Half in the Bag Episode 43: The Hobbit - An Unexpected Journey

half in the bag [ __ ] movies lively inside every toilet bowl is water hey J hey so if you uh heard about this new Alfred Hitchcock movie then oh is that the one where Anthony Hopkins looks like a white version of Eddie Murphy in the Nutty Professor films yeah so ya know I haven't seen the movie yet I want to though I'm a fan of Hitchcock yeah I mean it looks like a really good movie I just haven't seen a lot of Hitchcock movies what really yeah how can you call yourself a film expert and not have seen Hitchcock I never called myself a film expert oh you know there's a lot you two jackasses don't know about movies you've never seen an Alfred Hitchcock film and you you've never even seen a James Bond movie I never told him about that you didn't know ever tell him about that I'm gonna go find out just how much you two really know about films yeah I leave the house to do that yeah where are you going don't you worry about that your ignorance has given me an idea hmm hey speaking of poorly thought-out ideas have you seen The Hobbit My dear Frodo you asked me once if I had told you everything there was to know about my adventures well I can honestly say I have told you the truth I may not have told you all of it Bilbo Baggins I'm looking for someone to share in an adventure The Hobbit an unexpected journey is the first film in a new trilogy of films from director Peter Jackson now you've probably seen the Lord of the Rings films unless you've been living under a rock but The Hobbit is based on an earlier shorter book written by legendary author JK Rowling this makes the Hobbit technically a prequel and thus pointless follow the adventures of Bilbo Baggins and a group of dwarves as they attempt to reclaim their dwarven kingdom from the clutches of an evil dragon named Smaug Jay what did you think of The Hobbit an unexpected flop um well Bilbo Baggins has a line near the end of the movie or he says I hope the worst is past us or something to that effect yes and I hope that's the case with this movie you don't think you didn't think it was bad no no that's not to say I thought it was bad I actually liked it quite a bit but it's uh I love the Lord of the Rings movies I should say that I'm not a big fantasy guy or anything but I really really like those movies a lot and I enjoyed a lot of this movie it was nice to be back in this universe and there's a lot of a lot of stuff to like in it but it feels like a very conflicted movie it feels like a movie that's trying to do two very sort of contradictory things one it's trying to be a faithful adaptation of the the shorter children's book The Hobbit but it's also trying to reach the same of the sort of grand filmmaking scale of the original Lord of the Rings movies oh and those two things don't exactly go together well to me this is a tough one Peter Jackson is very competent filmmaker although he's doing something which is almost mind-numbing Lee [ __ ] when we talk about the high frame rate but we're going to leave or get into the head later but when I look at this I see a couple of things I see Peter Jackson and the studios saying make more of those movies that made us a lot of money movies made approximately gazillion dollars yeah yeah and Peter Jackson also saying I should probably make these movies before someone else does and Peter Jackson also saying I should probably make these movies before Sir Ian McKellen dies oh it's it's a fact of life he's pretty old yeah and he looks old and tired in this one so you know the it's a bit macabre and a bit mean to say but it's a it's a legitimate concern um because he is Gandalf and he's an excellent Gandalf and um you don't really want to see another Peter Jackson film with a different person playing Gandil so yeah the time is in of the essence here they make money Peter Jackson likes making them he likes the universe but again I think you said this after seeing the movie you said The Hobbit and unexpected journey feels like having the appetizer after the meal yeah it's like oh we've already had the main course now here have some potato chips mm-hmm and that's why they're trying to overcompensate for that by having yeah by incorporating elements from other talking writings that are in this universe and really sort of patting it out and having lots of filler lots of lots of elongated action scenes that are taken from other you know pieces of writing I believe the expression is scraping the bottom of the barrel yes yes and I understand that Peter Jackson really does love Tolkien and he loves this world and loves this writing and it shows it's a little bit different than you know obviously money is an issue and the idea of making these to make more money is a real concern stretching it out into three movies because three movies will make more money than one movie or two movies yeah um but it's a little it feels a little less slimy than it does with something like Twilight because there's genuine people of talent behind the camera and people that do like making this so it's a little bit different there yeah I would say it's um since the problem is is these are all kind of mild concern turns and and I don't know anyone who's outraged about these movies I'm sure somebody's saying it's the worst movie ever yeah till the next worst movie ever break right cuz it's not it it feels like all the things I mentioned and it also feels like like you said gathering up as much source materials possible kind of making a Frankenstein's monster of them yeah I think it's sort of like that we're not going to probably make anything past The Hobbit as far as other Tolkien adaptations so all these other pieces of writing from the SIL mullerian from there's other short stories and stuff as well squeezes get it all in here yeah one so we can make it into three movies and and two because it'll probably be the last time we do this I can't just go running off into the blue I'm a Baggins right of bagon Oh turbo allow me to introduce Phoebe Phoebe I'm doing darling Balin bifur Bofur Bombur Dori nori Ori and the leader of our company Thorin Oakenshield it reminded me a lot of actually of Jackson's King Kong movie where it's sort of frustrating the storytelling is frustrating because it's so sort of stop and start yeah yeah when the individual segments are entertaining in their own right but on a narrative level it can be very frustrating the difference with the Hobbit is the Hobbit was a children's book and and I actually read The Hobbit yeah I read it too when I was younger yeah I don't 200 some pages not yeah it's very fairly light compared to the the Lord of the Rings novels yeah and I don't remember much about it I remember Bilbo talking to a screech what's his name in this movie they're long stretches of time go by where nothing really happens with the Hobbit no he kind of takes the backseat and becomes the the dwarf movie for a while yeah dwarfs adventure movie yeah and then and then they bring up some of the the bigger middle-earth story elements which involve Gandalf and whatever the [ __ ] the health is name and oh yeah Cate Blanchett shows up and they're like oh and then Christopher Lee shows up who's also one the grave yeah yeah yeah yeah they're all there and they're talking about these big middle-earth issues and the things to come the necromancer in the grave danger approaches and you're like well yeah that's all the sort of tie it in with the lord of the race and that sucks out the it sucks out the air from the the simple children's tale of a little happy Hobbit going on this big adventure yeah it's like the big adventure comes first and there is also a happy Hobbit in it yeah and it's sort of like a pole shift because Peter Jackson probably likes all the the darker bigger more grandiose elements of Tolkien's stuff and that's why he started with Lord of the Rings I would imagine and I wants to make the Hobbit that's a little kiddie movie right right till the Lord of the Rings comes out and makes a ton of money and now oh now we'll do the Hobbit yeah he didn't make in a film a single film adaptation of The Hobbit first ray and then move on he started with the bigger more juicier stuff which is fine it is but that's what's what's sort of odd about this movie is that okay now we're gonna go back and do the Hobbit but we have to add all these other elements that don't belong there yeah just because now Lord of the Rings is huge considered this huge epic fantasy yes saga now there can be two epic fantasy songs yes exactly and so where have we seen that before No the five of us it flames through it's sort of amazing how we just kept oh sorry please leaves us in the final edit it is sort of amazing how we're watching on the screen and there's three different types of characters from different sizes but they're all normal human size all on screen at the same time completely flawless yeah and you're just like oh yeah oh that's right that's what's the best thing in effect can do is you forget that it's in effect yeah and it's all blended it's like perfect and and that stuff is there the Peter Jackson's sort of it's become tradition almost where some effects are really amazing and then there's others where you're like oh was that finished there's some of that in this like with the the brown radda radda gas car whatever the brown wizard's name is when the brown wizard is is Ryan his little bunny sled and you're like oh mmm I don't think I look bad no that stuck out to me is looking very the one thing that looked like fake for some reason was when the guy sneezed on Bilbo and he's all the way his hand I think proportions are always tough to do like King Kong had that problem too and King Kong looks great in the wide shots but when he's holding her yeah she looks sort of awkward and as yes it's probably a limit of the technology at this point yeah it just looked like he was like.he down there fake and it didn't look like it match it just kind of stood out to me but everything else you know all those other cities and the scenery and I liked a lot of the creatures I think some people might be complaining about the the overuse of CG and this one versus the other ones but there's so many real effects and miniatures and I liked a lot of the creatures unless they had sort of even though they were CG instead of puppets they reminded me a lot of tonally a lot of some of the Jim Henson's stuff like labyrinth or the storyteller the series he did well let me say this I don't think I'm a huge fan of token I I think I think it's a lot of detail it's it's that's the thing as Peter Jackson's made action movies out of stories that earn action story yeah but yeah he's you know the structure of Tolkien is very I guess that this is appropriate then because it's not a direct you know linear narrative yeah like we went back and we watched The Hobbit cartoon oh yeah just for contrast we decided to watch the the rank & basgier - yeah just to kind of refresh our memories of what was in The Hobbit and what was added in and taken from other source material and stuff like that and yeah we got to the point where this film ends and we saw all the scenes beyond that that will most likely appear in the next two films yeah the hiding in barrels and the I was just imagining what that will look like in yeah Peter Jackson's movie it's almost like I like honestly I don't have much of an interest in seeing the next two films really I will see them yeah but yeah like you said I can just foresee everything like okay okay I'll watch them but they Bilbo helps the dwarves escape in barrels of wine barrels or something like that that are empty and they they go down and unload on a river and yeah we're watching it we're thinking okay we're gonna have this giant waterfall they're going to go off the waterfall that's gonna go on 220 bit it's gonna be this big actually because we got a stretch this this material yeah I'm like okay I've seen it I could see it in my mind's eye I think a part of it more than just stretching the material into three movies is just that's kind of Peter Jackson's general mentality as he likes to drag things out yet this he likes XS and that goes all the way back to his early splatter movies look it's like Dead Alive that movie is about XS the the gore is taken to such an extreme that it's funny the battle scenes in the First Lord of the Rings trilogy I would say are rather excessive but they they are reaching an overall goal yeah point to them and this movie in The Hobbit there's a lot of excessive action scenes that don't really serve any sort of purpose right other than it might have been a little thing that was mentioned in the books any and he brings it out into this big elaborate a good saying that yeah another another good example would be as King Kong the original King Kong Kong fights a t-rex so in the the Peter Jackson one he has to fight to t-rexes and it has to go on for 30 minutes and they have to fall in a cavern and get caught up in vines and it's just yeah taken to such an extreme watching King Kong you're an hour and a half into it I'm like - haven't even left Skull Island yet do they even get the Skull Island by an hour and a half there on that boat forever - yeah yeah the flipside of that those at Peter Jackson is actually a good actor director though like all the performances and all these Lord of the Rings movies are really good and they're really rich yeah and well directed and there's a lot of motion and all this stuff but like you said the same time you watch the Lord of the Rings trilogy and there's this big like looming thing that's going on and it feels really big yeah in this there's the dwarves they they get kidnapped by the trolls they have a fight scene with them goblins I can understand say about no goblins and then they end up in a no not trolls underground underground the gobble goblins I haven't got those goblins and ghosts they end up in the goblin lair and they meet the Goblin King so so and it's like one scene after the next it's an adventure movie it's almost like a roadtrip movie yeah in in Fantasyland they but then every time what's-his-face the the wizard guy Gandalf he shows up and he's like I'm here to save you okay that haven't smelled a lot of the action scenes have the same sort of artists and and you know that they're not going to get anywhere at the end of this movie um so it's like okay and then and the Hobbit is like that it's just cool yeah you know it's this little guy and it goes along adventures um they throw an arc in there with with Bilbo you know he says only it takes true courage to know when to kill and when not to kill and then he's trying to prove his worth to UM Oakenshield the the leader dwarves yeah Thorin yeah Thorin Oakenshield and he's like that hobbits just a little [ __ ] and then he's like I'm not I saved you makes you wonder what they're gonna do with the next ones if his uh yeah it was over the course of this movie know what last we watched the cartoon show and spoilers but we watched the cartoon show and just some guy kills the dragon that was sort of odd yeah I'm guessing though they will embellish on that to an extent in the movies but I don't know in the cartoon Bilbo Baggins tells a little Magic Bird where the hole in the Dragons armor is and then the magic bird tells some guy yeah and he shoots him and then the drag and so this is where Tolkien fans get mad at us for calling whoever that is just some guy I'm sure he's super important or something maybe but he's not it's not like it's not The Hobbit yes not Bilbo jr. rlto kyun like his stories are written in a different era you know it's not like the heroes fighting the Dragons yeah and and I think toki and has no idea what he was doing I got I just picture Peter Jackson going oh Jesus [ __ ] what oh Christ what am I do here it's actually impressive how he's taken Peter Jackson has taken tokens work and made it it's kind of found a nice balance between making a more traditional narrative and staying true tits okay yes you have to find that balance yeah and he's done that pretty well yeah this is the only one out of the four movies that felt a little stuffy starting to me a little too often yes yes before they had a nicer flow to them yeah I tried reading The Lord of the Rings books and I got a bone you could not get me to read those I got about 50 pages in I got tired of reading the word fortnight it was people moving along a map and complex details about this map and stopping and and and stopping and camping and moving around and staying for a fortnight here and a fortnight and I was like you know I need to go out and and play outside I understand I need to go go on your own adventures I need to go feel the sunshine on my face make friends of or meet a nice girl are you gonna do any of these things someday I plan to okay well I guess we're being kind of down on the movie even though I don't think either of us disliked it all that much so what what are some things you enjoyed about the film I'm not being done yeah I enjoyed it quite a bit I I had a great time watching it it's a very good movie yeah for me it was it was a good movie I did like it it's slightly disappointing as someone that really really liked the previous movies yeah because it's sort of missing a little bit of that that sort of hearts that emotional connection and maybe that will develop more as the series goes on hopefully but for me I mean the Lord of the Rings movies the what really drives that emotionally is the relationship between Sam and Frodo specifically Sam and I was sort of unwavering devotion to Frodo and that's really the heart of that that series of stories and this one that's not there at least not yet yeah that was established in the first Lord of the Rings movie in fellowship so we'll see what happens but there's no real connection hopefully they'll try and work some more that in with the later from yeah yeah I didn't get magnetized is anything particular in the movies they weren't bad they were very good very well made I was riveted during the the during the Gollum stuff I thought that was all yes I don't know she describes the Gollum performance in the Gollum Gollum is yeah just as impressive as he wasn't Lord of the Rings just just a great performance yeah really uh sort of pathetic and sad and yeah really good stuff by Andy Serkis again he uses precious thing so we actually saw the Hobbit twice it is of course a lot of people know playing in what's called high frame rates 3d 48 frames a second the movie was shot in but I do not like 3d you do not like 3d so we decided the first time we would see it we just wanted to watch the movie so I saw a standard regular projection of it and then we went back to see what all the fuss was there's been a lot of controversy over this 48 frames a second business but deservedly so deservedly so so we thought we would check it out so Mike what were your impressions of the high frame rates 3d projection of The Hobbit well it was a nightmare it was what they call a living nightmare a disaster and an insult to everything I hold dear mmm for one we saw we didn't just see the film in high frame rate and 3d which are two to three DS okay here and there I will avoid 3d movies at all costs I may have seen one 3d movie that I sort of enjoyed watching but for the most part it's a terrible terrible experience yeah put high frame rate on top of that and it makes it worse yes but on top of that we saw it at on an ultra screen which normally is fine we saw it at an ultra screen in the Marcus majestic theater just a beautiful theater in Brookfield Wisconsin they have a great Ultra screen there but we arrived a little late and had to sit down in the corner in the front can you promise that it will come back no other than the sound everything else was terrible about the experience the sound was amazing the sound will give her that yeah it was better than the first time we saw yeah but I'm looking up at an image that's gigantic and distorted and distorted because of the angle we're at I'm watching it through through annoying 3d glasses that don't cover the full spectrum of my vision it dims the picture significantly and everyone looks like they're moving quickly and the film looks like a terrible video yes so this film Peter Jackson high frame rate all this all these doohickeys and gizmos and and fads and whatever the [ __ ] else is happening there it's almost like they're intentionally trying to ruin the movie experience this isn't a fad though 48 frames is the future of cinema Mike I don't know if you understand that this is gonna change the way we view movies forever that's the goal why are you against change what do you have against progress is it because it looks like absolute garbage and makes you want to shoot yourself in the face yes is that your problem yes well let's J let's take it a step back let's explain what 48 frames is here's the deal every one film is isn't always has been projected and recorded at 24 frames a second a video is is a little different it's 30 frames a second or 29.97 because of video fields and all sorts of technical stuff that is too complicated to get into but film is projected at 24 frames a second so we have we have one second to drop this this bottle cap whatever 24 frames of it falling and hitting hitting the thing the Hobbit is shot at 48 frames a second so it's technically when you shoot shoot more frames it slows it down right you shoot 60 frames 100 frames 100 frames means it's going to fall at a hundred frames till it hits thing you should at 10 frames it's going to go much yes so old-time movies had a slower frame rate so they that's why the old-time movies look all fast and so yeah um so what Peter Jackson and other people shooting at this if this high frame rate are doing are shooting 48 frames which is technically slower and then speeding it up they're not necessarily speeding it up but it's matching real time but there's more information there's there's less motion blur there's more clarity in the image which is better for 3d I guess even though I hate 3d anyway yeah I would enjoy watching high frame rate projection of like a nature documentary like the earth series the BBC earth planet Earth whatever it's called um an IMAX 3d experience of some kind like that but um we're used to motion blur in film yeah you know because that's that's the way that it's going through the film gate and when something pans fast yeah it blurs it when it's smooth it looks more like video yeah so watching this at the high frame rate um it looks like a video yeah well it goes a little deeper than just saying you know 24 frames that's what we're used to so that's why this looks bad it goes deeper and more into how your brain processes information and and in this case there's parts where they're moving at normal speed but your brain processes processes it as them looking like they're walking fast like just sped up and there were very weird portions in the movie where it looked like they were walking normal but then all of a sudden it would go like it like it like a jerky like ghost in a bad horror movie or something it was very off-putting and weird yeah and the clarity of like panning shots or specifically action scenes where the cameras going crazy and there's a lot going on because there's so much clarity it actually made it hard to focus on anything and this is going to vary from person to person because you talk about I mean some people 3d doesn't work for them it looks blurry or crappy some people can't see those magic eye posters whatever those are called so this may look good to some people but I think the way that most people process the information that's being fed to them at a specific frame rate it looks horrible and off-putting well yeah the the one parts the parts that got me when characters were just standing there talking obviously was fine but yeah I noticed it like there's a shot where Bilbo Baggins turns around real fast oh yeah ever goes you know it looks like it's sped up and when they're walking looks like it's about up um there was some like really epic shots where the cameras going that's not was starting to make me a little knock it made me say if I want too much information in my brain and it made me like my natural reaction was to look away from the screen so like yeah dim picture awkward glasses distorted angle making me nauseous it was like someone was like hitting me in the face with the bat don't like movies anymore yeah it's like why are you doing this to us Peter Jackson it is the absolute most hideous looking movie I've ever seen as a result and it's a shame because I was actually I was thinking about it even though I was mildly disappointed with the movie I still liked a lot about it and when we were getting ready to go see it the second time I was thinking about like oh I can't wait to revisit the scene or this moment because I liked a lot of stuff in it and the minute the movie started I think my reaction physical reaction was uh yeah it was it was a distracting terrible experience but now the reality is that it's not that difficult to shoot in 3d I love it when a film draws you in and you become part of the experience and 3d helps immerse you in the film I did try to go in with an open mind I really did it's it's you know people might not believe that because we're being so hard on it but I was reading beforehand a lot of things about 48 frame shooting and and the projection and all that and a lot of negative stuff a lot of people that are really in the film seem to hate it some positive stuff so I was like all right so I will go in I will give two shots even if I don't like it immediately I will try and you know ease into it see if it grows on me and it just never did it just looked horrible every every moment I was in theater I wanted to leave it was a perfect storm of bad movie experiences with the exception of someone kicking the back of your seat ones left eye ones the right eye when shoots through a mirror the other one bounces off a mirror how does 3d how does a movie being projected at 48 frames a second alter the story at all with using two eyes we can move the cameras apart and also more importantly as fine a convergence point movies are no longer about the story J they're about the experience the immersion into a world as James Cameron put it okay they're about something things happen but you're supposed to immerse yourself in a world it's more it's it's a it's a carnival right now so in conclusion go see The Hobbit it's it's it's a pretty enjoyable theatrical experience unless you're seeing it in all the ways that Peter Jackson would prefer you to see is Bilbo Baggins butchie's Gaines's fresh so I never thought I'd missed the relationship of two gay hobbits here I got this for you what the heck is that it's a movie trivia game they make for dummies I want to see how bad you fail at it yet there's gonna be hysterical I need to sit down for this yeah this shit's easy yeah these are always super easy questions let's do this will show you who knows about movies mister yeah okay ready J ask a question all right I'm gonna say the actors in the movie you say the movie okay sounds good let's go first card watch this [ __ ] watch this mr. blinker we're gonna throw this down [ __ ] here we go yeah 1982 sci fi drew Barrymore and Steven Spielberg director Beatty yeah oh look at that what it's a weird coincidence mr. Plunkett had a copy of ET on VHS right there oh that's interesting weird well whatever asked me one okay you ready yeah I'm ready 1999 horror Bruce Willis Haley Joel Osment ha The Sixth Sense that's right but easy yeah oh look that's right there has that always been there I don't know but I promise I didn't cheat I knew that one well sure that was super easy they're all super easy read me one okay 1995 animation Tom Hanks Tim Allen Toy Story yeah oh my god what the [ __ ] that just appeared out of thin air I saw it too I saw it with my own eyes Jay what if this game is like some kind of magic Jumanji game we say the name of the movie and then it magically appears in its VHS forum holy [ __ ] do you know what this means we could accumulate so many VHS copies of movies that nobody can get rid of we could start our own landfill oh my god this is amazing let's try it again okay I get me another one right okay I'm ready uma Thurman John Travolta pulp fiction oh my god it's real it's really happening sv1 okay okay oh my god this is amazing okay okay here we go ready ready Bill Murray and Richard Dreyfuss what about Bob oh look at a beard on top of the [ __ ] curio oh my god why did it appear up there there's no rhyme or reason to any of this I don't know I'm gonna ask you one this is so exciting Marlon Brando Francis Ford Coppola directs hmm that's hard The Godfather hmm yay Kevin Costner and Morgan Freeman Robin Hood is it Robin Hood I think it's Robin Hood yeah Mel Gibson Danny Glover Lethal Weapon yay Tom Hanks Robin Wright Penn who's Robin Wright Penn Tom Hanks bubble gum Forrest Gump yeah okay Jay this is a comedy all right jim Varney Ernest goes to camp yes that's right where is it it was Ernest goes to camp Brice I'm one of the other Ernest movies no no no you guessed it right it does say Ernest goes to camp but I don't see where it it has appeared at hmm Oh

Channel: RedLetterMedia

Views: 1,101,321

Rating: 4.8466644 out of 5

Keywords: redlettermedia, red letter media, red, letter, media, mr., plinkett, half in the bag, half, in, the, bag, mike, stoklasa, jay, bauman, hobbit, unexpected, journey, an unexpected journey, movie, The Hobbit (Book), review

Id: kFh6c_CwdBg

Length: 33min 6sec (1986 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 22 2012

Reddit Comments

[u/DoctorCroooow]

True professional, Mike is thinking about the final edit as he dies.

[u/manhole_resident]

It's one of the best blow-job-under-the-table scenes that I saw in my life.