The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug

[Paelos]

The length on these movies is keeping me from taking the plunge. I just can't see 2h 40m to tell the whole story, let alone a part of it.

[Khaldun]

It's not as dire a stretch as the first one, though in order to avoid anything resembling a quiet scene full of character development, the movie is usually in frenetic motion in order to keep you from thinking about how...fucking...long it is. It doesn't really work--the amusement park ride scenes go on for so long that I found myself restless despite the action on screen. It is like a roller coaster where you get to the next big hill and say, "Ok, ok, enough with the thrills already, I want to go somewhere else."

[01101010]

It's not as dire a stretch as the first one, though in order to avoid anything resembling a quiet scene full of character development, the movie is usually in frenetic motion in order to keep you from thinking about how...fucking...long it is. It doesn't really work--the amusement park ride scenes go on for so long that I found myself restless despite the action on screen. It is like a roller coaster where you get to the next big hill and say, "Ok, ok, enough with the thrills already, I want to go somewhere else."

I want to get off Mr. Bone's Wild Ride? 

[jgsugden]

Huge freaking disappointment. I rolled my eyes so many times that I developed muscle tone in my face. I'm betting this time around we'll get a director's cut that removes an hour of studio forced be rather than adding an hour of unnecessary extra scenes.

While I enjoyed the spectacle of the barrels and ruins scenes, I was still frustrated by the silliness.

[sickrubik]

I enjoyed the film quite a lot. I'm beginning to think I saw a different movie.

[Ghambit]

It was a good movie, there's only hate from people who misinterpret Tolkien's work to begin with.

a)  His books are silly  (silliness is at the core of whimsy).  Part of the point was to get adult readers to embrace this imaginatively, under a religious disguise. (religion in and of itself, when translated literally, is quite fuckin silly)
b)  Tolkien never wrote "canon."  He scoffed at the term (only really caring about his characters).  Seriously, he never even fuckin finished his works regardless... and what was finished was constantly changing.

[Samwise]

It was a good movie, there's only hate from people who misinterpret Tolkien's work to begin with.

[Phildo]

The Hobbit was occasionally a very silly book.

He charged the ranks of the goblins of Mount Gram in the Battle of the Green Fields, and knocked their king Golfibul's head clean off with a wooden club. It sailed a hundred yards through the air and went down a rabbit-hole, and in this way the battle was won and the game of Golf was invented at the same moment

[jgsugden]

The tone needed to be better aligned with the LotR trilogy.  There was some silliness in those movies, but not like here.  Some of the action scenes were akin to the Ewok battle of Endor - where they put being cute and funny ahead of the story and action.

The shoehorning of the romance storyline (which was clearly added in reshoots) was ridiculous.

The forest was very disappointing - I expected far more murk and more of the story devoted to it rather than feeling like it was a 3 hour hike.

And the battle with Smaug could be cut entirely without impacting the story.  It makes no sense. 

I had foolishly high expectations for this film to be much better than the first - and I found it to be worse. 

[sickrubik]

The shoehorning of the romance storyline (which was clearly added in reshoots) was ridiculous.

It wasn't. Her casting was much earlier than reshoots.


Anything else I can't really disagree/agree with. It's clearly just personal preference at this point.

[Ghambit]

I'll continue my Trollkien rant by pointing out that per the mouth of the professor himself, he really just wanted to flesh out the perfect Sandbox world (that's why it was never finished).  It was never meant to be canonized.  Both he and C.S. Lewis (the latter whom Tolkien literally converted to Christianity) were more concerned with Hope & Shadow (underneath the spectre of two world wars) then anything else; with as much vague allegory as possible.

Ironically, I guess you could say a lot of these arguments are no different then a bible-thumper screaming "that's not in the bible!"    Only the bible didn't have a literal writer to cite out exactly what his intentions were.  So, do not dwell in sorrow my friends, though this movie may not portray Tolkien's work in exactitude... that's kinda the point.  If you dispute this, in essence you're disputing Tolkien.

Now, whether or not the movie was good or not on its own is a different discussion.  But, you should definitely not go into a tolkien-esque movie depiction "expecting" things.  This is PJ's story told in Tolkien's world, that's really all it is.

[Khaldun]

Look, Jackson's aesthetic is different than Tolkien's. It's not a matter of what's in and out. I wish you and other folks who liked PJ's Hobbit drop that shibboleth, because it's an easy and lazy way to paint it.

The book is a loosely structured picaresque, a series of semi-connected (and often silly) episodes. The movie is a tightly built narrative. I kind of prefer the loose whimsy of the book to the tight amusement-park whimsy of the movie, but I'm also not sure that the loose whimsy would make a good film. But one of the consequences is that the sense of distance and time that the book cultivates is really lost. (And curiously enough, Jackson did a great job in the LOTR films with giving you a sense of Middle-Earth as a vast landscape.)

I thought this one was ok. Not bad, not great, but ok. I really did not care for the very strained and overbusy scenes inside the Mountain. That's not a matter of violating canon, it's disliking a tendency that Jackson has had on display throughout his entire career. The LOTR films were in some ways his most restrained films.

[jgsugden]

It wasn't. Her casting was much earlier than reshoots.

Alas, you're missing something. She was cast when the script had no romance storyline. She didn't want one and was still trying to distance herself from Lost. The studio notes resulted in the clumsy addition. This was confirmed fairly recently.

[sickrubik]

I wouldn't mind reference to that, her casting was in earlier June 2011, far before "reshoots".

[palmer_eldritch]

It was a good movie, there's only hate from people who misinterpret Tolkien's work to begin with.

a)  His books are silly  (silliness is at the core of whimsy).  Part of the point was to get adult readers to embrace this imaginatively, under a religious disguise. (religion in and of itself, when translated literally, is quite fuckin silly)
b)  Tolkien never wrote "canon."  He scoffed at the term (only really caring about his characters).  Seriously, he never even fuckin finished his works regardless... and what was finished was constantly changing.

Tolkein's Hobbit was a whimsical standalone tale aimed at a younger audience which was never intended to lead in to a longer story, although Tolkein did revise it slightly after he wrote Lord of the Rinsg to make them fit together a bit more.

But Jackson is doing something very different, which is to take the story of The Hobbit and use it as the basis of three films which are clearly meant to be prequels to the Lord of the Rings.

Imagine if there were no LoTR movies and someone adapted The Hobbit on its own. There's no way it would be like this. For one thing, the film or films would be more clearly aimed at a younger audience (and not last 160 minutes!)

So I think you have to judge these films on the basis of whether they work as episodes 1 to 3 of a 6-part Lord of the Rings movie series, because that's what they are.

[Ghambit]

The Hobbit was not written for the younger audience to read.  It was written for the younger audience to be "read to." (hence Bilbo's journal POV)  Same deal with Rudyard Kipling and to an extent Lewis (the latter though whom most definitely wanted young kids reading his bible books).  The lexicons used particularly in Tolkien and Kipling were way too advanced for the vast majority of youth readers (both then and now).  In Kipling's case, he wrote a lot in 2nd person - as if the reader was addressing the listener specifically.

Anyways, Tolkien never flat out said he wrote the books for kids.  He mayhaps wrote them because of kids and for kids to enjoy.  But, not FOR them... as something like Rowling or Uncle Remus would do.

[jgsugden]

I wouldn't mind reference to that, her casting was in earlier June 2011, far before "reshoots".

http://www.blastr.com/2013-12-16/evangeline-lilly-had-1-condition-sign-hobbit-jackson-broke-it

[sickrubik]

Eh. That doesn't seem too damning of anything, really.

Given that it's one actors perspective and without knowing exactly what shots were done and for whatever reason, it really doesn't seem to advance any conspiracy past there just being reshoots. Which happen in almost any movie.

Even if we take it at face value, this doesn't seem to indicate a lack of love story that was suddenly added during reshoots, just shoots that told that story a bit more. Her comments about wanting to focus on the ass kicking rather than the relationship, seems to indicate that the relationship stuff was there from the beginning.

Also, she's not Angelina Jolie, so I really don't buy her ability to get the script changed. I just don't.

[Samwise]

Look, Jackson's aesthetic is different than Tolkien's. It's not a matter of what's in and out. I wish you and other folks who liked PJ's Hobbit drop that shibboleth, because it's an easy and lazy way to paint it.

 

[jgsugden]

Eh. That doesn't seem too damning of anything, really.
...
Also, she's not Angelina Jolie, so I really don't buy her ability to get the script changed. I just don't.

You're not seeing he chain correctly.  She is approached for the role.  She says, "Is there any Lost style romance stuff in it?  I don't want to be shoe-horned."  Jackson & Co say, "Nope.  You're an action star."  She says, "OK".  They make some movie.  The studio looks at it and says, "You have that chick from Lost and don't have her in a love triangle?  Make her romance the elf and the least ugly dwarf.  Jackson groans.  Jackson and Co. approach her and apologetically tell her what they need to add.  Lacking power, she groans and says, "Fine."  They reshoot to tweak scenes to add the romance.

Just look at the scene where she visits the dwarf in prison.  It is clearly shoe-horned - it lacks flow with the scenes around it.  then look at the action scenes.  This was obvious to me before I found that article.  The article just confirmed what I was seeing.  The next time you see the film, I'm pretty sure you'll see how awkward the whole thing is ...

[sickrubik]

I've seen the movie. I just don't come to those same conclusions, especially with that story you posted. In the article they said the focus would be on the "ass-kicking" rather than the "will they/won't they", and the usage of focus seems to indicate that that the content was there on some level.

I watched the video as well, and the question that leads up to the quote is awfully leading. I just don't think there's any evidence that any of the love triangle stuff was shoehorned in. Emphasized during reshoots? Sure.

The movie in general did not bug me anywhere close to how much it bugged you. So, I think a lot of personal preference. And since you used it on me, "Do you know what quotation marks represent?" 

[Venkman]

Saw it. Liked much more than the first. All the silliness you folks are pointing out were actually high points for me. And I also like how he's deviating. I shouldn't really, but since the books were laborious to read in ways that would never translate to finite-lenght movies, nor certainly appeal as is to audiences three generations descending from the original audience, I can understand it.


The only beef I had was the river sequence was too long. Even the Smaug length didn't bother me, but the river took too long. His usual problem with editing.

[Samwise]

I was surprised at how bad some of the effects shots were.  During one of the "orcs chasing things" scenes I thought "wow, did they just screencap this from WoW?"

After having Smaug hyped up I was also disappointed in how poorly his face was animated.  Looked very fakey fake, especially when you compare to the technical triumph that was Gollum.  Rest of him was good though.

And even having been told about it, the GoPro barrel shots still jarred me.   What was the editor thinking?

[Khaldun]

The Necromancer = Sauron is laid out explicitly in the LOTR appendices. In The Hobbit, he seems to just be a bad guy hanging out in the forest somewhere. Gandalf pretty much acts as if the Necromancer is a familiar or known bad guy in The Hobbit when he answers Bilbo's question about why the party has to go through Mirkwood--he says if you go north, you're in a mountain range loaded with orcs, if you go south, you're in the Necromancer's domain and then says something to the effect of "Even you, Bilbo, you little mental defective from a place where people know nothing, know that you don't want to get near the Necromancer".

[Venkman]

The Necromancer = Sauron is laid out explicitly in the LOTR appendices.

Not exactly level 1 mass market reader material there  Not that it was much of a leap of course. I actually give PJ credit for deviating from the books by digging further into the fanservice. I mean, some of the stuff he came up with for these movies is almost in Tolkien Scholars Only land. Necromancer being Sauron isn't that deep of course. And as far as I know, Thuriel being around and Legolas figuring prominently are complete fabrications. But I don't remember each individual dwarf getting fully fleshed out personalities, nor Baird having such a big part in the book.

Doesn't really matter to me. I'm really not a purist. And I suspect even the purists recognize that many decades after the world first experienced these books, movie goers can't be wow'd just by the setting.

[Ghambit]

Necromancer = Sauron = Shadow = lots of philo. human moral frailty stuff

[Khaldun]

I'm actually all for everything PJ has done that isn't "in the book", at least on paper. Most of it is either in ANOTHER book (and so is doing Tolkien fanservice) or is reasonable in terms of the books (Legolas might as well be one of the elves in Mirkwood, because he *is* an elf in Mirkwood) or is a good idea in terms of breaking up the stifling boys-only feel of Tolkien's writings. It's cool to give Bard more backstory (which is again not at all unreasonable in the context of the book: the Master of Esgaroth is a corrupt cuntweasel in the book and Bard is very clearly a political opponent of his). Etc.

For me it is entirely about how PJ sticks the landing, not about the routine he's decided to perform.

[Ghambit]

Well, he's got an entire 3rd movie to stick the landing so I have high hopes.  It'll definitely be a bit blackhawke-downish, as really there's nothing left to do but beat the crap out of eachother in three different arenas (dol guldur [necromancer], lake-town[smaug], and Erebor[5 armies])  The political machinations will be omnipresent, but hopefully not overstated.

It has the potential to be the best movie of the 6 if he does it right.  Or at least as good as Two Towers.

Back to Hobbit2;

[angry.bob]

I thought it was good. A lot of stuff I don't remember from the book, but none of it was bad or out of place except for shitty romance. I can't fathom how people are unhappy with any of the Smaug stuff. I undertand he 's described as having 4 legs plus wings, but it's not that big a deal.

[eldaec]

Saw this last night. Had fun, didn't have any major issues.

The extra bits seemed to fit into the flow far better this time.

Bilbo was great. The ancillary dwarves were much better, but I think they are still struggling with Thorin.

There were some overlong sequences, principally in mirkwood, but you go in prepared for the length and there is enough stuff to fill the time. I still think the whole 6 movie stretch would be better broken up into hour long sections on TV, all of these films feel like watching a bunch of back to back episodes of a serial rather than feeling you watched one complete film (except fellowship maybe).

Barrel scene, the smaug scene, and everything in lake town was fine. Tauriel and sexydwarf's "romance" was daft and unnecessary, but involved maybe 3 minutes of screen time, so I could ignore it - it was far less annoying than Arwen and Aragorn in LotR. Legolas did not irritate me, which was a surprise. The spiders were cool, but the interminable build up went on way too long. Gandalf's added adventure seemed much more natural than the Elrond/Galadriel/Saruman/Gandalf/Radagast stuff in UJ.

It wasn't as good as FotR, but probably was as good as RotK.

[Phildo]

Considering the actual book reads episodically, it's not surprising that the movie feels that way to you.

[eldaec]

Sure.

And it isn't a big deal given I watch most TV 3 episodes at a time anyway.

[Lakov_Sanite]

Just thought I'd put this here but I just watched an unexpected journey for the first time last night.  Having never read the book myself and only knowing the old Bakshi cartoon I found it very enjoyable, granted this is at home where I can pause or grab something to drink and three hours is more manageable.

I really miss well made fantasy epics.  How close they are to the source material is clearly an issue for some but I was simply excited to see dwarves, orcs and wizards on the big screen and with a good sized budget behind them, it was fun.


Looking forward to this new one in theatres.

[MahrinSkel]

Considering the actual book reads episodically, it's not surprising that the movie feels that way to you.

The original was intended to be read *to* children in 30-45 minute chunks.  So by modern standards it reads like a short story collection with a common arc.

--Dave

[Lakov_Sanite]

Just saw the sequel on new years and I loved every minute of it.  Yes you can say it's not "the hobbit" but man as fantasy movies go it was pretty damn great.  If you can't enjoy the dragon scenes then maybe it's not the right genre for you because god damn they nailed it when it came to Smaug.  Not only was the dragon well crafted in look but it was the right amount of ferocity and intelligence.