Likewise I hope the director cut is better the the theater version of the film.

See some the old favorites from LOTR are making appearances in this one.

The scenary looks good too in this one and I hope that Directors Cut of the Hobbit is a good one as well, they say its going to have 20-25mins more to the movie. So it will be interesting to see which parts are added.

All i see is GREEN SCREEN when i watch this trailer. 

These are just lazy shots.  All the actors huddled close together standing in front of a backdrop.   Shot after shot after shot of green screen backdrops. 

And it's why i bet all the action shots of them running need quick cuts because they run out of stage because they aren't really running in a large field so to make the illusion work they have to cut away, reshoot a new running sequence, and roll the backdrop.

I can see why a lot of really good directors would want nothing to do with these types of productions. 

You would be surprised at the sets that were developed for these movies, PJ actually likes shooting on location if at all possible. If you ever watched the extras for the first three movies you will see that a lot of sets were built, fangorn forrest, chelobs lair etc... but any outdoor shot was actually done outdoors. Watching the extra's for Two Towers is good because you see the scale they went to tomake Helm's Deep and Rohan village. Remember they shoot all of the series in New Zealand on location. I know for me I enjoy these movies because of the detail mainly and when I save enough money I'm going to New Zealand for vacation 🙂

http://www.theonering.com/news/the-hobbit-movies/behind-the-scenes-of-the-hobbit-s-special-effects

just about every shot in the trailer at the start of this thread is using green screen.  So i dont know what it means to be shot on location in new zealand if it's mostly inside a studio or if they're shooting a trail with actors on it in the foreground and are replacing all the background imagery with CGI fx.  

So to be honest, it's nothing at all like shooting Xena Warrior Princess in New Zealand where cgi was still too expensive and too slow (to render final imagery) to be useful for large scale use throughout an entire picture.

Here's a good example

http://www.theonering.com/galleries/the-hobbit-movies/part-2-the-desolation-of-smaug/the-ruins-of-dale

saying that THAT is New Zealand just takes all the significance out out shooting on location.  That's a composite image with bits and pieces taken from several areas.

Not saying there is no green screening in these movies, there has to be to be honest there would be no realistic way to recreate these books. It is cheaper to go CGI than it would be to recreate an entire city, the scale of these cities are massive in the books and would be impossible to recreate. So they make small sets of portions that they need, Helms Deep was basically 1/2 to 3/4 of the full scale but good enough to show off. Green screens are a necessity these days and movies like Avatar would have never been made with out them.

I would prefer it if they just got rid of the actors and made them fully CGI.  At least this way the types of shots they are creating aren't limited as the cgi actors are able to fully interact with the entire virtual realm.

Na'vi, Gollum, why not go all the way?

The Hobbit does seem a bit more like a CGI film although it might be down to the computer grading used on it and the new 3d process that it was filmed in.

This trailer is really good for the Desolation of Smaug, you actually hear Smaug speak for the first time.

Just by the small clip of it not what I was expecting from the voice Smaug.

Hey least its not something like Sean Connery in Dragonheart 😉 hahaha

So does anyone have some feedback on this movie yet, I was probably going to see it next weekend or something. Had too much snow and didn't want to bother with the roads.

Sat through the DVD version of the film and I enjoyed watching it but it just not grabbing me like LOTR did, bit too much use of CGI in the films backgrounds and characters.

Bit of an abrupt ending as well, on the plus side smaug voice is a lot better than it sounded in the trailer.

I would have to agree that Smaug's voice was well done in this movie. I think your getting that feeling Pinback because they are trying to make one book into three movies and they are stretching out the material. The pacing of the movie is slower that the first three movies. I hope 'The Battle of the Five Armies' is a good closure to the series in that it is paced well and they do the battle and Smaug justice.

I will be getting the special edition this Chrimbo so I am hoping it will improve on the feature film version.