I saw the HFR/3d version this evening and really enjoyed it. It was a tad long, and still too much cgi, but a MAJOR improvement over an unexpected journey. The high frame rate never really bothered me either.
No eagles this time, thank god. Not in LOTR league, but very entertaining nonetheless. Really looking forward to the next one.
Took my 4 year old daughter this afternoon. My six year old would leave the first time some thing was killed, but the 4 year old will watch. She liked the first Hobbit but was literally creeped out of her seat during the gollum scene.
Anyways, I got the DBox seats that move, so it made the movie more fun. I really njoyrd it again. I wish the Beorn scene was longer. I enjoyed the Gandalf and Ratagast scenes - overlooked tose the first time I saw it. Really paid more attention to the dwarf engineering this time. Was fun.
Also, for what it was worth, my 4 year old LOVED Evangeline Lily's character. Loved her. Whenever she showed up and kicked butt I would look over and her jaw was on the floor excited that a GIRL was saving the day. There aren't a lot of girl characters who kick butt and save the boys. To the extent Jackson wanted to engage girls with this story, it sure worked with her. We came home and she gave her mom a summary of the movie and it was all about the "girl elf".
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"OOOOOOHHHHHHH those Russians" - Boney M
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.
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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.
I posted my criticism of the ridiculous action scenes, zany physics, and nausea-inducing luck of our heroes of these films already previously but...
Liquid gold has a density of 17.31 g·cm−3. Solid, room temperature iron has a density of 7.874 g·cm−3. I don't know what the density of a Dwarf is but it's probably close to 1 g·cm−3 since he's mainly composed of water. Therefore, an iron shield with a little Dwarf would easily float on liquid gold.
Was that a European Dwarf or an African Dwarf?
I was willing to suspend disbelief for pretty much all the LOTR movies, but the scene with the flowing gold was a bit much. The dwarfs had that primed and ready to go at a moment's notice? Really?
I missed the 'Attercop' song because, you know, there's nothing worse to a spider...
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Old fat spider spinning in a tree!
Old fat spider can't see me!
Attercop! Attercop!
Won't you stop,
Stop your spinning and look at me!
Old Tomnoddy, all big body,
Old Tomnoddy can't spy me!
Attercop! Attercop!
Down you drop!
You'll never catch me up your tree!
Took my 6 year old daughter to see it this weekend. The 4 year old daughter came to see it a second time.
They were both jumping out of their seats at Smaug. Every movement, growl, bite - they were both literally out of their seats and onto my lap. I was concerned there would be nightmares from it, but as much as they were wigged out by Smaug, they haven't stopped talking about him all weekend. Smaug and Tauriel.
It's fun watching the movie have that kind of impact on them. I remember jumping out of my skin in Raiders of the Lost Ark when Ford finds Alfred Molina when I was about the same age. I knew the scene was coming, but it would get me every time. Raiders of the Lost Ark is still my all time favorite movie.
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"OOOOOOHHHHHHH those Russians" - Boney M
Last edited by killer_carlson; 01-12-2014 at 07:27 PM.
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I saw it this weekend. It's pretty obvious just how drawn out it is to stretch it to a trilogy. When they're adding large segments of Legolas fighting, it just doesn't matter at all. No one expects him to be in any danger, so there's no real emotional involvement, so why bother? The only answer is filler. After a while the fight scenes were just boring.
I do love me some Evangeline Lilly though
It would be nice to see them do a true to the book cut when this is all done.
Yeah, I didn't mind the 1st one too much but the 2nd is just bloated and overdone. The best part was Smaug as he was done beautifully. That said, there was also some HORRIBLE effects in the movie.
There is a stretched out feeling of these Hobbit movies but they are just so entertaining it's not worth caring. The 2nd one was definitely stronger than the first movie and I liked the first movie.
There is a stretched out feeling of these Hobbit movies but they are just so entertaining it's not worth caring. The 2nd one was definitely stronger than the first movie and I liked the first movie.
Yeah, I just disagree. They're not "so entertaining". They're pretty tedious at points as a result of the pacing.
I feel like I'm greatly benefiting from having never read the book. I'm able to just sit back and enjoy the movies for what they are instead of having to constantly compare it to the book and nitpick every little difference.
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Well to be fair, it's beyond just comparisons to the book at this point. When it comes down to basic storytelling, these movies are doing a poor job because they wanted more money. You can't reasonably stretch the smallest book in the Tolkien world to be the same amount of film time as the trilogy of books and not have major issues.
Not only that, but Gandalf's side quest is ridiculous because he does the same thing in the LOTR trilogy. What, did he forget? Why is he doing it now and then just forgetting about it, causing him to do it again in the future?
Much better then the first one, not even close really. This was a very enjoyable film, it brought me back a bit to the first Lord of the Rings movie where after it was over I was surprised and thought, really?
Still though, it's not as good as any of the Lord of the Rings movies but it was a very solid and very enjoyable movie. It had some bad moments.. I mean bad moments... please stop surfing on objects and people, Legolas. That whole barrel scene was really tough to watch, I actually rolled my eyes at a couple points, just some overthetop silly action that took me out of the story.
Good movie overall...though I swear to god, if I have to watch a group of characters run down a flight of stairs that are falling apart as the camera swoops around I am going to punch Peter Jackson right in the face.
An Unexpected Journey - 5/10
The Desolation of Smaug 8/10
Much better then the first one, not even close really. This was a very enjoyable film, it brought me back a bit to the first Lord of the Rings movie where after it was over I was surprised and thought, really?
Still though, it's not as good as any of the Lord of the Rings movies but it was a very solid and very enjoyable movie. It had some bad moments.. I mean bad moments... please stop surfing on objects and people, Legolas. That whole barrel scene was really tough to watch, I actually rolled my eyes at a couple points, just some overthetop silly action that took me out of the story.
Good movie overall...though I swear to god, if I have to watch a group of characters run down a flight of stairs that are falling apart as the camera swoops around I am going to punch Peter Jackson right in the face.
An Unexpected Journey - 5/10
The Desolation of Smaug 8/10
Seriously? That was a wildly entertaining scene. The whole theatre was howling in laughter, and I would say laughing with it, not at it. Sometimes those lighter almost slapstick comedy style moments can be genuinely entertaining.
The thing I liked about this movie..it was "fun". That is pretty rare these days, most movies that attempt it just confuse fun with dumb.
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A few weeks after crashing head-first into the boards (denting his helmet and being unable to move for a little while) following a hit from behind by Bob Errey, the Calgary Flames player explains:
"I was like Christ, lying on my back, with my arms outstretched, crucified"
-- Frank Musil - Early January 1994
Seriously? That was a wildly entertaining scene. The whole theatre was howling in laughter, and I would say laughing with it, not at it. Sometimes those lighter almost slapstick comedy style moments can be genuinely entertaining..
Couldn't stand it, not saying I don't get the appeal but I hated it.
Couldn't stand it, not saying I don't get the appeal but I hated it.
I don't know if I hated it but personally I found it a little too Spielberg for me and it just felt out of place in the movie. It's definitely something I could have done without although it did elicit a lot of laughs from the packed house I watched it in so I can't call it a failure on Jackson's part.
