The Great Outdoors is one of my favorite John Candy comedies. It would have been even better with more John Candy or Dan Aykroyd and less angst ridden teenage son and local girl romance. That subplot really detracts from the silly lighthearted tone of the rest of the movie.
Back to School starring Rodney Dangerfield has a pointless romance between his son and a random fellow student.
The problem with The Hobbit, is there’s a lack of stuffing to the narrative, beyond it being a series of picaresque adventures that happen to Bilbo and his party. They keep falling downhill, from one adventure to the next, out of control, until they end up at the Lonely Mountain. But there’s no real point, no greater significance or theme in their world, other than it’s exciting. Unlike LOTR.
My thought was, if you have to bloat the plot to get three movies, then really go into just what the Necromancer was getting up to at Dol Whatever, show how its resolution was fundamentally different, yet ultimately more important, than what happens with one single dragon and his hoard, and show that settling the Necromancer problem didn’t ultimately solve the Sauron problem.
Evil has to constantly be watched out for, fought—even if you’d rather ignore it, or deny it’s happening—and afterwards, you still might not be done with the problem. That’s a theme. For that, Galadriel (and plenty of her Wood Elves) should play a gigantic role. And not some stupid [expletives deleted] bit with some covered-in-birdshit wizard riding a rabbit sled.
Add Tauriel too, that’s fine. But the love triangle was just asinine.
Cate Blanchett as Galadriel was so good that she’d probably have knocked it out of the park, no matter what you had her doing in the movie. Just increase her role.
Yes, and if you read the Appendices, the whole Hobbit thing was the B side to the White Council taking out the Necromancer.
Aragorn and Legolas had more chemistry in LOTR, 
I say mostly tongue-in-cheek, than Aragorn and Arwen. And Eowyn’s girly crush seemed mostly sad. But yes, those movies needed some women.
I thought the Iceman-Maverick sexual tension was adorable but you do you.
in the crystal skull, they have a line where she asks “so whatever happened to that blonde nightclub floozy you used to drag around ? and he says she married a dentist and moved to Minnesota” and she deadpans i bet you were relieved (or an exchange close to that )
Love Story. They meet on an ice hockey rink, hang out as friends, then she dies. It’s more about the things that don’t happen. Might have to change the title though.
There’s an interesting Luc Besson movie from the 1980s called The Big Blue based on the lives of 2 world-champion free-divers (who were childhood friends). It’s quite a beautiful and spiritual movie, well worth a look, but for some reason (US marketing, probably), they shoehorn in a completely useless Rosanna Arquette to be a love interest (and the character she lusts after isn’t particlarly interested in her, anyway).
This.
And it didn’t help that Kelly McGillis was pretty bad in the role.
Well, not if there is no good reason for there to be a female in it. If I’m watching a movie about, say, merchant mariners in WW2 I don’t mind if there aren’t any females. Or token females if it’s Tolkien because that’s how he saw women. But don’t film, say, a movie about the Viet Nam anti-war movements and not put women in because you don’t think they belong there.
It needed more romance, but the understated one, not the obvious one. Marverick and Ice Man should have hooked up. You know they wanted to.
She was the “Love of My Life” after all. omitting her would leave a big hole in the story. (and since it actually is true, it shouldn’t be left out of a biopic. Reality is stranger than fiction.)
This is one of my pet peeves about people that “hate” Titanic for the romance - they forget that everyone’s favorite Titanic movie A Night To Remember also has a teenage romance. There was even a scene in front of the clock with Andrews exactly like Titanic.
Totally agree with your first two comments but I haven’t seen A Night to Remember so I’m just speaking about the Titanic on it’s own terms. Maybe if the two leads had better chemistry (I adore both actors individually but they did not mesh in this case)or if they weren’t the core of the film. Anyway, I definitely love the film; just saying the love tory, for me, didn’t add anything.
I suspect Peter Jackson agrees with you, since his original plan was to make two movies, but studios insisted on three. A whole lot of what is wrong with The Hobbit can be traced back to that.
Well, I think The Hobbit does indeed have a theme, which is Bilbo growing in many ways (from scared nobody to hero to wise enough to want to avoid fighting). But agree that there’s certainly not enough to justify three movies.
Just made my day.
When I do me I have sexual tension. Damn split personality. :eek:
Rose are red,
Violets are blue,
I have DID,
and so do I.
Also, me as well.
I think the Sherlock Holmes movies (the ones with Robert Downey Jr. ) would have been better without a love interest for Holmes. Everybody always tries to turn Irene Adler into a love interest, and it didn’t help that Downey and Rachel McAdams had zero chemistry IMO.