Well, I’m here to discredit all of that. I saw it in 48fps in the theater last year and it blew my mind. At first I whispered to my wife, “There’s no way. There’s no way the movie is going to look like this for three hours.” The descriptions I had read were accurate. It looked as if you were viewing an extremely detailed live production through a giant window. It was glorious. And even after two hours and forty-five minutes, I was sad to see it end. Now, at the time, the visuals were so distracting (with 48fps, you’re receiving twice as much visual data than the normal 24fps of everyday schmoe movies), I barely paid any attention to the plot or what was happening.
Earlier this year the home video release of the Hobbit came out and I strained hard to resist it because I knew that there would inevitably be a special extended cut that would come out just before the next installment hit the theaters. And the extended cut did come out, just a couple weeks ago, and I greedily swiped it up and proceeded to watch the hell out of it.
After viewing the Blu-ray extended cut, the nine and half hours of behind the scenes special features, the movie again with commentary, and then half of it again in French just to see if the songs would be sung in a different language (they were!), I can safely say that I am qualified to review this movie, and that it is not shallow, plodding or a cynical cash grab by Warner Brothers. Although, the tone does jump around a bit here and there from kid friendly to gruesome, from corny dwarf songs to “serious” talk of mountains and dragons, I don’t personally find it distracting, that’s just part of the charm and epicness of the film. Nobody wants to be grim for three hours straight.
Any fan of the movie or the original Lord of the Rings trilogy should get this edition and watch the behind the scenes material. As was seen on the LOTR extended editions, the behind the scenes material is outstanding. Every aspect of making the film is covered in depth, in detail and in HD. It’s really cool to have a talking head tell you about an incident on the film set, and then they show the actual footage of that incident. Some of it seems pretty personal, for example a scene where Ian McKellen had to act in front of a green screen by himself for a long period of time and became quite upset about it. Other stuff is mind blowing in its conception. That same scene involves the actors performing live on two identical sets, except the one Ian Mckellen is on is slightly smaller in scale. Then they overlap the two and it looks like a large Gandalf walking around a tiny hobbit hole interacting with a tiny hobbit.
While the first disc of extra content covers the technical film-making side of things, the second disc covers the lore and creation of the film’s world. They go into extreme detail on each of the thirteen dwarves, showing their lineage, personalities, weapons, relations with each other, etc. It’s shocking how much of this content does not come across in the film. I’m assuming they will all be fleshed out more in the upcoming releases. At least, I hope so because it’s all really great. Did you know that one of the dwarves has an axe blade lodged in his head, and because of that he can only speak in Dwarvish?
The extended scenes only add up to about thirteen extra minutes of material, mostly taking place in Hobbiton and Rivendell. We get more great visuals and a few minor conversations, and a couple more songs. The scenes are seamless enough that I couldn’t really tell much of a difference. To me, the more material, the better.
Having experienced the Hobbit extended edition, I’m now psyched for the next two installments. I almost wish I could just skip the theater and immediately own the next two extended collections, but then I remember that 48fps. It’s the only thing the theaters can hold over me as competition against my comfy couch. Once again, if you’re into these movies, get this for sure. If you were a bit disappointed with this first Hobbit film, but wish you weren’t, then get this extended edition. I think it will let you enjoy the film a lot more than you did the first time around.
