[Tristan Jay]

 Salt-Man Z, on 21 December 2012 - 10:03 PM, said:

 Macros, on 20 December 2012 - 06:19 PM, said:

Its pulling in some stuff from the silmarion as well as expanding oj some stuff only aluded to in the book.

No, Jackson only has movie rights for The Hobbit and LotR; Tolkien's estate won't give him The Silmarillion. The extra stuff would come from LotR, either stuff mentioned in-story, or from the appendices of RotK.

I got the impression that this is the reason why Gandalf can't remember the names of the two Blue Wizards...

[D'rek]

Saw it tonight and loved it! It integrates really, really well with LotR but has a very different style - whereas LotR was very novel-like, this one was very campfire legend-like, which I think is absolutely the correct tone and scene style for this story. With the way the necromancer stuff and Thorin-vs-Azok was setup, plus how it ends, I think the whole trilogy will really flow together very well as one story when it is out.

[Macros]

too true


must be stuff thats aluded to but never elborated on.
sujposition and creation

[QuickTidal]

 Tristan Jay, on 21 December 2012 - 10:47 PM, said:

 Salt-Man Z, on 21 December 2012 - 10:03 PM, said:

 Macros, on 20 December 2012 - 06:19 PM, said:

Its pulling in some stuff from the silmarion as well as expanding oj some stuff only aluded to in the book.

No, Jackson only has movie rights for The Hobbit and LotR; Tolkien's estate won't give him The Silmarillion. The extra stuff would come from LotR, either stuff mentioned in-story, or from the appendices of RotK.

I got the impression that this is the reason why Gandalf can't remember the names of the two Blue Wizards...

I think you are right, I'm pretty sure they are only mentioned in THE SILMARILLION and UNFINISHED TALES...so that would make sense.

[Una]

I saw this last night and was very happy with it.

I suppose I would have like the dwarf introduction party to have been a little more light-hearted like it was in the books and Radagast to be a bit less of a buffoon, but I'm not going to let that spoil what was otherwise a good movie experience.
I am super-bummed about 1 thing though...

I saw it in IMAX 3D and I think my brain doesn't process 3D properly. My husband said that what he saw was all the people's faces popping out of the screen like there were 1 foot in front of his face talking to him and there were rocks and arrows flying at him so that he felt like he had to move his head to dodge them. My experience was that everything I saw directly in front of me (i.e. centre of the screen) was focused, and maybe in some scenes, the foliage and rock structures projected slightly off the screen (looked like about 1-2 feet off the screen). Everything towards the edge of the screen was slightly blurry. If I leaned back in my chair, changing the angle, everything was blurry. If I tilted my head to the side, which a little habit of mine when I'm surprised, curious, or confused, everything went blurry. It didn't make give me a headache or nausea or anything, but it's a bit of a letdown that I didn't get the same effect everyone else did.

[Traveller]

 Una, on 24 December 2012 - 11:10 PM, said:

I saw this last night and was very happy with it.

I suppose I would have like the dwarf introduction party to have been a little more light-hearted like it was in the books and Radagast to be a bit less of a buffoon, but I'm not going to let that spoil what was otherwise a good movie experience.
I am super-bummed about 1 thing though...

I saw it in IMAX 3D and I think my brain doesn't process 3D properly. My husband said that what he saw was all the people's faces popping out of the screen like there were 1 foot in front of his face talking to him and there were rocks and arrows flying at him so that he felt like he had to move his head to dodge them. My experience was that everything I saw directly in front of me (i.e. centre of the screen) was focused, and maybe in some scenes, the foliage and rock structures projected slightly off the screen (looked like about 1-2 feet off the screen). Everything towards the edge of the screen was slightly blurry. If I leaned back in my chair, changing the angle, everything was blurry. If I tilted my head to the side, which a little habit of mine when I'm surprised, curious, or confused, everything went blurry. It didn't make give me a headache or nausea or anything, but it's a bit of a letdown that I didn't get the same effect everyone else did.

huh, me too. I found the first scenes of the film took some getting used to, as only certain areas of the screen were in focus. In Bag End, the depth of the hallway and rooms were there, but I didn't like the dark borders that just seemed blurry to me, and wasted the giant screen as I was only looking a small part of it. I got on with the 3D better later on, but again, the depth of the caves etc was good, but I didn't feel like faces were coming right out of the screen or anything. I kept closing one eye to remove the 3D when I thought it was distracting me from what was on screen.

I know from using my camera that I've got one eye slightly weaker than the other though, so maybe that's why I've never been really impressed with 3D? It always looks false to me, like a lot of layers of flat scenery.

[Coco with marshmallows]

Saw it in Imax. Loved it. Glad to see Jackson's not following the George Lucas school of prequels in its entirety. Yes its a cgi fest cash grab, but its not actually a shit movie.

[MTS]

I saw it today and I loved it. I had a few quibbles, but they were really minor, and most have been addressed already. The main one was the use of CGI - while it's on the whole loads better (except for that roller-coaster bit someone mentioned, which really reached the point of immersion-breaking for me), I felt the use of CGI goblins as opposed to actors, especially for the main villain, was a misguided decision. Under the mountain and at the climax for instance they were clearly trying for tense sequences that would put the viewer on the edge of their seat, and yet I would say because of the CGI Azog is far less memorable and far less scary as a villain than, say, Lurtz from FotR. Hell, he's even less memorable than Guritz (the orc with the skull on his head in RotK), despite the fact that basically all Azog is meant to do in this film is radiate menace. The right actor I feel could have made Azog much more of a presence than he was in the film, and it is much harder hard to convey such things with computer animation.

It also made the battles feel far more artificial I thought. Balin's flashback when you first meet Azog for instance was clearly meant to evoke the prologue of FotR (as well as Elrond's flashback), from Azog blasting people around like Sauron to Thorin's charge echoing Isildur's after the death of Elendil, and yet the Battle of Dagorlad felt much more real due to most of it not being CGI'd, and it was able to resonate with me a lot more because of it.

That's not to say that the CGI wasn't well done, I just felt that the LotR trilogy struck a very good balance between practical effects and CGI, whereas I think the pendulum swung a bit too far towards CGI with the Hobbit.

Overall highlight had to be the score though. Just fantastic. I've still got the main theme in my head and I came out of the cinema hours ago.

[D'rek]

re CGI Orcs: thing is, in the original trilogy those Orcs were the same height/size as almost all the characters - elves, wizards and humans. But here you have the orcs fighting dwarves and hobbits, who are much shorter than them. Using tricks of the eye to make two actors look completely different heights works fine when Frodo and Gandalf are sitting at a table (actually two tables) or the dwarves are running around Gandalf in Bilbo's house (actually floors of different heights), but it'd be really really hard to do that in wide shots of fighting in the forest, or to get a thousand short extras to be the dwarves in the battle. And changing from CGI Orcs to actor-Orcs for different scenes would be silly.

Meanwhile, the Goblins really needed to be CGI - trying to get hundreds of extras that deformed and gross looking with makeup would have been impossible, IMO.

[MTS]

Actually, dwarves and orcs are meant to be roughly the same size, and it's done that way in the original trilogy. The Uruk-hai, which are a special breed of orc, are man-height, but all other orcs are shorter than men and elves, roughly on a par with dwarves, which is why Frodo and Sam are able to plausibly disguise themselves as orcs when they are in Mordor. If you look at the battle in Moria and the fight at Cirith Ungol in RotK the orcs are only a little bit taller than the hobbits, so I don't think the height of each race is all that much of an issue, either in the lore or how they filmed it, because they did it easily enough in the original trilogy. I'll grant you the numbers of goblins, but they had plenty of short orc extras in the prologue, while making most of the army CGI in long-shot. It was definitely doable, just in this day and age much cheaper to animate it.

[Mezla PigDog]

I saw it on Christmas Eve and while it was a fun movie, I didn't really like it. I had low expectations, I virtually knew the book by heart as a child and knew it wouldn't match up to childhood memory. I also had a very sore back so the length of the film may have made me less generous than usual but I thought it was pretty much LotR IV. The same music, the same set pieces - jumping from falling rocks, running along rickety underground platforms. It felt lazy and serves only as a slap on the back to the LotR crew to show why they did what they did in that trilogy. It may be cruel to critise a film for being similar to such great movies but if I want to see LotR again I have the DVD.

[Abyss]

Saw it. Liked, didn't love. Too long with a chunk of stuff it didn't need but still fun.

[Una]

 Traveller, on 25 December 2012 - 07:59 PM, said:

huh, me too. I found the first scenes of the film took some getting used to, as only certain areas of the screen were in focus. In Bag End, the depth of the hallway and rooms were there, but I didn't like the dark borders that just seemed blurry to me, and wasted the giant screen as I was only looking a small part of it. I got on with the 3D better later on, but again, the depth of the caves etc was good, but I didn't feel like faces were coming right out of the screen or anything. I kept closing one eye to remove the 3D when I thought it was distracting me from what was on screen.

I know from using my camera that I've got one eye slightly weaker than the other though, so maybe that's why I've never been really impressed with 3D? It always looks false to me, like a lot of layers of flat scenery.

Well, since I was about 12, I had one eye significantly weaker than the other. I was apparently using my far-sighted eye for distance vision and my near-sighted eye for close work. At 14, they made me wear a contact lens in my near-sighted eye to even things up. The only thing that happened was that my "good" eye got weaker and I had to wear glasses for both eyes, which I am still bitter about. I have never once been able to see those magic pictures where you look at a mish-mash of colours, cross your eyes, and a 3D picture emerges. I got laser eye surgery last year and I'm supposed to be 20/20 in both eyes now, but I guess my brain has been processing depth a certain way for so long that I still can't see 3D. It's kind of bummer. My husband says that when Galadriel was talking, she was so close he could have leaned over and kissed her. That would have been pretty cool for me for part 2 or 3, whichever one Legolas shows up in.

However, I have to say I really enjoyed Goblin Town. This team is just so good at making everything look exactly how I picture it. Rivendell, Hobbiton, Bag End, Gollum's lake, etc look just like I always thought. If it is something I hadn't really pictured, when I see it, I know it looks exactly the way it should, which really brings Middle Earth to life for me. I feel like I'm seeing a vision of Middle Earth as it is, never like I'm looking at "Peter Jackson's version" of the world. I don't know if I can explain what I'm trying to say. It kind of like how when I watch the movie, there are times where it's very obvious I'm watching a "Peter Jackson's interpretation" on the story. For instance, they made the dwarves' quest more about birthright and home and a place to belong and restoring lost glory, where really in the book it's really all about the treasure and not much more. It brings me out of the story sometimes. But the sets always look perfect and when I get transported, I stay transported.

[Tapper]

Loved some parts, didn't love others, overall verdict: seven hairy toes and one extra nail out of ten.
The entire running battle sequence in Goblin Town was, imho, too Indiana Jones in the way it was done, just like the Radagast appearance was a big no-no. The rabbit sleigh.... le sigh? Likewise, Thandruil on Rudolph the Rednosed Reindeer was ridiculous. What was wrong with giving him a horse, the way we see Elrond now and Arwen in LotR?

I liked the singing a lot, even though I dreaded it beforehand. The riddle sequence was awesomely done. I liked most of the flashbacks as well.
For me, Thorin didn't really come through as the bad-ass warrior he is intended to be. He is a troubled/dark character, but the way it is shown, he's more of an emo than the brooding type/ vulcano waiting to burst - to me, he looked barely competent outside of the flashback (and even there, he suffered from the Hollywood syndrome that the hero has to be knocked down and disarmed at least three times during a fight with a non-goon baddy. Once, to show how he got the Oakenshield name, would have been enough imho). Worse, he is not shown as much of a leader, despite the way the dwarves revere him.

[QuickTidal]

 Tapper, on 03 January 2013 - 10:49 AM, said:

Loved some parts, didn't love others, overall verdict: seven hairy toes and one extra nail out of ten.
The entire running battle sequence in Goblin Town was, imho, too Indiana Jones in the way it was done, just like the Radagast appearance was a big no-no. The rabbit sleigh.... le sigh? Likewise, Thandruil on Rudolph the Rednosed Reindeer was ridiculous. What was wrong with giving him a horse, the way we see Elrond now and Arwen in LotR?


For me, Thorin didn't really come through as the bad-ass warrior he is intended to be. He is a troubled/dark character, but the way it is shown, he's more of an emo than the brooding type/ vulcano waiting to burst - to me, he looked barely competent outside of the flashback (and even there, he suffered from the Hollywood syndrome that the hero has to be knocked down and disarmed at least three times during a fight with a non-goon baddy. Once, to show how he got the Oakenshield name, would have been enough imho). Worse, he is not shown as much of a leader, despite the way the dwarves revere him.

AFAIK, most mentions of him in peripheral ME material talk about how he rode a Stag, not a horse. And quite frankly it looked super cool in the film. Radgagast also is well known to have a sleigh pulled by rabbits. Thorin is meant to be how he was portrayed. He's NOT a badass warrior at the beginning of the tale (he's not supposed to be)...he's petty, angry, dark and looking for vengeance and treasure. The glory and badassery comes later with his personal revelations. This is all in the source material. It's clear that no one thinks he is, since Balin actually has to tell the story of WHY he follows him and the other Dwarves react as if they've never heard it before. He's not really a leader...not yet. They follow him for lack of someone else. He has to earn his role and he spends most of the third act of the story doing just that.

So it would seem your issues mostly stem from the established source material.

[Tapper]

 QuickTidal, on 03 January 2013 - 12:20 PM, said:

 Tapper, on 03 January 2013 - 10:49 AM, said:

Loved some parts, didn't love others, overall verdict: seven hairy toes and one extra nail out of ten.
The entire running battle sequence in Goblin Town was, imho, too Indiana Jones in the way it was done, just like the Radagast appearance was a big no-no. The rabbit sleigh.... le sigh? Likewise, Thandruil on Rudolph the Rednosed Reindeer was ridiculous. What was wrong with giving him a horse, the way we see Elrond now and Arwen in LotR?


For me, Thorin didn't really come through as the bad-ass warrior he is intended to be. He is a troubled/dark character, but the way it is shown, he's more of an emo than the brooding type/ vulcano waiting to burst - to me, he looked barely competent outside of the flashback (and even there, he suffered from the Hollywood syndrome that the hero has to be knocked down and disarmed at least three times during a fight with a non-goon baddy. Once, to show how he got the Oakenshield name, would have been enough imho). Worse, he is not shown as much of a leader, despite the way the dwarves revere him.

AFAIK, most mentions of him in peripheral ME material talk about how he rode a Stag, not a horse. And quite frankly it looked super cool in the film. Radgagast also is well known to have a sleigh pulled by rabbits. Thorin is meant to be how he was portrayed. He's NOT a badass warrior at the beginning of the tale (he's not supposed to be)...he's petty, angry, dark and looking for vengeance and treasure. The glory and badassery comes later with his personal revelations. This is all in the source material. It's clear that no one thinks he is, since Balin actually has to tell the story of WHY he follows him and the other Dwarves react as if they've never heard it before. He's not really a leader...not yet. They follow him for lack of someone else. He has to earn his role and he spends most of the third act of the story doing just that.

So it would seem your issues mostly stem from the established source material.

Come on, the movie opening sequence says that the dwarven king felt confident in his son (Thráin) and grandson (Thorin). He is also portrayed there as leading the dwarven contingent that awaits Smaug inside the gates. While those are of course Jackson additions, both in book and in movie he already had the Oakenshield nickname, had established the Blue Mountain stronghold for the Erebor survivors, was a prince of Dwarves, and Tolkien in general went with hereditary prowess and the nobility and strength of lineages so a lot was expected/known from/about him.
If anything, the movie portrays him younger than the books.

[QuickTidal]

 Tapper, on 03 January 2013 - 12:51 PM, said:

Come on, the movie opening sequence says that the dwarven king felt confident in his son (Thráin) and grandson (Thorin). He is also portrayed there as leading the dwarven contingent that awaits Smaug inside the gates. While those are of course Jackson additions, both in book and in movie he already had the Oakenshield nickname, had established the Blue Mountain stronghold for the Erebor survivors, was a prince of Dwarves, and Tolkien in general went with hereditary prowess and the nobility and strength of lineages so a lot was expected/known from/about him.
If anything, the movie portrays him younger than the books.

I'd love to agree with you Taps, but in this case it's actually imperative to the story that Thorin is not the hero/badass everyone thinks he is. He needs to be much less than he is assumed to be by those around him, to end up doing the heroic things he does in the third act and having them stick so well. Having re-read the HOBBIT recently, he actually comes off rather douchy and makes a NUMBER of glaring mistakes in leadership even there between the Shire and the Lonely Mountain. I'm not saying he wasn't "looked upon" as a leader...just that his leadership is a house of cards at the beginning, and he doesn't truly earn it till much later (mainly in the BotfA).

[Macros]

Considering how he got his name , I'd say he's relatively bad ass before the hobbit. He was the son of a king, well, the grandson of a king, he would be well versed in the arts of war and a life of tramping the country, smithing and fighting would have left him hardy enough.

The biggest change in Thorin that I always took from the book was his personality, not his physicality (because it shouldn't change that much when you consider what his life has already been).

He is a proud, almost petulant, dwarf who acts considerably more immature than one of his stature should. He is almost petty at points and sucumbs to the dragons sickness, his redemption has nothing to do with his martial skills.

[MTS]

Well, in general I agree with Macros, but I can see Tapper's point as well, as Thorin's 'badass moment' at the end of the movie was fairly uninspiring, which as QT says was probably intentional in order to build up the threat of Azog. Doesn't change much though, as it was still a bit of an anti-climactic moment. Thorin has his badass charge at Azog and then gets swatted down almost instantly.

I think as far as Thranduil on the stag goes, and why he couldn't have been on a horse like Elrond was is because Peter Jackson is likely trying to portray the Elves of Mirkwood as different from the Elves we see in LotR, who are mostly Sindarin as opposed to Silvan (although admittedly the Elves of Lothlorien are Silvan Elves as well). I didn't think Thranduil's mount looked terrible, but neither did it scream 'super cool' to me either, so make of that what you will. I will disagree on the Radagast sentiment though, I thought he was one of the most entertaining parts of the film.

[QuickTidal]

 MTS, on 06 January 2013 - 11:06 AM, said:

Well, in general I agree with Macros, but I can see Tapper's point as well, as Thorin's 'badass moment' at the end of the movie was fairly uninspiring, which as QT says was probably intentional in order to build up the threat of Azog. Doesn't change much though, as it was still a bit of an anti-climactic moment. Thorin has his badass charge at Azog and then gets swatted down almost instantly.

I think as far as Thranduil on the stag goes, and why he couldn't have been on a horse like Elrond was is because Peter Jackson is likely trying to portray the Elves of Mirkwood as different from the Elves we see in LotR, who are mostly Sindarin as opposed to Silvan (although admittedly the Elves of Lothlorien are Silvan Elves as well). I didn't think Thranduil's mount looked terrible, but neither did it scream 'super cool' to me either, so make of that what you will. I will disagree on the Radagast sentiment though, I thought he was one of the most entertaining parts of the film.

Sindarin is a language, whereas Silvan more just is another word for "Wood" Elves (Part of me realizes how nerdy it is to know this)...but your point is well made nonetheless. It was always apparent that Legolas and even the Lothlorien Elves (Galadriel and Celeriborn) are totally different from the Rivendell Elves...because they really come from very different delineations and Elvish lines. The biggest being that Elrond is actually part human, so the Rivendell elves are the first who support the Alliance of Elves and Men...and the Silvan/Lothlorien/Mirkwood elves should always seem LESS human...since in Elvish terms they are essentially Elvish Purity, with the only exception being that they speak Sindarin instead of Quenya. But yeah, Thranduil should be the biggest representation of how Classic Elves live in harmony with nature (riding a Stag)...as opposed to living like men. (Rivendell and riding horses)

This post has been edited by QuickTidal: 06 January 2013 - 10:14 PM