The Hobbit 2 Where To Watch
Vivien
I have not watched any of the entries in the Lord of the Rings/Hobbit franchise and as per my knowledge The Hobbit's story occurs before LotR but the release order is different. So for better understanding should I go with the Hobbit trilogy first or should I go with release order?
specifically Gandalf fighting a huge amount of Orcs in The Hobbit. Since he's in Lord of the Rings, if you see that first, when you watch The Hobbit you know that he wins the battle against the Orcs.
The Hobbit serves at least 2 purposes: laying some foundation for the important events that take place in LotR and being a gentle introduction to Middle Earth. ME is a complicated universe with its rich history, diverse geography, many races, many languages and many maps. If you are somewhat familiar with those things, LotR (the films and the book) will be much easier to follow.
Because they are made after LotR, the Hobbit films strive for continuity and providing fan services by bringing back many elements of the first 3 films. The score, several actors, the filming angle, certain emphatic quotes and many subtle hints for the people who have seen the first 3 films. The problem is important elements such as the score and the characters (played by the actors who have aged noticeably since the first 3 films, who have to play younger versions of the characters, and who are now given a much less rich source material to work with) appear in the Hobbit trilogy as lesser versions of themselves in the LotR trilogy. So if you watch the Hobbit first, you will meet those elements for the first time in less positive light than they deserve. That will spoil your LotR enjoyment when you later watch the original trilogy.
While inferior in important ways compared to the LotR trilogy, the Hobbit films are arguably more technologically advanced and flashier. Not surprising considering they arrive a decade later. Thus, if you see the Hobbit films first, they may make you feel disappointed in certain visual effects in LotR.
Finally, LotR are universally hailed as cinematic masterpieces whereas the Hobbit films are at best good and entertaining films. If you see the latter first, you may encounter disappointments that leave behind a bad taste that hinders your LotR enjoyment.
For example, you know the importance of Strider as a character in LotR and that Sauron's power is growing, making much of the mystery and knowledge discovery Frodo and the gang face in The Fellowship of the Rings redundant/less significant.
Tolkien crafted the books -- even The Hobbit -- very carefully. The movies have minced and mangled that. I would have understood if they had left out some characters and scenes from the books, but they have 'combined' characters in spite of at one point promising not to, and then they have added a lot of their own inventions, sometimes based on misunderstanding of the books, but more often for no good reason, and in every case disrupting Tolkien's careful narrative and world-building structure. I won't even go into the subject of making eight hours of movie from less than 300 pages of children's book on top of all that. If you think that that is OK in a movie -- after all all movies made from books do that to some degree -- then by all means see the movies in the order in which they were made -- after reading the books in the order in which they were written at least once.
I would say watch LotR and then the Hobbit. PJ added so much additional crap to the story in the Hobbit movies that I don't think it would make as much sense, or understand the importance, if you watched it the way JRRT intended it.
But if you want a real adventure, I would say read the Hobbit first(it's only 270 pages or so) then watch LotR and then watch the Hobbit. Then read LotR since PJ omitted some things in that. That would be the most bang for your buck, and allow you to fully comprehend where the stories were going as you watched the movies.
So start with The Fellowship of the Ring. Than ask a friend about the parts that were interesting, but not clear at all. I don't suggest to Google it because of accidental spoilers. If it was in the first Hobbit movie, watch it. If in the second, watch them both, and if in the third, watch all the Hobbit series. If the interested part wasn't in the second or third Hobbit movie, watch the Two Towers. After that, watch the rest of the Hobbit series, and close it with the The return of The King.
** all page numbers given in the chapter excerpts are from my personal copy of the book, the 1984 illustrated edition featuring the work of Michael Hague. If you experience technical issues while streaming, try refreshing the url or downloading the file directly. ?
All of that said: news that the source of the audio sync problem is found is also encouraging. It could mean that a new version of the film could be made without that issue, and subtitling it would be far more straightforward. I hope you can focus on that and give feedback as soon as possible, that way I could start planning what amount of my syncing / editing work can be salvaged and what needs to be done over again.
Then there is one further remark: watching the 3.1 and 4.0 (Standard) edition side by side I notice that the 4.0 standard edition has a smaller frame size and different frame rate. To me it feels like in the 4.0 edition the movement is not as smooth and the picture looks blurrier. Is an HD version still in the works?
So far I have got finished English subtitles with Closed-Captions and regular English. German is the first translation. I believe I have now enough scripts and data to almost automatically convert subtitles for the original films into TBE subtitles, so any requests are welcome.
Really excited about the upcoming update, just wanted to ask one thing, since you are going to be fixing quite alot of things from audio to even adding subs, is there any chance of an update in the quality of the video?
Two reasons:
a) In the book, the dwarves and elves do indeed begin to fight before the orcs and goblins arrive, so it is true to the spirit of the source material
b) I thought it was well executed and set up the character of Dain as someone to take seriously
Hi, I LOVE the sound of this, and I want to download and watch it so badly! Unfortunately, when I go to the dropbox link and click download, it says too many people have downloaded/watched it, so I cannot. Is there somewhere else I can download it? Thanks! This project seems amazing!
It was meant as a place-holder until I could get my hands on better editing software. I no longer have access to the original software used to edit the first three version, which has resulted in a great deal of frustration. That combined with teaching in the middle of a pandemic and everything else going on has forced me to put the project on hold. I hope this summer I can update with a higher resolution export!
This edit still remains my favorite and I would be glad to share more info. Maybe I have been sending emails to the wrong mail address, so could you send me an email from your preferred address to jberttdw AT gmail DOT com? Looking forward to a reply.
Hello! I am revisiting your site for the first time in a few years to download the Bilbo Edition again. I have been a big fan of your project here for years now, it is definitely the best edit out there and you are very humble about it. I did notice the audio issue during the many times I watched the 3.0 version, but it was worth it to rewatch multiple times anyway. I was very glad to see a 4.0 version with audio fixed, but sadly it is only in 480p, whereas the old one was in 1080p and looked phenomenal. I am wondering if you would upload the full 1080p copy of the 4.0 version if possible? Until then I will continue enjoying the 3.0 as the vast picture quality difference between 480 and 1080p is more important than the synced audio. Thanks for all your work to make this great story more true to how it was intended to be told!
Wow. This is crazy. There's a video going around online from the special features of The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies that is one of the most honest looks at filmmaking I've ever seen. It features extensive footage and interviews of the entire crew of The Hobbit trilogy, from director Peter Jackson to all of his various staff including script supervisor, production designer and set decorator talking about how they all had no idea what they were doing with these movies. It's a very sad, remarkably rare look at how hard it is to make a massive movie on this scale, and how much stress there is on a director. Having finally watched this video, I just keep wondering: how the heck did this get made and actually released to the public? Amazing.
I am still so stunned by this. The shot of Jackson at the 3:30 mark where it zooms out is incredible. That's the moment where I felt like - this is Hearts of Darkness, a brutally honest look at the making of a troubled trilogy. The video is out of context within the bigger picture - they do return and finish making The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies, and that's what the Extended Edition is - the complete cut. Not that it's that good in the end anyway. I remember thinking to myself while watching these that they just don't have that same magical feeling as the Lord of the Rings films, and I couldn't quite figure out why. Well now we know.
Thanks to The Verge for the tip on this. I finally caught up and watched this video and had to say something about it, because I was so taken back by it. Everyone is throwing around that "I don't know what the hell I was doing" quote from Peter Jackson, but there's so many other things I was thinking about. For example - during the release of these movies throughout 2012 to 2014, they were also putting out those 10-minute production blogs online. Thinking back, they must have been very creatively edited to find footage that only showed everyone looking happy. They were able to craft an "everything is going great!" narrative while the actual reality, we now know, was very different. I wish there was even more of this honest footage available.
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