[19Yzerman19]

Originally Posted by GreenLantern

I understand how people think the action was over the top, but I am watching a fantasy film and do not expect anything to seem even remotely realistic at any point. There is a fricken dragon in the movie and people are worried about shields floating? lol. How do we know that specific shield didn't have magic properties? +10 to heat resistance? Made to withstand dragons breath? etc.. etc..

Everybody's talking about this shield he floated on. Wasn't it a wheelbarrow? I thought he was wheeling a wheelbarrow immediately before, then used it as a sort of boat.

Wrap your head around the world you are immersing yourself in when you sit down to watch a Tolkien movie, let all that stuff go, and you will find it much, much more enjoyable.

For me, the best way to think about it is, imagine that this is "There and Back Again", by Bilbo Baggins. Because that's what it is. You think Bilbo's going to give a sober, straight-up factual re-telling of his adventures? Of course not. It's going to be exaggerated to the point of borderline absurdity. We're talking about this dude:



Suffice it to say he has a flair for the dramatic.

Does Bombur bouncing around knocking over orcs before breaking his hands out of a barrel to spin like a top taking out more of them make any sense? Of course not. But now imagine Bilbo telling the story to young hobbits around a fire. Can you see him telling it just like that? Yup. I wish they'd framed it this way more clearly, occasional reminders that Bilbo's writing the damned thing maybe once or twice a movie, or maybe him providing some narration once in a while.

Tolkein's works take on massively divergent characteristics. The Silmarillion is a pure history, though sort of in the style of the classics. The Hobbit is more of the kind of tall tale you'd expect to hear in a mead hall. LOTR is just an epic. They're different styles, and have to be considered in context. Accordingly, it's a lot easier to forgive excesses and creative license taken with this story than it is with the other two major works.

Anyway, I thought it was enjoyable (saw in Imax 3d 48), but in spite of reviews saying it was much more natural in Desolation as compared to the first film, I retain my impression from the first movie that this is not the place to debut 48fps film. The sepia-toned, half-remembered nostalgic blur is exactly what you want for a Tolkein story, not this hyper-realism that looks sort of like a play. It also is extremely hard to pull off - the cheese factor gets multiplied by ten when shot at high rate. Lines just get harder to pull off - "You'll be safe here tonight... (Gandalf Close Up) I hope." Not to mention everything Thranduil says. And every time Tauriel shows up to play hero (or anyone else really), and suddenly the standard triumphant music kicks in - particularly jarring after Kili takes an arrow to the knee (rimshot). Even one-off shots where they put the camera on a dwarf for a surprised head-turn become groan-worthy. It turns moments you might otherwise mentally accept into stage-slap, and when you're watching a movie set in a magical fairy land with wizards and dwarves and elves and goblins, all the more so.