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Hobbit Movie discussion II - Here be Spoilers

The BlackBear

By The BlackBear,
in Entertainment

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The BlackBear Council Member

The BlackBear

Posted
Posted

Last thread locked, I suspect there is more to say on this. Whilst I'm fairly pissed, I suspect on retrospect some good points will be revealed.



This film reminded me of Gotham in some ways, cartoony depiction of what is serious material, with endless winks and nods to the universe we all know will follow.






Tauriel should have fucking died. If not killed by Bolg, then at least dead of grief. Elves do that.





Elves only start to die after they lose everything they chose to give up their immortality for. Did Tauriel actually choose?




I wonder if there are people, among these who complain about TBotFA, who thoroughly enjoyed previous two Hobbit movies. I'd start to worry if there were, but not sooner, sorry. I'll be seeing this in a week and I hope to enjoy it as much as I enjoyed AUJ and DoS.

Maybe not enjoyed as it rambled and the final segment was utter bullshit, but DoS was almost saved by Smaug, who was played and realised to utter perfection for me. The problem with cutting the films off where they did was that we lost all resonance that Smaug had given us, so his death was flat. And it's not like they had to put it in this film at all. Just cut that silly mine scene from DoS and have a longer more involved Laketown scene.


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Corvinus85 Council Member

Corvinus85

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I wonder if there are people, among these who complain about TBotFA, who thoroughly enjoyed previous two Hobbit movies. I'd start to worry if there were, but not sooner, sorry. I'll be seeing this in a week and I hope to enjoy it as much as I enjoyed AUJ and DoS.

I am at this moment one of those people. Maybe on a second viewing I'll like it more, but besides my early complaints, what I found lacking in this one was the "spirit" of Middle-earth that despite all other flaws, PJ did manage to infuse in all the other movies. And the battle for which the movie is named is definitely the weakest of the 3 big battles we've seen all six movies.

Yeah, I remember that... I read Hobbit long time ago, so I might be mistaken here, but the necklace wasn't his wife's, right? Yes, I remember that he gets the necklace of Girion. Bilbo gave it to him, IIRC. And, Thranduil's main motivation was to aid Bard. Oh, God, I need a reread of Hobbit...

I decided to re-read it a couple of weeks ago. There was no mention of Thranduil's wife in the book. Thranduil cared more about those gems than any other treasure because wood elves love starlight. The reason why he left his kingdom with an army was to go the mountain, but he diverted to the shores of the lake when he heard what happened with the dragon.

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Night's_King Council Member

Night's_King

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So, I finally watched the movie. First of all, I loved the book, read it several times. Liked the first movie, was disppointed by the second one.



I was expecting to be disappointed again, but actually I wasn't. Sure, there were some big issues, like the dwarfs knocking their barrier to the ground, thus building a bridge, Legolas using a tower as a bridge and jumping on falling stones or Bard using his son and a broken bow to slay a dragon. There also were stupid things, like Sauron saying "The age of elves is over, the age of orcs has begun." (don't know if this is the correct translation, since I saw the movie in german) or the sandworms. And I always found it funny, how the number of soldiers in each army seemed to change every scene.



Things I really did like were the depiction of Thorin's madness, the deaths, Dol Guldur and (surprisingly) how they solved the love triangle. I actually liked the battle scenes, although I am still not a fan of super overpowered Logolas (btw: what's up with his eyes?!) and children or working class villagers defeating three orcs at the same time.



All in all not one of the greatest movies ever, but I did enjoy it.


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Werthead Council Member

Werthead

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Further to the discussion about copyright in the previous thread, The Silmarillion, Unfinished Tales, The Children of Hurin and the HoME series are actually all copyrighted by Chris Tolkien, even if J.R.R. is identified as the author. On that basis, they will not enter the public domain in 2043, but seventy years after Chris Tolkien's death. Since he's still going strong at 90, that's not going to be for a long, long time.



Indeed, it might even be argued that since those books were unpublished works at the time of J.R.R.'s death, they might even be covered by the 'unpublished writing' clause, which is death of the author plus 125 years. So that's 2098 even if J.R.R. is accepted as the author (or 2139 if Chris Tolkien is accepted as the author and left us tomorrow).



I suspect that come 2043, however, a lot of lawyers are going to get together and claim that J.R.R. should be accepted as the author as he wrote every single word in The Children of Hurin and the overwhelming majority in the rest.



Maybe I should have inserted a somewhat. I quite like Gotham, but a lot of people have been complaining about it's tone.


I really don't think it's right to say that Batman is 'serious' source material. The original comics going back to the 1930s were very campy by our standards, and it was the 1960s TV series (which was pure camp) which brought the franchise to massive worldwide attention for the first time. Even the Burton movies had a fair share of camp in them.



I think 'serious' Batman has given us some good stuff (the classic 1980s and 1990s comic books by Moore and Miller before he went nuts, the Arkham games, some aspects of the Nolan films) but that doesn't mean it's the default setting for the Batman mythos. In fact, I've been hugely enjoying Gotham for its blending of serious moments with pulp fiction with some elements from the comic books. I think they struggled with tone in the first two or three episodes, but have been much better since then.


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Corvinus85 Council Member

Corvinus85

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Further to the discussion about copyright in the previous thread, The Silmarillion, Unfinished Tales, The Children of Hurin and the HoME series are actually all copyrighted by Chris Tolkien, even if J.R.R. is identified as the author. On that basis, they will not enter the public domain in 2043, but seventy years after Chris Tolkien's death. Since he's still going strong at 90, that's not going to be for a long, long time.

Indeed, it might even be argued that since those books were unpublished works at the time of J.R.R.'s death, they might even be covered by the 'unpublished writing' clause, which is death of the author plus 125 years. So that's 2098 even if J.R.R. is accepted as the author (or 2139 if Chris Tolkien is accepted as the author and left us tomorrow).

I suspect that come 2043, however, a lot of lawyers are going to get together and claim that J.R.R. should be accepted as the author as he wrote every single word in The Children of Hurin and the overwhelming majority in the rest.

I really don't think it's right to say that Batman is 'serious' source material. The original comics going back to the 1930s were very campy by our standards, and it was the 1960s TV series (which was pure camp) which brought the franchise to massive worldwide attention for the first time. Even the Burton movies had a fair share of camp in them.

I think 'serious' Batman has given us some good stuff (the classic 1980s and 1990s comic books by Moore and Miller before he went nuts, the Arkham games, some aspects of the Nolan films) but that doesn't mean it's the default setting for the Batman mythos. In fact, I've been hugely enjoying Gotham for its blending of serious moments with pulp fiction with some elements from the comic books. I think they struggled with tone in the first two or three episodes, but have been much better since then.

I am more worried about movies that completely make up a story set in Middle-earth, thanks to The Shadow of Mordor.

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HexMachina Council Member

HexMachina

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Can they make ME fan fiction without violating trademark?

I imagine that if there is a way around it, it will be found. Lets just hope not, or we will have Legolas becoming King of Mirkwood and hunting down the Nazgul that have somehow survived...
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protar Council Member

protar

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Well I saw it today. It was shallowly enjoyable but incredibly self-indulgent and the action dragged on far too long. Smaug's death felt disjointed from the rest of the film and should have ended the second film.





Can they make ME fan fiction without violating trademark?





You're asking this in a discussion about the Hobbit? :P



It's an interesting question though - a lot of stuff in the Hobbit movies essentially are fan fiction with little to no basis in the source material. So where is the line drawn legally? I think so long as there is some flimsy basis in canon they can do what they like. I got the impression that they where setting up a film about Legolas and Aragorn.


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Sivin Council Member

Sivin

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I did a little translation of the runes that were on the stone that Kili gave to Freckles...

They said

4 8 15 16 23 42

HAHA!

So I was about to cave and go see this movie, but I can't. Because there's no Imax without 3D attachments. Are you fucking kidding me!?! Why can't I watch a goddamn movie on a comically large screen with overworked speakers without silly pop-up book effects?

Fuck you, New Line Cinemas.

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