People have been raving about it, so I went to see The Hobbit yesterday. It wasn't something that Ben had any desire to see, so I knew it was a film I'd have to go to on my own. Since he was in Phoenix, I took the opportunity and walked down to the train station and jumped on light rail for a ride to the theater.
I never read The Hobbit (Yeah, yeah, I know. How can a teenager of the 70s have not read The Hobbit?), but I loved The Lord of the Rings as well as the Harry Potter films without ever having read their source material either, so I expected to once again be greatly entertained by this journey to Middle Earth.
Sadly, I was not amused. I can't honestly say I gave a flying fuck about any of the characters, and it seemed to be little more than one pointless CGI creature battle after another. After the mountains finished fighting, I quietly gathered up my belongings and left.
Maybe I missed something in that last half that would've awed me and changed my opinion. But the theater was freezing (I had my heavy coat on), I had an hour's trip home and still needed to get my turkey breast in the oven; all of which seemed more interesting than what I'd seen on the screen thus far.
I've read the book many times; including in German! — and the film took great liberties. Several times I thought "Oooh! that's not in the book!" They made it far more a 'LOTR" prelude than Tolkein did. I thought this odd, as the LOTR was so precise; The Hobbit was not.
I avoided Tolkien like the plague, and i grew up in the 70s/80s. I was already on the edge of nerddom, and Hobbit-o-philes were the Dungeon & Dragons weirdos. I needed no help being more of an outcast. So, when the Lord of the Rings trilogy came out, I was unfamiliar, but I tried for the sake of my husband (who loves every second of it). At the end of the first one, I was horrified at the end, because I couldn't imagine this pointless quest going further. I was relieved that it was the actual end of the movie. I tried again with the second one, and became disinterested after the first hour. Didn't bother with the third, and was AMAZED when all three were released with extra hours of material. To me, it was a pointless, meaningless, unintelligible mess. Elves and dwarves and hobbits and who knows what all, I just didn't get any of it, or understand who was fighting who or why. It was pretty, I'll give it that.
And when I found out they took the Hobbit–which I understood to be something of a short story, a prequel kid's story—and made it ANOTHER trilogy? I'd rather watch just about anything else. Straight porn. Hell, LESBIAN porn. Anything else.
I'm pretty much in the same boat as J.P. Actually, the same boat. That's weird.
I don't think you're weird at all. I didn't read The Hobbit either and I didn't really enjoy The Lord of the Rings trilogy all that much. I have no interest in seeing this movie, but then again, I'm a surly type that doesn't really like going to a movie theatre that much anymore.