Reposting what I posted in the other thread here since I didn't know this thread existed:
k. So my crew was split evenly on whether the 2nd or the 3rd movie is the worst. I feel like the CGI gets worse with each one, but I don't necessarily count that against the movie. My background: I read The Hobbit book when I was little and enjoyed it, loved the animated movie, loved the PJ LOTR movies, did not get past the first chapter of the first LOTR book.
Shout-out to the heavy breathing nerd behind me that bore the distinct unshowered smell of sour nacho cheese and rasped inane comments like what the power level of each color of wizard is. Bear in mind my seat location was perfect for viewing the film, but at the cost of having this guy behind me for 8 hours.
Here are my thoughts fresh off the fryer:
Are videogames becoming more like movies or are movies becoming more like videogames? This is a question that occurred to me more than once watching this film. Pretend the Helm's Deep or Gondor fights were a whole movie and that's pretty much TBOTFA for you. If you want to watch lots of CGI things fight each other and Legolas perform increasingly fantastical CGI stunts then this is the movie for you. Other reasons you may want to watch this movie:
-To see Tauriel's character evolve in pretty much the worst direction possible.
-To see random locations and creatures from the books(?) as visualized by PJ's concept artists. (I don't remember The Hobbit taking place on Middle-Arrakis.)
-To see Galadriel turn blue again. Have I mentioned that depicting powerful women as having "bursts" of extreme power followed by faint spells is an annoying trope. PS those other guys in G-Crew also kick some ass, but it's kind of like watching Yoda "kick ass" in the Star Wars prequels, aka really weird that a sorcerer goes for staff-jitsu over I don't know calling down a lightning bolt and setting everything on fire.
-To see a bear paratrooper.
-If you are tired of "Bombur is fat" humor and instead want to see "man dresses in women's clothing" humor.
-If you are deeply invested in the fate of the unibrow not-Wormtongue assistant to Laketown's master from the last movie.
Smaug dies in the first ~10 minutes so you don't have to worry about his death throes encroaching on the rest of the film's substance. His death scene is also pretty cool looking imho. All the leaders of the various armies now have an animal mount to represent them, you know like how Thranduil has his elk, Azog has his white warg, Bard has his thrush-not-appearing-in-this-film. I will let you guess what Thorin's animal ends up being. There are several "hey did you know this movie connects to Lord of the Rings" moments, which didn't really add anything to my experience. Sample paraphrase from one of these: "The rangers call him Strider. I will let you find out his real name for yourself."
So you know that idea "show don't tell". This somehow applies even to TBOTFA's emotional climaxes despite that most of them are showing you close-ups of the climaxing character's (sorry) face. There is about 1.5 minutes of Thorin staring into a pool of bad CGI gold while quotes from the previous movies play. In this case I think "show don't tell" means these emotional moments deserved scenarios/full scenes involving interactions with other characters over close-ups and overlayed dialogue. There are two moments that gave me serious chills at the beginning of the film: 1) "Welcome my sister's sons, to the kingdom of Erebor", beautifully spoken line combined with a wide shot of Thorin raising his arms like a wraith (or a dragon) over his piles of gold, 2) When a madness-addled Thorin confronts Bilbo about something in his hand, and when Bilbo reveals it is only an acorn, you visibly see Thorin return to his old self, smiling bright as day...until a few moments later, when he's informed of guests to his keep. The play of emotions across Thorin's face was wonderful and terrifying. Other than those, the film's attempts at emotional contact with the audience fell flat on me, with a possible exception of Bilbo's "look the eagles have come" moment, but YMMV, and to alter something said in the film, "death is cheap".
I don't feel Thorin and Bilbo's relationship got enough expansion on the material from the first film even with both the second and third films put together, and they're the only two characters I think anyone cares about in an emotional investment sense. Thorin's descent is cheapened, and the film attempts to resurrect him into an Aragorn-style hero, but because the scene in which this happens is so poorly done it feels just as abrupt as his original hair-trigger change in DOS. IIRC the book does not offer much leeway in its depiction of Thorin, but since most of the events in the film were made up for the sake of having a third movie anyway, I feel it could have safely deviated on the matter.
Overall pretty entertaining, but maybe not something I feel compelled to watch in the theater a second time.
PS Tip for any Hollywood producers reading this thread: having contacts that don't allow the actor's pupils to naturally constrict and dilate makes them look weird.
k. So my crew was split evenly on whether the 2nd or the 3rd movie is the worst. I feel like the CGI gets worse with each one, but I don't necessarily count that against the movie. My background: I read The Hobbit book when I was little and enjoyed it, loved the animated movie, loved the PJ LOTR movies, did not get past the first chapter of the first LOTR book.
Shout-out to the heavy breathing nerd behind me that bore the distinct unshowered smell of sour nacho cheese and rasped inane comments like what the power level of each color of wizard is. Bear in mind my seat location was perfect for viewing the film, but at the cost of having this guy behind me for 8 hours.
Here are my thoughts fresh off the fryer:
Are videogames becoming more like movies or are movies becoming more like videogames? This is a question that occurred to me more than once watching this film. Pretend the Helm's Deep or Gondor fights were a whole movie and that's pretty much TBOTFA for you. If you want to watch lots of CGI things fight each other and Legolas perform increasingly fantastical CGI stunts then this is the movie for you. Other reasons you may want to watch this movie:
-To see Tauriel's character evolve in pretty much the worst direction possible.
-To see random locations and creatures from the books(?) as visualized by PJ's concept artists. (I don't remember The Hobbit taking place on Middle-Arrakis.)
-To see Galadriel turn blue again. Have I mentioned that depicting powerful women as having "bursts" of extreme power followed by faint spells is an annoying trope. PS those other guys in G-Crew also kick some ass, but it's kind of like watching Yoda "kick ass" in the Star Wars prequels, aka really weird that a sorcerer goes for staff-jitsu over I don't know calling down a lightning bolt and setting everything on fire.
-To see a bear paratrooper.
-If you are tired of "Bombur is fat" humor and instead want to see "man dresses in women's clothing" humor.
-If you are deeply invested in the fate of the unibrow not-Wormtongue assistant to Laketown's master from the last movie.
Smaug dies in the first ~10 minutes so you don't have to worry about his death throes encroaching on the rest of the film's substance. His death scene is also pretty cool looking imho. All the leaders of the various armies now have an animal mount to represent them, you know like how Thranduil has his elk, Azog has his white warg, Bard has his thrush-not-appearing-in-this-film. I will let you guess what Thorin's animal ends up being. There are several "hey did you know this movie connects to Lord of the Rings" moments, which didn't really add anything to my experience. Sample paraphrase from one of these: "The rangers call him Strider. I will let you find out his real name for yourself."
So you know that idea "show don't tell". This somehow applies even to TBOTFA's emotional climaxes despite that most of them are showing you close-ups of the climaxing character's (sorry) face. There is about 1.5 minutes of Thorin staring into a pool of bad CGI gold while quotes from the previous movies play. In this case I think "show don't tell" means these emotional moments deserved scenarios/full scenes involving interactions with other characters over close-ups and overlayed dialogue. There are two moments that gave me serious chills at the beginning of the film: 1) "Welcome my sister's sons, to the kingdom of Erebor", beautifully spoken line combined with a wide shot of Thorin raising his arms like a wraith (or a dragon) over his piles of gold, 2) When a madness-addled Thorin confronts Bilbo about something in his hand, and when Bilbo reveals it is only an acorn, you visibly see Thorin return to his old self, smiling bright as day...until a few moments later, when he's informed of guests to his keep. The play of emotions across Thorin's face was wonderful and terrifying. Other than those, the film's attempts at emotional contact with the audience fell flat on me, with a possible exception of Bilbo's "look the eagles have come" moment, but YMMV, and to alter something said in the film, "death is cheap".
I don't feel Thorin and Bilbo's relationship got enough expansion on the material from the first film even with both the second and third films put together, and they're the only two characters I think anyone cares about in an emotional investment sense. Thorin's descent is cheapened, and the film attempts to resurrect him into an Aragorn-style hero, but because the scene in which this happens is so poorly done it feels just as abrupt as his original hair-trigger change in DOS. IIRC the book does not offer much leeway in its depiction of Thorin, but since most of the events in the film were made up for the sake of having a third movie anyway, I feel it could have safely deviated on the matter.
Overall pretty entertaining, but maybe not something I feel compelled to watch in the theater a second time.
PS Tip for any Hollywood producers reading this thread: having contacts that don't allow the actor's pupils to naturally constrict and dilate makes them look weird.
It's been so long since I read the book, I thought I remembered some of the dwarves died, but I couldn't remember who.