Escape to the Movies: The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug

[JimB]

It's in no way canon, but I imagine SHIELD did not elect to bring in War Machine because Colonel Rhodes and the War Machine armor were both being held in a state of legal limbo after it was discovered that the suit was stolen property that had been enhanced by a man who'd ordered the murder of French nationals and the bombing of a French prison to conceal the escape of the son of a traitor to America, who hacked the suit and caused it to participate in Christ knows how much death and property damage.

Bob Chipman, I name you hypocrite and coward for not picking out the shoehorned in clichéd trope feast of a love story for the one token female character who just had to have a soppy love story because she's a chick like.

I thought better of you.

...Okie-dokie, so, that just happened.

 

[XDravond]

Lucky me got to see it just... And it's an improvement of the first movie not perfect but still a huge improvement and I'm really hyped over the conclusion next year... To bad its next year though and yea 9h for a ~300 pages book is kinda silly but it looks really good... And the hfr (48fps) really make the fighting scenes look fantastic, whilst the dialog parts look a bit like tv soap opera...
And I had to think back before I remembered that Tauriel was the "new" character she looked so natural in the story.

Will see again, and I just realized how many parts of the movie is seen in the trailer...

 

[PunkRex]

These movies are one of those real cluster bucks and i'm not talking about the actual movie, i'm talking about the masses of hard core fans proclaiming it as nothing but magic while droves of critics (not just professional) call out every way it could possibly slip up and shout shananigans.

I liked the first film, very much so and although I can see where some critics are coming from I just flat out don't agree. Usually i'm all for people just likeing what they like and letting it be but everything these films have done seems not just alright but pretty damn awesome. Great actors, same awesome attention to detail (it is Weta workshop), fluff that's kind of canon, just straight up fun!

I get that some look at the book and say it never should have come to this but i've never agreed with that, i'm very much with Bob on the idea you can make a film out of next to anything.

Whatever, i'll just keep contemplating.

 

[Adventurer2626]

I appreciated the Smaug the Golden reference Good movie, I agree better than part one and it gives me a better idea of the pacing of the trilogy. I now know most of what is coming up. I do wish the Beorn sequence had been...better? But I'm just glad that they are including him unlike poor Tom Bombadil (though I understand why). Hopefully we get to see him in all his furry fury in the big thing coming up in the third movie. Also I wonder after the Big Thing of a Specific Number what we will see of the reported filler material tying the Hobbit to Lord of the Rings. I imagine we will open with Lake Town, things will stabilize for the second act to get ready for the Big Thing of a Specific Number as the climax, after which will come the appendices/filler material.

 

[chozo_hybrid]

I really enjoyed it, the pacing of the film made it so much better then the first one. The barrel scene was a bit long, but could be forgiven for how much fun it was to watch.

 

[Azuaron]

That second pic at the end looked more like, "Tom Cruise stars in: Elysium: But Edger! (See! Edge of Tomorrow! Edge? Get it? Edge? 'Cause we're edgy? Guys? Where are you going? Guys?)

 

[teamcharlie]

So, Bilbo's about 50 at this point in the Hobbit and will be 111 by the beginning of the LotR trilogy (his eleventh-first birthday, as they say). That?s about fifty or sixty years. And Gandalf has already run into Sauron and his big-ass orc army. So: what the fuck has he been doing for the intervening sixty years? Wouldn?t it severely undermine Sauron?s plans if he just told, like, ANYBODY at all about it?

?Hey dudes, there?s this gigantic goddamn army of orcs building over here and their leader kiiiiinda wants to take over the world and kill everybody. Anyone wanna, like, kill them? Really any time would be fine. In fact go off, have families, raise kids. They can do it when they?re in their twenties and we?ll still be fine. Nope? Really? Nobody? Fuck it. I?ma go learn to play the sitar and do a couple other random things that take decades to do instead of saving the world. Gandalf OUT.?

 

[Kirke]

Spoiler: I've discussed the movie quite a bit with my father, and here are things I did not like. WARNING: This will be spoilerific!

The orcs in Laketown. I get the purpose of having them there, to have a reason for the elves to go there. But I feel that if Legolas had just not come with the lady elf and there had been like two or three orcs it would have worked much better. Yeah, less action, but it would quicken the movie quite a bit and cut out a rather confusing fight scene.
The fight between the dwarves and Smaug. Okay, this was just plain silly and felt really forced in. They could have had Smaug chase them for a bit, then say that he will punish Laketown for their assistance.

The extra time could have been spent on expanding Beorn's role and possibly a meeting of the White Counsil. I appreciated Gandalf's attack on Dol Guldur but it seemed odd that he would go in there alone instead of getting Saruman and perhaps Galadriel.

All in all I think this movie lost some of the wonder and light-hearted tone of the first one, which I think was better.

Snip

This will certainly be explained in movie 3, unless they are going to massively change from the book. This army is also much smaller than the later ones, in the book it is only around 6000 orcs.

 

[Grace_Omega]

I understand why they decided to make this a trilogy- movie franchises are all the rage, it's a business decision- but I do not get why each movie is nearly three hours long. It's almost like the felt obligated to make the movies long just because the LOTR movies were.

 

[Shoggoth2588]

Ya know what Tom Cruise's armor thing is missing to really make it generic-etc-etc? An orange smear going across the right side of it...well maybe not orange...the Battlefield people (EA?) might get miffed by that...

 

[Malty Milk Whistle]

My main gripes with this film is the schizophrenia that all Lake people seem to have, not only are their accents seemingly all over the British Isles, but the scene with Bard, Steven Fry and Thorin all trying to convince the lakers was just....Ugh.

Other than that, very enjoyable.

 

[Mr. Q]

Just got back from the theater after seeing The Hobbit: Desolation of Smaug. It was a fun movie to watch. Very fast paced and definitely had a lot of high points Bob mentioned. My one nitpick is that it left on such a cliffhanger, I now have to wait another year until There and Back Again hits theaters.

Also, thanks for pointing out the Sherlock connection, Bob. Damn, I need to sit down and watch that series like yesterday.

And, yes, Marvel needs to get some diversity up in Avengers: Age of Ultron. Be nice to see War Machine and/or Falcon get on board.

 

[teamcharlie]

Snip

This will certainly be explained in movie 3, unless they are going to massively change from the book. This army is also much smaller than the later ones, in the book it is only around 6000 orcs.

There's an army of orcs and Gandalf has now seen Sauron. No matter how lazy the various kingdoms are, Gandalf clearly knows enough stabby bastards to get the job done at some point over sixty years. Unless he gets his memory erased, in which case that scene was supremely pointless, there is no reason for Gandalf to sit on information that would severely hamstring Sauron's plans for taking over the world for over half a century.

 

[Stevolteon]

An Unexpected Journey was a good film, but I felt didn't quite know which side of the fence to settle on. Mostly a light hearted comedy adventure, but with occasional beheadings.

Desolation of Smaug has fixed that by virtually eliminating the light hearted moments and I sorely felt their absence. Perhaps it's fitting story wise that the tone shifts, and this is very much the middle piece of a trilogy, so I'll reserve judgement for when they wrap it up.

Decent film, good pacing, but forsakes fun for function.

 

[Burgers2013]

I strongly suggest to anyone "DONT READ THE HOBBIT" its ok if back in your childhood that have read it and known the basic plot but if you did what I did and actually read the hobbit in a effort to psyche ones self up for the movie.... your making a big mistake.

I enjoyed the movie but every time a characters motivation was changed because Peter wanted to tie the movie into LOTR just annoyed me. Certain things are completely different from the book purely in an attempt to say hey this is still a prequel to my most awesome movieness.

All the extra scenes that don't appear in the book that peter made up feel like cement in a effort to make movie number 2 the 3 hour epic its suppose to be.

Also don't go see the movie in 3D it just ruins the aesthetics and makes an already dark and greyer movie even more bleak.

My biggest annoyment and again this comes from reading the book and enjoying every word is that its a children book and peter wants to make this into LOTR v2.0 which really irks me.


But its still a good movie ....

Agreed.

There are some additions and alterations that I was okay with, but too many of the changes seemed to give the whole movie a darker, grittier, and more foreboding tone than the book. On top of that, most of the sense of foreboding doesn't have anything to do with The Hobbit. The action/extended fighting sequences, especially in the first Hobbit movie, matched LOTR's story wonderfully, but not The Hobbit. They were just a band of blundering, terrified, and homeless dwarves, a great but unreliable wizard, and one clever and very lucky little hobbit. In the book, they were not described as great warriors, and they did not fight much or very well until the 5 army war, and who the heck knows about that.

There were many charming moments that reminded me of the spirit of the Hobbit, but they seemed to be too few.

 

[Burgers2013]

I strongly suggest to anyone "DONT READ THE HOBBIT" its ok if back in your childhood that have read it and known the basic plot but if you did what I did and actually read the hobbit in a effort to psyche ones self up for the movie.... your making a big mistake.

I enjoyed the movie but every time a characters motivation was changed because Peter wanted to tie the movie into LOTR just annoyed me. Certain things are completely different from the book purely in an attempt to say hey this is still a prequel to my most awesome movieness.

All the extra scenes that don't appear in the book that peter made up feel like cement in a effort to make movie number 2 the 3 hour epic its suppose to be.

Also don't go see the movie in 3D it just ruins the aesthetics and makes an already dark and greyer movie even more bleak.

My biggest annoyment and again this comes from reading the book and enjoying every word is that its a children book and peter wants to make this into LOTR v2.0 which really irks me.


But its still a good movie ....

Agreed.

There are some additions and alterations that I was okay with, but too many of the changes seemed to give the whole movie a darker, grittier, and more foreboding tone than the book. On top of that, most of the sense of foreboding doesn't have anything to do with The Hobbit. The action/extended fighting sequences, especially in the first Hobbit movie, matched LOTR's story wonderfully, but not The Hobbit. They were just a band of blundering, terrified, and homeless dwarves, a great but unreliable wizard, and one clever and very lucky little hobbit. In the book, they were not described as great warriors, and they did not fight much or very well until the 5 army war, and who the heck knows about that.

There were many charming moments that reminded me of the spirit of the Hobbit, but they seemed to be too few.

 

[Xdeser2]

This movie was really great, and dare I say it, really stands up with the other Lord of the Rings films.

The only complaint I really have is the ending, its a major cliffhanger on the level of Halo 2, but being the second act, how could it have really ended any other way?