The Battle of the 5+ Armies

[Zigûr]

Originally Posted by Aganzir

I understand very well that you can't give in-depth screentime to all the 13 dwarves, but it would have taken so little to make us care even a bit, or show that somebody else within the story cared.

The thing is though, they've had three films to develop the Dwarves and have utterly failed to do so. Most of them have few or no lines, and only Thorin, Balin and Kíli have any substantial characterisation. Instead we've been given characters who weren't in the book, like Legolas and "Tauriel" as well as endless cutaways to Azog, Radagast and the like.

Of course the Dwarves other than Thorin really aren't developed in the book - even Balin is mostly just a cheery old lookout man overall - but that didn't matter because we were focused on Bilbo. In the film, however, they're trying to expand everything, and went to all this effort to given the Dwarves unique designs (and even invent backstories for them) which all amount to absolutely nothing. Why bother? Marketing, I suppose, but that's no excuse. I'd rather have characterisation over thirteen increasingly silly haircuts.

[mhagain]

I'm actually quite amazed that nobody has highlighted Alfrid's running around shouting "The children! Won't somebody please think of the children!" as a minus. Maybe it was so horrifying that you all blanked it out. But yes, that happened.

Anyway, I couldn't possibly even pretend to take the movie seriously after that. About the only real plus was that I noticed a resemblance in some of the Death of Smaug scenes to Tolkien's own painting of the same name.

[Tar-Jêx]

Originally Posted by Zigûr

The thing is though, they've had three films to develop the Dwarves and have utterly failed to do so. Most of them have few or no lines, and only Thorin, Balin and Kíli have any substantial characterisation. Instead we've been given characters who weren't in the book, like Legolas and "Tauriel" as well as endless cutaways to Azog, Radagast and the like.

Of course the Dwarves other than Thorin really aren't developed in the book - even Balin is mostly just a cheery old lookout man overall - but that didn't matter because we were focused on Bilbo. In the film, however, they're trying to expand everything, and went to all this effort to given the Dwarves unique designs (and even invent backstories for them) which all amount to absolutely nothing. Why bother? Marketing, I suppose, but that's no excuse. I'd rather have characterisation over thirteen increasingly silly haircuts.

I don't even think half of them have been mentioned by name since the first movie. It seems ridiculous that they tried to characterise some of the dwarves, and leave the rest to rot. I understand trying to add some interest to Balin to make his 'appearance' in Lord of the Rings have more weight to it, but who the hell cares about Fili and Kili?

At least Bilbo is having some good character progression, but I have yet to see how he is done in the last movie.

Another sin that was committed was trying to explain Gandalf's absence for half the story. We didn't need to see what Gandalf was up to. We just needed him to tell us in a really vague manner what happened, and have a few 10-15 second flashes of what was going on. In the book, Gandalf told us that he was going to go to Dol Guldur because he had business there, and that was enough for us, as we had enough interest in the main plot to not wonder what was going on.

The lack of understanding of why things were happening in the book seems to be the cause of this mess, but similar to those mediocre Narnia movies, the director wanted to make it more exciting by changing stuff and adding their own substance to it which was completely unrelated to the story.

[Kuruharan]

Originally Posted by Aganzir

The Hobbit is different from LOTR but good in its own right - why bring everything over and try to tell the same story twice?

PJ and Co are lazy and lacking in imagination.

Originally Posted by Zigûr

The thing is though, they've had three films to develop the Dwarves and have utterly failed to do so. Most of them have few or no lines, and only Thorin, Balin and Kíli have any substantial characterisation.

And Bombur fat jokes.