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

*gulp* Ditto Tin  Bloody sentimental tosh ! (Had to bite my lip also,*sniff, sniff*)
Add my points to the old score board.

Strangely enough it just annoys me- its deliberately manipulative and that just makes me crabbit.
Its also masking the fact TH films are a steaming pile of shite.

Yes, Petty, The Hobbit IS the biggest steaming pile of SHAT Ive ever had the displeasure to endure watching, no doubt about it, but the soooooong, he sings so nicely, have you no heart ?
Ok yeah, its manipulative, it suckers you in, you start to feel something for the film, the characters all because your sobbing your eyes out,.......... but the soooooong Petty ! It was bad enough when Annie Lennox did "Into the west", gawd did I blub at that !

this is blatant LOTR nostalgia. It reminds us of Billy singing in ROTK and thats why its moving and sad. They use a ton of LOTR visuals, Its got precious little to do with TH. Its very clever of them but its pretty obvious.

have you no heart ? - Azriel

Of course I do. I keep it at the bottom of an old bucket, somewhere

And this is the very reason Ive been taken for a dipstick all my life, I need to toughen up & not be led astray by men with silver toned voices playing acoustic guitar ! TIN, are you listening to this ? Save yourself NOW, before its to late !

& not be led astray by men with silver toned voices playing acoustic guitar ! - Azriel

Then you are perfectly safe with me Azriel. I have a singing voice like someone gargling gravel and I cant play guitar!

There's obviously nothing like grappling with rough hairy tweed then ?

Pettytyrant101 wrote:Strangely enough it just annoys me- its deliberately manipulative and that just makes me crabbit.    

I'd have to mostly agree with you here, although Billy Boyd has a very good singing voice, and in some ways the lyrics/vocals were rather touching in a hobbity simple way (I'm actually quite glad they have gone for a 'softer' song and resisted the attempt to out epic LOTR), the video just seemed to be a self congratulatory tear machine, playing heavily on nostalgia and edited like many fan videos I've seen on youtube. The crappy CGI and design of Azog stuck out like a sore thumb in even that very brief clip, the lyrics were repeitive and manipulative (though I guess they sum up this trilogy rather well-full of fan service, callbacks to LOTR and obvious 'empathize with me now!' moments) and my abiding feeling was   I was neither in tears nore bored, which to me is much more upsetting than the films coming to an end.

Admittedly I'm heavily biased, and Jackson has arguably  earned the right to be as indulgent as he wants I suppose (he makes alot of money and alot of people very happy, so I guess I can't be too annoyed with him...or can I?) but, considering I was introduced to Tolkien via the LOTR films, and grew up as teenager before first reading the books in 2007...I would have hoped a song entitled 'The Last Goodbye' would have upset me more, as a sendoff to a large part of my childhood.

I guess I will have to wait until December to see If I feel any different, I never even bothered listening to the songs for the first two Hobbit films (yet I still have a soft spot for 'The Greatest Adventure' from the cartoon...)

*It's going to look rather funny in retrospect when Warner Bros announce a 'Middle Earth shared Universe' of spin off movies...

I will always treasure LOTR. this Hobbit malarky is just fading fast from my memory, it doesnt really figure into my botheredness.

It's going to look rather funny in retrospect when Warner Bros announce a 'Middle Earth shared Universe' of spin off movies...

WAT !!

Mrs Figg wrote:this is blatant LOTR nostalgia. It reminds us of Billy singing in ROTK and thats why its moving and sad. They use a ton of LOTR visuals, Its got precious little to do with TH. Its very clever of them but its pretty obvious.

Exactly. I won't lie. The song has grown on me, and I appreciate the sentiment in the video. But it just makes me more bummed out that The Hobbit is so shitty.

Yeah, I'm glad they called him back for the song. But the warm nostalgic feeling we all want deserves a better movie.

I like the song. I like how it paraphrases parts of "Roads Go Ever Ever On" from The Hobbit. Having exact lyrics of "Roads" would have been nice, but it would have been too easy, plus it's already been set to music for the animated Hobbit. I also think it's clever at the end "I bid you all a very fond farewell." Which is what Bilbo says at his birthday party in FOTR.

yes the song itself is great.

I know it's manipulative, which I have to say is the correct way to market the steaming pile of crap that will probably be the movie. They know the Hobbit can't hold a candle to LOTR, so they're trying to share its light. And so all of us who like the LOTR films will feel immediately drawn to a song referring to the good old days aka THOSE FILMS which are fantastic in comparison to the Hobbit films.

Pettytyrant101 wrote:Is it time for a sing-song?!

Raise your buckie and all together now-

'Ohhhhh, a wizards staff has a knob on the end,
a knob on the end, a knob on the end,
Ohhhhh, a wizards staff has a knob on the end,
best not meddle or twist it!'

This came up in my DnD session yesterday. Otherwise I would have no idea what you're talking about Petty!

Pettytyrant101 wrote:Strangely enough it just annoys me- its deliberately manipulative and that just makes me crabbit.    
Its also masking the fact TH films are a steaming pile of shite.

Well, actually, what you object to is that it's being deliberately manipulative in a dishonest way. This kind of video works fairly well (in your case Petty) to amazingly well (for most other people) because it reminds them of all the things they liked in the LOTR films. The emotional substance of the LOTR trilogy backs up this music video like the background instruments back up Billy Boyd's voice and his guitar.
By including shots of the Hobbit trilogy in this video, however, they are assuming, or implying, that the same emotional substance exists in the Hobbit trilogy when, actually, no meaningful substance can be found in this second trilogy.
There is no reason, at all, whatsoever, that I shouldn't feel a strong emotional response to good acting from a beautiful actress like Evangeline Lilly when it's backed by music like this. So, really, this music video is like a glimpse of what the Hobbit films could have felt like to me if they were good, and not bad.
I didn't hate that the writers added in Tauriel, and Legolas, and whomever. I just hated that there were so few beautiful parts in the movie, and that the morally ugly parts, and the stupid parts, were so pervasive.

P.S.
For example, one of the parts in DOS that I actually liked (for a moment) was when Tauriel was talking about "going up" and out into the open world and seeing the beauty of the stars. This was the type of beauty that Tolkien wrote of, I think.
If only the action would have been exciting, the drama meaningful, the comedy well-timed and placed (more of that Bombur-running moment from DoS, except without Bombur probably), and the beauty apt and meaningful, then the Hobbit films would have been excellent.

Forest Shepherd wrote:This was the type of beauty that Tolkien wrote of, I think.
If only the action would have been exciting, the drama meaningful, the comedy well-timed and placed (more of that Bombur-running moment from DoS, except without Bombur probably), and the beauty apt and meaningful, then the Hobbit films would have been excellent.

Yes. And some good old fashion charm would have been nice, too.

Tinuviel wrote:I know it's manipulative, which I have to say is the correct way to market the steaming pile of crap that will probably be the movie. They know the Hobbit can't hold a candle to LOTR, so they're trying to share its light. And so all of us who like the LOTR films will feel immediately drawn to a song referring to the good old days aka THOSE FILMS which are fantastic in comparison to the Hobbit films.

I agree that they're trying to tie The Hobbit closely to LOTR, but I'm not sure that their motivation is so cynical. It's seemed pretty clear that PJ and Co. have approached this project from the start with the intention of making a companion piece to LOTR. Regardless of how most of us on here feel that it turned out, the Billy Boyd ending song makes sense as a way to conclude the project and is consistent with numerous decisions that the filmmakers have made earlier in the process.

That is an apt, and rather clinical, description of the matter.

I didn't really want to try to reduce the song to whether or not it's logical, because I do like it and find it to be emotionally effective, but all the casual accusations that the song is exploitative kinda bothered me so I wanted to propose an alternative explanation.

Your alternative explanation is sensible and true Eldo. But it doesn't change the natureof the song as being exploitative. The entire Hobbit trilogy is exploitative.
The song is just a particularly glaring cap stone on it.

New tv spots collected together in one vid- but quality isnt great-



And screencaps-

Bolg, I assume leading the Dol Guldur host-



Bilbo in Dale-



Galadriel using Nenya-



Thorin hanging over a high place!



Bard and his stupid cart-



The bats, rather big bats-



Orcs pouring out of caverns, somewhere-



Charging dwarves , well what passes for dwarves in these films at any rate-



PJ subtly highlighting Nenya



Galadriel moving in to snog an unconscious Gandalf will the Nine look on-



Bard, a moose, Thranduil and his army of idenikit cgi elves, what are they clone batched?-



Hey its the Witchking and mace from RotK, oh no its just Bolg and another pathetic callback-



Your guess is as good as mine-



Tauriel fighting Bolg (I think)-



Dain-



and his ridiculously large hammer-