I'm bored with the whole zombie thing. I won't be there.
I disagree with Breedy on Les Miserables. I thought it was awful. I was the only one in the theater that probably thought that, but it was terribly filmed and most of the singing was not good.
I also loved The Hobbit, so my taste in movies is obviously different than a lot of folks.
I loved LotR and we were between the Hobbit and Les Miserables, the showing time for LM was the deciding factor. I've seen a pretty good off Broadway production and I enjoyed the movie more. Russell Crowe won't win any Tony but I enjoyed the more spoken than sung aspects of a couple of characters. Borat was fantastic in his role.
A strong soundtrack and awesome storyline on top of making the wife happy, well worth it.
Side note : Alan version did you see? I've heard bad things about the HFR 3d
I saw the 2D version on an Ultrascreen (a screen that's 32x64 or some such measurement; it's a converted imax theater so one wall was the screen). I don't like 3D movies and we don't have a theater here that can play the hfr 3D version. That version is actually in very few theaters from what I understand.
I saw The Hobbit in 3D and loved it. It followed the book pretty well, but I don't understand how they're going to get two more movies out of it. They are 2/3 of the way through the book with the first movie.
There is a lot of stuff from the appendices in Return of the King in these three films. From what I've read, the next movie will get them to the mountain and Smaug v. Lake Town will be a big part of the story. Remember, they've yet to encounter Beorn, the Mirkwood spiders, and the wood elves along the way. There are also rumors of the audience having a look into what Gandalf was doing during his time away from the group.
The third movie will most likely be a lot of the Battle of the Five Armies. We don't get much of that in the book since Bilbo isn't really involved in it, but I don't see how Jackson could resist filming more battle scenes (which he does quite well) and showing the fates of some of the most prevalent characters in the story. There's also the journey home to cover.
I don't agree that 3 good movies can't be made from the material. Three 3 hour movies seems a bit long, but if you really look at the story, there's a lot of detail that needs to be filled in if one is telling the story visually and there are some time passage issues, as well. I have also always thought that the ending of the book was rushed a bit.
Yeah, some of it was dragged out a bit, but one film would have seemed rushed. Two may have been the sweet spot if Jackson was just doing The Hobbit. He's doing more than just The Hobbit, though, which I think can be made into 3 pretty good films.
Had he named the trilogy "Return to Middle Earth" or something I think there would be less criticism on stretching it out.
Now that I've outed myself as a LOTR dork, I'll head back to my hobo pit. There's work to be done...
