re: Official Hobbit The Desolation of Smaug Review Thread (spoilers)

Glad to see someone else isn't drinking the Jackson Kool-Aid.

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Yes. Why you so mad?

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Not mad. Just wondering how you got to be up on Middle-Earth military troop enlistments and tactics.

Did anyone else find it rather odd that there was a quick shot of two pugs licking up the fish guts? It just seemed way out of place for two common household dogs to be given a two second scene in a movie that is all about fantasy.

You're still mad.

We're just discussing the movie. Somebody else explained it though, thanks.

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The LOTR trilogy and the Hobbit were the only really popular works by Tolkien on Middle Earth. The Simarillion is out there but was probably never intended to be published (done posthumously by his son) and it is fairly unreadable by comparison.

I suppose if someone had the rights and wanted to go full George Lucas they could do another movie based on the original vanquishing of Sauron, the conversion of Gandalf the Grey into Gandalf the White, or the corruption of Sarumon but those would seem like incomplete and unsatisfying efforts compared to what's already been done.

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I have read The Silmarillion twice and loved it. I couldn't put it down. There is so, so much in there that could be made into many different movies. I would be most interested in seeing a movie about the events that occur in Valinor before Feanor leads them back across the sea. I also want to see Feanor and his descendants battle with Morgoth (Sauron was his first lieutenant and definitely inferior), and the story of the men of Beleriand and their meeting with the elves, of the two union of elf and man, of their separate offspring, Earendil and Elwing, who married and produced Elrond and Elros (ancestor of Aragorn) before using the last remaining Simaril to find their way back to Valinor, beg the Valar for forgiveness, and get their help to destroy Morgoth once and for all. Then the story of the rise and fall of Numenor, of their corruption by Sauron, of their rebellion against Valinor. The ancient history of the world Tolkien created is far more interesting to me than the events that occur in the Hobbit and LOTR, though I love that story as well.

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Perhaps. It just seems that the Ring and Sauron are so tied together that Gandalf would have known what to look for.

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I don't think you comprehended the response. The ring was scattered to the winds without any mention for such a long time. Plus, the ring being so powerful and linked with Sauron would make it even more unexpected that it would be hanging out somewhere as harmless as the shire in bilbo's junk. It's pretty incredible if you think about it in context.

Kinda like if you were getting a blanket out of your grandma's closet and came across the ark of the covenant.

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The main thing I noticed was how much more intended for kids

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Yes and no.

There were at least 11 graphic beheadings. I get that Jackson has a sick sense of humor from his early films, but the beheadings and cartoony characters just don't work for me.

People used the "it's for the children" excuse in the first movie and I didn't buy that excuse then. This movie had even more beheadings than the first one.

The silly style just doesn't mesh with the graphic violence. And for the record, I have nothing against the violence, I do have a thing against the shitty cartoony style.

Has anyone mentioned the over the top amount of gold?

With that much gold, gold wouldn't actually have been rare, thus it wouldn't have been worth anything.

Not to mention the RIVER of molten gold and the 100 foot tall gold statue.

Everything was over the top. The more I think about it the more I think this one was even worse than the first one.

He essentially made a caricature of the hobbit.

I do love your point that the book is about greed and yet the splitting of the movie into 3 fracking movies was fueled 100% by greed.

Just saw it

fan of the books
but I have to say,

I'm just burnt out on everything about these films

It's like watching a videogame at times

the cgi gets old

Smaug was fun, but it just couldn't save it for me

I'll wait to catch the third one at home

The Hobbit, as a novel, was much had a much lighter tone than the Lord of the Rings. If you went into these films expecting the dark, dramatic build of Lord of the Rings, you hadn't read The Hobbit or seen any of the promotional material. I just watched this film for the second time since opening night, and I have a few thoughts.

First of all, this movie in particular suffers as a result of it being turned into a movie trilogy. In the Lord of the Rings trilogy, there were 6 books and tons of annexed material to draw from. Each film had two books per film to draw from. The Hobbit (or There and Back Again), on the other hand, has a little over 300 pages for the entire trilogy. The studio's decision to turn it into a trilogy was one that will hurt it in time, even if we're given more screen time with the beloved characters.

Next, I was exhausted after this film both times. There was very little build-up, and it was all action. Most people left An Unexpected Journey wanting more action, and they got that ten-fold in this one. It's convenient since it lead to a lot of filler to allow for the third film to have more substance, but it wasn't exactly what I was hoping for.

Lastly, I tend to catch myself judging the films by the standard the Lord of the Rings film trilogy set. It makes sense that I would want that experience again because there aren't many others that can get me to sit down and watch three 4 hour films in a day. That said, having re-read the Hobbit recently and reading my new 50th anniversary edition of LOTR now, I'm reminded how different they really are. The Hobbit is very much a novel written with a setting of a time of peace. You know that horrible things are being set in motion, but it's a world where Smaug is the scourge of the world. Without diminishing Smaug, he is nowhere near the sheer hatred that Sauron embodies. In Lord of the Rings, Middle-Earth is clearly in a time of war and fear. Once you read that most of it was written during World War II, you can't help but understand the tone of it all. I agree that The Hobbit films go a little over the top sometimes (river scene, for example), but it's fitting in the scope of the novel itself. It's just a bit more whimsical and over the top. It's also a lot less refined. Tolkien's writing is clearly better and his world more envisioned by the time he'd written the Lord of the Rings. I think that there are a ton of cheesy moments, but I can't say that it's too far off of The Hobbit. As several people have stated, there are moments where the film truly depicts these places exactly as one might have imagined, such as Lake-town. Overall, I've enjoyed the films, even if this one is clearly suffering from being split into two films to give Smaug's downfall and the Battle of Five Armies its own film. I will say that the last one is set up to truly deliver on a grand scale. I'm holding out hope that it'll redeem the trilogy for a lot of people.

Also, I've seen at least one comment about Orlando Bloom being brought in. I'd have been a bit disturbed if Orlando Bloom wasn't brought in to play Legolas again. He was a major part of the LOTR film trilogy and is still young enough to play to role. As an elf, he wouldn't have aged much, if at all, between the two periods, and it'd make little sense to change unless he was unwilling to pick up the role.