Oh my God. [Tour guide] "You're gonna hear from Russell, but first of all Sir Peter Jackson." "Hello, I just want to welcome you on your journey to Hobbiton. "I'm very, very pleased that you're able to take the time to go and visit our set, so thank you." So here we are, in Hobbiton. Well, the movie set fictionally known as Hobbiton. In New Zealand, trying to recapture the lost magic of our childhoods. It comes easier to some of us. "I'm going on an adventure!" Nella, you were 28 when that movie came... Anyway. [sigh] This, this... This isn't so bad. I mean it's a little exploitative, but you know, this is... this is actually kind of fun. "This is pretty fun." This is actually a lot of fun. I don't think I've reclaimed any lost innocence, but I am having fun. Still, I do have a bigger purpose in coming here. Sure, yeah, we want to recapture that childhood magic. But first, before we allow ourselves to really go down that road, since this is a movie set made by a production, we need to talk about the production. We really need to figure out... Okay, let's go back. Lord of the Rings movies come out, Jackson wins all of the Oscars, the movies make all the money, then the good times come to an end when Jackson and company decide that New Line Cinema, the studio that bankrolled and distributed the Lord of the Rings films, is holding out on them. So factor number one is Jackson's original lawsuit against New Line Cinema in 2005. To keep this short, this results in Jackson being booted from all things related to The Hobbit, eventually turning into a feature film or several. A couple of years pass, and then in late 2007 Jackson and company settle out of court, and he agrees to executive produce The Hobbit movies. But Jackson does not want to direct the Hobbit films, owing to his commitments to Tintin and The Lovely Bones, although he does want to be involved along with Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens in a producorial context. In Jackson's words, he's already spent three 3-hour movies in Middle-earth and that was enough for him. The guy he wants to direct is Guillermo del Toro, who is fresh off the triumph of his Hellboy movies and especially of critical darling Pan's Labyrinth. Also around this time, New Line Cinema merges with Warner Brothers in 2008. So in the grand tango of rights, this is how Warner Brothers acquired the rights to all things the Lord of the Rings ...but not the rights to the Hobbit. See, MGM has those, and MGM has a problem. 3.7 billion of them, in fact, which was around the amount of the crippling debt the studio had amassed around the time of the Warner Brothers/New Line merger. Given this debt, MGM could not finance or even co-finance a blockbuster project. So, given that New Line and Warner Brothers were very anxious to create what would inevitably be lucrative movies based on The Hobbit, MGM and New Line brokered a rights-sharing deal for two movies, both directed by Guillermo del Toro. The year is 2009; pre-production is a go for del Toro's The Hobbit. "I am exploding with the desire of just [explodes] showing everything..." Del Toro was much more keen on The Hobbit than he was for the Lord of the Rings. His vision was to make the films both visually and tonally distinct from the Lord of the Rings, and to give them a more operatic, fairytale-like feel, in contrast to the more grounded tone and aesthetic of the Lord of the Rings. Del Toro seemed to want to capture the whimsical spirit of the book. "You don't have a committee, you don't have a group of studio people telling you, 'There should be a happy ending here, "'And they should never go to see the spiders, or they- Beorn is not rating with this age group...'" But, as we would find out later, that wasn't what Jackson or the studio wanted. Del Toro lived in Wellington for 18 months working on pre-production for The Hobbit, before leaving the project in late 2009. And here... okay, here's where it starts to get a little bit tinfoil hatty, but bear with me. After del Toro left, all parties involved cited scheduling conflicts, and claimed that it was all taking too long, and del Toro got impatient and wanted to work on other things, so he left. But given how quickly the Hobbit went into production after he left, to me that reads either as a partial truth or a mistruth. In 2012, Philippa Boyens stated that Peter Jackson had to step up and direct, for it to start making sense in terms of those financial models. But for del Toro the issue feels... emotionally fraught. "I have incredible heartache, I feel terrible about it, "It's very hard. It's getting a little easier to talk about it, but "essentially it's like you've been recently widowed and everybody asking you "exactly how your wife died." Again, there may be partial truth to the idea that this was all just taking too long, but this does not read to me of a guy who voluntarily left a project he'd spent almost two years on because he was feeling impatient and wanted to fly free, little bird. Yeah, it was taking a while, but if you've worked in film, you know that 18 months of pre-production for a project this huge... it's not that much. "There was none of this taking wonderful photographs in front of racks of armor, "completed a year before production, as we did on Lord of the Rings. "If you think about that time there was incredible planning. "There were three and a half years of pre-production before we rolled the cameras." And then there's the fact that when Jackson took over, those 18 months of pre-production got completely scrapped. Jackson threw out everything that del Toro had done. Which speaks to me that there was something about del Toro's vision that was fundamentally at odds with the movies that Jackson and the studio wanted to make. But here's the thing: I don't think that the studio really knew what movies they wanted, just that they wanted it to look and feel like the Lord of the Rings. Because they aren't shy about the fact that no department was given adequate time, and there was effectively no pre-production. "They didn't even get a chance to prep these movies. "You can't- I can't say that! But he didn't!" "You now have to plan on the go. "You're laying the tracks directly in front of the train, "and that chased us all the way to the end." The question to me is, why? If they've already wasted so much time and money on del Toro's pre-production, why not give Jackson at least a few months? The best answer I've been able to find is those financial models. Pre-production costs money, and Warner Brothers felt like they'd wasted enough, so the decree was to get it done, do it now, or we will find someone who will. At least, that's what it seems like to me. New Zealand is a small country. Surely, if I poke around, I can find someone who can tell me what happened on the set. Or better yet, find someone who was actually there. [John Callen] This was the day, the last day that we were all- the core cast were all together. The hobbit and the wizard with all the dwarves. And each one of us got one of these. Yes, my name is John Callen, and I've worked in theater, television, radio, film, since the early 70s. In The Hobbit I play one of the dwarves, and I played a character called Óin. "He said he's an expert! Ha-hey!" As I say we kicked off with tremendous enthusiasm, a real sense of brotherhood, camaraderie, and everybody working together. There wasn't one toss-pot person in the core cast. We really had a tremendous sense of brotherhood, of multiple different characters coming together for a single and very important purpose. And there was a determination within the cast that we would be a band of brothers, basically. There is - I don't know whether all your viewers would know this - but it's a very common expression that the film industry is run on the motto, "Hurry up and wait." And there was more of that in this production than any other production I have worked on. We'd go through makeup and costume, prosthetics, that kind of thing, get ready, and then wait. And wait, and wait. And it so happened that for a number of people, and it wasn't just the also-rans among us, they wouldn't be used. And so, we- at the end of the day, we'd been waiting all day, and nothing would have happened, and we just went, "Oh well, fine. At least I'm being paid." And the next day, there'd be a nice bottle of wine, saying "Thank you for being so decent about this," kind of thing, and we were very happy to get those bottles of wine. As it went on, the bottles of wine ceased. And the waiting got even longer. There would be the schedule on the wall, and we would just put a little number up, of how many changes to this schedule there would be within this week or this month. Then somebody would win a bottle of martini or something, you know, that kind of nonsense. The changes were incredible. Now, I'm not saying they weren't necessary, but they may well have come out of the fact that there had initially been the intention of using a director who had spent time prepping all this thing, and then Peter Jackson thought, "Well, if Guillermo del Toro has moved on to do the other work that he needs to do, I'll pick up the mantle." Other influences may have come from the studios. [Lindsay Ellis] It's hard not to feel for Jackson and company. With the original director gone, Peter Jackson was put into this position where he had to do what the studio wanted. He couldn't pass the job off to someone who was really hungry for it; if he passed on directing, there was no reason for Warner Brothers to keep the production in New Zealand. So with no other director, and no time, Jackson HAD to do it. And he had to do it according to the timeframe laid down by Warner Brothers, and he was also forced to defend their decisions. "It meant that we had a second movie, the middle movie, the Desolation of Smaug, "where we could actually have a little bit more fun with it too." Uh-huh. We may never know, but effectively the cost of making three movies instead of two was not a huge jump. And there were more parties at play here than just New Line, Warner Brothers, and MGM with their billions of debt. There was producer Saul Zaents, who also had a hand in the rights deal, and guess who else came to the feast? Yep, Harvey Weinstein is here too. So where the Lord of the Rings had one studio bankrolling the films, The Hobbit had... ...five, either bankrolling or taking a cut. Warner Brothers, parent company of New Line, MGM, which owned the rights to The Hobbit, producer Saul Zaents, who, having nothing to do with the production, didn't take his cut, and Harvey Weinstein, who reaped millions from The Hobbit movies, but according to the deal he struck with Warner Brothers, only the FIRST Hobbit movie. No, he was not actively involved with the production, but he did take a sizable cut from the first film due to a deal that he had struck with MGM in the Long Long Ago Time. So when you take into consideration all of these outside interests, that had nothing to do with the actual production, but who were owed cuts of the first film, but ONLY the first film, "A tad... excessive." having three films instead of two... doesn't seem like such a bad idea. And that was only one influence the studio might have had. [John Callen] They may, for instance, have wanted less of the story of the dwarves with the hobbit, and more the story of the punch-ups, the fights, you know, the battles, per se. The idea of having a love story in there, which wasn't in the book, whether one thinks that was well thought out or not. "Aren't you going to search me?" "I could have anything down my trousers." "Or nothing." [John Callen] So as we set off, making the first of what we thought was going to be two films, there was a really strong bond, with very different aspects to each of these characters. As it went on, we kind of had the feeling that, in fact, there were one or two people whose parts were going to grow, because they were young and good-looking and feisty and all that kind of thing. We got left behind a bit. How much that was based on what was originally intended, I'm not sure, because we didn't initially have complete scripts for three films, because initially there were going to be only two films. All I can tell you is that there was a definite feeling, within the core cast, that Peter was, if you like, he wasn't the final arbiter. [Lindsay Ellis] One certainly gets that impression. Just look at this thousand-yard stare. [theme to Curb Your Enthusiasm plays] Changes to increase marketability in movies are inevitable. And no, of course they're not always evil, but in the case of The Hobbit, they kind of build up. Let's run through just a few: With the Hobbit, it seemed like Peej started to fall down the same technology hole that swallowed the likes of James Cameron and George Lucas. A big gimmick that the film was sold on was being shot in 48 frames per second 3D. One consequence is that the models and matte paintings they used in the Lord of the Rings looked like models and matte paintings in 48 frames per second 3D, so there was a much heavier reliance on CGI. They also couldn't use the forced perspective that worked so well in the Lord of the Rings. The mileage of 48 frames per second varies by viewer. Some people are more sensitive to it than others. Some people like it; for some people, it gives them a headache. But where CGI is concerned, more frames means more render time and more computer power needed. Part of the problem with the visual effects was the lack of time the CGI artists had for a lot of these shots. Contrast how amazing Gollum looks... "If Baggins loses, we eats it whole." and the melting gold on a dragon... Yikes. One of these scenes got the time and care needed to look photorealistic, the other did not. The real irony is that 3D 48 frames per second version only now exists in prints. You can't see it anywhere. If you watch The Hobbit on Blu-ray, you're watching it in 23.98 frames per second, not 48. I suspect this is also why we got uncanny valley Dáin, instead of Billy Connolly in makeup. Dáin even gets his own chapter in the appendices, and they pronounce it Dane for some reason. "Dane" "Dane" "Dane" "This is Dane, lord of the iron hills." They never explain or even acknowledge the decision to put Dáin in CGI, instead of a guy in makeup like the rest of the dwarves are. Another marketability change, as we mentioned in the last video, is the inclusion of a bunch of characters from the Lord of the Rings that have nothing to do with the plot as writ in The Hobbit, Galadriel, Saruman, Frodo, Legolas... The arc they seem to be going for with Galadriel was that confronting Sauron and doing magic battle with him drained her and that's why she has to go to Lothlórien... "Her strength is failing. Take her to Lothlórien." Which, I mean, okay. It's better than what they do with poor Legolas. Legolas should have been a cameo, which was like the one thing Pirates of the Caribbean 5 did right. Because it makes sense that Bilbo and the dwarves would have run into him in Mirkwood. But because he was such a popular Rings character, they go ahead and bump him up to the main cast. And it continues with another Legolas problem we saw throughout the Rings trilogy: In Fellowship, he's just kind of, you know, cool, and an archer. And by the end of Return of the King, he's basically like Spider-Man. In The Hobbit... Woof. So let's ignore Super Legolas. Let's talk about his character arcs. First, there is the mom. About halfway through the Battle of Five Armies, the movie drops this bomb on the audience: "My mother died there." Okayyyy... And during Legolas's last scene in the movie, we get this: "Your mother loved you... more than anyone." Was that in dispute? So, at a point in history Legolas's mom died fighting. "There is no grave... no memory." This somehow led to something of a falling-out between Legolas and his father. "My father does not speak of it." So what we get in the theatrical cut is a motivation with no consequence. We get a cliche "mom dead, dad mad, kid sad" situation, in which the dead parent drives the separation between them, so now they never have to really talk and the writers can focus on that sizzling hot love triangle. Legolas also says this at the end: "I cannot go back." Like this five army battle, or... angst from the dead mom, it's not clear, has tainted the mere idea of Mirkwood for him for some reason. And then Thranduil tells him to go find Aragorn. "Find the Dúnedain. "There's a young Ranger amongst them, you should meet him. "He's known in the wild as Strider. "His true name... you must discover for yourself." Like Aragorn's true name is a password for a clubhouse. Also Aragorn is like, what, ten, during the Battle of Five Armies? I don't know, maybe Arathorn needs a babysitter. But much more prominent than this is the love triangle arc. From a character-arc standpoint, this does nothing for either Legolas or for the narrative. This could have been better setup for his distaste for dwarves, as we saw in the Fellowship of the Ring. "And my axe!" Thranduil, I guess, empathically confirms that Tauriel's love for Kíli was "real." "Why does it hurt so much?" And wow, the greatest love of all time is now legitimized. And Legolas looks on sadly, but sympathetically. Instead, the focus at the end is Dead Mom. He doesn't seem to care about Tauriel or the dwarves at all. Certainly doesn't play up that prejudice that he's going to have to work on in Lord of the Rings. Just this amorphous, mom-shaped angst. Legolas's arc in the Lord of the Rings is mostly tied to his friendship with Gimli. It isn't just about learning to undo their prejudices against each other, but also serves as a microcosm of everyone coming together to defeat Sauron. And they sail into the West together! "Never though I'd die fighting side by side with an elf." "What about side by side with a friend?" This is real! But Legolas doesn't get it worst in terms of clumsy addition made, presumably, at the behest of the studios, That honor goes to poor Tauriel. "She's torn between an elf and a dwarf, so I suppose for Tauriel, size doesn't matter? Oh, Evangeline Lilly, I am so sorry. Uh oh, we have a problem. Belladonna Took is the only named female character in The Hobbit. And she dead before the book even starts, so what do? Hollywood doesn't like women because writing them is hard. "I have walked there sometimes." "Beyond the forest and up into the night." But they like women, because they have money. And there's this idea, in some studios, that women won't see your movie if there's no women. But women in movies need a justification for being women, or they may as well be men, amirite? So better give her a love interest or... several. On the one hand it's a bit unfair to compare this to the Lord of the Rings, where they didn't need to fabricate female characters out of whole cloth and instead just beefed up the parts that were already there. "I am no man." But on the other hand, creating a character out of whole cloth, that adds nothing, nothing, NOTHING to this narrative, like, she doesn't help the dwarves escape, she saves Kíli I guess, from a problem that wasn't in the book, but he dies unceremoniously anyway, and she's sad and it HURTS SO MUCH "Why does it hurt so much?" So this, uh, this brings up the question of what is- what is worse: bad representation, or no representation. We're gonna answer that question today. just kidding no we're not And contrary to popular belief, this is not why these things get changed. It's not to make it more politically correct. It's a cynical move on the part of the studio to increase mass market appeal. One that I don't think was necessary to get lady butts in seats. Nor do I think it fixes the underlying issue of the way that Tolkien wrote women, or in the case of Hobbit, didn't. Fantasy in general has a women problem, because history is patriarchal, and since most fantasy is based on history, authors want to write patriarchal societies, buuuuuuuuut they don't really want to think or go into how or why these structures came to exist. "You think your life is worth more than theirs?" On the one end you have something like Skyrim, which is about as egalitarian as a fantasy world is going to get. There are, of course, the likes of Terry Goodkind and Piers Anthony, which I'm not going to go into here, and then you have works like A Song of Ice and Fire, where the patriarchal aspects of the society are both acknowledged and integrated into the narrative consciously. And then, of course, the benign sexism of Tolkien where women are fair maidens. Sometimes powerful maidens, like in the case of Galadriel, but we don't really get to see it, because, you know, she's gotta restrain that. Éowyn gets her Badass Moment of Awesome, but when Faramir reads her a poem, she decides she's done with being a shieldmaiden and becomes a good waifu. But more common in recent fantasy, at least fantasy written by men, is the version where there's an implied patriarchal structure, given the utter dearth of women in positions of power, but no one really talks about it. And that angle, the one where there's kind of like a token badass lady, that's kind of how I feel they went with Tauriel's inclusion in these movies, and it's not just that she's there, it's that she feels so out of place. No one in-universe ever points it out, because Tolkien didn't really care, but women have pretty strict gender roles in Middle-earth. Women don't do battle. That's why Éowyn stepping out of her lane was worth remarking upon. Arwen's redesign in the movies already makes her character a little bit schizophrenic. As far as she goes as taking Glorfindel's role, which again in my opinion was a good decision. But it also sets her up as kind of like a battle maiden. "If you want him, come and claim him!" And they did originally shoot Arwen: Warrior Princess at Helm's Deep, but then they cut that - also a good choice in my opinion. Because that was what made Éowyn remarkable. She disguised herself as a man because she had to. Because women don't do battle in Tolkien's universe. "You know as little of war as that hobbit." "When the fear takes him, "And the blood, and the screams, and the horror of battle take hold, "Do you think he would stand and fight?" So not only shoehorning in this unnecessary character, doing a disservice to the story, she does not mesh with the fabric of the universe. "I do not think you would allow your son to pledge himself to a lowly Silvan elf." I don't know, maybe lowly Silvan elves train their women in the art of war or something. To be clear, my issue with all things Tauriel isn't because it's unfaithful to Tolkien, or because representation is bad. It's because it's a transparent and cynical move on the part of the studio. You create a female character that is completely out of place in her own universe, for her to be the center of a love triangle that serves no purpose in this narrative. Not plot-wise, not thematically, nothing. While the only female character that escapes the great love triangle-ining is Galadriel, and even then... "Come with me, my lady!" Gandalf I swear to Christ "In order to take this job, you have to promise me I will not be in a love triangle. "I swear to God, this is what I said to them, and they said, 'We promise you, you won't be in a love triangle.' "I came back in 2012 for reshoots, "And they were like, 'Uh, the studio would really like to see...' "and I was like, here we go..." Yup. The great love triangulation of Tauriel was... ...a reshoot addition. Requested by Warner Brothers. And all of this mess was added in reshoots, a year after principal photography had ended. So if this romance feels tacked on, it's because it is. "And sure enough, I'm in another love triangle!" Tauriel's relationship with Legolas doesn't make sense. Thranduil expects them to get married, "He's grown very fond of you." But also kind of hates her... "... you would allow your son to pledge himself to a lowly Silvan elf." "No!" She has no reason to fall in love with Kíli. There is no reason for these two to care about each other. Like, they couldn't even write in a bit about how he, like, saves her from a spider at the beginning or something or she saved him from a... I don't know, they had spiders! Studios say we need woms, but what do you do with women in movie? I don't know, love triangle where none of the characters even have a reason to like each other, I guess. "Aren't you going to search me?" "I could have anything down my trousers." "Or nothing." Oh, the burning passion. So we will probably never know exactly where filmmaker intent ended and studio mandate began, but a lot of the weakest aspect of the films, if not directly demanded by the studio, were at the very least... encouraged. But the important lesson here is that all of these additions come at a price. And the price is what should have been the emotional core of these films: Bilbo, his journey, and his growing friendship with the dwarves, particularly Thorin. So, speaking of callbacks to the Lord of the Rings, Thorin... you notice that he doesn't really look like a dwarf? "Gandalf." Thorin looks more like, well, Aragorn than he does Gimli. So both aesthetically and thematically, Thorin is something of a callback to Aragorn, since Thorin is the king what needs to reclaim his crown in this trilogy. In the pre-production phase, Jackson stated that he wanted the dwarves to be iconically dwarvish. "Pete said to us, 'I want to be more bold, "'I want the dwarves to look like a race of dwarves from Middle-earth.'" Buuuuuuut well again I'm not saying he was forced to do it, I'm just saying beards got shorn, Thorin looks like Aragorn, and Kíli, well, he looks like your anime boyfriend. The ones with the most screen time are less cartoonish and dwarvish and more Game of Thronesy and mainstream. That said, there are elements of Thorin's Aragornification that do work. Thorin's narrative in the book is that he's a very important dwarf who suffers indignity after indignity, and that's funny. This... [Dwarves groan] ... is where he's introduced in the book. And the book even mentions how annoyed he is that a very important dwarf such as himself gets relegated to the pile. So I think the filmmakers found a good way to bridge this. Don't put him in the dwarf pile, have the other dwarves hella respect his prowess in battle... "There is one who I could follow. "There is one I could call King." ... and rather than making it a joke that this very important dwarf has to suffer indignity after indignity, have it be more about him regaining his honor by way of reclaiming his heritage. This is a good foundation for a character arc, but his arrogance is also a good basis for building a relationship with Bilbo. "He's thought of nothing but his soft bed and his warm hearth since first he stepped out of his door!" "You don't have one. A home. "It was taken from you. "But I will help you take it back if I can." And I really like the dynamic they built between Thorin and Bilbo, (and so does AO3 by the way) "I was going to give it to you. Many times, I wanted to." The problem, as with most problems in this movie, is when the restructuring does a disservice to the story, or when they go so far with a good thing that they don't know when to stop, jumping that shark from compelling, to confusing and/or boring. As I mentioned in the last video, moving Thorin's change-of-heart moment with Bilbo to so early in the narrative was a mistake. "I have never been so wrong in all my life." Because there's no growth between Thorin and Bilbo in movie two. Thorin and Bilbo's relationship, and its falling out, is the emotional core of movie three. Diluting the movie with all the crap that we don't need and doesn't matter dilutes the emotional core. Another casualty of this is Thorin's death. Hell, Thorin dies before Tauriel's "Why does it hurt so much" scene, and both scenes are given the same emotional weight with both the cinematography and the editing. One of these scenes features a relationship that has been built organically. The other features a woman crying over a man she has no reason to care about, in a studio mandated love triangle, and the latter is given the greater focus because it comes last. I'm not saying Kíli and his wingman Fíli don't deserve some sort of death scene, because yeah, we've spent a lot of time with them too, but that this happens... "Why does it hurt so much?" "Because it was real." ... immediately after this... [Bilbo cries quietly] ... robs Thorin's death of its gravitas, and pulls the rug out from under what was naturally a cathartic and good farewell, that had actual bones in the story. "I am so sorry... that I have led you into such peril." "No, I'm, I'm glad to have shared in your perils, Thorin, each and every one of them." And I hate to bring out the tinfoil hat again, but I cannot help but wonder if Warner Brothers looked at all the gay jokes that followed the Lord of the Rings trilogy... [Secret Lovers by Atlantic Starr playing] and thought, "We don't want THAT. No homo." It isn't difficult to tease out the stuff that worked, like Thorin and Bilbo, from the stuff that didn't, like Tauriel and Kíli, Gandalf and Galadriel. On the one side are things that were there in the source material and just needed to be fleshed out. The others, made up out of whole cloth, tacked on because the studio wanted it, because the focus group said it tested well. And it's less gay. So the emotional core, especially between Bilbo and the dwarves, THE most important aspect of the films, suffers. In this movie, this is our fellowship, and they start out great! The strongest point in all three movies is at the beginning when the dwarves show up. ♪ "The pines were roaring on the height" ♪ But as the movies progress, they matter less and less, until movie three ends with Bilbo just... sneaking out. And the implication here is that the emotional core of the story doesn't really matter. [John Callen] Even though we were in the core cast, we really did feel, at some point, that we were actually becoming the world's highest-paid extras. Whether it had to do with the fact that the studios had said, "Actually, they're all right, these dwarves, yes, but the real stories are the battle between "Thorin and the evil orcs, "It's the story of the relationship between Radagast and Gandalf, and finding Galadriel again and getting her help. If that is what the studios were pushing for, then they certainly got what they wanted. What I think they missed out on was the heart that we started with. And we had that as a group of dwarves, going with Gandalf and with our hobbit to find our treasure. The treasure, like in the Maori language, "taonga," has to do with the treasure of people, of history, and really of heritage. That's what we were after, and that's what we as actors were driving towards, and that, I felt, gradually dissipated, until at the end, we just had a big punch-up with five massive armies, driven by technology. [Lindsay Ellis] There is a lot more to it, but in the case of The Hobbit, bad studio mandate seemed to be the cornerstone of the discussion. No, I don't necessarily feel better about The Hobbit, but that doesn't mean that the legacy of The Hobbit has to be all or nothing. I mean, just look at what it's done for the people of New Zealand. Clearly they're proud of their ties to Middle-earth: there are giant stone dwarves at the airport, and this well-kept-up movie set, staffed with enthusiastic people happy to show you around... Maybe these films were deeply flawed and often disappointing, but they were important to the people of New Zealand. These are a simple folk, just trying to get by in the global economy, so even if I can't appreciate the films, I can appreciate their legacy. "Cheers!" This was so much fun! Yeah, I think I can finally see that The Hobbit movies have done a great service to the country of New Zealand. [Tom Augustine] In terms of legacy, what The Hobbit left behind is a little bit more complicated than that. I'm sorry. Who are you? Hi, I'm Tom. I'm a writer for Birth.Movies.Death and a filmmaker. Just so you know, what the Hobbit actually did for New Zealand was... Well, it kind of fucked us. Oh, uh, thank you. Um, we've just been informed by the studio that this is actually going to be three videos now. ♪ Far over the misty mountains cold ♪ ♪ To dungeons deep, and caverns old ♪ ♪ We must away, 'ere break of day ♪
Getting Oin on camera was some real investigative journalism. She's taking her game to new heights.
Lindsay does such great work. Loved her analysis here, and though Nella felt really tacked on in her older videos, I felt the connection here with their childhood love for the franchise was really sweet and well-integrated.
That ending was really funny. It reached this great heart warming climax that just fed into a great jab.
Part 1 for those like me who missed it.
These videos are making me mourn Del Toro's version more and more.
Pretty sure that's Dan from Folding Ideas making a cameo at 1:15?
I know The Hobbit has serious issues and everyone hates it, but I really just enjoyed going back to Middle Earth and wandering around and seeing new things. The costumes, settings, characters, and craftsmanship is still all there even if the drama and plot isn't.
Who are these fucking 'focus group's' and how do I get on one to make them slightly less idiotic?
As far as The Hobbit teardowns go I was always partial to this review