- The golf joke was funny but it felt out of place. I guess it isn't inconceivable that golf is played in Middle Earth, but ehhhhhh
I thought it was kinda funny since that line is straight out of the book.
But yeah, it is kinda cheesy, though I thought it worked.
SPOILERS ABOUND! Ye have been warned!
I thought it was a good, but not great movie. I have two major problems with the film: the CGI and the length. The CGI, overall, was quite awful and to me, was much more ubiquitous and poorly used than in LotR. Azog, in particular, looked pretty terrible. The Misty Mountain goblins were all kind of comically ugly, compared to the Moria goblins in Fellowship, which were much more disgusting, IMO. It certainly didn't help that there seemed to be a lot more closeups of CGI goblins in Hobbit whereas Fellowship 'filled out the ranks' of actual actors with CGI creations. The goblin king was pretty cool though.
The length was another issue. Unlike many of the critics who thought that the first half was the weakest, I loved the first half. Well, I did think that the Frodo and Bilbo part went on a bit too long, but the unexpected party, the trolls, weathertop, all great. Even the warg chase was good. I wasn't very fond of the Radagast scenes, but thankfully they weren't that long and I'm a much bigger fan of how the whole Dol Guldor story unfolds in the books (er in the Appendices at least).
After Rivendell, the movie just seems to be one long, boring chase scene. The goblin town chase goes on forever and feels like a much less interesting retread of Khazad-Dum from Fellowship without the awesome Balrog scene. Plus the goblins are fucking pathetic in the Hobbit. After the first few minutes, there's no tension, it's just like watching a supremely boring video game unfold. Then we get the Warg Treetop 'climax' which is... okay. It also kind of drags but, to be honest, I thought that part sucked in the book too and Jackson's changes neither improved nor worsened that scene. It's a good, logical conclusion for the film, but by then, I was just waiting for the film to end which I think was just a result of the length of the movie plus my general ambivalence about this sequence. It didn't help that my ass had thoroughly fallen asleep during the Fleeing The Goblin City Quick Time Event (Press X to kill every Goblin on the screen!).
Thankfully, Riddles In The Dark, aka the best part of the movie is pretty self-contained and the scene where Bilbo spares Gollum and returns to the dwarves are perfect.
Other little notes:
- The casting was great. Freeman as Bilbo was awesome. Armitage as Thorin was awesome and I really liked Thorin's prideful arrogance. Also, I actually liked Weaving as Elrond in this movie. I dunno if it was the writing or Weaving but I think he came off much better.
- In fact, while about half of the dwarves do sort of fade into the background, I liked the few that got some screentime. Overall, I thought the dwarves were well handled, but there is room for improvement. Some of them, I'm still not sure who is who but that was a problem with the book too so meh.
- Parts of the movie really reminded how some parts of the book are just... shit. In the book, most of the major confrontations end with Gandalf somehow saving the day and while the dwarves in the movie are much less inept, I just wish more had been done to keep each part from ending in a Deus Ex Gandalf. Or deus ex eagles.
- The Prologue was kinda cool but felt a bit like a lesser man's Fellowship prologue.
- I liked the inclusion of Azog as a villain. It's too bad he looked like shit.
- The Witch-King cameo was needless, but that plays into the whole fact that I much prefer how the storyline of the Necromancer and Dol Guldor plays out in the books. Obvious bias is obvious.
- The brief glimpse we got of Sauron was neat, OTOH.
- I loved the songs, except for maybe the goblin song. Gollum's song and the dwarves' song about Erebor were the highlights.
- Gollum was awesome. Serkis and Freeman delivered.
- The Stone Giant scene was pointless. It's not as if I didn't enjoy it, but I think that on rewatches it'll be a drag. Too long and just... silly.
- Apparently Middle Earth is only like 600 miles across seeing as the Dwarves get a pretty good view of Erebor from the Misty Mountains. It's a cool scene, but it irks me and it bothered me in LotR too.
- I was really,
really hoping for a quick glimpse or mention of Durin's Bane in the Dwarf-Goblin War flashback.
So there we go. A good, but not great movie. I'm wondering if there will be an Extended version of this because I can't imagine any more getting bolted onto this movie without it sagging and collapsing under its own weight.
Topic: The Hobbit movies (Read 175076 times)
