They're fucking terrible. At least, the first two are - couldn't stomach a third.

I thought the movies were OK. Jackson made a huge mistake in attempting to work in a bunch of outer-lore and stuff that happens in the background of the book which just doesn't mesh, tonally, with the rest of the story. But, despite that flaw, I think the movies turned out pretty decent considering. The third film is surprisingly well-paced and only runs about 2 hours which is amazing to me personally, as I expected it to be this overloaded 3 hour thing with all kinds of bullshit crammed into it. It's positively terse by Peter Jackson standards!

Smaug is not really a huge part of the book surprisingly enough, so the fact they inflate his role a bit in the movies was another dumb thing I thought. He's cool and all, but the 20 minute action scene at the end of part 2 was a mistake in my opinion.

You idiots, don't you realize that more of everything makes anything better! If a movie goes on for hours that means a movie is better! If you shoot your padded movie trilogy at 48fps, why that is twice as many frames as normal movies so it is twice as good!

I've watched the first two Hobbit movies and parts of the third, and, looking back, I can say with near-certainty that the dinner scene is one of the highlights of the whole miserable trilogy.

Abandon all hope.

I caught part of the second one and I didn't like all the CGI scenery. Purple Cat mentioned this too in another video, that LotR wasn't a great movie trilogy but the scenery's breathtaking. I understand needing a CGI Gollum or Smaug, obviously, but there were plenty of sets that just looked incredibly fake, because they were, which LotR seemed to have found real locations around New Zealand shoot at for.

Supposedly Viggo Mortinsen was written into the films with the presumption he would return to play Aragorn in a small-ish role but he refused to once he found out that 90% of the production was just going to be greenscreen soundstages and very little location/practical set work.

I don't blame him. They say Ian McKellen burst into tears on the set of The Hobbit after a day of performing opposite cardboard cut-outs of dwarves. Each one had a little light above its head that would flash when he was supposed to look at it.

I saw all of them on flights over the Pacific, weirdly well timed with my traveling. They were pretty bad, even for airplane movies.

Wait how would Aragorn in the Hobbit work in the first place? Unless he was playing his own grandpa or something..

Or maybe his own dad, but the movies portray Bilbo as much younger as I'd imagine him, maybe in his early 30s, vs. the book where he was 50.

I barely made it through the second Lord of the Rings to be honest, that was where Peter Jackson lost me.

This is pretty great though.

Apart from the animated movie and the first LoTR movie all of them have been absolute dog shit.

Peter Jackson is a hack. The LoTR movies were bad, the hobbit movies were terrible. I was tempted to walk out of the first one, wish I did. Will not give Jackson another chance.

To respond to IZ, the rumor is that he was planned to have cameoed somewhere in the wrap-around story, visiting Bilbo or something. The Hobbit takes place about 200 years before he was born, so yeah Aragorn could never have appeared in the story itself, but he claims he was asked to appear somewhere. Mortensen is pretty critical of the direction Jackson took the Hobbit movies in over relying on digital effects and such.

Good for Vigs! I'd much rather see him in Cronenberg movies anyway. Besides marrying Exene Cervenka Master Chief has made some pretty good life and career choices. I'm no expert on LotR but is it really that long of a time gap? In the book he was 50 and 111 in LotR.. there's probably something I'm missing but I'm also not planning on making a drawn out movie trilogy about it, acting like I know the story..

Not hip enough to hate on the movies.

They were alright. The first three were great.

I am totally hip enough.
http://www.poetv.com/video.php?vid=102835

Whoops...my Tolkien beard was not on completely straight.

I have no idea where I got that number from. Aragorn would have been about a teenager at the time of Hobbit's close.

Oh yeah.. Aragorn aged kinda weird too

CGI is technically cartoons

You keep telling people you're cool but that's the number one thing cool people aren't supposed to do.

How would you know, Square-ro?

I think you're doing a piss-take and yes, he does, and i'm still never gonna watch this crap, but this actually made me like cucumberbunch a little more. He's always...good I guess but I haven't seen him ever be anything other than generic british actor dude.