Critics review 'Desolation of Smaug' | POSSIBLE SPOILERS

Mrs Figg wrote: ''Bad book adaptations always make fans defensive because we don’t want the characters and world we so love to be misrepresented to the masses, yet that is far from the case here'' TORn

erm?    OH the irony!

Yeah, I picked up on that as well. Though the answer is quite simple.

"No, but when the people you worship makes bad movies you do need to backtrack wildly to justify why they turned out that way."

Great review from Forbes. (And by great I mean that he explains the problems with these Hobbit movies very well.)

http://www.forbes.com/sites/scottmendelson/2013/12/09/review-the-hobbit-the-desolation-of-smaug-is-better-without-being-good/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter

(Why is Legolas always described as a "fan-favorite"? He definitely wasn't one of my favorite parts of LOTR, book or movie. I guess I just don't care for him as a character.)

I liked Legolas in the book, he wasnt my favourite character but I liked him.

I never took to film Legolas, I felt he was functional in the role but no more.
The only time he nailed book Legolas for me oddly enough was in his reaction to seeing the Balrog.
But then again thats probably about the last time Orlando got a go at playing a semblance of book Legolas and not unlikeable super hero Legolas.   

Pettytyrant101 wrote:I liked Legolas in the book, he wasnt my favourite character but I liked him.

I never took to film Legolas, I felt he was functional in the role but no more.
The only time he nailed book Legolas for me oddly enough was in his reaction to seeing the Balrog.
But then again thats probably about the last time Orlando got a go at playing a semblance of book Legolas and not unlikeable super hero Legolas.   

I happen to think Orlando was pretty good casting for Legolas, (when he was younger) its not as if he has much of a personality in the LOTR books either. Orlando did the fey Elf bit very well, hes not a great actor, but he didnt need to be. Legolas is cool serene and not given to many outward displays of emotion, it does what it says on the tin. As for Super Leggy Rides Again, he's an Elf and he appealed to the youngsters, dont see the harm in it. As regards The Hobbit, they have taken the cool things about Legolas, taken them to extremes and amped him up into a complete twat. All this romance tosh and the bratty Prince stuff is going to ruin what little credibility he had. ok he didnt have much, but at least in LOTR I liked him.

He seems like a nice guy so I dont like to say horrible things about his acting. He has his own genre of films and he is pretty good at them.

Pettytyrant101 wrote:I liked Legolas in the book, he wasnt my favourite character but I liked him.

I never took to film Legolas, I felt he was functional in the role but no more.
The only time he nailed book Legolas for me oddly enough was in his reaction to seeing the Balrog.
But then again thats probably about the last time Orlando got a go at playing a semblance of book Legolas and not unlikeable super hero Legolas.   

That look in the film I thought was pretty lame. Before reading the book, I thought it was just another shot at his face cuz he's pretty. I felt like there could have been more terror in his face. I mean he yelps in the book, so something a bit more than a brooding look would have been nice...
Oddly he wasn't my favorite either. I was immediately drawn to Aragorn when I saw FOTR when I was six   Strange choice for a six year old, especially with Orlando Bloom...

Book Legolas always seemed to me to be - how else to say it - a bit of a girly boy.  Prancing around on top of snow, singing songs about nature, sighing about leaves falling ... just didn't seem like the type you'd like to have along when orcs were on the hoof.  Though he was a good shot with a bow.  Despite all the surfing, movie Legolas did seem more like what the Fellowship needed.  Wasn't a major problem for me, and I actually didn't mind the surfing that much.

I'm not a fan of Orlando Bloom in anything, let alone the LotR movies.

Legolas and Gimli were the comedy duo when Merry and Pippin weren't on screen. That is what they seemed like to me. In the book they weren't particularly prominent, but as supporting characters you wouldn't expect them to be. I don't remember the reaction to the Balrog in either book or film but you would think he was 1 of the 2 that would had known first had accounts of what they were (Gandalf had probably even seen them before). You would expect a pretty severe reaction from him if he knew one was after them.

halfwise wrote:Book Legolas always seemed to me to be - how else to say it - a bit of a girly boy.

Well he is an elf.

bungobaggins wrote:Great review from Forbes. (And by great I mean that he explains the problems with these Hobbit movies very well.)

http://www.forbes.com/sites/scottmendelson/2013/12/09/review-the-hobbit-the-desolation-of-smaug-is-better-without-being-good/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter

I enjoyed reading such a thorough review/analysis of the problems with DOS. Revising expectations down yet again, though. :/

(Why is Legolas always described as a "fan-favorite"? He definitely wasn't one of my favorite parts of LOTR, book or movie. I guess I just don't care for him as a character.)

He's not my favorite either, but Legolas is really popular. There are a lot of people excited to see him again.

Poking around a bit more on Scott Mendelson's Forbes site, I noticed that he claims King Kong is "terrific". I have no desire to ever see that movie again, but it says something if even Kong defenders don't care for The Hobbit.

I think book Legolas is great Lots of wisdom, loves forests and everything ancient, and yet he is a skilled warrior too. He may come across as feminine in certain parts of the book, but I think that's part of what makes him such a cool character - the contrast. I liked how not all of Tolkien's deadly warriors were Aragorns or Boromirs, that there were characters like Faramir, Legolas and Eowyn, too

Another decent review.

http://badassdigest.com/2013/12/09/the-hobbit-the-desolation-of-smaug-movie-review-ugh/

That review sounds about right for what I am expecting- a waste of my time.   

liked these bits. from above review.

The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug feels like Peter Jackson in crisis. He’s lost in the CGI and story padding, no longer grasping the storytelling basics that made Lord of the Rings work. That trilogy was all about making things fit, and it was a magnificent work of adaptation that pared down and focused a huge story with immense emotional resonance. This is a movie that takes a small story and blows it up like a cartoon character with a bicycle pump in his mouth. Of course it can’t maintain its form. Of course it comes apart.

Congratulations, Millenials - you have your own disappointing Prequel Trilogy. Like the work of Lucas, the Hobbit films have lost sight of what made the originals work as they drown in computer graphics. The tactile world of Middle Earth has become a cartoon; there’s a scene in Desolation of Smaug where one dumb looking CGI superorc is talking to another dumb looking CGI superorc in what appears to be either a CGI room or a space so color corrected as to be essentially painted and I wondered why the hell I was even looking at this cartoon. I felt like I could go to Middle Earth when I watched Lord of the Rings; maybe I could plug in a controller and play The Hobbit, but it would likely be the kind of game where I button-mashed my way through the cut scenes because, honestly, who gives a shit about the story? Not the people who made it.

I do feel compelled to point out one thing and that is that a lot of books go through sometimes extreme changes when adapted to film. The difference is that they're not made into 9-hour trilogies. TH seems like a fairly easy work to adapt to film, unlike LotR, but it's being inflated for reasons mostly to do, imho, with ego, self-indulgence and box office receipts.

Jesus Christ, if the action scenes are as bad as Devin Faraci says (and that's a fairly big if) then there is no hope at all for DOS.

nope   

I'll probably still enjoy it though, if only for the cheese.

and that's a fairly big if- Eldo

Not sure why, sounds exactly like what Pj does- over long action sequences with no control or restraint, camera unhinged from reality and failing to convey any meaningful narrative, cartoony in action and devoid of physics- sounds highly likely to me going on previous form.

It's more that Devin Faraci is not the most reliable movie commentator out there.  His complaints all sound highly plausible, though.

Most of his LotR action was pretty reasonable, if you discount the Legolas moments and Mumukil that would buckle under their own weight. It's only AUJ that he really lost touch with reality.

I'd argue that he'd already left reality behind when he got to King Kong, but I agree that the action in LOTR was for the most part excellent. And the DOS action has also been highly praised by most critics, which is why I'm clinging to hope, but if it's anything like the action in AUJ (of which there was actually a lot) it'll be awful.

got a feeling its goint to be ten times worse, but I still want to go see it just so I can have a good old moan afterwards.

bungobaggins wrote:Another decent review.

http://badassdigest.com/2013/12/09/the-hobbit-the-desolation-of-smaug-movie-review-ugh/

Devin Faraci wrote:[Re: the barrel ride]The camera, unhinged from any earthly reality, swarms around background plates and across the faces of dwarf actors standing plainly on a green screen stage. Around them the pixelated digital stunt people shatter the laws of physics and, along the way, my chance of giving a fuck.

I think this guy is my new hero.

This pic was on that page, btw:



Rather odd way to hold a sword.