The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies (2014)

Gavinmad_sl said:

Click to expand...

I already said, pretend the dwarves dont exist! lol

Smaug rendering and voice acting was incredible. Interactions with Bilbo were amazing.

Big Phoenix_sl said:

I like how they liquefied millions of tons of gold in a matter of seconds and then rode on the streams of liquid gold like huckleberry going down the mississippi.

Click to expand...

...and all to kill a heat proof dragon... it's the most retarded scene in cinema history and I'm including random tuxedo alleyway football from The Room.

So I watched the extended edition last night and while it's still a deeply flawed movie, it's significantly better than the normal release. The stuff cut from the original trilogy mostly made sense to cut, but there was a lot of stuff from five armies I would have left out instead of what was actually taken out.

Gavinmad_sl said:

So I watched the extended edition last night and while it's still a deeply flawed movie, it's significantly better than the normal release. The stuff cut from the original trilogy mostly made sense to cut, but there was a lot of stuff from five armies I would have left out instead of what was actually taken out.

Click to expand...

We still need more Beorn but yeah... it's better. Honestly, they're tolerable movies until you watch the LotR again. I caught them on TNT this week and I just couldn't believe how much better they were than the Hobbit films. I knew they were better but it's even more significant than you realize. However, there's a part of me that's glad they're out there. Maybe more time and a different director would have helped but it's really hard to say how anyone would interpret the source material as it is so different from LotR.

What I try to remember are some of the performances. Gandalf did well. I really think Balin and Bofur were the saviors of the film. They were just really pleasant characters. Thorin just didn't match my imagination visibly. I thought Smaug was pretty good and so was Bard. I just absolutely cannot stand the forced love even though Evangeline Lily is pretty cool. Actually I didn't really care for any of the added characters and interactions. It just seemed out of the way, forced, and pointless. The lack of Beorn's awesomeness bugged me quite a bit as well. The CGI was Star Wars prequel inspired as well and also annoying. To me, Bot5A had a chance to save the trilogies in a lot of way but in my opinion added and enhanced the annoyances. I think I like AUJ probably the best out of the three but I really don't know. They all have some good but overriding bad points.

Anyone know if they plan on releasing a 6 volume extended edition boxset? Been looking for it awhile now.

I hope they at least offer a free box to put all the extended editions in, like they did after ROTK Extended came out. All I had to do was submit my info and they mailed me one free of charge.

Without:

1) Dumb Legolas
2) Dumb Alfred surviving
3) Dumb everyone shows up for the Necromancer

These movies would have been much better. I honestly didn't care that much about the other added stuff, it was OK filler but most of it was well-done enough. Fatface, laser-eyes Legolas was just the worst. The 'maybe-love' angle would have been dumb but not insufferable if it was just ranger chick being brash/idealistic 'you idiots need to help these people' chasing after them instead of the love triangle BS. Alfred was awful and needed to die way earlier. Necromancer scene was just too much like a WWE fight, it should have just been Galadriel.

I read somewhere (probably this thread) that Evangeline Lilly took the role on the condition that there wouldn't be any gay love triangle bullshit, and originally there wasn't one, then they added it in reshoots and she didn't have a choice. Or some such shit.

Muligan_sl said:

We still need more Beorn but yeah... it's better. Honestly, they're tolerable movies until you watch the LotR again. I caught them on TNT this week and I just couldn't believe how much better they were than the Hobbit films. I knew they were better but it's even more significant than you realize. However, there's a part of me that's glad they're out there. Maybe more time and a different director would have helped but it's really hard to say how anyone would interpret the source material as it is so different from LotR.

Click to expand...

They could have interpreted it as not 3 fucking oversized movies and it would be most of the way towards being better. There's definitely probably 2-3 hours of good enough movie inside the trilogy as it is, if someone had just focused on making THAT, we'd have ourselves a good Hobbit movie.

Eliminating one of the five armies and replacing them with sand worms from Dune was a great idea. I'm pretty sure they let George Lucas write the screenplay.

As terrible as those worms were, they are astoundingly NOT a movie thing only, they are briefly mentionned in passing in the book as "wereworms", but are never part of the Battle of the Five Armies (then again we hardly see the battle in the book). That whole third movie definitely looked like a bad case of George Lucas Syndrome.

Do we know why Peter Jackson threw out Del Toro's two years of prep to then shoot the film with no prep at all and writing it at night instead of sleeping?

Chris_sl said:

Do we know why Peter Jackson threw out Del Toro's two years of prep to then shoot the film with no prep at all and writing it at night instead of sleeping?

Click to expand...

To be honest, if I was called upon to do a job at the last minute without any preparation, I'd still prefer that over getting called upon at the last minute AND having to do it with the work and tools of someone else...

If I had to make a guess, I'd lay the blame on PJ's one ego to rule them all.

Not movie related but ...

‘Lord of the Rings’: Amazon, Warner Bros. in Talks for Series Adaptation (EXCLUSIVE)

I don't know what a TV show could possibly cover that hasn't already been done outside of The Silmarillion. Unless they plan on putting the cost of taking out a hit on Christopher Tolkien in the show's budget. If a show does come together I know people will immediately start making comparisons to Game of Thrones but the differences between Tolkien's work and Martin's are considerable. There wasn't that much political intrigue or soap opera like flourishes in the former.

Saw that article as well, saying it'l be a prequel series. How far back, who knows. I'm doubting anything gets filmed at all.

Masakari said:

A Silmarillion series would be so bad ass. Just don't let Peter Jackson touch it.

Click to expand...

I don't know, I can't wait for the first 6 series of 24x2 hour episodes that tell the gruelling tale of Bilbo searching for the pencil to start writing the tale that Silmarillion is based upon. Including a 12 episode arc of trying to find his tobacco pouch and the ever gripping tale of his favourite potatoe boiling pan.