The Desolation

[Aganzir]

Originally Posted by Boromir88

Stories need to have conflicts and problems, and those conflicts get resolved. There needs to be some kind of story arc.

True. Jackson is forcing his story, and everything - characters, logic, realism - has to bend in order to accommodate the plot. It virtually feels like they don't care; you know when a big corporation with a good reputation can afford to sell lower class products for the same price because they trust people will buy anyway? That's what Jackson, Boyens and Walsh are doing here.

This review on TOR is one of the best I've seen (best as in most accurate), and there's one thing the writer Ostadan says that I'd like to emphasise:

As in the previous film, Jackson’s ability to convey (or understand) matters of time and distance is extremely limited, and sometimes distracting; we are not even given visual cues to the changing seasons until it is suddenly winter in Laketown (Thranduil’s crown of fall leaves from the book does not appear here). The tag-team Orc handoff is one example of time compression; Gandalf’s ride to the ‘High Fells of Rhudaur’ (presumably back across the Misty Mountains) and then back again to Dol Guldur is another. I hope Gandalf’s horse got home to Beorn OK; I think the wizards are riding the bunny sled back from the high fells. Expect the arrival of Dain and other dwarves to be similarly mystery-timed in the next film.

That's part of the confusion. There's a constant sense of hurry, but the passing of time and distance isn't described at all. In LOTR we got huge visuals, panorama shots of the landscape, some scenes dedicated to moving. Here we just don't know when things are happening and how long they take, and that problem is present from the very first scene all the way to the end. I remember sitting there with thoughts such as 'How long does this take? It should be longer than that, but why are they not showing it? What's going on? When?' running through the back of my mind.

[Kuruharan]

Originally Posted by Aganzir

This review on TOR is one of the best I've seen (best as in most accurate), and there's one thing the writer Ostadan says that I'd like to emphasise:

Things must be bad if people on TORN are finally starting to turn on Jackson.

I found this comment extremely biting:

So, there is no point to reviewing this film as an adaptation. That’s not the movie that’s there, disappointing as that may be.

Edit: I also derived a certain morbid sense of amusement from Ostadan's specific predictions of the what, how, and why certain things aren't going to work in the third movie.

[Hookbill the Goomba]

The first Hobbit film was fairly enjoyable for me; I've watched it several times and come away thinking that the additional scenes and whatnot can very easily be overlooked and even cut if you had the patience to sit down and recut the film. What was from the book was fairly passable and the visuals were neat.

Not so with this second installment.
Book scenes are few and far between, twisted and ravaged in ways that made my head spin. It would be almost impossible to cut it down to anything even remotely resembling an accurate adaptation.

Now, I have come to expect very little from these films in terms of accuracy, but I did genuinely enjoy the Lord of the Rings adaptations, despite their flaws. I enjoyed them for pure entertainment and visual interests, as well as the great musical score. The Desolation of Smaug, however, holds none of those pleasures for me. The liberties are too vast, too overshadowing. With the changes in the LotR films, one could still see a lot of the main thrust of the story, but here the focus is very much on the new material.
I am a fan of Sylvester McCoy and Radagast, but even his brief appearance didn't leave me smiling.
The orcs hunting the dwarves really got on my wick. It feels like forced peril. Whenever things might have been slowing down enough for the characters to get some time together, OH NO ORCS!

The constant, unending orc deaths were frustrating. In the Lord of the Rings there were at least a few scenes where one got the impression that it was a difficult and not altogether throwaway act. But now, orcs fall like flies, Legolas and Tauriel just hop, skip and jump their way through a barrage of half naked bodies.

Within the film there is what I think is the perfect metaphor. A giant, golden statue that quickly falls to pieces because it cannot maintain its structural integrity. A hideously bloated budget has opened the floodgates onto gargantuan detours, set pieces designed to show off just what they can do with CGI these days.

Now, there were a few little details I was glad to see and hear.
The spiders seemed to be whispering 'Attacop' at one point (though why is a mystery as it is supposed to be an insult... Unless they are insulting one another??).
Balin being the only dwarf to follow Bilbo down the secret tunnel. My love for Balin grows every day and he is probably the best adaptation in these films so far.
The occasional book line in the Smaug/Bilbo debate was pleasant, though often buried beneath an avalanche of new material. Like the Arcenstone hidden under gold coins, Tolkien's words are lost under the promise of mounting wealth for the studios, I imagine in my more cynical moments.
But that's the thing. The inaccuracies and liberties take center stage so much that Tolkien is a best a cameo in this film. So when a vaguely accurate moment arises it gives you a little jolt. At least, that was the case for me up until now. In this film I felt like the sheer tidal wave of new stuff was too much.

I am going to watch it again, most likely, now knowing what to expect. I can then enjoy the bits I liked a bit more. Thranduil being hilariously over the top and fabulous. Erebor looking gorgeous. Lake Town looking nice. Richard Armatage looking majestic. Just go into it with completely shallow intentions. Eru knows the film makers seem to have.

[Boromir88]

Now, I have come to expect very little from these films in terms of accuracy, but I did genuinely enjoy the Lord of the Rings adaptations, despite their flaws. I enjoyed them for pure entertainment and visual interests, as well as the great musical score. The Desolation of Smaug, however, holds none of those pleasures for me.~Hookbill

You know what, speaking about the musical score, I never paid much attention to it except for the recycled Minas Morgul theme anytime Gandalf stumbles into evil places or Bilbo fiddles the ring. And that's a problem.

I mean for the previous trilogy to give us a great score like with Rohan's theme, or the company travelling through Moria, or Minas Tirith's theme, or Lothlorien's....there's nothing about the music in Desolation of Smaug that stands out. Except, as I said above the recycled "there's evil moving near by" music and the super jarring song at the end of the film during the credits. I bolted out of the theater, that song just sounded really out of place.

[Bêthberry]

It really is a pity they have not gone with a new score, as Shore's music in the first trilogy was superb.

[Galadriel55]

I am quite behind the times at the moment, and I didn't even realize the movie is out. I wasn't planning on seeing it anyhow, at least anytime soon or without some social event attached to it, so I only briefly skimmed the thread. Legate's post title caught my eye, and I decided I'd rather not read the rest - or watch the movie.

[Lalwendë]

Iconoclastic. That's how it's best described in one word. Jackson has taken Tolkien's text and thrown it into the Cracks of Doom and used what was spat back out. This is the one film of all Jackson's adapts that you will love or hate. It has new characters and a new storyline and is thoroughly rip-roaring and grown up; it's everything I should despise but it was the best one since Fellowship.

I went to Sheffield IMAX early to bag my favourite seats in front of Europe's biggest screen (allegedly). Some had got there even earlier. It was full of geeks, and it got rammed full of even more geeks. The rest of the screenings were sold out and there was a queue outside camping (not in the Vicious way) in the corridors. I spent the first 5-10 minutes feeling a sense of outrage that this was not The Hobbit. And then had a word with myself that maybe I ought to forget I'd ever read the book and suspend reality as t'were. That was the right thing to do. If you make a habit of watching comic book films you will know that you need to do this quite often - remember the rewrite of Superman just this summer? Forget that Superman just doesn't act like this and enjoy the ride.

So, I just watched as though this was virgin territory. It's not at all a good film of Tolkien's text. However, it is a very good film. 8/10. It is mostly coherent, though parts get a bit baggy and overlong. It has outstanding performances - all of them. The characterisation is perfect The 'look' is beautiful. It has interesting detail thrown in. And because Jackson ripped up his copy of The Hobbit, it is full of surprises and you will get spoilers if you read about it. They aren't just spoilers in the sense of 'what have they done with x', but real spoilers.

I got the strong impression that with this film, Jackson simply decided he was never going to make us hardcore fans happy, no matter how faithful he tried to be, so he was just going to do his own thing in the quest for internal coherence. I kind of hope that Steven Moffat never, ever realises this and does the same thing to Doctor Who. Though what Jackson has done to The Hobbit is much the same as what would happen if Moffat suddenly cast a woman as the Doctor. He has quite simply turned the whole thing upside down. you will love it or hate it. It's revisionist. It's not The Hobbit. But it is a good film.

Now to get granular...the single most outstanding feature was Smaug. I was not overly keen on Cumberbaps voice interpretation though it wasn't terrible. But the CGI was awesome. That WAS Smaug. He looked perfect. There's something that happens at the end to him before he breaks free and it is simply beautiful cinema. The created storyline of the caper under the Mountain is a bit hokey and too long, but I didn't mind it because it meant More Smaug. And sorry to be spoilery, but we will have him in the final film, which I rather like because for the past 31 years I have always felt the Hobbit went downhill rapidly once Smaug was despatched. The Battle of Five Armies was always something I found a little tedious.

There were good set piece scenes such as the spiders in Mirkwood which was unpleasant. I also commend the Mirkwood scenes in general as wonderfully trippy. They must have used some Alan Lee designs for this part, too. It wasn't my internal Mirkwood, and it was the wrong story, but it was a bonkers one I really enjoyed. The Beorn scenes were simply not long enough, though what we saw was good, including some large bees I liked. And the barrel escape was enjoyable.

About Tauriel - I was dreading this, really not looking forward to it at all in an almost melodramatic fashion. Now I eat my words. Taken in the context of the new story Jackson created, she worked and was not a Mary Sue. I failed to see a 'love triangle' going on, rather that it was an echo of what Gimli loved about Galadriel. There was a puzzling use of walnuts as a pillow though. Was this some kind of smutty in joke? And where a red haired Silvan Elf came from...what exactly had Maedhros been up to?

Moving on from Tauriel of course brings me to Thranduil, who was superbly interpreted. Creepy, imperious, a bit horrible. Lee Pace ate up the celluloid every time he appeared. I detected a little bit of Hiddleston's Loki about his part, a little bit of Lucius Malfoy, and he beat Hugo Weaving's Elrond into a cocked hat (or tiara...). Stephen Fry was alright too; not his biggest fan as he's so ubiquitous and I'm tired of him, but he was good. I liked the choice of name for his greasy Grima-like assistant and that namecheck will please a small boy I know who has talked about little else than The Hobbit for days (but who had to go to school today, muahaha). Some more acting nods - Luke Evans and Bard's little family (great acting from the girls); Martin Freeman pulling an even better Bilbo this time around; and Orlando Bloom much more mature and experienced as an actor. The Lake Town populace are great, too.

I also need to work out from the conversation in Bree how much, exactly, was lifted from Unfinished Tales. I bet the Estate have been pulling their hair out. I quite liked this because it was bordering on naughty creative thievery.

Aside from this film not really being The Hobbit, there were other errors, though this time ones which could not be overlooked by suspending my expectations and prior knowledge. There is not enough of that trippy Mirkwood and no Bombur falling in the stream. There is a Gandalf side story which just did not work for me and I think was there purely to have more Gandy screen time. With repeat viewings I suspect I will get more narked at this as it was close to a bit of a hot mess. The only good bit of that was Gandy's meeting with Rrrrradagast.

And there are far too many Orcs again. We didn't need them, the Dragon to end all Dragons is more than enough Big Bad for one film!

Wasn't so struck on the end titles song, though whether that was more to do with my dislike of Ed Sheeran or my sore, stiff bum, I don't know.

Let's be frank, Tolkien will be rolling in his grave tonight. And if that thought disturbs you, then don't go and watch it. However, while Tolkien's story may have been stripped out, Tolkien's characters are there, very much big and bold and perfectly done. If you want to see them all in a story that's different, then fill yer boots.

[Mithalwen]

Originally Posted by Kuruharan

Things must be bad if people on TORN are finally starting to turn on Jackson.

I found this comment extremely biting:



Edit: I also derived a certain morbid sense of amusement from Ostadan's specific predictions of the what, how, and why certain things aren't going to work in the third movie.

Anyone else worried about Ostadan's safety given that ToRN on ths comments seems to be a pesonality cult about to enter into a twinning arrangement with North Korea I fear he may have paid the ultimate price for not clapping enthusiastically enough.

[Kuruharan]

Originally Posted by Mithalwen

Anyone else worried about Ostadan's safety given that ToRN on ths comments seems to be a pesonality cult about to enter into a twinning arrangement with North Korea I fear he may have paid the ultimate price for not clapping enthusiastically enough.

I did notice that Ostadan touched up the ending to his review so that it was rather at odds with the tone of his review as a whole.

[Bêthberry]

Another review in, The Hobbit2 Is Bad Fan Fiction

There are two obvious ways a director can go wrong in adapting a work with a large and ardent pre-existing fan base. He (or she) can feel so constrained by expectations that he makes his adaptation too literal, a book-on-film. Or he can get carried away riffing on the original story, pulling in references from related works and assuming that fans’ appetites for additional material are, for all intents and purposes, insatiable.

As a general rule, I think the former temptation, over-fidelity, is the greater hazard. But Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug is proof that when you go the other way—really, really far the other way—the result can be genuinely egregious.

[William Cloud Hicklin]

Originally Posted by Kuruharan

Things must be bad if people on TORN are finally starting to turn on Jackson.

I found this comment extremely biting:



Edit: I also derived a certain morbid sense of amusement from Ostadan's specific predictions of the what, how, and why certain things aren't going to work in the third movie.

I venture that Ostadan will be banned from TORN shortly. Or, given that TORN takes a similar attitude toward dissent as does North Korea, perhaps executed by mortar shell.

[William Cloud Hicklin]

On anoter note, this thought came into my mind after watching Puccini’s Turandot the other day. The story is just several paragraphs long, there’s hardly any character development, the musical themes are repetitive and the whole thing lasts about 2,5 hours. Yet no-one seemed to complain that the opera was dragged out. I thought it was quite excellent, actually, but maybe I’m just easily entertained.

Nobody goes to the opera for the plot (well, except Wagner maybe). Opera is basically highbrow musical revue: performance numbers stitched together with a threadbare 'plot', plus costumes.

And TH: DOS is sort of a "CGI opera", a collection of f/x setpieces there merely for their own sake, with a threadbare plot made of 10% Tolkien and 90% PBJ wibble just to hold the Beheading Ballets together- like a Kill Bill, except without Tarantino's wit.

Or really, the proper comparison is porn, which exists only to present sex scenes with the barest pretense of a plot to string the bonking on, said bonking being the whole reason for the enterprise's existence. What DOS actually is is Violence Porn, just like a cheap kung-fu movie with a bigger budget.

[Nerwen]

Originally Posted by William Cloud Hicklin

Nobody goes to the opera for the plot (well, except Wagner maybe). Opera is basically highbrow musical revue: performance numbers stitched together with a threadbare 'plot', plus costumes.

No offence to spawn, but my feeling is that if you need to compare a film to an opera (particularly that one) in order defend its pacing, plot and characterisation... well, there probably is something wrong with it in those areas. On a similar note (hey!) somebody else a while back pointed out that the entire running time of the completed trilogy would be actually quite concise if it were a television serial. I mean– what happened to the “different mediums” argument?

–But please, WCH, lose the porn-comparison. You know it’ll just start a flame-war.

[Alcidas]

Originally Posted by Nerwen

–But please, WCH, lose the porn-comparison. You know it’ll just start a flame-war.

Still, you must admit that the porn-comparison is just spot-on

[Michael Murry]

Originally Posted by William Cloud Hicklin

Nobody goes to the opera for the plot (well, except Wagner maybe). Opera is basically highbrow musical revue: performance numbers stitched together with a threadbare 'plot', plus costumes.

And TH: DOS is sort of a "CGI opera", a collection of f/x setpieces there merely for their own sake, with a threadbare plot made of 10% Tolkien and 90% PBJ wibble just to hold the Beheading Ballets together- like a Kill Bill, except without Tarantino's wit.

Or really, the proper comparison is porn, which exists only to present sex scenes with the barest pretense of a plot to string the bonking on, said bonking being the whole reason for the enterprise's existence. What DOS actually is is Violence Porn, just like a cheap kung-fu movie with a bigger budget.

Thank you for those excellent -- priceless, actually -- analogies: "Beheading Ballets," "Kill Bilbo," "CGI opera," "Violence Porn," and "cheap kung-fu movie," each -- or all together -- with a bigger budget. Well and succinctly done.

[dancing spawn of ungoliant]

Originally Posted by William Cloud Hicklin

Nobody goes to the opera for the plot (well, except Wagner maybe).

Well, after TT, I haven't gone to watch PJ's movies for the plot either. The story can be found in the books, after all, but what the books are missing are things like landscapes, costume design, score, hearing the characters talk... So WCH's term CGI opera is quite good actually, but I don't find it to be an altogether negative description.

Anyway, I can see that even though there were some parts that people generally liked in the film, the bad things weigh more in the debate, so I'm going to leave it at that.

[Juicy-Sweet]

It wasnt absolutely terrible as the first one. It was clear from me it would be bad when I heard The Hobbit would be turned into three movies - I think it was allright apart from a few things. I agree with too Little Mirkwood (weird since he has been struggling to fill the 3 hours) and too Little Beorn.

The worst things are though

1: Kili gets shot by a Morgul Blade. This is so un-cannon it makes me cringe. First, Morgul blades (and arrows) are special special weapons, random orc footies just shouldn't have them - it's WRONG WRONG WRONG.

Kili seems to be absolutely fine at first. WRONG! He should fall immediately into a stupor and turn into a ghost within hours.

Tauriel cures him. NO NO NO she is a forest elf warrior, no special skills and all. In LoTR I think it is stated that only Elrond is able to cure such a wound.

The Morgul Blade has been degraded from a fearsome rare weapon to standard orc equipment. Sigh.

2: The Kili-Tauriel romance just sort of perverse and weird to me Like if Boromir fell in love with a hobbit girl lol.

Both things seemed completely unnecessary to me.

The orc could just have said "a poisoned arrow" and it would have been fine for the plot. It's weird PJ unnecessarily introduces stuff that doesn't even make sense as compared with his LOTR movies. (Where the Morgul blade is "special" as well.)

And the romance would work so much better between Tauriel and Bard, I accept he has to be one, Holywood and all + it was necessary to introduce a female character and given the plotline, it had to be an elf as the first people they meet are elves.

But WHY pick a DWARF as a romantic character when you have a character with a lot of potential as a romantic character. (His wife is dead, he has a dangerous slant to him, and one day he will be king.) Seeing he made so many changes already, it wouldnt have bothered him if Bard went to tye Mirkwood elves residence (not sure of it's name in fact). Maybe they had had a good eye to each other for years etc.

Thus, I find it weird that of the choices between a quite good romantic liasion and a weird one, PJ picks the weird one. Bad script IMO:

The walnut pillow - we talked about it even during the movie. It seems they just put Kili on some table, and there happened to be a bowl of walnuts on it. It looked weird visually, like they purposely put his head on a pile of walnuts so I dont get Again why PJ did that - but there's nothing wrong with it, it's just a bit weird

[Juicy-Sweet]

Oh and the whole "let's cook Smaug in melted gold, this scene worked well in Terminator II and Alien III" come on!


Smaug should be this larger-than-life adversary that you can't outrun and dodge from. Several people said PJ made it more gloomy; I think the playing-cat-and-mouse with Smaug scenes heavily reduced the gloominess. The dragon seemed sort of inept in the end - I got the impression Smaug just gave up on killing the dwarves and left to attack a target he (she?) thought he (she?) could handle.

[Alcidas]

Originally Posted by William Cloud Hicklin

I venture that Ostadan will be banned from TORN shortly. Or, given that TORN takes a similar attitude toward dissent as does North Korea, perhaps executed by mortar shell.

Not bloody likely.

This film is so bad that even the folks over at The One Ring are griping about it. Here are some examples

"While I know the makers will no doubt earn billions of dollars from DoS and will be laughing all the way to the bank as it were, (and that makes me a little ill I suppose) I got to believe that down the road with time DoS will be known as the pile of nonsense and fecal material that it in fact it is. "

"I finally know what it is to be a Purist after being a huge fan of the LOTR movies and even "The Unexpected Journey". I walked out of DoS stunned in a bad way. ... I don't know what happened, suddenly I've found myself untethered from the PJ's Tolkienverse with this film and I hate feeling this way."