Thread: The Desolation
View Single Post
Old 12-12-2013, 12:49 PM   #12
Thinlómien
Shady She-Penguin
 
Thinlómien's Avatar
 
Join Date: Dec 2004
Location: In a far land beyond the Sea
Posts: 8,385
Thinlómien is wading through the Dead Marshes.Thinlómien is wading through the Dead Marshes.Thinlómien is wading through the Dead Marshes.Thinlómien is wading through the Dead Marshes.Thinlómien is wading through the Dead Marshes.Thinlómien is wading through the Dead Marshes.
White-Hand Time to throw in a couple of comments (including lots of spoilers obviously)

Alright, so I thought the movie would be bad, but it was awful. Greenie, who was sitting next to me in the cinema, can witness I was like shell-shocked. The core of the problem is that the film works neither as an adaptation of Tolkien's writings (it has hardly any of the plot or the atmosphere) nor as a random fantasy action adventure (badly written and directed).


I enjoyed:

+ Martin Freeman. That guy just nails Bilbo, plus he has the astonishing ability to surf through all the silliness with just about the right mix of comedy and drama. Without him the movie would have been unbearable.

+ Smaug. True, he's taken to the direction of the generic monster-villain, but he still retains a delightful amount of the original dialogue, plus at times he looks just gorgeous (like in the very last scene flying towards Laketown in the night and shaken molten gold off his scales. I also think the fire-breathing was done very neatly.)

+ The Elves. Orlando Bloom has been praised above and not without reason. Like Martin Freeman, he can actually pull off the silly stuff, plus he gets some of the funnier jokes. I also quite liked Tauriel/Evangeline Lilly, and Lee Pace's Thranduil was enjoyably awful. And Galion! I felt like cheering when I heard the name.

+ The Dol Guldur plotline. True, not much happens, but actually having some dialogue between Gandalf and Radagast was nice every now and then, and the "duel" between Gandalf and Sauron was visually amazing. (And really even not as cringeworthy plotwise as I make it sound!) Also they imply Thráin is still alive, which should make for an interesting scene in the next movie.

+ Bard. Bard, Bard, Bard. On the surface, the smuggler single dad is not the guy from the book, but he has delightfully the same character. Here is the pessimistic herald of doom, respected but not listened to, slightly in the outskirts of the Laketown society, and a very epic man. Also apologies to all the Dwarf fangirls and Thrandy fangirls out there, but Bard is the hottest man in the movie by far.

+ the Laketown part all in all. The plot gets more followable and interesting for a time there, and Laketown looked good compared to what I thought based on the trailers (Russian Winter Wonderland). Of course I could have complaints about Dwarves coming out of toilets and ocean's eleving around, but it was still (mostly) entertaining.

+ (kind of) the action scenes. I think they were less boring than in the previous movie!

+ cute Dwarf moments. We saw shamefully little of the Dwarves and their relationships with each other, but when we did, it was quite cute. I especially liked Balin's emotional return to Erebor and Fili big brothering over Kili.


I was disappointed with: (where do I even start?)

- the ridiculous triangle drama. I think a romance was totally unnecessary and made my feminist side cringe ("hey let's introduce a major female character so she can be someone's love interest!"). But the worst thing was that they couldn't keep it on the level of a romance, but they had to make a triangle drama out of it. Like, didn't they promise there wouldn't be anything romantic between Tauriel and Legolas???

- all the other plot installments by Jackson & co. Like Kili getting wounded by a morgul arrow so that he & couple of other Dwarves have to stay behind in Laketown, where they get attacked by orcs, and are then saved by Tauriel and Legolas, and then Kili is healed by Tauriel using Athelas? No, no, and no!

- the writing in general. The dialogue was bad and repetitive (as mentioned above, "it is the only way", "I have the only right", "this is our only chance" and so on.) The scenes were written thinking the audience gets bored is something doesn't explode after 50 seconds or so. It was incredibly tiresome. Lastly, 90% of the brand new plot twists were incredibly predictable. (Greenie and I kept saying to each other "and now Tauriel will appear and save them" and then that would happen 2 seconds later, and so on. Argh! Frustration.)

- the direction in general. With all the messing around, the balancing between a slapstick farce and an epic adventure, good actors like Richard Armitage and even Ian McKellen were occasionally losing their grip. It was awful to watch. Also, PJ continues in the line that everything has to be painfully emphasised. When Bilbo drops the Ring in Mirkwood and has to battle a giant crab to get it back, we get about 1,5min of Martin Freeman making pained expressions holding the shining ring to make sure we all understood Bilbo was afraid he had lost the Ring. Blaaaa....

- the music. Howard Shore seems to be as disinterested about TH movies as us old school 'downers. Here we got a new theme for Laketown, but that was it. Even the epic dwarf music wasn't utilised as much as it could and should have been!

- Beorn. As said above, his lack of screentime was ridiculous, and made his whole appearance rather pointless. He was given crappy lines and he looked positively awful, especially in the bear form. (The actor was fine, though, and I quite liked how his house looked and the giant bees and the spotted ponies.)

- the overload of action and stupid jokes. But this was to be expected, and both could have been worse, I guess.

- tired recycling of stuff from An Unexpected Journey and the LotR trilogy. Starting from the carrot cameo in Bree up until glow-in-dark Arw... Tauriel performing Elvish healing magic. A lot of the time I just had a feeling I've seen all of this before, and it was better the last time around (yes, even the carrot).


That's it for now, I guess, I bet I've forgotten something. I would have liked to enjoy this film, at least on some level, but the truth is that I was mostly either horrified, frustrated or bored. After seeing An Unexpected Journey for the first time I disapproved of a lot of stuff, yes, but I was excited too, my head full of epic Dwarves and the magic of Middle-Earth, and I wanted to see the movie again despite all of its shortcomings. It took me a while to figure out the movie was actually a lot worse than the LotR trilogy was.

The sad thing is that The Desolation of Smaug didn't hold even that meager amount of magic for me. When I left the cinema, the only thing I was enthusiastic about was complaining about the movie. And mind you, I had done my best to see the movie with an open mind and cast my puritanism aside and enjoy it just as an epic adventure. I hope and believe that the next movie will be better.
__________________
Like the stars chase the sun, over the glowing hill I will conquer
Blood is running deep, some things never sleep
Double Fenris

Last edited by Thinlómien; 12-12-2013 at 12:53 PM.
Thinlómien is offline   Reply With Quote