The Desolation

[Inziladun]

Agan, my sincere thanks for this. I have no doubt of your objectivity, and this reinforces my decision to do something more worthwhile than line PJ's pockets: like cleaning the catbox or sorting all those old single socks in the laundry.

Originally Posted by Aganzir

I don't know what Peter Jackson is trying to achieve by taking away the dwarves' agency - I simply can't understand why he is portraying them as Gandalf's tools. (Help me?) Gandalf on the other hand is given a lot more knowledge and agency than in the book, and frankly, he uses the dwarves.

Especially when in the book, it was Thorin who sought out Gandalf for help.

Originally Posted by Aganzir

Alas even though the dwarves fight the spiders bravely they cannot win; there are too many! Elves to the rescue!

Now come on! Bilbo rescuing the Dwarves in the book alone was such a defining moment in his character! But no: not good or "cinematic" enough for PJ, I guess.

Originally Posted by Aganzir

Tauriel is alright as a character, and her first encounter with her romantic interest Kili is surprisingly okay, even if it's wrong on so many levels to have a romance between an elf and a dwarf.

Hopefully there weren't many PDAs. Those theaters would have some awful messes to clean up.

Originally Posted by Aganzir

After washing ashore, the dwarves run into Bard who is there collecting the empty barrels and also seems to work as a smuggler of sorts, agreeing to take the dwarves to Esgaroth.

Did Bard need money to pay off some old debts?


It seems to me that instead of taking any criticisms of the previous films seriously, and working to address them, Jackson is going out of his way to slap said critics upside the head with his "vision". Your vision is color blind, sir.

[Legate of Amon Lanc]

This is another review, reflecting my personal perception of the film. By the time I'm writing this, I haven't yet read Agan's above (even though we've talked about the movie a lot yesterday), so apologies for some repetition, but you can take it also as a completely different, unaffected perspective. So...

...Let me start with reminding that I actually liked the first Hobbit movie. Yes, yes, I did, strangely and puzzlingly enough, while otherwise I am a strong enemy of the movie adaptations, as can be seen if you look at posts which I have made in this subforum (and there are very few of those). But, I had expected the first Hobbit to be crap, and it wasn't, it was at least as good as FotR, probably even the best of all the PJ movies. Because aside from ridiculous sliding stunts a la Ice Age in the goblin-town, it was pretty faithful to the book. Not atmosphere-wise - but in my opinion, that's what movies cannot be anyway - but in its own right... and knowing PJ. He managed to really do pretty well there, for himself.

Now I must say I had expected the second Hobbit to be worse than the first, in the same pattern as Two Towers was suddenly full of made-up nonsense (Aragorn's death...) and facepalm-worthy things (skating Legolases). In some way, I was right. PJ does exactly the same thing he did in TT: skipping important events (or, skimming over them in a couple of seconds) and filling in his own rubbish. Even though, here actually, and this is the strongest impression I brought back with me from that movie, PJ's invented scenes are actually better than the scenes which are taken from the book. Truly. (Except for a few exceptions, such as the start of dialogue with Smaug, which is pretty much from the book and is quite decent.)

In other words, I believe Peter Jackson has succeeded to show that he is a better writer than Tolkien. At least to an unknowing audience it must seem that way, because the scenes from the books are usually utterly ridiculed.

***

Now, let me make a short comparison of what is good in the movie, and the rest. The parts in the movie which I have enjoyed are:

- The scenes with Master of Lake-Town. There are three in total, the actor is of course brilliant, it is fun, but not in the silly way, there is some nice background, and even though my image of the democracy in Lake-Town was different, it's still nice: this is what I call good, inventive adaptation. Even though these scenes aren't really in the book like that (one of them not at all), it is a good adaptation.

- Actually, the scene where Tauriel and Legolas are talking to Dwarves when locking them up/when they are locked up. The eyebrow-raising romance aside, it is decent, a joke made by Legolas about Gloin's family is funny, and so is the dialogue. These moments have more characterization than 99,9% of the whole movie, or even of the first movie. That's also why Tauriel and Legolas (yes, I will say it again: Tauriel and Legolas) are possibly the two characters I liked the most in the movie. Yes, you heard right. Now think what it says about the rest of the movie.

- Thranduil is also pretty good, even though very, very, very different from the book. But he has a clear personality of semi-baddie, or semi-arrogant posh isolationist, not to mention pretty cruel, and I am fine with that. I am. Much more characterization, and much more entertaining than, say, Thorin, who is mostly just cycling around a few repetitive "epic" quotes with no substance (in the style "I have the ONLY right", "it is our ONLY chance", "this is the ONLY way", and so on), and would have spent the whole movie posing and chewing bubblegum, if he apparently hadn't run out of bubblegum. Still regarding Thranduil, I was not even that much disturbed by some very strange, vague hints that Thranduil is apparently a hero of the First Age, or coming from Gondolin (and so is Legolas, since the swords seem to belong to him by right) - that's maybe not so uncanonical, since originally Thranduil was, obviously, some sort of wannabe-First Age-maybe-Thingol-esque-figure, when Tolkien still wasn't sure what he's actually writing, or that he's writing in the same mythology. Likewise, Thranduil's weird intimidating moment where (my interpretation) an illusion on his face covering wounds made by some Glaurung briefly disappeared, only made me curious about whether there is some deeper idea behind this (if I'm not too demanding of PJ) and whether this will still be explained (one of the reasons for me to go to see third movie, perhaps).

And then a couple of what are rather small moments:

- PJ actually putting there the Bree "chance meeting", even though I enjoyed like the first few seconds of it - of the realization that it is there - and the rest was crap.
- Bilbo looking from top of a tree with butterflies flying around. Very beautiful scene, very well done - shows some geography to the viewer; also, I think for movie purposes, it's perfectly OK that the Dwarves disappeared when Bilbo was up there. Makes sense, good way to cut stuff. If only along with it 99% of the Mirkwood wasn't cut out as well.
- one of the drunk Elven jailers being actually called Galion.
- Bilbo realising (canon!) that he's too late to join his friends in the barrels.
- Lake-town looking nice.
- the Dwarves' tear-eyed entering into Erebor. Well acted.
- some of Smaug's dialogue with Bilbo.
- that's about it.

Worst moments:
Too many. There are not really "moments", you see. It's the whole movie, with some parts of it providing momentary relief - those I named above. Maybe I should rather mention some things which caused my greatest puzzlement. If so, I would shout out these questions:

- WHY bother with Beorn whatsoever, if he's there just to actually BE there (maybe a way to avoid the Tom Bombadil accusation, "Why wasn't Tom in LotR?" This way, PJ can't be accused by "Why wasn't Beorn there?" because he was, but he has like one line, looks like a werewolf from some 1920s movie, and ). Also, WHY to discard a perfect opportunity to explore the Dwarven characters deeper by making them come two by two, like in the book, and even possibly EXPANDING the dialogue (hear that, PJ?), so that we get some more characterization. The best opportunity to make more differentiation between 13 otherwise alike bearded guys, wasted.
- WHY skip ALL of Mirkwood? Aside from the fact that it's ugly and grey and not looking like Mirkwood at all (too light) - but that may be personal visual preference, fine; but WHY reducing to none great, adventurous journey... beats me.
- Why doing the "Dwarven metalurgic miracle aka how to battle the Dragon with technology for ten minutes" (and I half-expected the Dwarves to animate a gold golem there, it really looks like that at certain moment), and then copying the ending of Alien 3... (personal puzzlement, rather for those who know the movie)

***

Final score: minus nine out of ten. I would give minus ten out of ten, but I really liked the Master of Lake-Town. And even his mini-grima, who at least provided him a nice dialogue partner. And, oh! One really, really bright moment in the movie. How happy was I when I heard that one of Bard's kids, the boy, is actually called Bain! Isn't that great, to be happy about such thing in a three-hour movie?

All in all: How would this movie fare better? I believe it could be a very succesful general fantasy movie, if a few changes were made. Actually, pretty simple. Remove all reference to Tolkien and pretend that it is a stand-alone fantasy movie. Removing all reference to Tolkien would be difficult, you say? No, I don't think so. Simply change all the characters' names. If it weren't for that, and the movie's title, I bet many people wouldn't even recognize that it is based on The Hobbit.

That's All, Folks.

[Zigûr]

For whatever reason, we here in Australia get it ridiculously late compared to almost every other country in the world (Boxing Day). Your helpful reviews are making me think I shouldn't see it, and I'm not sure I'll go out of my way, but at the same time, know thine enemy and all that. We should fight evil, not try to ignore it, etc.

[NogrodtheGreat]

Yes! I'm also in Australia and now, after having read several reviews and seen the pandering, simpering praise the movie's gotten on TORN (as if you'd expect any better) I'm reconsidering my Boxing Day. Maybe I'll go to the Ashes Test after all..

[Zigûr]

Originally Posted by NogrodtheGreat

Yes! I'm also in Australia and now, after having read several reviews and seen the pandering, simpering praise the movie's gotten on TORN (as if you'd expect any better) I'm reconsidering my Boxing Day. Maybe I'll go to the Ashes Test after all..

I don't understand TORN. I've occasionally considered joining, but like equivalent major forums for other things it seems to me to be the kind of place where if you don't follow the herd you can expect to a) get ignored (if you're lucky) or more likely b) get metaphorically dragged out into the street and shot by people whose self esteem is so abysmal they can't tolerate people having different opinions to their own for fear that doing so will invalidate and annihilate their own identity.

There seems to be this sort of attitude I'm perceiving in reviews elsewhere that Professor Tolkien for all intents and purposes "didn't do a good enough job" with the source material in terms of description or characterisation and needed Peter Jackson to come along, chuck his life's work into the Hollywood meat grinder and produce something which conformed to the standards of the insidious neoliberal media so that it wouldn't ruffle any feathers.

But I digress...
As much as I dislike the films, I don't understand why we get them so late compared to the rest of the world. There must be some marketing reason, but it still strikes me as odd that Australia gets them substantially later than almost every other country in the world.

[Bêthberry]

Originally Posted by Zigûr

There must be some marketing reason, but it still strikes me as odd that Australia gets them substantially later than almost every other country in the world.

Does that include New Zealand?

[skip spence]

The whole thing does get infuriating eh? Well I'm not really furious, I save that emotion to more worthy occasions, and I haven't seen DoS and doubt that I ever will, but I mean, PJ says that even two 3-hour films isn't enough to tell the story (that is a short novel), but then when the films screen it turns out that most of the story and characters that are in the book feature only nominally, if at all. Which makes 'the story needs three films' a ridiculous argument, unless it is PJ's story, loosely based on The Hobbit, that needs the added screentime, and not JRR Tolkien's The Hobbit. Of course we all know the real reason of why they made it a trilogy, and PJ would say something like that, what else could he say? Still it's sort of depressing eh?

It's been a while since I read the book, but as I remember it my enjoyment really started to go up from about the point when the party hit Mirkwood and that it was pretty excellent from then on. Too bad they seem to have changed those parts the most.

[Alcidas]

Originally Posted by NogrodtheGreat

Yes! I'm also in Australia and now, after having read several reviews and seen the pandering, simpering praise the movie's gotten on TORN (as if you'd expect any better) I'm reconsidering my Boxing Day. Maybe I'll go to the Ashes Test after all..

Much better use of your time IMHO (and I actually liked the first movie). I watched it last night and both my wife and I did not like it. Best to wait for the DVD.

For what its worth, my review here

[Inziladun]

Originally Posted by Alcidas

Much better use of your time IMHO (and I actually liked the first movie). I watched it last night and both my wife and I did not like it. Best to wait for the DVD.

For what its worth, my review here

I know I said I would stay away from here, but I wanted to say I thought your review was good.

There is nothing more unintelligent than the argument that, since a new interpretation is one particular person's take on older material, it is therefore a valid viewpoint and must be accepted as worthwhile. Artistic license cuts both ways, and while a film producer is, in my opinion, entitled to provide his or her own interpretation, any such producer should also be willing to accept criticism, even if it is withering, if his efforts fall short and the end product should lack wit.

That is a problem I've noticed: critics of the films are pointed to the "artistic license" argument, and basically told that it invalidates calls for more fidelity to the source material.