[worry]

That will largely be due to total economic collapse and a worldwide technological blackout.

[QuickTidal]

And Taco Bell will have been the only ones to have survived the Fast Food Wars.

[Tsundoku]

worry, on 16 December 2014 - 10:20 AM, said:

That will largely be due to total economic collapse and a worldwide technological blackout.

I think they'd call that "The Rapture" in the Midwest. As they lock themselves in their bunkers and secretly ponder why they're still here ...

[QuickTidal]

Saw it tonight and loved every last second of it. Not one moment wasted, and a stunning conclusion to the trilogy.

I can officialy say that I loved all three movies.

Some nerdy Tolkien-fan moments:

Spoiler

Seeing Angmar and hearing Legolas talk about the battle that took place there in the Age before. But better was after the fight in Dol Guldur with the Nine and Sauron's eye appearing while Saruman, Elrond, and Gandalf fought, Galadriel confronts Sauron and calls him a servant of Morgoth...and I lost my shit! Grinning from ear to fucking ear.

And Billy Boyd's end credits song THE LAST GOODBYE is gorgeous!

[Andorion]

Saw this. I was a bit underwhelmed. It felt like Peter Jackson was not entirely sure how to end it and the last part of the battle of the Five Armies was a bit patchy. Had to keep reminding myself not every movie can be a Return of the King.

Most awesome scene: Galadriel unleashed. Holy shit that was scary.

Best fight: Thorin vs Azog.

Funniest fight: Dain the headbutter!

I enjoyed every second of the Smaug sequence. It was unbelievably well-made. But the highlight was Martin Freeman.He effortlessly controls each scene he is in. Even with no dialogue, his expressions alone steal the show.

The funniest time I had was while washing my hands in the bathroom and overhearing increasingly bewildered argumnets about which are the five armies.

I found myself wishing somebody would just thump Thranduil over the head a bit. Bloody useless idiot. Also his instructions to Legolas to go north and seek out the Dunedain seems weird. The lonely mountain is quite far in the north. What would the Dunedain be doing even further up north? In LotR its stated that they mainly patrol the northern reaches of Arnor, and thats a totally different place.

This post has been edited by Andorion: 21 December 2014 - 01:59 AM

[worry]

Pretty sweet movie. I do agree that the battle was a bit mishmash. The broad battle had some cool moments but nothing really jaw-dropping like in Helm's Deep or Pelenor, in terms of character moments or outstanding choregraphy. The isolated one-on-one fights near the end though were fantastic, as was Gandalf's escape. I also think Tauriel more than made up for her existence. She's awesome.

The biggest flaws:

Spoiler

Thorin coming out of his fugue. It touched a bit on Smaug earlier (his poison lasting beyond him, and Thorin's voice during his paranoid moments), and then you see Smaug kinda glide around under the gold, but the metaphor should have been carried out way more overtly. The molten gold quicksand thing was weak, and so Thorin snapping out of it was a bit too generic.

Bard the Dad. It wasn't necessarily Bard's fault (scenes of him dealing with Thranduil and Thorin were decent enough), but there were like zero stakes for his storyline since a) his kids were never going to get hurt and the Lake Town residents just didn't pull the heartstrings -- the people of Rohan weren't necessarily that much more fleshed out, but a few individuals were and that made all the difference it seems.

The eagles were under-served.

The extended editions of both previous movies actually improved them, so I'm hoping some gaps get filled in for this one too.

[QuickTidal]

worry, on 22 December 2014 - 08:50 AM, said:

The extended editions of both previous movies actually improved them, so I'm hoping some gaps get filled in for this one too.

Indeed, I can't wait to own all three extended editions. Then of course my plan will be a Hobbit & LOTR Extended Edition Weekend Marathon!

[champ]

QuickTidal, on 22 December 2014 - 11:45 AM, said:

worry, on 22 December 2014 - 08:50 AM, said:

The extended editions of both previous movies actually improved them, so I'm hoping some gaps get filled in for this one too.

Indeed, I can't wait to own all three extended editions. Then of course my plan will be a Hobbit & LOTR Extended Edition Weekend Marathon!

Weekend? Bah - 1 day marathon!!

I noticed a scene in the trailer that wasn't in the film...

Spoiler

The chase scene with the rabbit sled leading Gandalf away from the fortress so I presume that will be in the extended

Really enjoyed the film and probably on par with Return of the King for my favourite LotR/Hobbit films!

[QuickTidal]

champ, on 22 December 2014 - 01:43 PM, said:

QuickTidal, on 22 December 2014 - 11:45 AM, said:

worry, on 22 December 2014 - 08:50 AM, said:

The extended editions of both previous movies actually improved them, so I'm hoping some gaps get filled in for this one too.

Indeed, I can't wait to own all three extended editions. Then of course my plan will be a Hobbit & LOTR Extended Edition Weekend Marathon!

Weekend? Bah - 1 day marathon!!

I noticed a scene in the trailer that wasn't in the film...

Spoiler

The chase scene with the rabbit sled leading Gandalf away from the fortress so I presume that will be in the extended

Really enjoyed the film and probably on par with Return of the King for my favourite LotR/Hobbit films!

Indeed, I got definite ROTK vibes from this as well. Nothing QUITE as solid as my fave moment from ROTK (Aragorn's Speech at the Black Gates followed by "For Frodo"), but it definitely has a few close ones.

[Kruppe's snacky cakes]

Finally saw this one. For me, 2 was the best (2 > 1 > 3). I did think the added Bard storyline was well done (in 2 as well). But this one dragged for me, more so than the others. Although I'm usually in the "more is better" camp, I think this would have worked better as 2 movies (5 hours total, tops). Among other slow bits, the extraneous Tauriel-Kili stuff was a big time waster in an already-too-long movie. And poor Evangeline Lilly, always getting stuck with the patronizing "love triangle" trope.

 E2XZb0OqNGsl.jpg (44.44K)
Number of downloads: 0

Regarding the aforementioned "Galadriel unleashed" scene, I thought it was a bit over the top. (Film makers are way too enamored with sound and visual effects. Also,

Spoiler

I don't understand why it was up to her to "magically banish"? Sauron and the Nazgul, since Elrond and Gandalf both also possess a ring of power. Maybe just a way of adding girl power to a female-deficient movie...?

[worry]

Spoiler

It's because she's better than them. They're a couple of dorks.

[Traveller]

I still haven't seen it.. I'm not really all that motivated to at the moment either.

[QuickTidal]

Kruppe, on 29 December 2014 - 11:12 PM, said:

Finally saw this one. For me, 2 was the best (2 > 1 > 3). I did think the added Bard storyline was well done (in 2 as well). But this one dragged for me, more so than the others. Although I'm usually in the "more is better" camp, I think this would have worked better as 2 movies (5 hours total, tops). Among other slow bits, the extraneous Tauriel-Kili stuff was a big time waster in an already-too-long movie. And poor Evangeline Lilly, always getting stuck with the patronizing "love triangle" trope.

E2XZb0OqNGsl.jpg

Regarding the aforementioned "Galadriel unleashed" scene, I thought it was a bit over the top. (Film makers are way too enamored with sound and visual effects. Also,

Spoiler

I don't understand why it was up to her to "magically banish"? Sauron and the Nazgul, since Elrond and Gandalf both also possess a ring of power. Maybe just a way of adding girl power to a female-deficient movie...?

Spoiler

Galadriel is the oldest Elf (other than POSSIBLY Cirdan the Shipwright, she's 8,000) in Middle Earth, and as such her power and skill is much greater than Elrond (who is a great deal younger), and Gandalf was pretty much incapacitated at the time (he is a Maiar...demi-god...so he has the power) and Saruman was busy fending off multiple Nazgul ghosts.

[Tapper]

I thought it was a total pile of crap. I am actually quite annoyed that the movie made me feel that way, as I thought I had stopped caring about Tolkien mostly.

Spoiler

I kind of liked the way the escape from Laketown and the death of Smaug was done - all that gloating for once didn't seem out of place, despite the overly emotional bullshit with the kid: that was both close enough to the book and fun. But from there on, things got worse quickly.

Legolas and Tauriel travel to Angmar/ Mount Gundabad (other side of the Misty Mountains, which is roughly one third of the Shire-Erebor distance): they leave halfway during the day Bard marches the people of Laketown to Dale (when Fili and gang set out for Erebor from the edge of the lake), which is 12 hours before Thranduil arrives, which is 24 hours before the Elves and Dwarves meet. On one of those two nights, they arrive at Mt Gundabad to see the Orcs leave.

Even more impressive, the orcs from Angmar march that same distance on foot to arrive somewhere during the battle, only a few hours after the Elves at most.

As said, that distance is roughly a third of the distance of the Shire to Erebor... Yet Bilbo, who left only a couple of days after the battle, I think, was gone for 13 months, which Jackson didn't change per the epilogue. How were he and the dwarves travelling? Two steps forward, two steps back?

Then, there's the battle. We have every single elf defy gravity and time for ninja shenanigans, sometimes also involving a moose.
Or let's be fair, all but Galadriel, who is too busy fainting, in between being hysterical in blacklight (which I guess is Jackson's way of showing a strong woman do magic; he was going I guess for the same effect as when Frodo offers Galadriel the Ring).The actual Maiar wizard (Saruman) is doing some quarterstaff brawling instead.

We see the dwarves in Erebor arming themselves to the teeth in the armor of forebears in a pretty cool marching montage (you know, dwarven plate, mail, awesome weaponry, maybe some mithril - all that stuff that ought to keep them alive). When they charge into battle, they're somehow doing that in the coats they made the whole journey with.

I guess they realized that in Peter Jackson's world armor means jack-shit anyway. Every arrow pierces mail and plate, swords cut straight through chest armor, Dain can headbutt people in the chest and they stay down, and no-one of consequence bothers to wear a helmet. And despite all those casualties, every army fights on instead of running for it.

Then I haven't mentioned a dwarven mountain goat cavalry appearing out of nowhere for Thorin to ride (never mind that the only mounted dwarf we see was Dain on that boar), a dwarven pike phalanx of two tiny ranks deep against creatures twice their size and three times their weight (for fuck's sake, dudes...., how's that going to stop a charge? And how do you hold those pikes while also holding a shield?), Elves rushing into battle over the shield wall instead of using that to cover their archers and outflank the enemy (incidentally also cutting off their own avenue of retreat and making the shield wall completely useless in a single move - bravo there, Thranduil: good way to show you don't need the beardies to fight your battles for you). Speaking of brilliant tactics: no-one ever thinking of using Dale as a stronghold of sorts until the orcs are in it.

And that's not mentioning the pretty stupid orc-on-ice extension to the Thorin fight. The Angmar army arrives only piecemeal on the mountain top, nowhere else, and then its entire vanguard somehow manages to get slaughtered by two elves, four dwarves and a stone throwing hobbit.

I know Thorin had to die, but seriously, the whole lead up to it was fucking stupid... if you want to do a kharmic strike scene, then do so straight away. Thorin has to die, the book says so, after all. But no, we have to put the fucker under the ice for some trickery and making the audience gasp when he turns out to be alive! So, we get Thorin forgetting to do the sensible thing (which is walk to the fucking shore, get sure footing and wait to see if he is really, really, really dead instead... if need be, for an hour).

Also, why are we spoilering quotes for a movie that is
A - based on a book we probably all read;
B - not exactly full of twists that spoilers will ruin the movie?

This post has been edited by Tapper: 30 December 2014 - 02:34 PM

[Tapper]

QuickTidal, on 30 December 2014 - 02:04 PM, said:

Kruppe, on 29 December 2014 - 11:12 PM, said:

Finally saw this one. For me, 2 was the best (2 > 1 > 3). I did think the added Bard storyline was well done (in 2 as well). But this one dragged for me, more so than the others. Although I'm usually in the "more is better" camp, I think this would have worked better as 2 movies (5 hours total, tops). Among other slow bits, the extraneous Tauriel-Kili stuff was a big time waster in an already-too-long movie. And poor Evangeline Lilly, always getting stuck with the patronizing "love triangle" trope.

E2XZb0OqNGsl.jpg

Regarding the aforementioned "Galadriel unleashed" scene, I thought it was a bit over the top. (Film makers are way too enamored with sound and visual effects. Also,

Spoiler

I don't understand why it was up to her to "magically banish"? Sauron and the Nazgul, since Elrond and Gandalf both also possess a ring of power. Maybe just a way of adding girl power to a female-deficient movie...?

Spoiler

Galadriel is the oldest Elf (other than POSSIBLY Cirdan the Shipwright, she's 8,000) in Middle Earth, and as such her power and skill is much greater than Elrond (who is a great deal younger), and Gandalf was pretty much incapacitated at the time (he is a Maiar...demi-god...so he has the power) and Saruman was busy fending off multiple Nazgul ghosts.

Spoiler

Cough * Saruman the White * cough.

And yeah, she's the oldest Noldor still alive, and probably pretty close in power to Feänor. Who would probably have had Sauron for breakfast, considering it took an army of Balrogs to take him down, iirc. Which means all the fainting wouldn't have been necessary. I

Imho, Elrond & Saruman arriving first, fighting the Nazgul, followed by Galadriel arriving as the cavalry in the moment of need, followed by a dignified speech while the power grows around her and an eruption of power, would have been way more believable

[QuickTidal]

Tapper, on 30 December 2014 - 02:39 PM, said:

QuickTidal, on 30 December 2014 - 02:04 PM, said:

Kruppe, on 29 December 2014 - 11:12 PM, said:

Finally saw this one. For me, 2 was the best (2 > 1 > 3). I did think the added Bard storyline was well done (in 2 as well). But this one dragged for me, more so than the others. Although I'm usually in the "more is better" camp, I think this would have worked better as 2 movies (5 hours total, tops). Among other slow bits, the extraneous Tauriel-Kili stuff was a big time waster in an already-too-long movie. And poor Evangeline Lilly, always getting stuck with the patronizing "love triangle" trope.

E2XZb0OqNGsl.jpg

Regarding the aforementioned "Galadriel unleashed" scene, I thought it was a bit over the top. (Film makers are way too enamored with sound and visual effects. Also,

Spoiler

I don't understand why it was up to her to "magically banish"? Sauron and the Nazgul, since Elrond and Gandalf both also possess a ring of power. Maybe just a way of adding girl power to a female-deficient movie...?

Spoiler

Galadriel is the oldest Elf (other than POSSIBLY Cirdan the Shipwright, she's 8,000) in Middle Earth, and as such her power and skill is much greater than Elrond (who is a great deal younger), and Gandalf was pretty much incapacitated at the time (he is a Maiar...demi-god...so he has the power) and Saruman was busy fending off multiple Nazgul ghosts.

Spoiler

Cough * Saruman the White * cough.

And yeah, she's the oldest Noldor still alive, and probably pretty close in power to Feänor. Who would probably have had Sauron for breakfast, considering it took an army of Balrogs to take him down, iirc. Which means all the fainting wouldn't have been necessary. I

Imho, Elrond & Saruman arriving first, fighting the Nazgul, followed by Galadriel arriving as the cavalry in the moment of need, followed by a dignified speech while the power grows around her and an eruption of power, would have been way more believable

Fainting? Did I miss that? I must have.

Meh, Saruman was busy enough. Two Maiar either busy or wounded/exhausted...Galadriel makes decent enough sense as a viable option to put Sauron in his place.

I like your idea for the scene, but I enjoyed it how it was as well.

[Andorion]

QuickTidal, on 30 December 2014 - 02:48 PM, said:

Tapper, on 30 December 2014 - 02:39 PM, said:

QuickTidal, on 30 December 2014 - 02:04 PM, said:

Kruppe, on 29 December 2014 - 11:12 PM, said:

Finally saw this one. For me, 2 was the best (2 > 1 > 3). I did think the added Bard storyline was well done (in 2 as well). But this one dragged for me, more so than the others. Although I'm usually in the "more is better" camp, I think this would have worked better as 2 movies (5 hours total, tops). Among other slow bits, the extraneous Tauriel-Kili stuff was a big time waster in an already-too-long movie. And poor Evangeline Lilly, always getting stuck with the patronizing "love triangle" trope.

E2XZb0OqNGsl.jpg

Regarding the aforementioned "Galadriel unleashed" scene, I thought it was a bit over the top. (Film makers are way too enamored with sound and visual effects. Also,

Spoiler

I don't understand why it was up to her to "magically banish"? Sauron and the Nazgul, since Elrond and Gandalf both also possess a ring of power. Maybe just a way of adding girl power to a female-deficient movie...?

Spoiler

Galadriel is the oldest Elf (other than POSSIBLY Cirdan the Shipwright, she's 8,000) in Middle Earth, and as such her power and skill is much greater than Elrond (who is a great deal younger), and Gandalf was pretty much incapacitated at the time (he is a Maiar...demi-god...so he has the power) and Saruman was busy fending off multiple Nazgul ghosts.

Spoiler

Cough * Saruman the White * cough.

And yeah, she's the oldest Noldor still alive, and probably pretty close in power to Feänor. Who would probably have had Sauron for breakfast, considering it took an army of Balrogs to take him down, iirc. Which means all the fainting wouldn't have been necessary. I

Imho, Elrond & Saruman arriving first, fighting the Nazgul, followed by Galadriel arriving as the cavalry in the moment of need, followed by a dignified speech while the power grows around her and an eruption of power, would have been way more believable

Fainting? Did I miss that? I must have.

Meh, Saruman was busy enough. Two Maiar either busy or wounded/exhausted...Galadriel makes decent enough sense as a viable option to put Sauron in his place.

I like your idea for the scene, but I enjoyed it how it was as well.

Except for the part where that entire scene contradicts LotR where it is clearly stated that the White Council: Galadriel, Elrond, Saruman, Gandalf maybe others together cast out the Necromancer.

[QuickTidal]

Andorion, on 30 December 2014 - 03:11 PM, said:

Except for the part where that entire scene contradicts LotR where it is clearly stated that the White Council: Galadriel, Elrond, Saruman, Gandalf maybe others together cast out the Necromancer.

Does it contradict it though? They all played a part, just because Galadriel did the final bit of banishing doesn't mean that they all didn't play a part in casting him out...it's merely PJ's interpretation of that idea. I don't think it's wrong or contradicts, it's just how PJ sees it.

[Kruppe's snacky cakes]

Well, the White Council vs. Necromancer is at least canon, so I'm glad they found a way to include it, as opposed to extra "Kili pines for Tauriel" scenes. I just thought it was cheesily done... Fair points on Galadriel being more powerful than the others.

[Grief]

I agree with Tapper. It was total crap, even more so than the other two. Also, I don't really think spoiler tags are necessary here (if you're worried about getting spoiled -- on a film based on a book that is about as well known as it gets in fantasy circles -- then entering a thread dedicated to discussing the movie on a fantasy board just seems like it's obviously a bad idea), so SPOILERS AHEAD.

Aside from the already mentioned problems, I thought the pacing of the film was awful. Rather than feeling like it followed any coherent structure or built towards a conclusion, it just felt like a bunch of different conclusions thrown together hapharzardly -- which is not an inevitable result of multiple plotlines. We start with the conclusion to the Smaug bit (why not end the last film with that, if you're going to start this one with it?), then jump to the conclusion of the necromancer bit, then go to the conclusion of the dwarf bit, and everything happens in its own little bubble.

It felt stretched very thin, with a ton of extended action scenes and repetition (how many times did it need to make the point that Bilbo wasn't telling Thorin about the Arkenstone, really?), combining with important events and characters getting too little screen time. And the action scenes got increasingly ridiculous (peaking with Legolas running up the falling bridge for an eternity) and just started to seem like self-parody. The whole battle (goats, Billy Conolly/Dain in general, the tide turning as a result of a handful of dwarves joining the battle, Beorn's cameo...just everything) was the final nail in the coffin.

I know making the party of dwarves distinctive characters is perhaps tougher than doing the same for the fellowship, but after 9 hours, I feel like I ought to be able to at least tell you which dwarf is which. At the end of the film, we got a scene showing all the remaining dwarves, and I wasn't sure if some of them had even had a line of dialogue in the film. As well as the awful romance plotline that served to replace Fili's character, with Thranduil and Legolas chipping in for "Most heavy-handed moment of the series" (regarding real love). Also, if they're going to have a visit at the end, I'm not sure why they didn't go for Balin and Gandalf visiting, i.e, what actually happens in the book?

I also thought they really missed the tone of the book. Maybe it's just difficult with trying to fit the darker tone he gave LOTR (which the Hobbit book arguably doesn't do very much). However, instead of a lighter tone, it just felt like the same "epic" tone of LOTR, spliced with awful pieces of comic-relief, with the (not named in the book), Master's assistant guy getting more screen time than many major (in the book) characters.

I honestly struggle to think of one thing that I felt they really nailed. There are things that I think it was a good decision to include (such as the Necromancer information from the appendices), but I don't think they were handled well.

One of the worst films I've seen in ages, even taken seperately from the books.