Just saw Desolation of Smaug

[Loki Laufeyson]

Well, I guess the point I was trying to make is that if you want to adapt a book completely faithfully, it needs to be completely faithful in every aspect. So then yeah, you do need to make it like 8 hours long. If you try to stick to the original but then also want to condense that down to 2-3 hours, it's just strictly inferior. But if you want a 2-3 hour version, then making the kind of changes you see in LotR or Monte Cristo gives the movie the opportunity to transcend the book in some way, however small that might be.

Also its impossible to do. Like, impossible. Game of Thrones is an adaptation of A Song Of Ice And Fire and its a premium channel serial show. That means full seasons of stuff. And its still not completely exactly like the books. Adaptation needs wiggle room to work due to the medium shift. Some shit just cannot happen on a screen when it happens in a book. So yeah, writing around that for an adaptation requires taking a huge risk. Sometimes, it really pays off. Sometimes it doesnt.

the frame rate was wack

Heh dat frame rate made the barrel scenes hilarious.

Samias rants about Tauriel

Yeap. Yeap. Yeap. People cry sexism when theres a lack of female characters in a work. (See H.P Lovecraft and Tolkien) But i find it more sexist to shoehorn a female character into a story/work and force her motives around a male. Yeap.

[-Cynthia-]

Eh I think Tauriel also represents an anti-isolationist initiative among the Mirkwood elves- it's not all about sexy dwarves Kili.

[baticeer]

I don't at all have a problem with the idea of adding female characters to the story, in fact I'm totally in favor of it, and in theory the idea of Tauriel is really good. But it was just not executed well. The love story with her and Fili was so overdone and cheesy. If you wanted female characters I think a better way to do it would have been to change the gender of some of the dwarves in Thorin's party (although I know some people would hate that LOL).

[Balcerzak]

Also the Tauriel love interest flies in the face of there only being 3 (iirc) cross-species Eldar couplings, which is part of why it was such a huge deal. (Aragorn/Arwen, Tuor/Idril, Beren/Luthien.)

[LuxSpes]

I watched the movie a couple of days ago and I fully agree with most of the critics raised here. While other LotR and Hobbit movies felt like an adaptation of the books, this movie went into the fanfiction territory several times.

I found the TaurielxFili way too cheesy and unbelievable considering how Elves are so against interspecies marriage. Here, an Elf see a Dwarf for like 5 minutes and then decides to go against orders from her lord and endanger the Prince at the same time only so she can heal Fili with herbs another Dwarf had already provided?

And the barrel scene was made a bit over the top and cartoonish. Legolas jumping from Dwarf to Dwarf? Really? And the Orcs are so hellbent on killing some Dwarfs that they would voluntarily walk through elven territory and get massacred by a handful of them?

And the last scene against Smaug was really getting wacky. Melting tons of gold in a matter of minutes, pouring it in a conveniently placed mold and then crashing it on a dragon. The thing is a fire-breathing lizard with iron-hard scales, you think molten gold will handicap him? And the ending was very underwhelming. My first reaction was: 'That's it?'

But despite all the criticism, I did like the movie. It was an entertaining watch and I appreciated the added details around Dale.

[Vorena]

My only disappoint is more at my speculation. During the river arc I believe they pitched in some actual scenes from a river where they sent a camera down some rapids. However, it seems like the quality on the rapids is so poorly connected to the special effects around the movie.

[Party Moth]

And Smaug... I thought he was awesome, although, my memory is a little sloppy here, but didn't he have golden scales in the book and not red? minor, but something that I thought of.

If I recall correctly, most artistic depictions of Smaug either only show him lying upon his piles of gold or leave out the jewel-and-gold encrusted underbelly entirely. This adaptation is certainly the one that could have portrayed it well though, given the budget.

[Rewjeo]

Tauriel was just such a blatant Mary Sue. Everything about her was Sueish.

I found the movie generally disappointing compared to the LotR films. I feel like if things can be done without CGI, then they should be. There's so much CGI in the this movie that it has a general air of fakeness, even before you take in all the silly action stuff.

[Magical CC]

I was going to give it 8 out 10 but the stupid, half-ass done and cliches fantasy of a virgin dwarf and an old hag elf killed my mood. It's 6 at best. I love how movie origin women in lotr and hobbit movies are always treated as sex object. They always want to get in someone's pants. I just want to enjoy a nice fantasy movie, why do they have to include the dirty (not really) jokes? To please the stupid kids and low intelligent audiences? And it has to be the best looking one to have the relationship. If they let Balin or some fat dwarves fall in love with that slut, I may give it a 9 out of 10 just because hilarious. I dont want to rant about that bitch, but her unnecessary scenes are joy-killer, they switched the dragon's scenes and her scenes like every 2 minutes. It's horrible. While Tolkien's books were not that amazing, they were not this stupid. You dont have to follow the books 100 percent but please, do not add useless stuffs.

The CGs...oh God! They are better than the first movie's. But they are still horrible. I can spot some scenes that have the quality of a game cutscenes, a 5 years old game. What a joke, to think that I wasted my money on this POS while the first one was totally a POS too.

Edited January 14, 2014 by Char

[Narga_Rocks]

I was going to give it 8 out 10 but the stupid, half-ass done and cliches fantasy of a virgin dwarf and an old hag elf killed my mood. It's 6 at best. I love how movie origin women in lotr and hobbit movies are always treated as sex object. They always want to get in someone's pants. I just want to enjoy a nice fantasy movie, why do they have to include the dirty (not really) jokes? To please the stupid kids and low intelligent audiences? And it has to be the best looking one to have the relationship. If they let Balin or some fat dwarves fall in love with that slut, I may give it a 9 out of 10 just because hilarious. I dont want to rant about that bitch, but her unnecessary scenes are joy-killer, they switched the dragon's scenes and her scenes like every 2 minutes. It's horrible. While Tolkien's books were not that amazing, they were not this stupid. You dont have to follow the books 100 percent but please, do not add useless stuffs.

The CGs...oh God! They are better than the first movie's. But they are still horrible. I can spot some scenes that have the quality of a game cutscenes, a 5 years old game. What a joke, to think that I wasted my money on this POS while the first one was totally a POS too.

Wow that's a lot of hate. Especially calling her a slut. What's your problem?

[Magical CC]

Wow that's a lot of hate. Especially calling her a slut. What's your problem?

She ignored her order and chased after a strange dwarf to save his life.

She clearly has a thing for that dwarf. Those eyes, lol.

Then she waited for Legolas to appear.

She said that she expected Legolas to chase after her.

She knew that Legolas has a thing for her.

Then she convinced Legolas to help her help the dwarf.

She clearly doesnt have any feeling for Legolas. May be she used to, but not anymore after being threat by the king.

Basically, she took advantage of Legolas's feeling for her and used it to help her new boy. Then, she was so focus on saving the dwarf while Legolas was having fun with the Orcs. (Note that, she is not the only one who know how to save the young dwarf, the other dwarf actually knew what he should do. Her appearance in the house is meaningless)

[-Cynthia-]

People seem to miss the fact that Tauriel is generally against just letting the orcs kill the dwarves which Thranduil is in favor of- it's not all about Kili. She knew Legolas would follow her, but that doesn't mean she's a 'slut' or particularly manipulative, just that she's perceptive. It would make sense that she would be more attracted to the 'human looking' dwarf rather than the other ones, as canonically elves have found humans attractive, dwarves not so much. Also, how do you know Kili is a virgin?

I will agree that Oin probably has the knowledge to apply athelas and that her intervention there was unnecessary.

[Skynstein]

People seem to miss the fact that Tauriel is generally against just letting the orcs kill the dwarves which Thranduil is in favor of- it's not all about Kili. She knew Legolas would follow her, but that doesn't mean she's a 'slut' or particularly manipulative, just that she's perceptive. It would make sense that she would be more attracted to the 'human looking' dwarf rather than the other ones, as canonically elves have found humans attractive, dwarves not so much. Also, how do you know Kili is a virgin?

I will agree that Oin probably has the knowledge to apply athelas and that her intervention there was unnecessary.

Thanks for having some sense.

I didn't like Tauriel's character (Eve Lilly doesn't look... elvish to me) but she gets way too much hate because of the love triangle bit. She's a necessary link to make Legolas have reasons to act and to add some complexity to Legolas since, if he acts, he's not entirely in accordance to Thranduil's wishes, as Thranduil would rather see the dwarves toasted by the dragon any day.

[dreamcrash]

I saw the first one, but I don't think I want to see this one. The Hobbit was a fairly short book, especially compared to LotR, and it was partially meant to be a story for Tolkien to read to his children on top of that, if I remember correctly. But it wasn't a "children's story" in the Hollywood sense that's full of absurd one-liners and general idiocy, it was a children's story in the sense that it was filled with wonder and adventure that would captivate the mind of a child, and genuinely fun characters. I really disliked a lot of the characterizations in the first Hobbit film, because they screamed of "We have to make them extra eccentric for the kids to understand", and I really don't like that they made it an entire trilogy. They did a huge disservice to the original book by extending it like that and adding all this nonsense in, in my opinion. A single film that kept the spirit of the book and turned a relatively short but wonder-filled story of adventure into a single wonder-filled fantasy adventure film would have been far, far better.

LotR, on the other hand, easily could have been a 6-part film series (with each part being shorter, so each individual film would be better paced) and I would have been all over it, because unlike The Hobbit, it actually has that amount of content, and is a huge saga consisting of many adventures revolving around one main adventure instead of a precisely written tale revolving around one adventure. Reading the Hobbit (and much of LotR), it feels like Tolkien refined his works and, especially in The Hobbit, took care not to waste a single word, describing things exactly as much as they should be and never spending too much time on one thing. Taking that kind of tightly written writing and drawing it out is just a recipe for disappointment.

Edited March 12, 2014 by dreamcrash