I'm not excited! In fact, I'd completely forgotten that this was a thing that was happening, and I never bothered to see the LOTR movies.

And so, with that vital contribution out of the way, I'll leave the rest of you to it.

Anyone know how the hell did they manage to turn a book 1/2 the lenght of The Fellowship into a trilogy?

I hope it's the usual people complaining just to complain. Can't imagine how that could be an issue

See my post above, as I said it's not just "The Hobbit" it's large parts of the silmarillion and other unprinted materials

unless they sing "down down to goblin town" I'm not interested or at least will be mildly disappointed.

At the risk of offending LOTR nerds, I am not even remotely excited.

Why do all Peter Jackson movies have to end 4 to 5 times? Twice watching Return of the King I almost got up, ready for the credits to roll, only to see the ending focus change hands again. Same thing with King Kong. Given how much the standard versions of those movies drag out, I can't ever imagine sitting through the extended versions.

Been looking foward to this since I read book+LOTR books for first time and heard about film being made (a year or two after ROTC) and can't wait to see now

I'm really looking forward to seeing this movie next week. The trailers with the dwarves' song were wonderful, so I'm optimistic.

I'm especially curious about seeing Gandalf's side of the story. :)

Its cause an internet theory is in the hobbit dwarves are jews and it'd be offensive to have ALL of them silly big nosed buggers stumbling about speaking hebrew(well dwarven hebrew anyway) ranting about their obsession with gold and their generations old victim complexv in an allegedly badass warrior race. This way some of them aren't funny looking and are quite dignified and serious in their obsession with gold and their generations old victim complex. ;)

Tolken could do it because wrote snarky letters to nazis....a movie today couldn't because it'd bug people.

These crazy internet people to be specific.

http://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Racism_in_Tolkien%27s_Works#Dwarves_as_Jews
http://www.warseer.com/forums/showthread.php?248807-Are-dwarves-jews
http://www.lotrplaza.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=240171

The only way Tolkien compared the dwarves to Jews was they circumstances: both peoples were exiled from their original homes and had spread across the world. Trying to read more into this comparison is purposely misreading Tolkien. He was very clear on this point. At one point, the Nazi Germany wanted his assurance he had no Jewish ancestors prior to publishing The Hobbit in Germany, and Tolkien's reply was that he unfortunately had no relation to these excellent people, and went on to explain the philological roots of the word "aryan" and how the nazis were misusing it.

Just to make it clear before anyone gets into their head that Tolkien was anti-Jewish. He most certainly was not.

yeah, but its inevitable that somebody in any tolken discussion will eventually come along and do that. So I did it on purpose because those people are always funny. Its like how these days even in an actual serious political debate(american ones anyway) eventually somebody gets compared to hitler.

its like how some people saw a ferengi and said "hey thats me and I'm upset" when I'd always assumed it was the bajorns who were supposed to be jewish and ferengi were capitalism taken to the extreme as seen through the eyes of the socialist utopia of the (tng and later)federation

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the real reason for that dramatically different looks is probably because they didn't think a movie populated entirely by viking helmeted scottish accented old treasure hunting blacksmiths and goldsmiths who live in a mine would sell well on a movie poster, they needed an aragorn looking type(also aragorn was supposed to be weird too looking right? "look foul feel fair" so they changed that too for the same reasons. they did the same stupid sort of thing when they cast "Reacher" the tall lumpy face guy as a short excessively roundheaded scientologist.

(also it wasn't just the no homeland circumstances, he also based their language on theirs...and I don't think that was the version of his letter that actually got sent. I've read that beforea and in that draft he also made fun of their question if he was aryan saying he didn't think his ancestors spoke hindi pr gypsy referencing the real origins of the evidence of the "aryan race". Saw somewhere he wrote like 30 drafts of less and less critical letters before he actually sent one and copies of those get quoted too. I think the actual letter was more mild cause he actually got published and was more along the lines of a straight "no but you're also an idiot for asking/caring(but said politely)"...but I'll have to find where I read that)

In the books, the dwarves weren't comic relief characters in the first place. At least not in the LOTR. And in The Hobbit they were funny for different reasons. Peter Jackson made them look and act like the stereotype of the average D&D dwarf, maybe in order to amuse the audience and cater to roleplayers and fantasy geeks.

yeah, not in lotr. A bit more comic relief in the hobbit tho but that entire book was more lighthearted and silly, at least the first version, he went back and edited it a bit when he published lotr. The elves in the hobbit were also dramatically different from what I remember.

i read it awhile ago but i think with the exception of elrond rivendale elves were goofy(more like keebler or jolly frolicking christmas elves sort of feel to them rather than how they were in his other books) and the forest elves they escape from later on were petty isolationists interested in the outside world solely because of its inclusion of human made brandy and willing to go to war to steal all the dwarves emeralds because they were green and shiny and you can buy brandy with them.

I'm curious to see if I have the same issue with this that I've had with some older movies that have been given 'HD" versions. It's hard to explain, but I've seen a couple movies (Ghostbusters 2 for example) that when played at Blu-Ray resolutions look jarring, and perhaps "too realistic". That may be more of an issue of familiarity though, that doesn't necessarily apply here.