In theatres: 'Desolation of Smaug' | SPOILERS

Yeah, I mean, even Smaug knows about the Ring despite having been holed up in his mountain for at least 60 years. So unless he has some supernatural ability to sense the Ring, which would make zero sense since even the movie says he's not a servant of Sauron, he must have heard about it somehow. Which means other people know about the Ring too, which raises two major questions about the beginning of FOTR. First, how did neither Gandalf nor Saruman hear any inkling of this, and two, why did Sauron need to wait until he happened to catch Gollum to have any clues about the Ring's location?

Ugh. How can we think of these things and someone with access to hundreds of millions of dollars doesn't even give a nod in their direction?

PJDGAF

It's certainly very strange when you are making wholesale changes to a story to make it a prequel to another, to be so blind to the ramifications the changes you make to the prequel has for the story it's supposed to be a prequel to.

The way it has turned out now, their self written story parts doesn't even make sense in relation to themselves.

Look guyz! It's Sauron!



Do you think they got it? Should we have it loop a few more times?

 That part just looked so wrong...

When he first appeared to Gandalf, it really did look like a vagina.

Maybe that was Boyens and Walsh trying to get back at all the phallic symbols they've seen in movies.

Feminine energy!

Eldorion wrote:Yeah, I mean, even Smaug knows about the Ring despite having been holed up in his mountain for at least 60 years.  So unless he has some supernatural ability to sense the Ring, which would make zero sense since even the movie says he's not a servant of Sauron, he must have heard about it somehow.  Which means other people know about the Ring too, which raises two major questions about the beginning of FOTR.  First, how did neither Gandalf nor Saruman hear any inkling of this, and two, why did Sauron need to wait until he happened to catch Gollum to have any clues about the Ring's location?

good point and if Smaug was a servant or buddies with Sauron, wouldnt he have sent him a skype saying ''hey m8 I found your Ring, some twitching idiot I failed to kill (a lot) has got it. laters''

Wait, "laters" is the common Brit usage? Over here we just say "later", but a delightful chinese woman I know keeps using "laters" and nobody has pointed it out to her because we think its adorable.

But if a whole country is using it the adorable quotient just went down.   

sorry to burst the cute bubble   

Sauron: LOLZ. WT A Dumbazz!

Mrs Figg wrote:sorry to burst the cute bubble   

yeah, now I may have to think of her as being sophisticated instead of cute. bollocks.

Mrs Figg wrote:

Eldorion wrote:Yeah, I mean, even Smaug knows about the Ring despite having been holed up in his mountain for at least 60 years.  So unless he has some supernatural ability to sense the Ring, which would make zero sense since even the movie says he's not a servant of Sauron, he must have heard about it somehow.  Which means other people know about the Ring too, which raises two major questions about the beginning of FOTR.  First, how did neither Gandalf nor Saruman hear any inkling of this, and two, why did Sauron need to wait until he happened to catch Gollum to have any clues about the Ring's location?

good point and if Smaug was a servant or buddies with Sauron, wouldnt he have sent him a skype saying ''hey m8 I found your Ring, some twitching idiot I failed to kill (a lot) has got it. laters''

Doesn't Gandalf also explicitly state in the book that Smaug is his own master, and that it is him siding with Sauron in an eventual war he fears?

He says that in the movie too. Page 63 of this transcript.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1WSLu9yYZZk55wi4PgZ904qC2eaHMw-e3jhpGjNGWJMs/edit?hl=en&forcehl=1&pli=1

Gandalf wrote:This is true, my lady. Smaug owes allegiance to no one. But if he should side with the enemy, a dragon could be used to terrible effect.

I think it was Halfy who asked will watching DROSS effect our view of LOTR. Well it wont change my liking of LOTR, but it will effect how I look at PJ. I dont know what went wrong, how could he be capable of such second rate pap? has he lost what creative spark he once had?, was he just bored of it all?, I dont admire him now, although I will always admire and defend LOTR. It makes me think that before (10 years ago) he could have been in more of a collaboration with equaliy talented people who put a brake on the excess and channelled the creativity into something great, and this time he had total control/power and therefore no one to tell him to stop therefore it became all the worst aspects puffed up into a big ball of bloat? who the heck knows, but I dont trust his judgement any more, its mediocre drivel.

It's also strange to think that the studio didn't really want him directing this one. And if del Toro hadn't decided to leave the project, he wouldn't have. I do wonder if that view of the studio was based on economic or artistic reason.   

Eldorion wrote:He says that in the movie too.  Page 63 of this transcript.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1WSLu9yYZZk55wi4PgZ904qC2eaHMw-e3jhpGjNGWJMs/edit?hl=en&forcehl=1&pli=1

Gandalf wrote:This is true, my lady. Smaug owes allegiance to no one. But if he should side with the enemy, a dragon could be used to terrible effect.

It will be interesting to see then if they go to the step of involving Sauron in the Bo5A or with Smaug in any other way in the third movie as some have theorized. I certainly hope not, and it would be another example of them disregarding the logic of the story.

The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug nominated for 5 Critics’ Choice Awards
by TORn  -  
Critics Choice AwardsThe Broadcast Film Critics Association has announced their nominees
for 2013, and The Desolation of Smaug has received 5 nods for Best Art Direction, Best Costume Design, Best Make-up, Best Visual Effects,
and Best Actress in an Action Movie (Evangeline Lilly).

so best wigs and lipstick then. whoopdewoo! what a haul.   and Lilly is up against Sandra Bullock in Gravity so she's got no chance.

((((do I sound bitchy? yeah probably   )))))

Martin Freeman is up for Best Actor to Play a Diminutive Character in a Fantasy Movie.

Rad I approve of the new avatar...

Mrs Figg wrote:The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug nominated for 5 Critics’ Choice Awards
by TORn  -  
Critics Choice AwardsThe Broadcast Film Critics Association has announced their nominees
for 2013, and The Desolation of Smaug has received 5 nods for Best Art Direction, Best Costume Design, Best Make-up, Best Visual Effects,
and Best Actress in an Action Movie (Evangeline Lilly).

so best wigs and lipstick then. whoopdewoo! what a haul.   and Lilly is up against Sandra Bullock in Gravity so she's got no chance.

((((do I sound bitchy? yeah probably   )))))

Well, these nominations (all but the best actress) seem fairly reasonable I guess. Even though I must say that I haven't seen many new movies this year. Those areas of the film were fairly well done as is the norm for them.
I have no personal vendetta against Ms. Lilly but she didn't get a chance to act much between all the surfing and skippin about... I suppose athleticism is a major asset in an action movie actress though.

I'm not familiar with any of Lilly's work outside of TH, but she seemed pretty good to me. She was just stuck trying to make do with crap material. It especially sucks for her since she'd been promised that there would be no love triangles when they hired her.

Thanks, MotA!

Also it's a bit of a shame since it seems to be a commonly held view that Lee Pace was the standout actor in the movie, and he got a lot less screentime than he could have had because of the inclusion of Legolas and Tauriel.

I wonder if her nomination is just the media's way of cementing the idea that she is the embodiment of "feminine energy"   

And I was shocked that Thranduil didn't have a bigger role, especially because of the way he was hyped up in AUJ. Lee Pace has been nominated for an Emmy before (which I think holds more ground than a critic's choice award) so I don't feel too bad for him