The Hobbit

So... I saw The Desolation of Smaug last night... anyone wanting to discuss? :)
 
Saw it last night as well. It was not a very good movie but at least paced to be more entertaining than the first one. I haven't read the original book but I can still tell how the non-book source parts of the story were shoehorned in to pad the length.
 
Interesting... because I quite enjoyed it. It's packed with action and things to look at in awe but still has got a lot of subtleness in it. Maybe the fight with the dragon in the end was a bit drawn out (dunno why they had to bring in the melted gold) but then again, it's the climax of the movie and certainly better than Tolkien's anti-climactic version:
(Bilbo and Smaug chat a bit and then the dragon flies to Laketown to get shot down by an arrrow just like that).

I have high hopes that Smaug puts on more of a fight in the third movie...
But I am curious - please tell me what parts you think were added by Peter Jackson, besides the already known Tauriel/Legolas/Kili threesome and the blown-up dragon fight in the end?

Oh... and I personally think the first movie seemed more like it was blown-up to gain length (no stuff like rabbit-sleigh chases or rock-throwing stone giants in the 2nd one)... I think the second one was handled rather tightly concerning the story and it was refreshing to see Radagast without him rolling his eyes like a moron...

Other thoughts:

- The beginning in Bree was excellent (including Peter Jackson's carrot cameo at the very beginning)
- Beorn was characterized well, if a bit too short
- Mirkwood was a bit short, too, yet very spooky and kind of psychedelic
- The idea to let the spiders only speak, when Bilbo wears the ring, was brilliant
- Thranduil and his isolationist woodland realm were portrayed brilliantly. Finally an Elf that has a flawed character. The woodland Elfs are kinda like the rednecks of the Elfs in Tolkien's world and it shows in the movie
- The river scene with the swarfs in the barrels was awesome, with some nice and funny new ways to kill Orcs being invented
- Esgaroth was great with its mixture between Venice and Victorian London. The whole part in laketown was a bit like a Charles Dickens novel and Stephen Fry as the mayor was hilarious
- The final part of entering the mountain was 90 % brilliant (Smaug is definitely the best dragon seen on film or TV so far, the empty halls of Erebor were breathtaking) and 10 % pointless action (the whole melting furnace/molten gold stuff).
- The sub plot with Tauriel/Legolas/Kili is debatable but still doesn't feel artificially put-on
- The two Maiar (Gandalf and Sauron) fighting each other in Dol Guldur was epic. The whole sub plot with Gandalf discovering the empty cells of the ring wraiths on his way to Dol Gildur was good, too
- The end was a nice cliffhanger.
- All the characters were played brilliantly - as usual, Peter Jackson is an excellent actor's director - and most of the effects were truly convincing (not sure about the molten gold in the end, would have to see how real molten gold looks like first but I doubt it looks like plastic foil)
 
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You summed up things well in the film. I was bothered by Orlando Bloom's presence as Legolas in the movie for sure. And visually I found him really distracting as I know they had to CG and heavily makeup him to be a 'younger' Legolas from an earlier era, but combined with his stiff and 'phoned in' performance he looked too much like a CG render of Orlando Bloom digitally added in the film than a flesh & blood actor. During most of his scenes I kept wondering if he was somewhat resentful that his Hollywood film career did not skyrocket as he would have wanted after the LoTR movies that he begrudgingly accepted the paycheck to reprise a role that wad inserted in the story anyway.

Having said that I liked Tauriel just fine and thought the actress did a nice job.
 
Evangeline Lilly with red hair surely was a sight to behold. That nose... <3
 
I actually enjoyed the first movie more. I felt like everything I liked about the first movie was kind of ruined for me in the second. What I liked about the first movie was that ties to LOTR were not so obvious and I didn't feel like there was anything added to just lengthen the movie. However the things that ruined it for me in the second movie were:

Peter's way too obvious cameo (in the first movie I didn't even notice him, he was in heavy Dwarf makeup. This time it was like he just walked on set with a carrot, lingered in front of the camera and they kept it)
The crappy GoPro shots (x3) during the barrel sequence
Gloin pointing out that he's Gimli's dad (anyone that has watched LOTR more than once can figure that out, and I kinda liked it being more of a "figure it out yourself" kind of thing)
The Tauriel/Kili love scenes. Honestly they bored me and I felt like they didn't add anything to the story.
The dragon fight with the gold smelting. I liked it just being Bilbo in the book.
The whole Sauron fight... save it for the Rings series!


That said, it wasn't a terrible movie. I did like Beorn and Laketown. The barrel sequence (minus the aforementioned GoPro shots) was awesome and hilarious. However, this whole series could have been 2 movies. Honestly.
 
Did you feel like some of the direct tie-in/lead-ins/references to LOTR were a little too 'on the nose?'
 
Precicely. The Gimli thing is what really did it for me. But also, I mean there is no need for Legolas to be in the movie at all... As for the Sauron thing, I guess I'll have to reserve complete judgement until I see what they do with it in the 3rd movie.
 
Speaking of Legolas, is his wikipedia entry a bit nsfw for anyone else?
 
MacGuffin said:
- The whole sub plot with Gandalf discovering the empty cells of the ring wraiths on his way to Dol Gildur was good, too
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Would you, or anyone else, care to explain this scene? Having not read the book I wondered what was the point there...
So he left the group, climbed all the way to the top of a mountain, entered a passage to see a huge pit with broken cells...what was meant to be in those?
 
Ah, thanks! I get it now. (Well, I still don't know why they have this form, but I guess that's something that I have to read the book to find out.)
 
_HighVoltage_ said:
Ah, thanks! I get it now. (Well, I still don't know why they have this form, but I guess that's something that I have to read the book to find out.)
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If you mean why the Nazgul are the way they are, it's because they were kings of men who were given rings of power. They became corrupted by the rings and eventually fell to Sauron's power. (That may be off a little, I'm not a lore expert)

Can anyone comment about the added non-Hobbit scenes? I haven't read outside of the LotR trilogy, and I was wondering if everything added into these movies actually came from other Tolkein sources or if some is just added for fun.
 
Martin Freeman answers a few questions about what it was like filming the movies.


:lmao: :rofl:
 
I'm so torn. Want to love it, but being such a huge fan if the source material I find that this second part of the "trilogy" only contained about 10% of stuff from the actual book, and what they did leave in they glossed over horribly. It made me sad :(
 
Well, while I always liked "The Lord of the Rings" as a book, I never got myself to really like "The Hobbit" as a book - maybe because I never read it as a child, who knows?

I understand those, who have sentimental feelings about the book and feel that the movies are overdone. But as a general Tolkien fan and a fan of the way Peter Jackson put his world onto screen, I frankly cannot get enough of it - even if parts are only loosely based on the book or added by the film team completely.

The Hobbit has ecome more "ring'ish" in the movies, if you know what I mean. Nobody expected a children's movie to be made from the book. And the movies are meant for a broader audience, not only for book fans. All the Tolkien movies are a vision of a certain group of people and thankfully that vision seems to be in compliance with the vast majority of the book fans and those who never read the books.

Those who find it hard to accept, that their beloved book stories are being visualized in that way, have my sympathy but frankly it's time they should stop complaining - we all got the message. I have gotten that message again and again over the last 10+ years and frankly I cannot hear it anymore. It has become annoying, sorry...

If someone cannot bare the movies, just don't watch them. Keep to the books, if you want to. But for me as a guy who equally enjoys books and movies, the way Tolkien's world was translated from print to the screen, is simply an amazing achievement and I wish all book adaptations would have that quality.
 
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British/Columbian said:
I'm so torn. Want to love it, but being such a huge fan if the source material I find that this second part of the "trilogy" only contained about 10% of stuff from the actual book, and what they did leave in they glossed over horribly. It made me sad :(
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I agree, most of the movie felt like fluff to me. The book could easily have been two (long-ass) movies, not 3.
 
Yeah, I read the book a long time ago and I'm boycotting this 2nd Hobbit movie, for now at least. I saw the first one and while it was technically very well executed, there was just too little plot, so it felt like nothing happened in the damn movie. It was more of a 3-hour ad for New Zealand mountains and countryside. While Desolation of Smaug is getting decent reviews, I still think it is a shameless cash grab to split one relatively short story into three three-hour movies.
 
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So basically you have a problem with people making money with selling a product to the world? ;)
 
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