[Pomegranate]

Whoa. I expected to come here and meet a lot of criticisms and negative feedback, based on what how I see the film and how most of the people seemed to be a lot more negative about it than I was in the first place, and now I think my opinion might be the one of the most negative ones. I definitely didn’t expect that. And given that, I think I’ll need to see the movie again before I can have a proper full picture of the film, right now it’s just bits that I liked a lot and bits that I didn’t like at all, and these not forming anything proper.

I’ll start with what I didn’t like, because it’s on the top of my head.

Azog, as many have said before, was useless and confusing. For a while I assumed it might actually work, when he appeared with the wargs and I thought “Hey, that makes sense! They’ll kill him here and thus will have an appropriate ending to the first movie, a separate plot, and we don’t have to watch him anymore in the next one!” …and then this didn’t happen. So he remained a useless and confusing side-plot.

More controversially, I didn’t like Bilbo. I think. I had high expectations, having seen Martin Freeman do great in all the trailer bits, and what we had? Instead of a confused and surprised but still keeping-his-good-manners–hobbit who invites Gandalf for tea and treats the dwarves to all his food because that’s how he’s been raised, we get a rude slam-the-door and don’t-eat-my-things person who keeps turning back at every possible corner, until the sudden change-of-mindset due to which he decides to save Thorin from Azog. And I feel like most of the changes PJ has made to the story were affecting his growth-story, making him do things that were done by others in the book (like the trolls) or things that don’t happen at all in the book (like the Azog-fight in the end, or his plan to leave in the mountain cave), which made it jump forth and back unlogically. He didn’t feel likeable, or believable. Which was sad, because the original story is, after all, essentially that - Bilbo’s growth story.

And another bit that I didn’t quite agree with that seems to be generally approved was the White Council. Especially Saruman. I mean, he’s supposed to be respected and “the wise” still here, right? And then he keeps going on about how he doesn’t like the dwarves not coming to talk to him and blahblah and is completely ignored by Gandalf and Galadriel who have their secret wee talk. No respect whatsoever. Which annoys me a great deal, because I feel like it’s contrary to PJ’s own works – in LOTR, Gandalf goes to ask for his help, talking about the greatest of his order and so on, and here he seems like a complaining child who wants to stop others from playing because he wasn’t involved in the first place.

These were my main complaints. And then there were a lot of brilliant bits.

Like the beginning with Dale and Erebor. Lovely, tell-tale-like. Beautiful, and a good way of explaining the background.

The dwarves. I love the personalities given to them, I love Thorin, I think the young dwarves are adorable and enough childish to not to be only the sexy-dwarves that they were labelled as before.

The already-familiar characters when they were younger and all was well. The cheery Elrond and his awkward hug with Gandalf, especially. I could include Gollum here as well, I loved the way they portrayed him.

The songs. I’m so glad they included the songs, and as has been mentioned before, the misty mountains-song is one of the most beautiful things in all PJ films I’ve seen.

Some of the references to the LOTR trilogy. Not the one with Gandalf getting mad in Bag End, though, that was really bad.

I really liked the rock giants. They were very impressive, and pretty, and I’ve not seen transformers so that impression didn’t hit me during the movie either.