Thread: The Desolation
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Old 12-14-2013, 05:35 AM   #38
A Little Green
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Eurgh. Looking back, I think there were two major things that ruined the thing for me: the almost complete lack of character development and the amount (and style) of violence.

I loved Balin, Bard and Bilbo, Smaug was nice, and I thought Thranduil, Legolas and Tauriel were OK. But other than that - where were the relationships between the dwarves, for example? Apart from a ten-second scene of Thorin and Balin, and maybe a minute of Thorin-Fili-Kili drama, those guys could have been chance acquaintances for all the notice they took of each other. Their relationships didn't deepen or develop at all, which is an impressive feat for a two-and-a-half-hour film. Also, the general level of dialogue in the script was abysmal; it was like copy-pasted from a manual called 101 Emptiest Action Movie One-Liners. And all this is a shame, because the casting is mostly very good and they would actually have potential for great characterisation!

And why was there no time for character development and dialogue? Because they were busy killing something or other 90% of the time. I tend to dislike on-screen violence in general and I already thought it was getting out of hand in the first Hobbit film, but that was nothing on this one. It's not only the amount of it that I find disturbing; it's the way it's depicted. Violence is portrayed as fun and entertaining, something to laugh at. I've come to accept that as a part of today's cinema, but in this film it was just too much. The fighting scenes were there to entertain, not to show what danger the characters were in or to make the audience fear for them. Indeed, the characters didn't, at any point, seem to be in any danger at all, let alone frightened for themselves or the other characters. During the action scenes (ie. for most of the film) they were inventive, funny killing machines without any real emotion. So small wonder I had trouble relating to them, or believing they have any real relationships with each other.
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