Hobbit Movie -- I've seen it! [open spoilers]

Cafe Society
161

Actually, I liked that he was still all somber and ominous and snarky in this installment. Husband and I were talking about that scene later on, and he was going “wait, I thought he was still good then?” and yes, he was still “good” at the time of the Necromancer.

Husband: “Ahh, he was *already *a dick. Makes perfect sense now.”

And really, it does. Because he WAS a huge dick. He was stubborn, thought very highly of himself and his opinions (and very lowly of everyone else and their opinions) and generally acted like a stiffnecked knowitall. That’s the perfect type of personality for Sauron to corrupt, you know? That type of Saruman is *never *going to fact-check the palantir with Gandalf or with the elves, because he’s the smartest and best of the istari, and so what possible help could the others be?

And if we’re going by “portrayed as ominous and sinister” look at Galadriel - they practically tailor-made her scenes in LoTR to make her look like a freaky alien mind-reading super-powerful being who is inches from being the elf-queen version of the Ringwraiths! And she’s unambiguously one of the good guys. I like that the good guys aren’t friendly and approachable by the little people the way Gandalf is - it makes Gandalf seem more sensible and more friendly by comparison, and makes the reality of these beings as being way old and way remote to short human lives as much more understandable to the audience. Try to look at Saruman that way, and I think you might like his characterization better.

162

I also noticed the lack of blood, or, rather, didn’t, and so assumed it was just one of those superficial wounds that don’t bleed for a second after you slice yourself. That, or it was a super duper paper cut that actually did hurt the Goblin King due to the magic of the blade.

However much the movie lacks in actual gore, it makes back in the “not quite dead” Orc that Gollum drags back. If that scene were as cartoony as people accuse the rest of the movie of being, it would be one whack and he’s really dead. But no, he has to pummel him several times, all while the orc is still mostly conscious, before he dies. That’s pretty dark.

163

I thought the Goblin King’s death was actually fairly gruesome - definitely more than a papercut. Gandalf (Thorin?) sliced into about six inches of adipose tissue. He wasn’t gutted because he was so huge that he still had about another half foot before getting to the guts, but I still winced when his belly split open.

Other than that moment, though, it was a pretty tame movie as far as violence goes.

164

Loved it. Will happily concede all the purists’ points about divergences from canon and so on, and I sympathize if they did really take you out of the movie or disappoint you. But for my own part I can’t really care because I JUST. LOVED. IT.

From the first shot of Hobbiton in Fellowship of the Rings, Jackson’s world has simply somehow been Middle-Earth to me. I make no aesthetic or critical arguments in favor of that response, it’s just what my response was. Anything Peter Jackson wants to show me in Middle-Earth I will happily watch and then go back and watch it again, because I’ve been fascinated by Tolkien’s whole story since childhood and being able to actually see it happening is a never-failing thrill.

There are moments and sequences and even whole characters that even I can recognize are imperfect in their realization of the books’ universe. But to me, that’s no more than the scratchy background on an old Enrico Caruso recording: yes, it’s a bit irritating but listening to Caruso is still thrilling and glorious, and so is watching Middle-Earth.

And I could go on about it for hours but need to go work instead, so just one quick observation: my “click” moment when I settled into the confident feeling that yes, I’m back in Middle-Earth and can’t wait to see what happens next came in the opening sequence when the little Dale girl is watching her dolly burn. Ahh.

165

Dumb questions:

The Dwarf King, did he have one of the 3 rings given to dwarves? Because when they were talking about his obsession with gold, it made me remember Sauron’s rings making the dwarves greedy.

What was that shiny stone they found? Seemed important.

I recognized the orcish powwow about failing to capture the dwarves took place on Weathertop (right?)

I liked the film, but the problem was I compared it to FotR which was an amazing film. That movie had a lot of suspense and amazing visuals. This movie was more of the same, but no real “Holy shit!” :eek: moments for me. The movie dragged in the beginning, but picked up to the point that when they ended it at Erebor my wife and I were like, “BUT THEY JUST GOT THERE!”

I actually liked the action scenes, they were very kinetic and reminded me of watching a platform game. The dwarves, to me, seemed suitably “dwarfy” to me- they were loud, clumsy, always tumbling and yelling, just great balls of beards, axes, and swear words. I liked how much more we get to see of the dwarves in this movie. In the LotR movies, all we really get is Gimli and a deserted dwarf colony, here we at least see them as a group, their kingdom, leaders, and battles. In LotR, a bunch of freakin tree shepards got more footage of collective badassness then dwarves did.

166

:eek: Oh my lapine god. I’m embarrassed to admit this, but I hadn’t realized that the word was “Rhosgobel” from the books and vaguely thought that it was some made-up Jackson-Westron rabbit breed name that was supposed to distantly suggest “rascally”.

:o I am covered with rue.

167

Yup, at least the books say that Thror (Thorin’s granddad, who was reigning when Smaug attacked) gave his Dwarf-Ring of Power to his son Thrain when he went off to Moria. Sauron seized the ring back from Thrain under torture in Dol Guldur.

The Arkenstone, a very valuable gem mined from the heart of Erebor itself: not sure if it’s outright magical or just purdy, though.

168

I am now stuck with a brainworm where the orc chieftain Azog on his white warg is shaking a spear in exasperation and exclaiming “Oooo, those wascally wabbits!”

Somebody please kill me.

169

at least he didn’t stand up and say

“Its Wabbit Season”

170

Nit: there were seven rings made for the dwarves. Sauron recovered a total of three (including the one he took from Thrain); Gandalf believed that dragons had destroyed the other four.

171

“Orc season!”
“Wabbit season!”
“Orc season!”
“Wabbit season!”
“Wabbit season!”
“Orc season!”
bang!

172

And there’s no goddamn way that many goblins could be sustained by that mountain ecosystem!

173

For you poor folks who are less familiar with the Martin Freeman ouvre, I present his appearance on awesome pop quiz Never Mind the Buzzcocks, in which gentle mockery is made of his despondent face.

174

I don’t think that would have been Weathertop. There should have been no orcs anywhere near as far west of the Misty Mountains as that. But then, Jackson did mess with the story a lot, so who knows. The whole business of Azog leading a marauding band of Warg-riders west of the Mountains is pure Jackson invention… sixty years later, in LotR, Tolkien has Gandalf stunned by the fact that “the Wargs have come west of the Mountains”. (Not to mention the fact that Azog was slain long before Bilbo and Thorin ever met.)

175

So, Middle-Earth lover who nonetheless hasn’t read The Hobbit since about 1981 or so reporting in.

I really loved it. But then, You could spend three hours just exploring the Shire and I’d be right there enjoying every minute of it, so pacing? Not really an issue for me.

I saw the lower-frame-rate 3D version, so there was a lot of visual confusion whenever the camera panned across a scene. A little distracting, and I look forward to watching again in the hi-def version.

Clockwork: I’m soooooo glad someone else saw the Rock-em Sock-em Robots, because I’m pretty sure I was the only person in the insanely packed movie theater who giggled remorselessly throughout that scene.

For the first 10-15 hours after seeing it the only things I could remember were the guano in Radagasts hair and the Orc-King’s goiter (seriously, that goiter should have been listed in the credits!). I realize they were meant to be campy, but I think the director allowed those elements to take over the scenes to an inappropriate extent. There comes a time to ask even the most talented folks to dial it down a bit, and those make-up designers needed an elbow to the ribs IMHO. I never really felt the dwarves peril like I did in the book.

The changes to the troll scene were inexplicable, unnecessary and innappropriate.

I don’t remember Thorin as the full-on hero type in the book. He was just this grumpy leader guy with a chip on his shoulder. But then I was a young colleen uninterested in battle scenes at the time I read it. I think it helped the story though, and besides: Hubba hubba!

Bilbo going after the warg was a bit much - it rushed his character into a personality turn that he didn’t really find in himself until much later. How will we ever get this new guy passively stuffed into a wine barrel is what I’d like to know.

The whole “your home was taken from you . . . I’ll help if I can” scene was needlessly pathetic. I don’t see the dwarves as I read them responding to that kind of sentimentality at all. I confess to having teared up a bit, but I’m no Thorin Oakshield.

In every movie these days we have three main elements to watch for: The Amusement park ride, the video game sequence, and the toy. The goblin village escape is obviously the ride, but I agree with those who said it was vastly overdone. The toy will obviously be a new black plastic mold for the classic robot fight game, and the need to differentiate action figures may explain some of the ludicrous Dwarf hair. As for the video game, well, the whole movie would do really, but again it explains some of the over development in the Orc city - especially all the scaffolding.

I never thought how I’d long for the days when these things were developed from the movie, rather than the movie elements being suited to existing manufacturing processes. Le sigh.

Don’t get me wrong though, I loved it.

176

“Hey, look, it’s Weathertop” is exactly what popped into my head the instant I saw the scene. That being said, I found the scene kind of silly - the “kill your subordinate for telling you the truth” thing is cliche and I can’t imagine that any evil mastermind who did business that way would have anyone willing to work for him after very long.

177

My suspicion is that that scene (as well as the changes to the troll scene, the scene where the company is captured after falling through the “front door”, and the Riddle Game) were all meant to make Bilbo a more competent, heroic character by the end of this film. Otherwise, he winds up being a bit of a whiny drip throughout the first film.

Regarding the wine barrel…

Bilbo is the one who talks the dwarves into letting him stuff all of them into wine barrels…Bilbo rides on top of one of the barrels to Lake-Town.

178

The second film is called “The Desolation of Smaug”? Does that mean the third film will be mostly new stuff and the Necromancer?

I had mixed feelings about the movie, and didn’t like it as much as I hoped I would as a big fan of the books and the movies. I wasn’t particularly impressed with the 3D or 48fps. The 3D glasses made the film too dark, and lot of the landscape scenes looked much better without the glasses.

I hadn’t heard anything about 48fps other than it being a new, and I wasn’t very impressed. At first it looked like characters were walking in fast forward. By the time I got used to it, half of the movie was over.

Radagast’s bunny sled was tolerable, but not great. The CGI hedgehog was awful, and looked nothing like a real animal. I don’t remember a single scene from the mass of indistinguishable dwarves apart from Thorin, Fili, Kili, the white bearded one (Balin?), and the dwarf that talked to Bilbo as he was sneaking out. Which one was that anyway?

Martin Freeman was amazing as Bilbo, and the Gollum scenes saved the movie for me.

179

I believe the third film will be “and back again” -

I hope thats not a spolier, people do realize that Bilbo survives this, right?

180

Seeing as how the movie starts with an elderly Bilbo looking back on his adventure, I think you’re safe. :slight_smile: