In theatres: 'Desolation of Smaug' [2] SPOILERS

bungobaggins wrote:

Forest Shepherd wrote:What magic?

ah of course!

Forest Shepherd wrote:There is no talking fox. Reread that section and you'll see it's only the fox's thoughts, nothing more.

I know that, but "the fox whose thoughts we can hear" doesn't work so well in a pithy (and sarcastic, as anyone who's read my other posts about the movies should know) comment. And the fox's thoughts are still way more sophisticated than one expects from a fox, so it's close enough for my purposes.

bungobaggins wrote:

maybe he should'v had six limbs...

Eldorion wrote:

Forest Shepherd wrote:There is no talking fox. Reread that section and you'll see it's only the fox's thoughts, nothing more.

I know that, but "the fox whose thoughts we can hear" doesn't work so well in a pithy (and sarcastic, as anyone who's read my other posts about the movies should know) comment. ;)And the fox's thoughts are still way more sophisticated than one expects from a fox, so it's close enough for my purposes.

Ah of course. Sorry about that.
Of course in the film, Pippin has less overall sophisticated thought than that fox did in his brief book cameo.

Errrr, he looks like hes gonna kill someone at an Ice hockey game

haha yes.. or he really hates that fluffball..

As someone quite insightfully said, who needs a dragon when you have Benedict Cumberbatch.

Forest Shepherd wrote:Ah of course. Sorry about that.
Of course in the film, Pippin has less overall sophisticated thought than that fox did in his brief book cameo.

And it's no problem; you were of course correct and I'm the last person to complain about someone correcting others' facts.

I'll take Richard Boone over Derelict Cabbagepatch any day

Hmm, that was better than I remembered (not having seen the animated Hobbit in years), but I don't think I'd put him above Cumberbatch. The Smaug performance was probably the highlight (or one of them) of both versions of The Hobbit though.

I'm not about to award any points to this horrendous film, so Cumbersome loses by association

Also, his voice was altered making it practically unrecognizable, thus making me curious about the praise. Any decent voice actor could have done as good a job or better. I can't recall hearing this much (if any praise) over a vocal performance, so I'm wondering if there isn't some cult of personality thing going on here; as if it's more about him than the character. And even if it was the best vocal performance ever, it's wasted on this terrible movie.

Then there's the motion capture: first of all, why? And second of all, never mind, I don't care

Well there is certainly a faction of people dedicated to Cumberbatch no matter what (not that I'm naming any names here ) but I think a lot of people just wanted to find something nice to say about the movie and Smaug was a pretty impressive creation (both visually and audially) despite the problems with how he was utilized (and the size factor).

I wanted Smaug to be more reddy-golden, well, more red than gold but, goldy red, with more red than gold. So yeah, red with a touch of gold. But more red, if you see what I mean

Forest Shepherd wrote:What magic?

I take it you dont think the Talking Purse was magical?   

For me it had more to do with the Smaug Bilbo scene in it's entirety.  

That was the one moment where I felt the movie slowed down enough to allow for some contemplation and the one time I felt the spririt of Tolkien seeping through. Thoughts of what might have been and so on. Not that it didn't have it's issues as well. And Cumberbatch, by association, gets a fair bit of credit from me for that.

radagast, did u watch the video i posted a link to? there is some behind the scenes stuff with benedict, before the sound was "altered"

This link?

http://muchadoaboutbenedict.tumblr.com/post/77028270205/deareje-new-thehobbit-smaug-more

Oh, I missed that.

That was a lot more similar to the finished product than I expected..  I might even say preferable to..

And for all the talk about his motion capture work being used or not, it obviously had a large impact on how the voice came out.

And he obviously put a lot of work in. I can fully understand that he's proud of that.

I might have appreciated the effort more if it was to create a scene closer to the book

Well, we agree on that Radaghast.  I would too.

All the while I'm saying it was easily my favourite part of the movie, I'm very open to the fact that it still had it's issues.

Like Smaug not being red enough ?

Haha, yeah.

And Bilbo only going down once not twice, not wearing the ring, the Saurons eye bit. A whole range of issues seemingly.   

Still my favourite scene though.

I just saw a snippet on youtube where it is in French, sounded so much better ! thats the secret, watch the fooking thing in French I say !