"The Hobbit: There And Back Again" To be Renamed "The Battle of the Five Armies"

[Kuruharan]

...here it is.

From the "I knew those rumors were so ridiculous they had to be true" front - I see a dwarf-bearing chariot drawn by rams...which might not have been quite so bad if I wasn't instantly reminded of the silly barrel-riding sequence and at 1:22 I see what can only be an army of dwarves charging in on what can only be a horde of similar rams.

*sigh*

From the "Oh my gosh, how lazy can you get" front - I see orcs that look like they could have come straight from Isengard from The Two Towers (I guess they wanted to reuse the armor to hold down costs) and a song from the previous trilogy.

To say they appear to be phoning it in is an insult to the comparatively high standards of actual phoning it in.

And then we have the end of the trailer. I'm sure New Zealand is a lovely country...but seriously, does the entire economy of the country revolve around these movies now?

[Zigûr]

Beaten me to the punch, Kuru, I was about to post this.

Gut-punch more like.

Dwarves riding rams. For goodness' sake.

"It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury
Signifying nothing."

[alatar]

Can't wait to get into the heated discussion of which is faster: Radagast's bunny sled or this Dwarven chariot.

[Aganzir]

I'm unimpressed. The amount of recycling old imagery in these films hurts as it is, and now we're even getting Galadriel's feet.

Peter Jackson shows he hasn't improved as a director one bit in these 15 years. Most of the youtube comments seemed doubtful too.

Some scenes did look visually better than the first two films in general, though. And mind you I'm not talking about the CGI and the unrealistic fighting choreographies here.

[Inziladun]

"I will have war!"

Give me a break.

It all seems very much darker than the book. They're trying to build it up to a climax rivaling the big showdown at the Morannon in ROTK. "Recycled" is the best word I can think to describe it. And why does PJ have only two modes with these films: goofy slapstick and overblown dramatics?

[Aganzir]

Originally Posted by Inziladun

And why does PJ have only two modes with these films: goofy slapstick and overblown dramatics?

That's the only two modes I've ever seen in PJ's films anyway. Perhaps he's like that in real life too. Now that I think of it, those modes would make for an entertaining family comedy.

If they wanted a bigger climax they should have done the War of Wrath, not the prequel to the climax of the Third Age.

[Kuruharan]

Another point that adds to the silliness of the rams; the dwarves were shown in the first movie riding large ponies. What is the need to have them riding rams?

Obviously, they do have to ride. They can't just march into battle like they did in the book. That would be silly.

We have to recreate the charge of Rohirrim from ROTK after all.

[Zigûr]

Originally Posted by Inziladun

And why does PJ have only two modes with these films: goofy slapstick and overblown dramatics?

I feel like that is something which has become true of all kinds of adventure and capital-r Romance media in general (which we might otherwise clinically term 'speculative fiction'). It all feels like 'soap operas and sit coms but with dragons and robots' to me these days, nothing with that "applicability" which was so valuable to Professor Tolkien.

In my opinion the modern, mainstream Western 'culture industry' may currently be at one of its lowest points in terms of anti-intellectualism and fatuousness (yes I know 'fatuous' is one of my favourite words), turning everything into this sort of homogenous cultural gruel of adaptations, reboots and revivals of older texts and properties which are chewed up and regurgitated as identical, generic slop. As a wise man once said, "I guess if you feed humanity flavourless wallpaper paste for decades then you shouldn't be surprised if that's all they want to eat now." But it's a chicken-and-egg problem really, the industry feeding the consumers and vice-versa. That being said, I think a lot of blame lies with the current intensity of the corporatocratic grip on our politics and economics: lazy, stock storytelling feeds the bottom line a lot more readily than, I don't know, dignity or meaning.

[Inziladun]

Originally Posted by Zigûr

In my opinion the modern, mainstream Western 'culture industry' may currently be at one of its lowest points in terms of anti-intellectualism and fatuousness (yes I know 'fatuous' is one of my favourite words), turning everything into this sort of homogenous cultural gruel of adaptations, reboots and revivals of older texts and properties which are chewed up and regurgitated as identical, generic slop. As a wise man once said, "I guess if you feed humanity flavourless wallpaper paste for decades then you shouldn't be surprised if that's all they want to eat now." But it's a chicken-and-egg problem really, the industry feeding the consumers and vice-versa. That being said, I think a lot of blame lies with the current intensity of the corporatocratic grip on our politics and economics: lazy, stock storytelling feeds the bottom line a lot more readily than, I don't know, dignity or meaning.

And this is precisely the reason I have so little use for the vast majority of films released in the last 15 years or so. I'm only hoping a reboot won't be in the cards for LOTR ever. Noting the trend of such movies, I have no illusion it would be any sort of improvement over PJ, but I fear would instead be an even worse example of hack-and-slash Michael Beyism.