choosing a peaceful life would be a sign of the highest nobility, more so than having an ego trip as a warrior - not only Eowyn says farewell to arms, but Frodo does so too (although for different reasons).
It's also supposedly a thematic way of merging the Norse aesthetic with Tolkien's Christian ideas, as the desire for glory in battle is slowly displaced by the desire to heal and love and all that jazz.
@@andresacosta4832 Yeah, it's interesting because I always thought that the ainur are like Norse gods and that Eru has a pantheistic "god is nature, nature is god" side, before I grasped that it's all filtered through a Christian philosophy
Right of course but that doesn’t take away from the reduction of the noble warrior into the simple house wife in line with the patriarchal society of middle earth. That’s not a critique of Tolkien, the man was alive in a time before 2nd and 3rd wave feminism and discussion around gender roles was mainstream and drew his mythos from Patriarchal societies. It was not a criticism of Tolkien from Lindsay either but rather a critique of Tauriel’s addition as her role doesn’t fit within the patriarchal society of the world and her story cannot be compared to a female character such as Eowyn as Tauriel doesn’t face the same patriarchal constraints as Eowyn which is what makes the latter such a great character. Tauriel’s lack of patriarchal constraints is shown to be evidence of the studio using her as a marketing tool for women as opposed to a character necessary to the plot as well as an addition that flows with the world. It’s not saying “Tolkien sexist, Tolkien bad” as Tolkien’s brand of sexism is, as much as I hate the phrase, a product of its time. It’s not explicit not intentional just a result of his upbringing, comparatively with other members of that society his sexism was abhorrent or disgusting, just the application of social norms of his time as well as the mythos he draws from into his legendarium. I don’t think it is unfair at all to point this out.
Yeah, me too, I just discovered Del Toro with the Shape of Water, but what I heard of the guy and the passion he seems have to this book, it would be very refreshing and interesting. And by refreshing, I mean he would do a movie that can be different of the three first movies, not another trilogy with same cast and same writers and same graphic chart and etc... ^^
That’s because they didn’t do what the studio wanted. They deliberately went against it as best they could...without getting in trouble. AM I THE ONLY ONE WHO SEES THIS?
the entire character of Tauriel is not done well, she is captain of the guard it works with the source material thranduil’s captains gender and name was never revealed. the entire love arc between tauriel and kilo should never have been done though. elves and dwarves at that time had really bad blood, Legolas and Gimli was the first case of friendship between the races for decades. but no we have it so Tauriel and Kili love each other because it makes sense. they spoke a minimal amount when he was a prisoner yes that will make you love him 😂 Thranduil not claiming she was good enough for Legolas could been seen as valid if he thought he could find a Sindar match for Legolas.
Still crying, but for different reasons. The story IS as depressing as I feared it would be. Evangeline Lilly deserved better. Guillermo del Toro deserved better. John Callen, Peter Jackson, and everyone involved deserved better. (except Weinstein, screw that guy) I am really, REALLY glad you're making these, Lindsay, thank you. And, yeah, the trilogy joke was hilarious ^_^
But Evangeline Lilly signed on under the understanding she would be playing a female supporting character, and she asked for no love triangle. But once the contract was in effect and she had already done the first round of shooting, when the studio thrust the unwanted love triangle upon her, she had no choice but act in those scenes. It's not HER fault.
A really great series, the cameo appearances do a very good job tying this installment to the older ones. ....but enough about Nella's appearance in this video, let's talk about The Hobbit. The connections to LOTR are really forced, aren't they?
Yeah they did force them, because they didn’t think people would be here for something that wasn’t tied to the great LOTR. While it forced connections that weren’t there, because The Hobbit is a prequel and not a sequel and they can’t make that -_-
"That's my wee lad, GIMLI." *Looks into the camera and winks* Seriously though, I'd say the references weren't as forced as they were in the new Star Wars films. I definitely don't blame them for bringing back a lot of the old characters.
the way del toro’s voice wavered when he was being interviewed made me so damn sad!!!! I can see that the way he makes movies is so heartfelt and personal to him when you see his sketchbooks... you can tell he really cares about everything he does in making a film. I wish the del toro version existed.
For me, the worst thing about the hobbit trilogy is that, in that farewell scene at the door of ereborn, I just don't know all of the dwarves names. They had three movies to make us care about these characters and they failed. So much stuff and battles but no feeling
3 movies could have worked, had they devoted more time to the dwarves. They could have added more, original, adventures for the dwarves along the way (perhaps getting ideas from the vast history of middle earth), instead of basically shoving them away as a B-plot
I'm so beyond impressed and so happy. Who actually does interviews for a RUclips video essay?! Someone with a future in film-making, thats who! OH boy you've restored my faith in this type of media. Thank you for all your hard work.
Del Toro was screwed, badly. They wasted his time, his enthusiasm, and his talent. He wanted, as you say, a tonally distinct film which would stand on its own as a reasonable adaptation of a children's book. What troubles me the most (aside from what could have been) is whether this betrayal came from Jackson, or the studio, or both. If it one day comes out that Jackson was a considered part of outing Del Toro, my respect for him would only plummet. The fact that he has those 'thousand-yard stares' in many production photos and videos, however, gives me at least some hope that he was just another creator taken along for a ride by the typically vicious whims of the studio.
Well, he certainly didn't seem to want to take on directing the movies himself, so I would highly doubt that he had any desire to boot out another director. Honestly... even though Lindsay doubts it, I do think it probably just came down to scheduling issues. They were still waiting for the production to be greenlit in 2010 when he left, due to MGM's hesitancy. The Hobbit was facing even more potential setbacks because of a union dispute thing that was going on in New Zealand/Australia at the time, which did end up affecting the production after PJ took over (which Lindsay didn't cover... maybe it'll be in part 3?)... so in the face of all that, I think Del Toro just decided it wasn't worth it. All accounts we've heard have been that it was Del Toro's schedule that was the reason, so I don't think we really have any good reason to doubt it.
That's one of the things that stood out for me. All the pandering and shoulder-patting being juxtaposed with footage of PJ just looking as if he wanted to be far, far away from all of this. Something that you never saw in the footage from LOTR.
Del Toro realised it wasn't going to work in those conditions and reluctantly moved on, whereas Jackson stepped in to take the bullet for him because he knew that he was one of the only people who could do it some justice. I sense those same work conditions inevitably drove the production off the rails.
Honestly, just looking a Jackson's physical transformation during production of the three movies makes me think he had really tough years directing them. Look at how much old and tired he looks like just a few years after starting them :o
The actor (I’m sorry, his name slips my mind,) is so incredibly well spoken and articulate. I loved listening to him speak. Your video is fantastic and really makes me wish that the films reached their very real potential. *Edit: his name is John Callen
Thankfully, there's a great fan-edit by Maple films that edited the entire Hobbit trilogy into one film. And the focus (if not most of it) is now on Bilbo, the Dwarves and their journey.
I've just gotta say, every time Thorin's hair blows in the wind, I regain the life stolen from me by every time I see the "Why does it hurt so much?" moment.
24:10 - God damn, if that's true, then that's probably the perfect example of why "tone at the top" (the acquisition of smaller companies by massive ones and then seeing upper management decisions seep down and influence the product) is so detrimental. The people making the decisions are not always creatives. And storytelling is the arena of creative people. Therefore, Warner suits entered an environment they were not prepared for, and metaphorically got their asses kicked. In this case, seeing a story that had no love-triangle and shoe horned it in, thinking they knew best. The worst part is, I doubt any of them will read it as their mistake. They probably looked purely at financials. And lacked the experience to recognise their own inexperience.
I love the part where after a new Womble video drops, you find him commenting on things in his RUclips recommendations he’s been trying to ignore for months. Shine on you crazy diamond. Shine the fuck on.
As a Kiwi I love seeing this, and not just for the chance to hear kiwi accents on screen (which is pretty Choice). My dad was an extra in LOTR and got his bald head painted to look like a goblin, my friend got to ride her horse as a rider of Rohan extra, and my high school math teacher has a fan page about the elf he played who didn’t even get a line. LOTR is a cultural touchstone to be proud of, it’s the movie all of NZ helped make. The hobbit had no such high regard. It’s a bit harder to call up that volunteer army on goodwill when this time around there is enough money to actually pay people. No more traveling to small towns and countryside to shoot, injecting a bit of cash into places. no just green screen and studios. It’s more illegal than gardening to say a bad word about LOTR, but no one I have spoke to really even likes the hobbit. The highlight of the films for me was one time when I got a see Martian Freeman walking down Cuba st, while waiting at a bus stop.
ralphyetmore To be fair, the Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit are very different stories, so it makes more sense to say "series" or "franchise" than it does to say "story".
The dead mum angst annoys me because it spoils a really poignant, subtle moment that Lindsay pointed out in her Fellowship video. The hobbits are crying after Gandalf’s death and for a second Legolas has this confused and alienated expression, because this is presumably the first time he’s encountered grief and he doesn’t know what to do. Lindsay pointed to this as one of the few instances of moments in the trilogy that gave depth to Legolas. He doesn’t understand mortality and he is unnerved by the hobbits reaction. And I think this was important because it emphasised how different all the Fellowship members are - it underlines that theme of brotherhood and people coming together to destroy a common enemy. Adding a dead mom subplot to the prequel completely destroys the logic of that moment, because it suggests that hey Leggles has dealt with grief before! What’s this about him feeling detached from the hobbits? So - this beautiful moment where we get a deeper understanding of him is rendered meaningless, because the thing that sets him apart from the hobbits - his inexperience with mortality - is retconned out. Not cool Peej.
"Adding a dead mom subplot to the prequel completely destroys the logic of that moment" No it doesn't. It really doesn't. if you have experienced the death of a close person. A death of another close person will bring ALL that shit back up. he's not alienated. he's going through that shit again. regardless of whether thats how it was written or not, it still works in context of the hobbit movie Legolas.
Orlando Bloom explained it as being Legolas's confusion at the concept of death. Which is patently ridiculous. Elves can't die of old age or disease, but they can most certainly be killed, either accidentally, in war, or by murder. The idea that Legolas wouldn't know what death is when he's already a thousand years old is ludicrous, and I'd love to know who let Orlando get away with that nonsense.
Wow, that actor's summation of how the film got hijacked was really sad and moving. Clearly, Jackson and/or the studios did NOT want to make a movie about dwarves, at all.
Annoyed me a lot how un-dwarf like the three main dwarfs looked; had to be pretty boys it seems, imagine how that love triangle would have looked if kili was *gasp* ugly?! If you cant even tell its a Dwarf without context, ya done screwed it up. This is something i've been noticing in fantasy media for a long long time and dreaded every second of it in The Hobbit. Course they downplayed the Dwarfs; unsexy people dont test people, good writing is hard but flashy action scenes with backflips and sexy characters is easy.
I honestly kept forgetting that they were supposed to be Dwarves. I've watched these movies exactly once and I remember that the fact that they were supposed to be Dwarves was something that did not stick with me. It wouldn't be until they would bring it up or the people I watched them with mentioned it as well. I was also confused as to why they seemed so much more "well groomed" than the others but my brain kinda just went "maybe it's like Whoville rules where you grow into it??" and just left it at that.
Dude, it was the first thing I thought of when I saw part 1, and Lindsay explaining how a third movie was shoehorned into the original two-part idea. I saw lindsay's 'part 1 of 2' in the title and I'm like, there's gotta be a joke somewhere where she makes a third part to this review... THERE'S SO MUCH FORESHADOWING xDD
Del Toro definitly has his highs and lows. The highs are high and lows are really low at times, but his take on the hobbit is really something that I would like to see happen.
Exactly, his style of film making would bring back the "fairy tale" aspect The Hobbit was missing from these movies. And they could stand apart from the LOTR trilogy, on their own TWO legs (because that's all you need to stand upright, not a third: that's called a crutch).
@@TheLowBrassDude You mean blondie? If they form a triangle, and thus define a circle, she would be more like a polar point on the outside. The most she could hope for was to get close enough to the circle and even then she would only be a tangent. But this analogy just got too technical on the geometry side and I don't know where I'm going if this anymore. XD
Oh, you have hot takes on The Hobbit? Well, Ms. Ellis WENT TO NEW FREAKING ZEALAND AND DID INTERVIEWS! I love it, and this is just fantastic, in addition to your always terrific commentary.
I'm from New Zealand, and I have no idea why someone would subject themselves to such pain. Our country basically just banks on the fact that "HEY! HEY!! LOOK! HOBBIT/LORD OF THE RINGS STUFF!". My town even has a jeweler that mainly makes necklaces and rings from the Hobbit...
I hate that she's destroying my second childhood. I was quite content to overlook and ignore all the true things Lindsay Ellis can't help noticing and pointing out. she's absolutely right and brilliant and funny, but I she leaves me feeling like I just found out the bunny rabbit and Santa clause are fake. I don't know if it's as depressing as watching Noam Chomsky but she give me that feel as a point of comparison.
I have the advantage that I didn't like these films at all. I'm fairly sure there's one good three-hour movie buried under all that dreck, but as they are, they're painful to watch. I stopped after the second one, which I barely got through; never bothered with the third. It's too bad PJ didn't have someone right next to him to slap his hand and yell PETER NO. He desperately needs an editor who'll bully him a bit, because he's gotten horribly self-indulgent as his budgets have grown.
I have always had a hard time understanding why Peter Jackson would allow these travesties to happen. I wasn't aware how much of it was out of his hands. Thank you for this! Subbed.
I have had this theory for soo long. Then I watched the Appendices where he keeps reiterating that it was HIS idea to make three movies and I just felt a tinfoil hat growing out of my own head as I was like "You're lying! Everyone makes mistakes and yes, some decisions you made on TWO TPOWERS and RETURN OF THE KINGS were dangerously close to becoming dumb epic action fluff that would evolve into the bloated video game stuff from the Hobbits...but you certainy can't be THIS mad!" Then Lindsay came, made these videos and confirmed my conspiracy theories. TBH I have similar theories regarding THE LAST AIRBENDER. Admittedly I am biased because I am, like, one of 3 Shyamalan-fanboys but I see that he is not perfect and I can totally understand why many people dislike some of his trademarks. But even if I keep that in mind, there is stuff in AIRBENDER that doesn't make sense even for Shyamalan. And the most important proof for me is the fact that he was sooo stoked about this project. He loved that show and his first script was basically just a rundown of the whole show with each and every episode. So yeah...I truly believe that Paramount and Nickelodeon fucked him over. WOuld he have made a LOTR-level masterpiece on his own? Probably not. He is still Shyamalan. My favourite director, but flawed as hell in some regards nonetheless. But he wouldn't have made something THIS bad. So many scenes feel like obvious reshoots. Maybe one day someone will make a similar deepdive into that movie's production like Lindsay did with the Hobbit. Hopefully
@@goth_fraggle I think that the best way to adapt Avatar: The Last Airbender to the cinema would be to divide each season into two films, so in the end it would be six movies.
@@goth_fraggle old comment I know, but IIRC TLA's production was indeed a shitshow and by the middle of it he was just in it for the paycheck. The studio definitely messed with things, such as the casting of Katara, even if the director wasn't guilt free himself.
@@goth_fraggle While the studio does deserve _some_ blame for _some_ of what happened to The Last Airbender, most of the problems with the film were Shyamalan's fault. If it makes you feel better, he was way outside his comfort zone: the guy directs dramas and horror stuff, not epic fantasy, and it _really_ shows. He also tried to do everything: write, direct and produce.
Sigh. I remember when the first trailer came out and the dwarves fell into melancholy song. I about lost my mind, it was so epic and lovely and on-tone for the story. And then the movies happened, and I just lost interest.
"Hollywood doesn't like women because writing them is hard." Thank you so much. I've been saying this for ages now and it's sooooo frustrating watching the poorly written women on television and the big screen. It's so rare to see a well written female character. All the attempts at writing "strong" female characters by making them masculine are so annoying.
Writing women doesn't have to be any harder than writing men: treat them as characters rather than as props or symbols, and that will get you where you need to go. If your writing naturally passes the Bechdel Test, because the women have relationships and goals and ideas and such that don't revolve around dudes, you're on the right track.
This is why i liked "Split". All the flashbacks made me think "oh another movie about a woman that is special, because she's been trained as a man and doesn't show skin"
i adore lower frame rates in films, it gives it a dreamy quality that oddly helps my immersion/suspension of disbelief. 48fps really pushes it for me, im in the headache crowd lol
I saw them on cinema and realized that the higher frame rates makes the props looks obviously like props. They just too sharp, shinny and lack any sign of wear and tear.
"why does it hurt so much?!" "Because it was studio mandated"
Bravo. I just laughed out loud and woke up my roommate!
Yes
& Studio mandates aren't real... REAL ... they're tropes played off as reality.
Because I'M LOSING TO A BIRD!!
Because all the good parts got cut.
I was robbed of a beautiful Hobbit themed Guillermo fairytale
why does it hurt so much
@@ethanshover2734 because it wasn't real :'(
And Hellboy 3 !!!!
We all were
The creature in the feast in Pan’s Labyrinth with the eyes in its hands is the freakiest thing I have ever seen in a film. I too wonder what his Hobbit would have been.
I still feel so much for Evangeline Lily... That she so loved The Hobbit and knew that a random female character created for the films had the potential to be so bad and uncomfortable that she was willing to turn it down, and that she SPECIFICALLY asked that there be no love triangle... And then they fuckin tied her up into a contract and threw her into a love triangle. I would have been completely hurt and furious.
Absolutely! Couldn’t agree more. In fact, all the actors and artisans of this derailed trilogy have my sympathies. I feel for all of them. They put everything into these movies _they were asked_ and did it flawlessly-the problem was that they were asked to do some pretty stupid shit.
I wonder if some of these studio- created problems could be improved by fan-edits. The question then is if characters like Evangeline Lilly's would even really be in the story if all the terrible love scenes were cut. What the anti-feminist edit of endgame really showed people is women might be in movies now, but they aren't treated as an important part of them. Very disappointing.
I least she has hope now.......Eh eeeeeeeh
@@Andrew-od4vg A fan edit would be interesting also have fan edits of the LoTR films been made?
At least she got Wasp. Seriously, she was so fucked over in these movies
I feel bad for Del Toro. I constantly have this feeling that these studios hire him to be creative and then dont let him be creative.
It reminds me of his unsuccessful attempts to get into making Video Games do to loving the Medium that kept ending badly til he finally gave up.
As someone with Ambitions of being a writer, I can only imagine how horrible it is to feel like to have a vision for something great only for it to get shafted
In an interview he gave about The Shape of Water at the University of Guadalajara (in Spanish), me mentioned that his means of negotiating had to be to give several completely overblown pitches at first - for instance, for The Shape of Water he said it'd be in black and white or a silent film or something of the sort. Don't quite remember, it was quite a long time ago.
Did he really want it that way? No. It was something that he knew would be rejected, but that's how he could eventually make the things he wanted: by making them seem comparatively conservative.
Now, I know this isn't new by any means, but I get the feeling that certain experiences might have made him settle more firmly for this type of approach...
It's funny, cause South Park used to do the same thing, include some completely over the top, gratuitous jokes they knew would never fly, and make everything else look tame by comparison.
He's so passionate and so darned *nice* (at least, he seems to be) and the industry seems intent on just slapping his hand over and over. "Hellboy 3!" *slap* "The Hobbit!" *slap* "At the Mountains of Madness!" *slap*
@@montyr2083 Pacific Rim 2 *slap* Silent Hills *slap*
God that interview with John Callen broke my heart. That's exactly what the movie should have focused on... The dwarves and the relationship with Bilbo.
I was so confused why, with three movies that were hours long, they apparently didn't have time for any of the core relationships between characters in the book. Like, so much great material just handed to them on a silver platter. But no, we need to focus on video game like battle sequences and random characters who have nothing to do with the primary characters.
This makes me think of that appalling ad bromancing up The LOTR. That was another band of brothers, with a core membership of two. The treatment of gays is an urgent matter now, as it was around the original publication of the LOTR, when the great computer scientist Alan Turing committed suicide. But Tolkien's legacy is no place for these arguments, and sexing up these characters just does the audience a big disservice.
focus tests are scum, so are test audiences/screenings
Alex Manning agreed. This really upset me. What a let down the Studio was to everyone involved in this project.
Fae-Adventures This! Couldn’t have said it better!
The way Guillermo's voice broke when talking about having to leave the project, you could tell he was putting his heart into it, what a missed opportunity.
Dude he compared the situation with having recently lost your wife and having to talk about how she died. I am pretty goddamn sure the dude really suffered with the whole thing. That part of the video made me really sad
Maybe. I appreciate the enthusiasm, but I don't think that making the movie more like a fairy tale and less like Lord of the Rings would make a better movie. The world of the Hobbit needs to have the same feel as Lord of the Rings.
@@JoshuaRellick Why though, they're very different books
@@blob22201 But they are supposed to be in the same universe. I know that Tolkien wrote the Hobbit as a children's story and the Lord of the Rings for adults, but when he wrote the Hobbit, I don't think he had planned to write the Lord of the Rings so he had to change things not only in the original Hobbit but also the fictional world at large in order for the Lord of the Rings to work. We can have different types of stories, but they both need to fit an overarching world, especially when dealing with characters we've seen before. It is better if the Hobbit is treated as a prequel to the Lord of the Rings even if that is not how the book was originally written. That way you can tie the movies together more.
Did you read the hobbit?
Every time you replay that "because it was real" scene a year is deducted from my lifespan
By part 3 my spirit will depart to Mandos, find Aulë and make puppy eyes at him until he lets Bilbo reunite with Thorin.
Sofia Irene see how she glitters
I will have faded with Middle Earth till the world ends
It really does hurt so much.
+ Sofia Irene; At present I'm writing the definitive work on the subject. So I want you to be totally honest with me on how that quote makes you feel. What did it do to you? Tell me. And remember, this is for posterity, so be honest - how do you feel?
The fact that they not only add all that nonsense with Legolas and his mother but _ignore the fact that elves are fucking immortal_ is seriously dumb. Legolas acts like his mother is dead and gone as if she were from the race of men but Legolas is full-elf, his mother was an elf, therefore if she were slain, she's either in the Halls of Mandos in Valinor awaiting judgement and resurrection, or she's already been resurrected (possibly resurrected long ago) and is alive and well in Valinor _and literally will be until the end of Arda._ Legolas would know this and would know that he would one day be reunited with his mother in Valinor once he decided to sail West.
Exactly, this is what happens when people who don’t care about the actual lore make brain-dead adaptations. If they actually cared then the Hobbit would have been an animated children’s movie, like how the book reads. Maybe a miniseries, that would fit the story of the book well.
on point. people who added those plot points didn't care about the world they were exploiting for moneys
@@benjibader32 Have you seen The Hobbit(1977)?
@@pandemonium8420 no. Where can I find it?
@@benjibader32 On RUclips Movies and Amazon prime videos. Although the reviews say they did a bad job of digitizing it especially the audio.
"Women in movies need a justification for being women, otherwise they might as well just be men amirite?" Is probably the best quote on female representation in film anyone will ever state. Precisely sums it up.
@Kvothe Windrunner I dunno reckon there is a valid critique of Princess Leia as a character in the original trilogy being some form a female trope. Damsel in distress? At least that's how the male characters originally perceived her. I dunno. Not a big Star Wars fan so can't really comment.
How I interpreted the comment was that female characters are written as female first and characters after. Its like writers say "what makes this character a woman" rather than "who is this character".
I'm sure there are lots of examples you could come up with of female characters that are well written without falling into tropes but the majority are sadly not.
@Kvothe Windrunner also I'm not claiming some kind of conspiracy against women in film. Just they are clearly more often lazily written.
In brief the reason is "patriarchy". The power structure in most societies tended to favour men over women. The reasons of this is manifold and hotly debated but some of it had to with food production and childrearing
For most of Western history (as this isn't universal in all societies), political power and wealth were seen as exclusively male things. Women couldn't own property or hold high office (or vote once elections became a thing). They were tied to the home. Therefore men tended to play the active role in stories while women usually took more passive roles, even when they are the protagonist.
Until recently literacy rates were lower among women than men so a lot of classical literature wasn't written by or for them. People tend to like to read and write about people who are like themselves. People also tend to hire people like themselves, which makes it difficult for women or minorities or poor people get a foot in the door in industries dominated by rich white men.
Even when female writers emerged on the scene they were often stigmatized and confined to perceived "female genres" like romance novels. There has been historical exceptions of course and things are improving but the delineation still exist.
Stories told by men, and a small group of men at that, had a disproportionately wider reach than stories told by other groups for thousands of years. It's no wonder that their stories are seen as universal while stories told by women and minority voices are seen as niche.
SethDakotaS “Written as female first and characters after” “‘what makes the character a woman?’ Instead of ‘who is this character?’” Man, your comments hit the nail on the head
Justice for arcee
Guillermo was supposed to direct the movies and he wanted to capture the more whimsical elements of the book? And wanted to show Beorn?
I WAS ROBBED!
We all were. 💔😭
It hurts so much!
wait isnt Beorn in the movie?
jbvader721 because it was real
Beorn was in the movie though?
It is very true that both Thorin and Kili don't really look all that Dwarvish... which is why that I love that some of the fandom have decided that among dwarves they're considered unattractive lol.
Veereble Atsim I like that meme where the dwarves have been captured by the elves and they have a conversation about how to identify the females of each group. The dwarves think Taurel is a man and the elves Fili, Killi, and Thorin are women
Pretty sure Kili has an actual babyface among Dwarves
@@berkleypearl2363 Send link.
Please. I need that.
@@berkleypearl2363 liiiink...
@@berkleypearl2363 we must know!
I think Tolkien had a pretty good understanding of the horrors of war given his experience in the first world war.
In fact Eowyn goes from idolising heroism to realising how horrendous war is and that for everyone a simple life of peace is more rewarding.
I think Peter Jackson realised this as well, and it was a big reason he cast Elijah Wood as Frodo - his big blue eyes and fresh face really captured the look of the teenage boys sent to war with no idea what they were getting into.
Thus! And the same goes for Faramir who might at this point decide to be just a good husband as well, leaving behind all the horror and madness of war that had been forced onto him , robbed him of his beloved brother and drove his father insane.
100th like
Exactly. Also, she is permanently injured by her fight with the Witch King so it makes sense that she doesn't want to fight again.
Seems entirely in line with her character.
While not strictly such, a part of her glorification of warlike valour had to do with the men she loved - Theodred, Eomer, Theodin, Aragorn. I mean, she always wanted reciprocated love, and aswell had to with love of her Kinfolk, the want to keep and protect them, to feel validated in service to them.
Faramir provides all of that - not to chalk it all up to sheer utility ofc, as that could lead down a dark n dreary mountain path, but in terms of consistent within the universe n all it completely makes sense that she'd marry the son of the Stewart of the Gondor and sing songs, grow plants, tend to the people, etc.
"Lindsay please god no, I don't think I can stand to hear it one more ti--" "WHY DOES IT HURT SO MUCH"
“because the studios mandated it”
it gives me physical pain to hear it.
lmao this reminds me of when I watched this video with my boyfriend and at some point he yelled "OH GOD WHY DOES SHE KEEP SHOWING THAT, IT'S SO CRINGE"
Because it is REAL
It was real.
"We were becoming the world's highest paid extras" uuuuff
💔
At least he got paid well... at least something for his heartbreak and frustrations.
Oh god I cried all over again. It broke my heart.
This was a good video, but I feel like it needed a love triangle.
Ha ha ha XD
Who's gonna play the hypothenuse?
Yeah. Not doing Kili+Legolas getting it off was such a missed opportunity.
How about a love-dodecahedron ?
How 'bout an Eiffel tower? Kili might need a mead barrel to stand on though.
Ugh, they got the scene at Bilbo’s so right, and they even pulled lines from the book. But then everything went so wrong....
Yeah that part was the only good thing about any of the three movies. They did a really great job on that one thing, then destroyed the rest.
@@woody5476 The WB entered the chat
...
That song was awesome, it still gives me chills
It's honestly heartbreaking, the fact that we had such a promising start with a great story of relationships, heritage, struggles, but remaining strong and not wanting to give up was just ugh, a knife through the heart really
Exactly, the song made me hope it's going to be magical
“Two attractive people are staring into each other’s eyes. They must be in love!”
Ah, I see you are a man of culture as well.
"I could have anything beneath my trousers". Said no lovestruck dwarf ever.
Assuming they're a male and a female, of course.
Oh, the burning passion.
Can’t believe that studio executives and Tumblr shipping communities have the same braincell
Its a real loss that we didn't get to see Del Toro's Hobbit movies. Would have been fascinating
Hearing him talk about how sad he was not to be the director anymore was absolutely heartbreaking. :(
Or At the Mouth of Madness. Guy can't catch a break.
Huh? What was that about an Oscar?
To be fair to Mr. Jackson - if there's anything that would burn out someone's creative juices, I would imagine that filming the Lord of the Rings would be it.
What is an example of a Del Toro decision that made it in and didn't work? I am actually asking. This video made it seem like it was all scrapped.
LordVader1094
What bullshit are you spewing on about?
I want to travel to that parallel universe where Del Toro directs The Hobbit
Sierra Tillman Sadly until we discover the Quantum Realm...
God same
...and the last, but also least, hellboy
Take me with you!
We are living in the worst timeline
The dwarf actor, John Callen... was he ever a teacher? He's got SUCH an arresting voice and presence. I could listen to him talk about absolutely anything!
I thought the same thing!
He was in theatre. A clear, powerful voice is to be expected.
agreed, he's fantastic! there's not a huge amount of info online about him, but it looks like he's pretty much worked in theater/tv/movies straight through since the mid 70s.
@@loudashamemy old history teacher has worked in theater and he had a similar presence, I loved his lessons :D
Did you literally leave a comment that you're shocked that a professional actor is good at talking and holds interest? I mean....
“Your mother loved you more than anyone. More than I love you, Legolas. Please leave.” -Thranduil
"no u"- Legolas
The Hobbit sold me when I saw the trailer with the goosebumps-inducing singing of "Far Over the Misty Mountains Cold". There was so much promise in that scene, and that moment captured something special. It all steadily fell apart from there. What a damn shame.
I have never been so keen for a movie as I was after hearing that song in the trailer. Some friends saw the movie before I was planning to go and told me it was trash so I waited til it was available to stream and I fell asleep before I got to the end and never tried finishing it, watching it again or watching the sequels. It looks like they were even worse than the first one.
The only moment in the Hobbit films that really had the LotR feeling for me.. That moment had me really thinking it would be a return to that same feeling I had when first seeing the Fellowship of the Ring.. Yes, that fell apart very quickly. It is still the only scene in all three films that I actually enjoyed.
So much this!
God me and my brothers were so excited, I was like 12? my baby brother’s voice had just started to drop and we’d sing it nonstop, I started reading the books & just threw myself into all things Tolkien in anticipation. Such a souls crushing let down :/
For the scenes in the Shire for the first movie the entire cinema were struggling to contain their cheers of joy and mirth, we were all so happy. The second half was not as great and the ending very rushed. The crowd was still enthusiastic upon leaving afterwards though, I was very happy myself. Until I started watching the second one, now that is when I was truly disillusioned and the cinema this time was not cheering or happy at all. In fact there was a palpable feeling of disgust, as people jeered and booed, which is very, very uncommon.
That interview with the actor is heart breaking. Imagine a hobbit movie where the Dwarves come to the conclusion that the real treasure was the friendship they had right from the start. I envy the alternative universe that got a Hobbit movie entirely focused on Bilbo and the Dwarves like in the book.
In fairness... the dwarves are far more fleshed out in the movies than in the book.
*Martin Freeman
Holy shit can you imagine Morgan Freeman as Bilbo that would really be interesting.
Well, the treasure was also their share of the giant horde of gold as well, so much that Bilbo took two boxes of gold home and that was considered a shocking step down from his contractually obliged 1/15th share.
Well, he did get that mithril shirt, didn't he? Either way, Hobbits rarely care for such things.
Amen
John Callen’s disappointment is so tangible, it’s pretty heartbreaking to see. But what an honour to have had access to such insight into the process and how the cast felt about it!
My headcanon is that The Hobbit movies are the story as told by Gimli. That's why Legolas is so prominent and does so many ridiculous things, because he wants to tell everyone how cool his elf bro is. Legolas has long since given up trying to tell him that no, that's not how it happened, he wasn't even _there_ for that part.
Kevin Stevens Gimli was still a child during the Hobbit
Angelo Cruz - Right. They're stories that Gloin told Gimli, and now Gimli's telling other people an embellished version of them. And on top of the Legolas stuff, he added all the unnecessary Lord of the Rings connections to tie it into all the stories he tells about his own adventures.
But wouldn't Gloin then also get some nice pieces? "You know my dad, well he did all that cool stuff back then."
I think you've completely misjudged Gimli as a character and the relationship he had with Legolas. Please respect all of the work an author puts into creating their characters/relationships
Whether this would fit Gimli's character or not, if they'd done this as a sort of Epilogue reveal then it might've made the changes feel more justified; it's an unreliable narrator relaying his interpretation of events that he wasn't present for.
Del Toro would have been perfect for these movies. Not only because I love the bastard, but the way this guys sees a story, that simple yet incredible look his movies have, would have worked so well for a tale like this one.
Truly cannot believe anybody thinks this. Even before the trilogy ended I was in contact with people connected to the production who attested to Del Toro's incompetence. Then the making of videos came out showing Del Toro's outlandish and quite frabkly absurd designs for Mirkwood, Smaug (a giant iguana) which made me happy that the bullet was dodged there. But forget behind the scene whisperings and silly set designs. The reason Del Toro would have been a terrible choice as director is the fact that he completely ditched the product 6 months in. Left the entire crew and cast high and dry, forcing them to start from scratch. Nobody who would do any justice to this story would do that, imo. Its hard to see as anything but an act of pure scorn.
@@tylerlynch2849 If you say he ditched the production in 6 months, why was he then in Wellington for a year and a half for pre - production???
@@Tamaki742 because he's just making shit up
@@tylerlynch2849 Del Toro has made some of the greatest movies of all time, he would have done a much better job. Jackson shit the bed.
Apparently Pan's Labyrinth is great (haven't seen it) but the only movie of his I've seen is Hellboy (2004) and... yikes, that movie was dogshit.
Just hearing Del Toro talk about his original intention for the films is heartbreaking, what a wasted oppertunity.
Del Toro can't catch a break it seems. For every success he's had there's a story of him getting fucked by corporate meddling. :
Ikr?
I got really sad there :(
Especially when he said he was really heartbroken about this.
Seriously! The dude is a visionary but every time he gets his hands on a project he actually wants to do, someone else fucks him over. Same thing happened with the remake of Silent Hill. He and motherfucking Hideo Kojima were teaming up for that one and then Konami cancelled it at the eleventh hour again!
vsGoliath Silent Hills was a new title, not a remake.
@@vsGoliath96 True, forgot about Silent Hill, but H.P. Lovecraft's "Mountains of Madness" came to mind, which he prepaired while Ridley Scott's "Prometheus" was released and Del Toro said he can't go on with it, since Prometheus had basically the same story.
Aw look at how they broke Del Toro's heart, how could they?!?
It wuld have been better if they didn't
its Warner Bros. its like tradition for them to break a director's heart unless their name is Christopher Nolan
Lindsay elis should be a director
@@johans3164 it's funny reading this comment after Nolan and WBs bitter break-up.
@@johans3164 This aged well.
I only just now realized why there are 3 of these videos. I feel stupid.
No need to feel stupid. It's stupid that there were 3 Hobbit movies.
its so clever!!
Oh. Me too. The "3/2" and all...
@@shelby4355 no, no. He knew there were three videos, he just figured out why there were 3
@@0428733 I know that too, I just also figured out that the numbering was supposed to represent the fact that only 2 Hobbit movies were planned initially 😂
Eva played Tauriel under literally ONE condition.
No love triangles.
And everything was fine, and no love was shed between characters...
... And then came the reshoots...
24:09 "The studio would really like to see..." 🤦
Volvirth pretty sure that getting paid was another condition
@@arnouth5260 and contracts
Lindsay, this is truly an elevation of the film video essay. The time and effort to travel to the set and even get an actor who went through the production ordeal makes this so much more than another RUclips armchair analysis. This was definitely worth the wait. Thank you and thanks to all involved.
She did that when she decided to break away from the formula of channel awesome (let alone breaking away from the channel period)
Seriously all of the video essay channels are so boring. It's just a timeline of what happened mixed with "analysis" which is usually just basic observation. It's just boring overall.
I was just about to compliment the rigor applied in this series. Very well done.
The only things even close to what Lindsay is doing that I can think of off the top of my head are maybe moviebob's Really That Good series or the 20,000 word essays of FilmCritHulk.
Moovieboy I have loved this series and this video as well... although I started liking it a little less when it became a video about how Tolkien was a supporter of the patriarchy and stuff like that I liked it a little less. Series was still awesome though, I definitely give it a thumbs up myself!
‘Her character wasn’t strong female representation. It was a cynical sales pitch.’
This analysis is so accurate I’d list it next to the raw production cost numbers.
Yes
It's such a shame that Del Toro's two-movie The Hobbit never got to be. I'm sure it would've at least been far superior to what we ended up with.
Still, we got a giant robot film which went to some strange and wonderful places.
It probably would have captured the feel of the book a lot better. The Hobbit films are a really terrible adaption. They stretched the story until it broke. I guess we'll have to wait for the definitive Hobbit film version.
Mr Shambleface yeah it sucks how they treat del toro
Agreed. God I wanted those movies so much.
Even if it had somehow not been good, at least it would have been different.
"I could have anything down my trousers..."
And now I think I know why Christopher Tolkien refuses to see the movies.
I just started reading Return of the King and I'm still trying to find "looks like meat's back on the menu"
Cornelius Funk two towers that’s where that quote is from
Reed the film written by Hollywood writers, not the book written by Tolkien
Christopher Tolkien: Tell me one random thing that they added in the movies
Me: Kili tries to get a female elf to grab his dick
Christopher Tolkien: NOPE IM OUT
Cornelius Funk Isn’t the language in the books glorious? Unlike that in the movies.
In the Lord of the Rings Aragon's nickname "Strider" is explicitly something he was identified in Bree, not something the Elves or anyone outside of that calls him. The Elves gave him a different name that Bilbo calls him in Fellowship. It's weird seeing the Elves call him something that only some dumb hillbillies near the Shire called him.
Also, "Go north." The hell is Legolas gonna find north of Erebor? THE ONLY THING NORTH OF THE LONELY MOUNTAIN IS THE GREY MOUNTAINS AND FORODWAITH. No ten-year-old prince of the Dúnedain has any business there when "Goblins, Hobgoblins, and Orcs of the worst description" have occupied those mountains for centuries. The geography in BoFA is a mess.
It's just Thranduil taking away Legolas Konami code and putting him on hard mode
he did have a decent age though, think he is 90 or something in LOTR
as noted in the extended version (as well as the books probably)
Absolutely and this was the thing that annoyed me the most about the movies (as well as the method of filming was disorientating especially the first 10-20 minutes-just like Lyndsey mentions it gave me headaches). Two scenes in particular- When the survivors gather by the shore and Bard says "Where is the Master?" a lady replied "Halfway down the Anduin by now" The Anduin is nowhere near Lake town/Erebor. Likewise the motivation for the evil armies to attack the Lonely Mountain was not for the treasure but to "open the door to rebuild the realm of Angmar" Gundabad and Angmar are nowhere near the Lonely Mountain (they are north of Moria and closer to the Shire). It's like someone looked up place names of Middle Earth (Anduin and Angmar being mentioned in LOTR) and just threw them into the script. It happens in The Two Towers as well. When chasing the Uruk-hai, Legolas says "The Uruks turn North-east. They are taking the hobbits to Isengard" on their current path, turning North East would take them away from Isengard. Finally how did the Elvin force lead by Haldir make it to Helm's Deep before the Uruk-hai army as Isengard is much closer to Helm's Deep then Lothlorien is. Aragorn even saw the army on the march meaning he must have gotten washed quite far down the river and would have had to backtrack to Helm's Deep.
@@jackcoleman1222 True about geography. But Aragorn isn't 10 during BoFA. He's already 80ish in LOTR.
Del Toro sounds so pure. They hurt him :(
There is no human more adorable and kind, honestly.
He's a grown up. He can take care of himself. And honestly, did you see what he was planning? Terrible stuff, so un-Tolkien. Fine for his own movies, but absolutely wrong for The Hobbit.
@@fs9096 And he then got shafted by Konami. Makes me sad.
@@Serai3 - Where can I find these "un-Tolkien" things he was planning? I've always felt like I'd love to see his vision for The Hobbit, but didn't know anything he'd planned was public.
Other than the supposed film structure of having a "There and Back Again" movie paired with, "Where the Fuck was Gandalf", which clearly isn't something only he could do, but would have been a massive improvement on the films.
"Hahaha Lindsay, The Battle of Five Studios. Nice pun there, I'm sure it was two or three- *oh* "
Aidenpons Nice Rock Raiders avatar!
@Aidenpons - ha! Literally just thought that, having reached that part.
Every single interview is so depressing, especially Evangeline Lily.
That’s because it was real
@@BenWeinerRVA LMAO PLEASE SHUT THE FUCK UP
@@BenWeinerRVA i want you to remember you commented this
Referring to the heart-breaking interviews by the actors, let me just add something here as a Scandinavian LOTR fan. Mikael Persbrandt, a renowned Swedish actor who was casted to play Beorn, tells in his autobiography how utterly ridiculous the production culture was. At first, he was flown there from Sweden and this respected theater actor spent his first evening on the set hanging from ropes for hours and hours, without any senior actors around, talking to bottles or melons or some other CGI markers of actual persons I can't recall right now. He said that Sir Ian McKellen tried to bring some decency to this faceless monster of an production, but mostly it was just waiting, hanging like a clown, or flying back and forth to New Zealand without knowing whether Persbrandt would actually be used in the movie.
Edit: In "Sir Ian" I mean Sir Ian McKellen
Sir Ian who? What do you mean he brought decency? Your comment just raises more questions man. Finish the whole thought if you're going to post such a giant paragraph.
@@Supersquigi English is not my native language, apologies for any unclear phrases. No need to get upset :)
In "bringing decency" I meant that Sir Ian (McKellen) tried to add proper, actor friendly production culture to the set - what term would you recommend instead?
@@ElComanchero As native speaker, the dude replying is talking nonsense. Your English was perfect.
@@GeeeDubb Oh, ok! Good to hear that.
@@ElComanchero Your English is very good and your comment adds even more context to what was happening on set. Thank you.
17:16
"Mom dead ☠️
Dad mad 😡
Kid sad 😭"
Literally 70% of young adult literature right there
Fma
@@qwertyqwerty-jy9fc no that ones kid mad, dad sad, mom dead.
eva then
Damn, seeing del Toro like that nearly broke my heart.
It sadly happens a lot to him. He was going to direct The Mountain of Madness before Universal demanded that the movie has a happy ending and a love interest.
so fucking sad. one of the best directors of our generation still isn't trusted with full control over their movie. art is made by artists, not by focus groups
IN A LOVECRAFT MOVIE!!!??? WTF!?
@@MajinCCBThePrince Yeah, in a Lovecraftian movie. Because, no studio execs understand source materials apparently. Except for a select few and that's after a lot of struggle for control.
Tamaki742 Which makes at least four movies that an alternate universe has as a one up on us with.
Del Toro's Hobbit (one and two), Pinocchio, and Mountain of Madness movies.
It breaks my heart whenever a project falls through for Guillermo. He's such a sweet guy and a talented creative mind.
I will never give up on the live action adaptation of Monster. You can't convince me otherwise.
And it happens so damn often! First the Hobbit movies, then three video games: Sundown, Insane, and Silent Hills.
pocketlint60 at least he has two well deserved oscars now, maybe that will help in future projects :)
Yeah, he gets shafted by various bankrollers depressingly often. Here's hoping that winning all those Oscars means that the At the Mountains of Madness film he wanted to do can be finally made.
Same. I'm hoping to hell that The Shape of Water's wins --even if it wasn't what I thought was the strongest movie of last year-- will maybe??? allow him to do what he wants??? Because his vision is wonderful and the "The studios fucked up by dismissing GDT" narrative is only going to increase as the Hobbit movies continue aging poorly and his films continue holding true.
"The Great Love Triangulation of Tauriel" really frustrates me. Like it's *so asinine* that you can't help but realize the studio was out of their mind. It's like they realized they accidentally forgot to give her *anything to do* and forced her into a love triangle to justify her existence entirely.
Yuuuup.
I love how the actor playing Kili openly looks like he wants to die when he says the "I could have anything down my trousers" line.
He knows how terrible it is.
was just about to comment this exact thing
HAHAHAHA!!! Poor Aidan Turner! Deserved so much better! It is true as the older actor says that he is "good looking" but he also has some damn good acting to back it up. He is amazing in Poldark.
The pain in del Toro's voice after leaving the project shows how utterly committed to the movies he was and how much he wanted to do it. What a phenomenal swing and a miss on account of the studios by driving him away. Peter Jackson didn't have his heart in this trilogy...he didn't want to direct it. Being forced to because 'he was the only one who could', and then being ridden by the studios and kept on a tight leash completely destroyed the spark, life, and charisma he brought to the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Those movies were his dreams realized. The Hobbit trilogy was more akin to a nightmare.
I need a remake with del Toro and a focus on the dwarves. It seems those were the people actually most invested in the story.
I completely forgot how GOOD the Misty Mountains song at the beginning is. I got chills watching it and I remember getting chills in the theater.
and then they dropped the song from the following movies for no reason whatsoever. Still scratching my head on that one.
True! I's almost as good as the Rankin-Bass version of the song. Too bad they couldn't get the rights to that!
(not even kidding)
The "trilogy" peaked right there. I should have gotten up, left the theater and lived my entire life thinking that it was an amazing movie
Yeah, that's a rare fuck up by Howard Shore. I don't know why he dropped that theme. It was iconic in the first movie. It'd be like if he had dropped the Shire theme from Two Towers and Return of the King.
Clamavi de Profundis produced an epic 20 minute edition of the full Lonely Mountain song set to that music (including related songs from the Hobbit and Lotr). ruclips.net/video/LY0lLcz3Qis/видео.html
Mr Callen sounds like such a respectful, heartfelt professional. Him and his collegues deserved better treatment for how much effort and good will they put into their work despite the circumstances.
that ending...... I can not wait for the third "unnecessary" chapter for this videos
Eh. I'm just going to wait for the extended editions.
The Hobbit series sounds surprisingly like the new Star Wars movies with all the behind-the-scenes drama. Hmmm.
Are you talking about the new new ones or the old new ones?
MrDman21 yeah probably. But both trilogies can’t compare with the drama behind Justice League. Oh boy! I hope some day some one tackles that.
...
Although there’s also an interesting drama behind the sequel Star Wars trilogy and it’s spin offs.
Who will be in the studio-mandated love triangle? Place your bets!
That interview clip with John Callen near the end broke my heart. I also grew up with the hobbit and was bored to tears by the movies. But I never thought about the actors of the Dwarves and how important it was that they got pushed aside. The hobbit could have been amazing if it was this band of actors, dressed like dwarves, trying to reclaim their culture and finding out what that really means. It's a pure idea, and ironically it was corrupted by greed... you reminded me what I loved about the book! :'(
that and combined with Guillermo's heartbreak we would have had a whismacal film about a band of brothers on an adventure ahhhhhhhhhh fuck warner brothers
@@ImperatorMagus They really are the worst.
@@StarWarsomania By the end, I only remembered Balin, Thorin, Kili and Brombur. After 3 movies following these dwarves I really expected more
Someone's got dragon sickness
I still say there's a really good three-hour movie buried under all that ridiculous crap. A good editor could dig it out. I hope some fan will do so eventually, because the parts that are good are just so damn good, they deserve to be set in a decent movie instead of this endless self-indulgent mess of yaya and jumping about.
In college, one of my professors claimed to have worked on the CGI for The Hobbit (which had just come out at the time.) When he was talking about it he was very frustrated, because his department wasn't given enough time to render their effects. Thus his department was forced to render everything in way lower definition, and even had to forgo the higher fps they were supposed to use while animating. I was pleasantly surprised this got brought up in this video.
I can imagine how bad it feels to be forced to be signed under an underwhelming work of art.
I feel so bad for the fantastic actors whose potential was wasted. The dwarves should have been the highlight of their career. Instead they got barely any screen time and what they did do was infront of some damn green screen.
Eowyn didn't give up wanting to be a warrior because she decided it's a man's thing after all. She had a romanticised idea of war as something glorious and heroic without much concern for the horror, the suffering and the pain it brings. This was why she almost seemed to have contempt for tasks that involved caring for others. Not surprising considering she grew up among men who boasted of their battle glories. She was in a way like Trish from Jessica Jones who claimed she wanted to help others from a purely selfless heroism when the truth is that all she wanted was personal glory. She could have helped so many people using her voice as a celebrity if her main intention really was to just help. Instead she wanted to be a 'hero'. Eowyn fulfilled her destiny of destroying the Night King, and through that ordeal dispelled the illusions she had about going to war and realised that taking on a nurturing and healing role is no less, if not more, glorious than killing in war.
fair point!
It should also be noted that the reason she travelled to the Pelennor Fields in disguise is not because women in Middle Earth don't fight, but rather because Theoden had expressly forbidden it on the grounds that he wanted her to govern Rohan until his return, or that of Eomer, and failing that, in perpetuity. 'Dernhelm's' ride probably caused quite a bit of upheaval in Rohan while the Muster was away, what with the designated head of state MYSTERIOUSLY VANISHING OVERNIGHT
Makes a lot of sense comming from an author who grew up in a time where war and glory was romanticised to hell, then he took part in WWI and the Somme, and then settled down teaching English to the younger generations and writing awesome books.
This video was very painful to watch. Not because it was bad, quite the contrary actually, but because it shows us what the hobbit movies could have been. That a lot of heart and talent went into them and yet they were wasted.
OMG my thoughts exactly, just why? The dwarves became just extras in the background and that love story... cringed it in every moment. They are few good and decent scenes and dialogue, but the use of music exclusive made for The lord of the rings (like the ringwraits and the theme of the coronation ofAragorn) used it when Torin hugs Bilbo is horrible. I feel really bad.
I remember when I first saw the third installation of The Hobbit movies, and when Thranduil told Legolas to seek “Strider” I immediately thought to myself, “That makes no fucking sense...”
I literally said out loud "Fuck off!" to the movie while I was watching it. Made me so mad
Yeah, after I read more info on Aragorn's story, I was like "how the hell does Thranduil even know Aragorn exists"? In the books, Aragorn was just being told after hitting 20 years old by Elrond his true name and heritage. He was also told by Elrond to go out into the world. Before that happened, Elrond kept his name and true identity secret while grooming him in Rivendell.
It still hurts me to think of how enthralled I was with the opening scenes while watching the first movie for the first time, just to be totally disillusioned less than an hour later. It breaks my heart everytime.
Just HAD to check the wiki and...
Aragorn Born: March 1, 2931
Battle of Five Armies: November 23, 2941
SO excuse you but Aragorn was 10 AND A HALF.
In the extended edition of Two Towers doesn't Aragon say he's like 80 years old or something?
McSuperfly Frodo had the ring for like +10 years before anything really happened in the book
@@McSuperfly101 He says that he's 87.
@@RamBear88 If I recall correctly, he had the ring for 40 years before everything started going sideways.
@@RamBear88 Frodo had gone 19 years after Bilbo's (and his) birthday. Excuse me for my English.
$900 for an 'elven cloak' ARE YOU KIDDING ME??? it better be hand woven by orlando bloom himself
New Zealand dollars... Worth as much as a packet of gravel.
it would be around 653 US, which is soooo reasonable...
Bugsy McCoy , but how many US dollars for that packet of gravel??
I don't know why, but I find the mental image of Orlando Bloom sitting behind a loom making elven cloaks absolutely hilarious :'D
How much is that in silver pennies?
Ya know what does hurt so much? The fact that Del Toro's vision is exactly what I wanted from The Hobbit movie. Because it's exactly the different vibe the book has from lotr! And he is already my favourite director. I am so sad after discovering that he left, it could have been so good! :(
I mean, Legolas would have been a notable omission, frankly. He's Thranduil's son and elves live for freaking ever; it would be weird if he wasn't at Thranduil's court in Mirkwood. But they did give him way too much to do.
Renegade Paladin. I read that Orlando Bloom asked to be in The Hobbit
I know this comment is very old, but I can't fight the need to info dump so here it comes: Legolas was actually the last of the Fellowship members to be invented. Originally Tolkien planned to have Glorfindel (Lord of Gondolin who died in a fight with a Balrog during the fall of the city and later rembodied in Valinor but sent back to Middle Earth by the Valar to act as an emmisionary) be the Elf who joins the Fellowship in the Ring Quest.
However due to his legendary history Tolkien feared that he'd actually end up overshadowing Aragorn. Also having such a notorious Elf didn't fit the theme of the fading of the elves from Middle Earth and the coming dominion of Men.
So Glorfindel's role was reduced to escorting Frodo to Rivendell.
Meanwhile Tolkien came up with Legolas for the Elf spot in the Fellowship. However since he was such a late addition his character is notably less fleshed out than the other characters. Making him Thranduil's son was Tolkien's way of giving him kind of an instant backstory as "the son of the Elvenking from The Hobbit".
So Legolas' absence in The Hobbit book is due to the character not having been invented at that point in Tolkien's work and the reason why he seems to kind of fade in the backround in comparison to other characters is that he actually was a very late addition.
Sure, but in universe that doesn't make a difference. In The Hobbit Bilbo doesn't spend much time in Thranduil's court and none openly being introduced to people, so there's no reason why any of the members of that court would be featured in the book since it's told from Bilbo's viewpoint. The movie did away with that and focused on other characters, and at that point it would become weird for Legolas to be omitted, from an in-universe perspective.
@@RenegadePaladin I agree that no acknowledgement of Legolas character at all would have been weird would have been a little weird.
I just wanted to highlight that given the character's history and little hard canon facts about both his family (aside the little bits about Thranduil and Oropher) and the way the Greenwood operates as a Kingdom make the expansion of his character in the movies (an obvious nostalgia money grab) feel out of place. There's no place for him in this story because he wasn't supposed to be there and that's hard to change retroactively; at least to the extent the producers obviously wanted to.
Personally I feel like a short little cameo at Thranduil's court should have been sufficient as both an acknowledgement of his relation to Thranduil as well as a nod to the LotR movies for fanservice.
(Don't even get me started on the whole dead mother business; why would they think the good ol' "Mum dead, Dad mad, Kid sad" situation would be the most compelling dynamic to give to those immortal characters?)
((Finally my personal headcanon here since we just don't know and my thoughts aren't any more correct than any other reading of the situation:
Given that while Tolkien went back and edited some parts of The Hobbit after the publication of The Lord of the Rings to be more consistent but didn't bother to even mention Legolas once as well as the fact that the focus of Legolas' character in LotR was his relationship with Gimli but despite that he never mentioned a (however brief) collision with the party Gimli's father was a member of (or an ivolvement in the battle of the five armies for that matter) I personally believe Legolas just straight up wasn't there. Since nothing in LotR points to Legolas having had a formal day to day position at Thranduil's court and the fact that Elves operate on such ridiculous timelines that a say 3-5 year stay somewhere else wouldn't be considered "long" I just think that he was occupied elsewhere at this point in time.))
I remember when Gandalf "dies" in Fellowship the big thing with Legolas was that he was experiencing something unfamiliar- death. Jackson specifically directed him to be bewildered by the whole concept of death.
So mark that as another nice little touch from Lord of the Rings that the Hobbit totally erodes. He's got a dead mom...for some reason....!
I have read that already here, but that would be a movie decision.
Legolas having no concept of death is not a topic in the books at all.
I'm sure you're right about that with respect to the books, but we're talking about the consistencies of the films here. It's certainly a factor in Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings film universe, and it's one he decided to upend for no good reason.
The book cannon isn't really relevant to the discussion.
A book cannon can be relevant in any discussion it wants to be. Are you going to say no to a book cannon?
It makes sense for Legolas to be bewildered that Gandalf died, but only because he's the only one in the group likely to have a decent idea of just how powerful Gandalf actually is. As someone above said the idea that he would be unfamiliar with death as a concept is just imbecilic.
So what did Legolas think was happening to all the orcs and animals he shot with his bow? Did he think they were sleeping?
"See how I glitter" ----> "I'm loosing to a bird" ----> "Why does it hurt so much" ^______^
Saaaavvve... Mmmmaaaarthaaaaa...
“Fairy lives don’t matter today.”
Fairy Lives don't matter today because I ate the whole plate, now see how I glitter because it hurts so much! And it's fine... this is fine... it's fine... see? He's fine... this is fine... Save Martha.
"Bumblebee, stop lubricating the man."
Bumblebee! Stop LOSING TO A BIRD because it HURTS SO MUCH!!
Listening to John callen and his vision of the movies is nothing shortbof heartbreaking
Local geezer has better understanding of how to make a good movie than five studios and an award-winning director
ugh, the movie he describes is exactly what it could have been easily under better circumstances
I remember seeing the first vlogs that Jackson made during preproduction. Even though I didn't believe in or care for the movie back then, I was impressed by how much effort they put in it, for example by giving a distinct character to each of the dwarves. I started to think that maybe it could be a good movie.
I still don't care about the trilogy, but now I understand John and the other dwarf actors, and my heart goes out to them
Studio assholes ruin everything. I wonder sometimes, if they're even human. Their callous disregard for art and beauty is disturbing.
You can tell it's all true by the behind the scenes stuff too. And he was right - the dwarves became these caricatures. The little friggin yokels in Snow White were better developed and had more lines, jfc
My fix for Tauriel is pretty simple: She be-friends Kili. That's it. No romance. She DOES love him and grieve for him, but as a friend only.
I feel like this also adds a layer to Legolas's disdain for dwarves. Through Tauriel, Bilbo, and Gandalf's grief, he's seen the consequences of what caring for mortals can be.
Yep. It could also be a fresher take on the sole "real love" eternal bond that Elves have.
And it’d be a fresh take in Hollywood overall tbf. Last time a big blockbuster really did that was in Shang-Chi perhaps? Or the whole love triangle being upturned in Hunchback for example. Its used so little, the concept of becoming friends with a woman and not falling in loving with them. It would really help with the people who grow up with films like these. Its so miserable when you see on social media how many dudes think its impossible to befriend women like wtf
WHaT?? woMaN be FrIEnd WiTh MAn??? IMPOSSIBLE!
15:01 unfortunately, CGI Dáin was due in large part to Billy Connolly’s health problems; battling both prostate cancer and advancing Parkinson’s disease.
Due to the huge number of changes, he would have been required for numerous reshoots, which he could not do due to medical commitments.
This was a real shame, but spare a thought for all the ork actors who had to learn how to move like orks, only to be replaced by CGI.
RIP Billy Connolly.
@@whitesage3448 I think he's still alive.
@@meg-a-watt5404 He is, he went through a surgery or two, but last stated he's mulled over the idea of retirement for health and personal reasons. I believe he is still making artwork though.
@@theartisanrogue That's good! Thanks for letting me know!
@@theartisanrogue bless him
I never understood why critics said that the 2nd and 3rd were a step up from An Unexpected Journey. It was pretty clear that the most coherent and focused film was the first. Of course there were some absolutely horrible decisions there, too, but the sequences in the Shire and Riddles in the Dark were done to perfection.
After the first one, I actually came out of the theater mostly satisfied and feeling good about what we'd seen and where things were heading.
Not so much for the next 2.
I even defended the film, including the somewhat goofy fights and the cgi goblins. I thought it gave those scenes a more child-friendly, fun tone, which meshed with the book. I even wish they had kept in the Great Goblin's song because it would have stayed true to that tone.
Yeah, I liked the first one, and saw it again. Though, it was mostly because in the first I was made ot see it in 3d and my glasses were so scratched I couldn't see through them but hey.
Yeah, I agree. The first film was the best of the three - most coherent, most loyal to the book in tone and content, and certainly the most focused. I was hopeful for the second one after seeing the first, but I was hoping they would get better, not worse. I understand some of the changes they made from the point of plot and narrative in movies 2 and 3, but that doesn't make them good.
Preciousss cuz the second one had Smaug
The Hobbit filming in NZ lead to the govt basically outlawing the actors and screen workers unions (the legislation is literally referred to as 'the hobbit law') citing pressure from the companies bankrolling the production who threatened to go elsewhere if we didn't relax our workers rights law. It was obviously an empty threat, there was no way they were going to move production out of NZ, but it was pushed through and as of 2018 it's still yet to be repealed. The whole production was a horrifying example of the pressure large corporations are allowed to place on governments.
Interesting information and I love your name
When unscrupulous capitalists ruining a movie series suddenly becomes about unscrupulous capitalists ruining a whole society.
#thanksJohnKey
(and #thanksJacindatoo technically because she kept it)
you are wrong the would have, they get taxbrakes and other incentives, the question is if it was worth it for NZ and it wasn´t probably.
the taxpayers just cofinance the movie^^
22:00 I think you're being a bit unfair to Tolkien. Of course, in the books the change happens a bit abruptly. But I believe Eowyn sought death in a battle, and the point of Tolkien was to have her embrace life. I bet for Tolkien, choosing a peaceful life would be a sign of the highest nobility, more so than having an ego trip as a warrior - not only Eowyn says farewell to arms, but Frodo does so too (although for different reasons).
It's also supposedly a thematic way of merging the Norse aesthetic with Tolkien's Christian ideas, as the desire for glory in battle is slowly displaced by the desire to heal and love and all that jazz.
@@andresacosta4832 Good point! I assume he had to somehow balance his "pagan" influences with his devotion to Christian worldview
@@topilepojarvicomposer6157 I mean, he DID make Eru "god" yet had minor gods (the Ainur) which he then was like "no they are angels"
@@andresacosta4832 Yeah, it's interesting because I always thought that the ainur are like Norse gods and that Eru has a pantheistic "god is nature, nature is god" side, before I grasped that it's all filtered through a Christian philosophy
Right of course but that doesn’t take away from the reduction of the noble warrior into the simple house wife in line with the patriarchal society of middle earth. That’s not a critique of Tolkien, the man was alive in a time before 2nd and 3rd wave feminism and discussion around gender roles was mainstream and drew his mythos from Patriarchal societies. It was not a criticism of Tolkien from Lindsay either but rather a critique of Tauriel’s addition as her role doesn’t fit within the patriarchal society of the world and her story cannot be compared to a female character such as Eowyn as Tauriel doesn’t face the same patriarchal constraints as Eowyn which is what makes the latter such a great character. Tauriel’s lack of patriarchal constraints is shown to be evidence of the studio using her as a marketing tool for women as opposed to a character necessary to the plot as well as an addition that flows with the world. It’s not saying “Tolkien sexist, Tolkien bad” as Tolkien’s brand of sexism is, as much as I hate the phrase, a product of its time. It’s not explicit not intentional just a result of his upbringing, comparatively with other members of that society his sexism was abhorrent or disgusting, just the application of social norms of his time as well as the mythos he draws from into his legendarium. I don’t think it is unfair at all to point this out.
Guillermo del Torro's The Hobbit, those are two movies I would die to see
Yeah, me too, I just discovered Del Toro with the Shape of Water, but what I heard of the guy and the passion he seems have to this book, it would be very refreshing and interesting.
And by refreshing, I mean he would do a movie that can be different of the three first movies, not another trilogy with same cast and same writers and same graphic chart and etc... ^^
that feeling when, finally, hollywood's fanatical reboot mania can do some good :P
Going to New Zealand and obtaining a primary source for your video essay. This is the kind of content we need. Impressed and proud.
I had no idea that Legolas and Tauriel "loved" each other until this video.
That's probably a testament to how tacked on it was.
Legolas loved tauriel who friend zoned the guy
@@jennifermoriarty2188 And it sucks for Legolas...
...BeCaUsE It WaS rEaL!
They SWORE to the actress “No love triangle”.. and so it was until the reshoots after main photography. 🧝♀️
That’s because they didn’t do what the studio wanted. They deliberately went against it as best they could...without getting in trouble. AM I THE ONLY ONE WHO SEES THIS?
the entire character of Tauriel is not done well, she is captain of the guard it works with the source material thranduil’s captains gender and name was never revealed. the entire love arc between tauriel and kilo should never have been done though. elves and dwarves at that time had really bad blood, Legolas and Gimli was the first case of friendship between the races for decades. but no we have it so Tauriel and Kili love each other because it makes sense. they spoke a minimal amount when he was a prisoner yes that will make you love him 😂 Thranduil not claiming she was good enough for Legolas could been seen as valid if he thought he could find a Sindar match for Legolas.
"as a group of dwarves going with gandalf and OUR hobbit" I'm crying I wanted to see this it's so cute 😭
Still crying, but for different reasons. The story IS as depressing as I feared it would be. Evangeline Lilly deserved better. Guillermo del Toro deserved better. John Callen, Peter Jackson, and everyone involved deserved better. (except Weinstein, screw that guy)
I am really, REALLY glad you're making these, Lindsay, thank you. And, yeah, the trilogy joke was hilarious ^_^
But Evangeline Lilly signed on under the understanding she would be playing a female supporting character, and she asked for no love triangle. But once the contract was in effect and she had already done the first round of shooting, when the studio thrust the unwanted love triangle upon her, she had no choice but act in those scenes. It's not HER fault.
A really great series, the cameo appearances do a very good job tying this installment to the older ones.
....but enough about Nella's appearance in this video, let's talk about The Hobbit. The connections to LOTR are really forced, aren't they?
BattleUp Saber i
Oh my gosh BattleUp Saber we need to stop meeting in the most random of places on youtube, like how does this keep happening?!
(btw HI!!!)
Yeah they did force them, because they didn’t think people would be here for something that wasn’t tied to the great LOTR. While it forced connections that weren’t there, because The Hobbit is a prequel and not a sequel and they can’t make that -_-
"That's my wee lad, GIMLI." *Looks into the camera and winks*
Seriously though, I'd say the references weren't as forced as they were in the new Star Wars films. I definitely don't blame them for bringing back a lot of the old characters.
I hated the Sauron cameo, it wasn't even a cameo he was literally one of the secondary characters in it :/
the way del toro’s voice wavered when he was being interviewed made me so damn sad!!!! I can see that the way he makes movies is so heartfelt and personal to him when you see his sketchbooks... you can tell he really cares about everything he does in making a film. I wish the del toro version existed.
#releasethedeltorocut
For me, the worst thing about the hobbit trilogy is that, in that farewell scene at the door of ereborn, I just don't know all of the dwarves names. They had three movies to make us care about these characters and they failed. So much stuff and battles but no feeling
3 movies could have worked, had they devoted more time to the dwarves. They could have added more, original, adventures for the dwarves along the way (perhaps getting ideas from the vast history of middle earth), instead of basically shoving them away as a B-plot
I'm so beyond impressed and so happy. Who actually does interviews for a RUclips video essay?! Someone with a future in film-making, thats who! OH boy you've restored my faith in this type of media. Thank you for all your hard work.
Cameron Cutler- I agree with your remarks with this RUclipsr...one of the best. 😁
Del Toro was screwed, badly. They wasted his time, his enthusiasm, and his talent. He wanted, as you say, a tonally distinct film which would stand on its own as a reasonable adaptation of a children's book. What troubles me the most (aside from what could have been) is whether this betrayal came from Jackson, or the studio, or both. If it one day comes out that Jackson was a considered part of outing Del Toro, my respect for him would only plummet. The fact that he has those 'thousand-yard stares' in many production photos and videos, however, gives me at least some hope that he was just another creator taken along for a ride by the typically vicious whims of the studio.
Well, he certainly didn't seem to want to take on directing the movies himself, so I would highly doubt that he had any desire to boot out another director. Honestly... even though Lindsay doubts it, I do think it probably just came down to scheduling issues. They were still waiting for the production to be greenlit in 2010 when he left, due to MGM's hesitancy. The Hobbit was facing even more potential setbacks because of a union dispute thing that was going on in New Zealand/Australia at the time, which did end up affecting the production after PJ took over (which Lindsay didn't cover... maybe it'll be in part 3?)... so in the face of all that, I think Del Toro just decided it wasn't worth it. All accounts we've heard have been that it was Del Toro's schedule that was the reason, so I don't think we really have any good reason to doubt it.
It's bloody Warner Bros, isn't it? Look at their wonderful DCEU shenanigans.
That's one of the things that stood out for me. All the pandering and shoulder-patting being juxtaposed with footage of PJ just looking as if he wanted to be far, far away from all of this.
Something that you never saw in the footage from LOTR.
Del Toro realised it wasn't going to work in those conditions and reluctantly moved on, whereas Jackson stepped in to take the bullet for him because he knew that he was one of the only people who could do it some justice. I sense those same work conditions inevitably drove the production off the rails.
Honestly, just looking a Jackson's physical transformation during production of the three movies makes me think he had really tough years directing them. Look at how much old and tired he looks like just a few years after starting them :o
The actor (I’m sorry, his name slips my mind,) is so incredibly well spoken and articulate. I loved listening to him speak. Your video is fantastic and really makes me wish that the films reached their very real potential.
*Edit: his name is John Callen
his name is John Callen, and he played Óin
Thank you so much! I'm definitely going to look up more of his work.
Thank Lindsay, she's the one that put it in the video when he first appeared ;)
That's some good old British trained actor talk, we don't get talk like that anymore.
The Tauriel love triangle was the last minute rewrite addition the word "cringeworthy" was invented for.
So was the “patriarchy” commentary.
Thankfully, there's a great fan-edit by Maple films that edited the entire Hobbit trilogy into one film. And the focus (if not most of it) is now on Bilbo, the Dwarves and their journey.
Where??
Where???
Where????
Where?????
www.maple-films.com/jrr-tolkiens-the-hobbit
The melting gold looks amazing.
They clearly intended it to be made of mac and cheese.
LittleFieryOne it’s chocolate isn’t it?
Infinity War had a better looking forge scene than The Hobbit.
This comment made me crack up
"LIQUID GOLD"
I've just gotta say, every time Thorin's hair blows in the wind, I regain the life stolen from me by every time I see the "Why does it hurt so much?" moment.
"Why does it hurt so much?"
"Because you're worth it" - L'Oreal
24:10 - God damn, if that's true, then that's probably the perfect example of why "tone at the top" (the acquisition of smaller companies by massive ones and then seeing upper management decisions seep down and influence the product) is so detrimental.
The people making the decisions are not always creatives. And storytelling is the arena of creative people.
Therefore, Warner suits entered an environment they were not prepared for, and metaphorically got their asses kicked. In this case, seeing a story that had no love-triangle and shoe horned it in, thinking they knew best.
The worst part is, I doubt any of them will read it as their mistake. They probably looked purely at financials. And lacked the experience to recognise their own inexperience.
I love the part where after a new Womble video drops, you find him commenting on things in his RUclips recommendations he’s been trying to ignore for months.
Shine on you crazy diamond. Shine the fuck on.
(I am also experiencing trepidation about the Rings of Power, Womble. The algorithm led me here too).
studios don't want creative, they want money
ⁿ
The suits literally don't know what creativity is or how it works.
As a Kiwi I love seeing this, and not just for the chance to hear kiwi accents on screen (which is pretty Choice). My dad was an extra in LOTR and got his bald head painted to look like a goblin, my friend got to ride her horse as a rider of Rohan extra, and my high school math teacher has a fan page about the elf he played who didn’t even get a line. LOTR is a cultural touchstone to be proud of, it’s the movie all of NZ helped make.
The hobbit had no such high regard.
It’s a bit harder to call up that volunteer army on goodwill when this time around there is enough money to actually pay people. No more traveling to small towns and countryside to shoot, injecting a bit of cash into places. no just green screen and studios. It’s more illegal than gardening to say a bad word about LOTR, but no one I have spoke to really even likes the hobbit. The highlight of the films for me was one time when I got a see Martian Freeman walking down Cuba st, while waiting at a bus stop.
HAAAAAAAA, THAT ENDING!
This is extremely well done, I can feel the love you have for this franchise.
Max Barr I knew it was coming, but it was a genius way to tie the review format to the content.
Someone get Lindsay an Oscar for that ending.
Max Barr Ikr!
ralphyetmore To be fair, the Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit are very different stories, so it makes more sense to say "series" or "franchise" than it does to say "story".
ralphyetmore you can love a story all you want, but what about how it was executed? That’s the difference.
The dead mum angst annoys me because it spoils a really poignant, subtle moment that Lindsay pointed out in her Fellowship video. The hobbits are crying after Gandalf’s death and for a second Legolas has this confused and alienated expression, because this is presumably the first time he’s encountered grief and he doesn’t know what to do. Lindsay pointed to this as one of the few instances of moments in the trilogy that gave depth to Legolas. He doesn’t understand mortality and he is unnerved by the hobbits reaction. And I think this was important because it emphasised how different all the Fellowship members are - it underlines that theme of brotherhood and people coming together to destroy a common enemy.
Adding a dead mom subplot to the prequel completely destroys the logic of that moment, because it suggests that hey Leggles has dealt with grief before! What’s this about him feeling detached from the hobbits? So - this beautiful moment where we get a deeper understanding of him is rendered meaningless, because the thing that sets him apart from the hobbits - his inexperience with mortality - is retconned out. Not cool Peej.
That's a very good point.
user36able I don’t even care about these movies and this upsets me!
"Adding a dead mom subplot to the prequel completely destroys the logic of that moment" No it doesn't. It really doesn't. if you have experienced the death of a close person. A death of another close person will bring ALL that shit back up. he's not alienated. he's going through that shit again. regardless of whether thats how it was written or not, it still works in context of the hobbit movie Legolas.
'Leggles'
Orlando Bloom explained it as being Legolas's confusion at the concept of death. Which is patently ridiculous. Elves can't die of old age or disease, but they can most certainly be killed, either accidentally, in war, or by murder. The idea that Legolas wouldn't know what death is when he's already a thousand years old is ludicrous, and I'd love to know who let Orlando get away with that nonsense.
Wow, that actor's summation of how the film got hijacked was really sad and moving.
Clearly, Jackson and/or the studios did NOT want to make a movie about dwarves, at all.
Annoyed me a lot how un-dwarf like the three main dwarfs looked; had to be pretty boys it seems, imagine how that love triangle would have looked if kili was *gasp* ugly?! If you cant even tell its a Dwarf without context, ya done screwed it up. This is something i've been noticing in fantasy media for a long long time and dreaded every second of it in The Hobbit. Course they downplayed the Dwarfs; unsexy people dont test people, good writing is hard but flashy action scenes with backflips and sexy characters is easy.
Yeah, I really could not look at Thorin and Fili and Kili without thinking they looked like captains of Gondor.
I honestly kept forgetting that they were supposed to be Dwarves. I've watched these movies exactly once and I remember that the fact that they were supposed to be Dwarves was something that did not stick with me. It wouldn't be until they would bring it up or the people I watched them with mentioned it as well. I was also confused as to why they seemed so much more "well groomed" than the others but my brain kinda just went "maybe it's like Whoville rules where you grow into it??" and just left it at that.
Dwarfurious Thorin was, in canon, described as being extraordinarily tall for a dwarf.
@@GrahamCStrouse Is it also canon that he doesn't have any beard and looks like a well groomed human?
@@GrahamCStrouse A tall dwarf is still BROAD, he'd still have the face of a dwarf, heck look at him from the old cartoon movie.
THAT PART THREE TWIST WAS A STROKE OF GENIUS MY GOD
Someone already made a joke about getting excited for part three in part one.
Saw it coming a mile away
still great tho
Dude, it was the first thing I thought of when I saw part 1, and Lindsay explaining how a third movie was shoehorned into the original two-part idea. I saw lindsay's 'part 1 of 2' in the title and I'm like, there's gotta be a joke somewhere where she makes a third part to this review... THERE'S SO MUCH FORESHADOWING xDD
I should've seen it coming and yet I still burst out laughing at the end there.
I still want to see a Del Toro Hobbit movie so bad. His vision is perfect for the Hobbit.
It is... It really, really is.^^
"Because it was real."
Well, at least we have Pacific Rim.
Del Toro definitly has his highs and lows. The highs are high and lows are really low at times, but his take on the hobbit is really something that I would like to see happen.
Exactly, his style of film making would bring back the "fairy tale" aspect The Hobbit was missing from these movies. And they could stand apart from the LOTR trilogy, on their own TWO legs (because that's all you need to stand upright, not a third: that's called a crutch).
I understand Lilly. She must have being tired of love triangles after Lost.
Which eventually became a quadrangle by season 3
@@TheLowBrassDude You mean blondie? If they form a triangle, and thus define a circle, she would be more like a polar point on the outside. The most she could hope for was to get close enough to the circle and even then she would only be a tangent.
But this analogy just got too technical on the geometry side and I don't know where I'm going if this anymore. XD
@@TheLowBrassDude a square
That "Aren't you going to search me?" exchange makes me physically ill.
I just wanna say that John Callen seems like such a cool old dude. I’d love to just chill and have a beer with him.
I was thinking more that I would like to be near him during all my waking hours.
Oh, you have hot takes on The Hobbit? Well, Ms. Ellis WENT TO NEW FREAKING ZEALAND AND DID INTERVIEWS! I love it, and this is just fantastic, in addition to your always terrific commentary.
I'm from New Zealand, and I have no idea why someone would subject themselves to such pain. Our country basically just banks on the fact that "HEY! HEY!! LOOK! HOBBIT/LORD OF THE RINGS STUFF!". My town even has a jeweler that mainly makes necklaces and rings from the Hobbit...
I hate that she's destroying my second childhood. I was quite content to overlook and ignore all the true things Lindsay Ellis can't help noticing and pointing out. she's absolutely right and brilliant and funny, but I she leaves me feeling like I just found out the bunny rabbit and Santa clause are fake. I don't know if it's as depressing as watching Noam Chomsky but she give me that feel as a point of comparison.
I have the advantage that I didn't like these films at all. I'm fairly sure there's one good three-hour movie buried under all that dreck, but as they are, they're painful to watch. I stopped after the second one, which I barely got through; never bothered with the third. It's too bad PJ didn't have someone right next to him to slap his hand and yell PETER NO. He desperately needs an editor who'll bully him a bit, because he's gotten horribly self-indulgent as his budgets have grown.
@@SteveWhetstone-UXDesigner yes the bunny rabbit is fake, there are no such things as rabbits silly boy
@@Serai3 PJ didnt get a fair shot on The Hobbit. No prep time, two movies forced to three, reshoots, you name it.
I have always had a hard time understanding why Peter Jackson would allow these travesties to happen. I wasn't aware how much of it was out of his hands. Thank you for this! Subbed.
I have had this theory for soo long. Then I watched the Appendices where he keeps reiterating that it was HIS idea to make three movies and I just felt a tinfoil hat growing out of my own head as I was like "You're lying! Everyone makes mistakes and yes, some decisions you made on TWO TPOWERS and RETURN OF THE KINGS were dangerously close to becoming dumb epic action fluff that would evolve into the bloated video game stuff from the Hobbits...but you certainy can't be THIS mad!"
Then Lindsay came, made these videos and confirmed my conspiracy theories.
TBH I have similar theories regarding THE LAST AIRBENDER. Admittedly I am biased because I am, like, one of 3 Shyamalan-fanboys but I see that he is not perfect and I can totally understand why many people dislike some of his trademarks.
But even if I keep that in mind, there is stuff in AIRBENDER that doesn't make sense even for Shyamalan. And the most important proof for me is the fact that he was sooo stoked about this project. He loved that show and his first script was basically just a rundown of the whole show with each and every episode.
So yeah...I truly believe that Paramount and Nickelodeon fucked him over. WOuld he have made a LOTR-level masterpiece on his own? Probably not. He is still Shyamalan. My favourite director, but flawed as hell in some regards nonetheless. But he wouldn't have made something THIS bad. So many scenes feel like obvious reshoots. Maybe one day someone will make a similar deepdive into that movie's production like Lindsay did with the Hobbit. Hopefully
@@goth_fraggle I think that the best way to adapt Avatar: The Last Airbender to the cinema would be to divide each season into two films, so in the end it would be six movies.
@@goth_fraggle old comment I know, but IIRC TLA's production was indeed a shitshow and by the middle of it he was just in it for the paycheck. The studio definitely messed with things, such as the casting of Katara, even if the director wasn't guilt free himself.
@@goth_fraggle While the studio does deserve _some_ blame for _some_ of what happened to The Last Airbender, most of the problems with the film were Shyamalan's fault.
If it makes you feel better, he was way outside his comfort zone: the guy directs dramas and horror stuff, not epic fantasy, and it _really_ shows. He also tried to do everything: write, direct and produce.
Nella truly inspires me to be my most joyful self at any age. Thanks Nella!
Awe Nella, never change!
More Nella please
Lindsay is lucky to have her!
What company did she come from again? I gotta order me one XD
Yeah, it's almost hard to believe she's over 30
Sigh. I remember when the first trailer came out and the dwarves fell into melancholy song. I about lost my mind, it was so epic and lovely and on-tone for the story. And then the movies happened, and I just lost interest.
I know right! My favourite fucking scene, that should be the esence and the tone setting of the movies...sigh
"Hollywood doesn't like women because writing them is hard."
Thank you so much. I've been saying this for ages now and it's sooooo frustrating watching the poorly written women on television and the big screen. It's so rare to see a well written female character.
All the attempts at writing "strong" female characters by making them masculine are so annoying.
Yeeessss. I relate more to masculine men in film than I do to masculine women in film. I'm not a masculine woman.
Yeah they do great as Mary Sues dont they
Writing women doesn't have to be any harder than writing men: treat them as characters rather than as props or symbols, and that will get you where you need to go. If your writing naturally passes the Bechdel Test, because the women have relationships and goals and ideas and such that don't revolve around dudes, you're on the right track.
What, and writing men is easier?
This is why i liked "Split". All the flashbacks made me think "oh another movie about a woman that is special, because she's been trained as a man and doesn't show skin"
i adore lower frame rates in films, it gives it a dreamy quality that oddly helps my immersion/suspension of disbelief. 48fps really pushes it for me, im in the headache crowd lol
I saw them on cinema and realized that the higher frame rates makes the props looks obviously like props. They just too sharp, shinny and lack any sign of wear and tear.
This channel can't upload enough in my opinion.
I watched the first part of this when it came out. I've been watching all her shit non-stop since XD
LareLareIsNotHere Same here...