Waiting for 'The Battle of the Five Armies' [2]

I think it meant he planned on attacking Mirkwood and Laketown with Smaug and then kill the dwarves before they got the arkenstone.


Still stupid though.

I think this confirms that the windlance/ballista thing will still play a major role in BOFA.

And yeah ... we knew that after the earth-shattering events of LOTR, The Hobbit would look a little lightweight.  So it seems that PJ's strategy to counteract this is to try to make out the events of Battle of Five Armies to be just as earth-shattering as the War of the Ring.

I see Azog got his early Christmas present of a cutlery set





He just doesnt know which one to use 1st, they are all so nice

Yeah, wonder if he has one for getting stones out of horses hooves!

Ive been hearing rumours that as well as the orcs, giant trolls, trolls with orc son their back, bats, dwarves on goats ect that there are also some sort of huge burrowing wormy creatures (That may well explain the shot of all the orcs pouring into what looked like cave entrances)

azriel wrote:I see Azog  got his early Christmas present of a cutlery set





He just doesnt know which one to use 1st, they are all so nice  

I now have an image of Azog in a christmas had telling tales around the campfire toasting marshmallows on a toasting fork attachment the Orcs...

That sword is stupidly big though, you couldn't really block effectively and it would get in the way of the other arm...

What ? like the sand worm thingies from DUNE ? Oh fook !

That sword is stupidly big though- Malick

I think we passed stupid with these films long ago

like the sand worm thingies from DUNE ? - Azriel

Im not really sure, just giant burrowing things, probably a lot uglier and disgusting than the Dune worms cause you know, its PJ. They probably eat through rock then do a burp and fart gag. (I think they are there for Beorn to fight so PJ can have a monster fight, and so Legolamb can kill Bolg instead, probably after Bolg kills Fili and then is about to kill Tauroel when the plastic faced wonder boy surfs into action Then after all the fighting Tauriel is so grief stricken she leaves ME for the West and Legolas is so pissed off he stands on the harbour and cries "Dwraves! We hates them! We hates them forever!")

Its all spiraling way down the plug hole. How much farther from the book can you get ?? Dont give me this shit that its "artistic license" & that the director can take the view its his idea of an adaptation,  Cripes, Im mad, what must Christopher Tolkien feel like ? If peejers did all this to my fathers work Id never sleep till I had hunted him down, ( the rest is illegal, I couldnt possibly say what Id do to him !)

azriel wrote: Im mad, what must Christopher Tolkien feel like ?

I doubt he's even bothered watching them to be honest, even if he had, I think he is too close to the material (for the right reasons) to have a balanced opinion, and as a 90 year old retired Old English Scholar I doubt he is any way the target audience...

This stuff has a target audience?! God, thats a depressing thought.

azriel wrote: If peejers did all this to my fathers work...

Yeah, but it's in the Appendices right?

Pettytyrant101 wrote:This stuff has a target audience?!

Their aim could have been better...

azriel wrote:I see Azog  got his early Christmas present of a cutlery set





He just doesnt know which one to use 1st, they are all so nice  

Looks like the same exact shot they just "enhanced" it to add Azog's new knife to go with his fork. Pretty soon the stupid white orc will be a swiss army knife. With a spoon that folds out of his ass. That will be the hot new Christmas toy. I can see the sales pitch now...  

           "Azog the swiss army knife with ass folding spoon",  "Comes equipped with an excessively large knife blade and interchangeable fork". "Its good for nothing but show just like this worthless character in the films." Get yours today for a low low, over inflated price of $29.95, tax and shipping not included"

be the biggest waste of 30 bucks since buying two full price tickets to the Hobbit-TBO5A. I'll stick with my 5 dollar matinee price. Less money to give WB and the movie is the same either way.

Pettytyrant101 wrote:This stuff has a target audience?! God, thats a depressing thought.

Seriously though, I'm sure WB has wanted to insure from the beginning that TH is a blockbuster in China. It's one of the biggest film markets in the world, and only a very short list of foreign films are approved for distribution each year.

I'm guessing the members of the film board are big fans of Jacky Chan style action films, but may never have read Tolkien.
If that were the target audience, you just might get a silly CGI action film with a Tolkien-Lite story line....

Just a theory.

why is Ron Weasley dangling from a tower?

oh well at least Elrond comes out of this mess looking cool.

If it was for China then thats the best argument Ive heard yet for why they must be stopped from becoming the dominant super power and cultural influence- a world where all the films have the sensibilities of a PJ Tolkien film just doesnt bear thinking about

David H wrote:

Pettytyrant101 wrote:This stuff has a target audience?! God, thats a depressing thought.

Seriously though, I'm sure WB has wanted to insure from the beginning that TH is a blockbuster in China. It's one of the biggest film markets in the world, and only a very short list of foreign films are approved for distribution each year.

I'm guessing the members of the film board are big fans of Jacky Chan  style action films, but may never have read Tolkien.  
If that were the target audience, you just might get a silly CGI action film with a Tolkien-Lite story line....

Just a theory.

Now you have me thinking David

Pettytyrant101 wrote:If it was for China then thats the best argument Ive heard yet for why they must be stopped from becoming the dominant super power and cultural influence-

What are you thinking then? Another Opium War? I'm not sure the UK could pull that off again....

Sinister71 wrote:
 Now you have me thinking David

" "Azog the swiss army knife with ass folding spoon", "Comes equipped with an excessively large knife blade and interchangeable fork". "Its good for nothing but show just like this worthless character in the films." Get yours today for a low low, over inflated price of $29.95, tax and shipping not included" ".........Sinister 71

Pettytyrant101 wrote:If it was for China then thats the best argument Ive heard yet for why they must be stopped from becoming the dominant super power and cultural influence- a world where all the films have the sensibilities of a PJ Tolkien film just doesnt bear thinking about

Chinese audiences are just as bad if not worse than American ones when it comes to gobbling up crappy blockbusters at an alarming rate. Transformers 4 was (possibly) the first "tentpole" blockbuster to make more in China than it did in the US: $301 million vs $245 million. It remains to be seen what changes occur in Chinese movie-going trends if and when the country fully opens itself to foreign movies instead of only allowing in like 20 per year.

azriel wrote:" "Azog the swiss army knife with ass folding spoon",  "Comes equipped with an excessively large knife blade and interchangeable fork". "Its good for nothing but show just like this worthless character in the films." Get yours today for a low low, over inflated price of $29.95, tax and shipping not included" ".........Sinister 71

Glad I could make you laugh Azriel

It was...." ass folding spoon "...that got me Sin !

Eldorion wrote:

Pettytyrant101 wrote:If it was for China then thats the best argument Ive heard yet for why they must be stopped from becoming the dominant super power and cultural influence- a world where all the films have the sensibilities of a PJ Tolkien film just doesnt bear thinking about

Chinese audiences are just as bad if not worse than American ones when it comes to gobbling up crappy blockbusters at an alarming rate. Transformers 4 was (possibly) the first "tentpole" blockbuster to make more in China than it did in the US:  $301 million vs $245 million. It remains to be seen what changes occur in Chinese movie-going trends if and when the country fully opens itself to foreign movies instead of only allowing in like 20 per year.

I have to defend China here.  This is the film industry that gave us Farewell my Concubine, Hero, Ju Dou and of course Ang Lee and the films he did in China.  I don't think western films hold a candle to their visual aesthetic (comparing Central Park to any garden in Suzhou will convince one how far behind the western aesthetic is).

Sure, they will churn out and consume pulp, but so do we all.  And there's more of them to do the consuming. The judgement should lay with their best films, and I'd match them against anything.  The same unfortunately cannot be said of Bollywood, which can't seem to break free of their formulaic version of the musical soap opera.

I was talking solely about Chinese audiences. I don't think general audiences in any country flock to arthouse films except on rare occasions when a mainstream crossover hit emerges. But China in particular presents an interesting change in the dynamics of mass-audience movie making because they're the first national movie market to rival the United States for Hollywood's attention. The international market in general has only caught up to the US and Canada in the last 10-15 years, but China is in the process of eclipsing the US singlehandedly in terms of cinematic purchasing power. Previously, the largest foreign movie markets were still dwarfed by the US (like France, the birthplace of cinema) and/or turned largely inward (like India).

This is only true of mainstream/blockbuster movies, of course. Arthouse crowds and cinephiles the world over have and will continue to take a more inclusive global perspective than people who only go to the movies a few times a year.