The Hobbit
Dec. 28th, 2014 09:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
potentiality_26I saw The Hobbit: Battle of the Five Armies yesterday.
Some thoughts from the trailers:
Latest in the ongoing saga of remaking perfectly good movies because we have better special effects and must use them gratuitously, we have a new Mad Max. I like Tom Hardy, it's a shame this movie looks so stupid. Just because you can make a thing look realistic in your movie doesn't mean you should.
In the Heart of the Sea: I don't even know what this is, but seriously since when did Moby Dick come from a true story? Maybe it did- I'm just saying I've never heard that before, and this trailer had a very "As we all know..." tone to it.
Then there were two trailers for films already in my theater, the new Night at the Museum movie and Into the Woods. Movies take so long to come out now; it's surreal (and sad) when a film comes out with an actor who passed away some time ago as with Night at the Museum. I doubt I'll see the movie itself. I actually saw the second one recently and found it more entertaining than I expected to. I did learn from the trailer that the guy I was calling Not-Tom-Mison in my head based on the poster is meant to be Sir Lancelot, but he would still be improved by being played by Tom Mison. I doubt I'll see Into the Woods either; I've never been a fan of that musical. It was a well-made trailer, though.
Legolas is starting to look a bit weird, isn't he? The hair and makeup people were obviously doing their utmost to make him look like he did over a decade ago, but he just doesn't look like he did over a decade ago. And it's not like Orlando Bloom is aging worse than everyone else in the world, it's just that the Legolas look doesn't work on him as well as it used to. With the Will Turner hair and beard he'd look fine, but with the Will Turner hair and beard, he'd be Luke Evans.
Speaking of whom- I loved Bard making a makeshift bow out of his old bowstring, a bell tower and his son. Awesome.
Aw, Saruman being a good guy. Crying forever.
I was pretty disappointed by Galadriel coming to save Gandalf but then just sort of laying there with him while the boys did all the fighting. The same thing happened with Tauriel later. Did we decide that representation was all we needed?
The bit with Sauron and the nine had some bizarrely bad animation.
Okay, so Fili, Kili and them other two (twelve dudes with beards and Aidan Turner are too many for me to remember by name, okay? I had to prioritize) were in Laketown and they evacuate with everyone else, and then they make their way to Erabor, whereupon Bilbo's all, "OMG, Thorin's obsessed with gold, he's just been staring at it for days." I have two quibbles with this. First of all, when did days pass, for Christ's sake? Laketown gets attacked at night, they're on shore by morning. That's one night, during which the other dwarves made their way into the mountain. Am I really to believe that it took these four additional days to get there? Which brings me to the second thing: why did Bilbo have to summarize this? Like, why couldn't we have scenes where they got to Erabor and Thorin started to lose it? They made three films out of a relatively short and simple book, and yet they felt need to skip over this section, because it was super necessary that this film be 70% battle.
And Thorin and Bilbo. Jesus. I'm not huge about this pairing, in that I like the fic but I didn't exactly come away from the first two movies with it on the brain. I started reading the fic because of a rec and that was when I got into it. But this movie... I know they weren't actually writing/playing/presenting those two as in love, but I legitimately do not know what they would have done different if they had been.
And then it's battle time. Hooray!
Dain Ironfoot comes in riding a pig. He's got this whole red-headed war chieftan thing going on. What great makeup! Who could he be? He opens and it's Billy Connelly! Best part of the movie.
Thranduil's sort of a badass. Who knew.
We're doing Dune now, I take it?
The things Leggy can do have been getting more and more ridiculous. I swear, back in The Fellowship of the Ring times, they were essentially believable. Now he's all running along falling stones. What?
The eagles are coming! How exciting! If I was an eagle in the LOTR-verse, I'd be pretty goddman annoyed. Who starts this shit? Those ground dwelling types. Who has to finish it? Eagles, that's who. Come in at the last minute and save the day. Every time.
And then death. Fili in particular got the shaft here, I feel. Would it have killed them to do a funeral sequence? From a director who gave The Return of the King a dozen endings, you wouldn't have expected this one to be so damn rushed. Again, super important that this two and a half hour film be 70% battle.
Was the heavy Strider name drop really needed? Were there people going around asking, "But how did Legolas meet Aragorn?" He could have just told his father that he couldn't come home and would travel for a while. We could have filled in the blanks overselves.
And the end sort of made it seem like Bilbo and Gandalf said goodbye on the way back to the Shire and didn't see each other again until the start of LOTR, but of course Frodo knows him, so obviously he did visit. Weird. Come to that, I was surprised not to see Frodo in some form in this movie.
It's interesting how well post-BOTFA fix-it fics hold up now that the film is out. I mean, I haven't read The Hobbit in years, but the one I wrote is still pretty valid. I may post it sometime soon, but that'll require typing it up. Meh.
Some thoughts from the trailers:
Latest in the ongoing saga of remaking perfectly good movies because we have better special effects and must use them gratuitously, we have a new Mad Max. I like Tom Hardy, it's a shame this movie looks so stupid. Just because you can make a thing look realistic in your movie doesn't mean you should.
In the Heart of the Sea: I don't even know what this is, but seriously since when did Moby Dick come from a true story? Maybe it did- I'm just saying I've never heard that before, and this trailer had a very "As we all know..." tone to it.
Then there were two trailers for films already in my theater, the new Night at the Museum movie and Into the Woods. Movies take so long to come out now; it's surreal (and sad) when a film comes out with an actor who passed away some time ago as with Night at the Museum. I doubt I'll see the movie itself. I actually saw the second one recently and found it more entertaining than I expected to. I did learn from the trailer that the guy I was calling Not-Tom-Mison in my head based on the poster is meant to be Sir Lancelot, but he would still be improved by being played by Tom Mison. I doubt I'll see Into the Woods either; I've never been a fan of that musical. It was a well-made trailer, though.
Legolas is starting to look a bit weird, isn't he? The hair and makeup people were obviously doing their utmost to make him look like he did over a decade ago, but he just doesn't look like he did over a decade ago. And it's not like Orlando Bloom is aging worse than everyone else in the world, it's just that the Legolas look doesn't work on him as well as it used to. With the Will Turner hair and beard he'd look fine, but with the Will Turner hair and beard, he'd be Luke Evans.
Speaking of whom- I loved Bard making a makeshift bow out of his old bowstring, a bell tower and his son. Awesome.
Aw, Saruman being a good guy. Crying forever.
I was pretty disappointed by Galadriel coming to save Gandalf but then just sort of laying there with him while the boys did all the fighting. The same thing happened with Tauriel later. Did we decide that representation was all we needed?
The bit with Sauron and the nine had some bizarrely bad animation.
Okay, so Fili, Kili and them other two (twelve dudes with beards and Aidan Turner are too many for me to remember by name, okay? I had to prioritize) were in Laketown and they evacuate with everyone else, and then they make their way to Erabor, whereupon Bilbo's all, "OMG, Thorin's obsessed with gold, he's just been staring at it for days." I have two quibbles with this. First of all, when did days pass, for Christ's sake? Laketown gets attacked at night, they're on shore by morning. That's one night, during which the other dwarves made their way into the mountain. Am I really to believe that it took these four additional days to get there? Which brings me to the second thing: why did Bilbo have to summarize this? Like, why couldn't we have scenes where they got to Erabor and Thorin started to lose it? They made three films out of a relatively short and simple book, and yet they felt need to skip over this section, because it was super necessary that this film be 70% battle.
And Thorin and Bilbo. Jesus. I'm not huge about this pairing, in that I like the fic but I didn't exactly come away from the first two movies with it on the brain. I started reading the fic because of a rec and that was when I got into it. But this movie... I know they weren't actually writing/playing/presenting those two as in love, but I legitimately do not know what they would have done different if they had been.
And then it's battle time. Hooray!
Dain Ironfoot comes in riding a pig. He's got this whole red-headed war chieftan thing going on. What great makeup! Who could he be? He opens and it's Billy Connelly! Best part of the movie.
Thranduil's sort of a badass. Who knew.
We're doing Dune now, I take it?
The things Leggy can do have been getting more and more ridiculous. I swear, back in The Fellowship of the Ring times, they were essentially believable. Now he's all running along falling stones. What?
The eagles are coming! How exciting! If I was an eagle in the LOTR-verse, I'd be pretty goddman annoyed. Who starts this shit? Those ground dwelling types. Who has to finish it? Eagles, that's who. Come in at the last minute and save the day. Every time.
And then death. Fili in particular got the shaft here, I feel. Would it have killed them to do a funeral sequence? From a director who gave The Return of the King a dozen endings, you wouldn't have expected this one to be so damn rushed. Again, super important that this two and a half hour film be 70% battle.
Was the heavy Strider name drop really needed? Were there people going around asking, "But how did Legolas meet Aragorn?" He could have just told his father that he couldn't come home and would travel for a while. We could have filled in the blanks overselves.
And the end sort of made it seem like Bilbo and Gandalf said goodbye on the way back to the Shire and didn't see each other again until the start of LOTR, but of course Frodo knows him, so obviously he did visit. Weird. Come to that, I was surprised not to see Frodo in some form in this movie.
It's interesting how well post-BOTFA fix-it fics hold up now that the film is out. I mean, I haven't read The Hobbit in years, but the one I wrote is still pretty valid. I may post it sometime soon, but that'll require typing it up. Meh.
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no subject
Date: 2014-12-29 06:38 pm (UTC)I totally agree. There are some movies that just should not be remade. SO GLAD you have better special effects. Now get better writers/actors to go with. UGH.
no subject
Date: 2014-12-29 10:44 pm (UTC)It's true across the board, I think, that better special effects don't always make for better movies.