[Cause]

Ill never forgive him for having the elves pitch up out of no where at helms deep though. Absolutely unnecessary and it flies in the face of one of the most important themes of the books

[amphibian]

Oh, there's a Mirkwood captain in the books? Then the purists have even less legitimacy in their griping.

[QuickTidal]

amphibian, on 14 December 2013 - 04:50 PM, said:

Oh, there's a Mirkwood captain in the books? Then the purists have even less legitimacy in their griping.

There is. Totally an unnamed one, and only briefly mentioned but still there. But then again that one ten page chapters contains the elves finding them after the spider, the capture, being brought before the king, imprisoned, Bilbo sneaking in, freeing the dwarves AND the barrels escape...so he kind of dedicates a sentence or two only to each thing that happens.

[HoosierDaddy]

It's certainly not that she is a female. I have no problem with that. It has been a long time since I read the Hobbit, 20 years or so. It's the unnecessary addition of a love story/side plot. I'd say the same thing about the dwarves staying put in Laketown. It's unnecessary filler time. IIRC, they all went to the Lonely Mountain.

The complaint comes in Jackson adding things that don't need to be added, which coincides with the fact that he made the Hobbit 3 movies when it clearly doesn't need to be so.

Then again, I recognize that I love the stuff involving the Necromancer side plot and it was only briefly mentioned or totally unmentioned. I imagine it comes down to taste, I think.

[QuickTidal]

Cool, thanks for the explanation HD.

[worry]

I liked this a whole lot. The action was great, and the journey felt much less cat-and-mouse than the first one for sure, even if the basic elements were still the same. Also I didn't mind the added content, but then again I'm a cheeseball.

[Traveller]

I was underwhelmed.

This should have been the second and final part - it would have been so nice to see it wrapped up by the end. And it would have been if it had been focused on the Hobbit himself, as the book was, instead of wandering off all over the place.

I think it lacked focus, and attempted to give depth to new characters at the cost of leaving the main crowd as two dimensional foils for action scenes. Having Balin commend the courage of hobbits was almost word for word ripped from a scene with Gandalf in Lotrs - it just seemed lazy.

If it was shorter and more focused, I would have enjoyed it a lot more. Orcs and ninja elves in Laketown, and an overextended chase with Smaug made it lose it's impact for me... That dragon was amazing; they totally nailed the bragging, selfish nature.. and I that voice! And instead of keeping it sweet, we then had another 30 minutes? of pointless chasing about and 3d jaw snapping, which made a fool of the dragon after the beautiful build up.

I just don't agree with PJ that every character needs to be on a 'journey' and have everything previously left between the lines explained. (And he had to pop up again in Bree, biting a carrot again and spoiling the first scene.)

Subtle is good. Hints are good. Less is most definitely more in this case imo, anyway.

[Cause]

I was also underwhelmed and think too much padding was added.

The dragon chase/fight scene, as mentioned, in particular struck me as pointless. They go through all that trouble, cover it in gold and it flies off unharmed anyway. The whole scene could be deleted and not affect the movie which seems problematic too me since its PJ's own invention and just came across as padding to me. Movie 3 must start with the dragon getting skewered in the first twenty minutes!

Some things I did enjoy. Tying Azog, the necromancer and the orc army together makes sense. I liked seeing how racist Legolas was and is supposed to be before LotR. It was not covered properly in the other movies. In LotR the racism is more of a gag than real.

[worry]

Well the whole point was that they did their very best to stop Smaug and it didn't work at all. Dashed hope. A fantastic addition to the story, an invaluable lesson, and maybe the best possible note to end the middle entry on. Might as well call Han getting frozen in carbonite pointless.

[Traveller]

The dragon in the story would have toasted them all in a second. Bilbo only just escaped. To then have the film dragon trying and failing so many times takes away some of its awesome infallibility.

I imagine if Jackson had anything to do with Solo's capture, there would have been a mine-cart chase fitted in somewhere. But you really can't compare the two. Jackson loves Empire and of course he was trying to copy it, but it didn't work for me. Solo was in a seemingly helpless position, captured and taken off who knew where, and Luke was psychologically and phyisically beaten. Everyone knows where the dragon ends up in about 20 minutes time, and Gandalf isn't in any peril as we know.

This post has been edited by Traveller: 16 December 2013 - 10:36 PM

[QuickTidal]

worry, on 16 December 2013 - 05:07 PM, said:

Well the whole point was that they did their very best to stop Smaug and it didn't work at all. Dashed hope. A fantastic addition to the story, an invaluable lesson, and maybe the best possible note to end the middle entry on. Might as well call Han getting frozen in carbonite pointless.

I think I saw it this way as well. Especially coupled with Thorin's inexorable pull to power/riches/Kingship...you've got a whole swathe of dwarves who can be pretty badass in their own right (aside from getting trussed up not once, but twice in the story by peripheral villains (Trolls, Spiders)) who basically come in guns a'blazing and do their worst on the dragon (tricking him and coating him in hot liquid gold)...and it ends up a useless failure. This is going to do two things come the 3rd film.

1. Bard the Bowman's triumph against Smaug, redeeming his family honour, becomes all the more fitting and poignant. Two failures against Smaug (once in the past and once recently) followed by a vitory give that triumph more oomf. ESPECIALLY because the Dwarven attempt is so elaborate...Bard's simple, single shot into the breast through the hole in the scales will be perfection.

2. The Dwarves suffer a failure, giving the Battle Of The Five Armies a new dimension of "fight".

Lastly, to the comment of Orcs and Elves in Laketown. Both eventually show up for the BotfA anyways...so I'm not fussed that Azog and his cronies showed up early, or that Legolas and Tauriel also showed up before... Thranduil eventually will as well. The whole finale of the Hobbit centers at Laketown/Erebor...having the pieces in place early doesn't bug me. And I actually feel it sped the pace up.

This post has been edited by QuickTidal: 16 December 2013 - 05:46 PM

[worry]

Smaug is a big dumb animal, and he's on dwarf turf, plus he doesn't really try and fail that many times (and, somewhat arrogantly, Smaug considers the dwarves to be on his turf). In general the dwarves are in the nooks and crannies of their complex and unfortunately hitting dead ends, while Smaug prowls. The thing where they split up and keep distracting him was pretty silly, but then again, golf was invented by a guy knocking another guy's head into a hole. Silly is intrinsic here. You can take that or leave it as your taste demands of course.

[worry]

It's Bolg that gets to Laketown rather than Azog, but the reason I bother mentioning that is not to be nitpicky, but because he's not played by Conan Stevens again in this one. I wonder if that guy just gets under people's skin or what?

[amphibian]

I found the dwarf/dragon chase scene to be quite good - why?

Because it showed us not only the inventiveness of the dwarves, the fate of the prior inhabitants and sone fun stuff, it also showed us why the dwarves went to that much trouble to assemble that much gold and treasure. It was religious. the statue of a dwarf god was but the start of probably a whole hall full of such statues.

The motivation for Thorin isn't just to reclaim his family home, it's to fulfill a dwarf religious need. That makes the fights more meaningful and better tells us why they're willing to fight a dragon over it.

[Traveller]

But don't you think that too much of anything just makes you numb? Watching Legolas and Tauriel was like watching someone play a computer game... there's no threat, and the longer it continues the less you care about what is happening on screen.

In Laketown, when the Orcs attacked Bard's family, who watching wasn't just waiting for yet another life-saving arrow from an elf? There was no threat or cause to think any of them would be actually harmed, as they'd basically pulled the same trick in an earlier scene.

And apologies for referring to the book again, but the whole point of the burglar being a hobbit was the light footed, barely noticable quality about him, and the fact that Smaug wouldn't have recognised the smell. The plan was to sneak in and out, and not wake the dragon. Because he would have killed them all.

Bilbo did wake it, and the dragon caught onto the plan, but that is pretty different to having the dwarves piling in and antagonising it, and then trying to kill it using fire (good choice on a fire drake) which didn't really make much sense. If they were willing and able enough to do all that, why take Bilbo at all?

And although i don't agree that Smaug is a big dumb animal, I think he's been made to look like one.

This post has been edited by Traveller: 16 December 2013 - 06:48 PM

[amphibian]

I'm of the opinion that the changes to the Hobbit in this movie are firmly for the better.

I didn't see the first movie and I'm not a particular loyalist to Tolkien's original and also flawed in their own way books.

[Macros]

Saw it
enjoyed it
better than the first.

Not going to gripe about canonical changes, you can see why he's done them to stretch the story, to make some scenes flow better and fuck you if you don't agree, appeal to a wider market and make some more money. It happens, I accept it and most things didn't detract from my enjoyment.

as has been said, some of the action was silly (really, floating down a river of molten gold for several minutes and not toasting yourself?) and over drawn.

ny biggest complaint is a complaint I've had from all the Jackson middle earths offerings. The sense of scale and journeys is always stupidly skewed in favour of the bad guys. How many times have orcs covered covered ground in hours that has taken others days? I know its done tk make the experience watchable without "5 days later" flashing up on screen at every turn around. I acknowledge this in my head but it still fucks me off when orc number five is sent to take word to dol guldor, which is a massive undertaking but they gallop of and pop up on the same day. Its only because I know the source material and it pulls me out momentarily and bothers me.

but that's a minor complaint in an enjoyable film, cut the action scenes down by 30% please, but tha goes for most holywood block busters these days

[worry]

Smaug is a dragon. They're idiots. Like if you gathered 3000 of Thorin's greedy grandpa, added cat and lizard DNA, and stuffed them all in a gigantic burlap sack and tied it shut, that would be a dragon. Also they didn't try to kill it with fire, they hit it with a bunch of water, and then molten gold (presumably not for the heat so much as the metal). Anyways I think these are all taste things and I don't necessarily want to keep arguing about it. Mostly I just opposed the term "pointless" in Cause's post because it was the exact opposite of the truth, and I also don't like the word "pointless" much in general and have argued against it plenty in the Malazan book forums. Maybe it's just a pet peeve of mine. Maybe there's no good reason for any of the things I say. Does Obamacare cover psychiatrists?

[Traveller]

This is nothing to do with the content, but I find that wearing 3D glasses in the Imax reduces the effect of the big screen - it looks like someone is holding a 10 inch tablet screen about 2 inches away from my eyes.

[HoosierDaddy]

Traveller, on 16 December 2013 - 10:46 PM, said:

This is nothing to do with the content, but I find that wearing 3D glasses in the Imax reduces the effect of the big screen - it looks like someone is holding a 10 inch tablet screen about 2 inches away from my eyes.

Piggybacking on the 3D glasses thing. I saw the first in IMAX 3D, and the second in regular 2D. I quite enjoyed the silliness of the dragon chase scene, if only because it looked pretty awesome on screen in the 2D. I imagine I would have another opinion, much like the chase seen in the goblin caves in the first, if I had seen it in 3d.