Arrrr, you missed something obvious there me hearty!
What film did you watch last night?
- Thread starter Richeh
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Arrrr, you missed something obvious there me hearty!
The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies
And the trilogy grinds to it's disappointing conclusion. The first part of the movie seems like it should have been the end of the one before as the Smaug storyline wraps up in typically stupid fashion. Rather than using the stupid looking but potential powerful "Windlass" or something similar bow they foreshadow in the second movie to shoot the iron arrow into Smaug, Bard cobbles together a balista with the two broken halves of his bow and his son. Somehow this piece of obvious garbage can not only shoot the overly heavy arrow but kill Smaug with it.
Smaug inevitably lands on the badly charicatured master in what I presume is supposed to be an "and the audience cheers" moment but it's so cheesy it totally misses the mark. Eventually, after more tedious attempts at comedy from the Master's toady sidekick, the main plot of the movie kicks off. This can be summed up as: Thorin goes crazy, lots of people fight in unconvincing battle scenes.
For some reason the director decided that their actors were so bad that they'd use special effects to emphasise parts of their speech. It seems like bad autotune every time Thorin does something a bit threatening. Meanwhile Legolas forgets how to physics and the bred-to-fight orcs can be killed by an untrained boy with a sword or a hobbit with a rock and the Dwarven pig-riding Chief can apparently headbutt people to death.
The CGI that was used to create massed ranks in LotR is back but this time they seem to have forgotten that people don't look identical and we see line upon line of identikit elves and dwarves fighting indentikit Orcs. The trolls - who seemed to have mysteriously grown in size while now becoming so feeble a single arrow will kill them - get to be individually characterised but in ever more stupid ways. One is apparently missing both arms, both legs and both eyes. I guess it's nice that they include the disabled.
Oh, and at one point the Nazgul turn up, only they seem to have forgotten what they look like since they look completely different in The Hobbit to how they look in The Lord of the Rings. I'm really not sure why.
The closing scene of The Hobbit book does make the cut which is a relief after they chopped off the ending of LotR but overall it's a remarkably poor film compared to the LotR movies and a bad tribute to the books. Which is a real shame, because the look of the films is frequently brilliant and they've got a slew of good actors in there and great source materials. It's a sad indictment of the trilogy that the best moment of the lot is the Dwarves singing in the first movie.
I don't know where it all went wrong but at least the third movie is marginally better than the second: 5/10.
And the trilogy grinds to it's disappointing conclusion. The first part of the movie seems like it should have been the end of the one before as the Smaug storyline wraps up in typically stupid fashion. Rather than using the stupid looking but potential powerful "Windlass" or something similar bow they foreshadow in the second movie to shoot the iron arrow into Smaug, Bard cobbles together a balista with the two broken halves of his bow and his son. Somehow this piece of obvious garbage can not only shoot the overly heavy arrow but kill Smaug with it.
Smaug inevitably lands on the badly charicatured master in what I presume is supposed to be an "and the audience cheers" moment but it's so cheesy it totally misses the mark. Eventually, after more tedious attempts at comedy from the Master's toady sidekick, the main plot of the movie kicks off. This can be summed up as: Thorin goes crazy, lots of people fight in unconvincing battle scenes.
For some reason the director decided that their actors were so bad that they'd use special effects to emphasise parts of their speech. It seems like bad autotune every time Thorin does something a bit threatening. Meanwhile Legolas forgets how to physics and the bred-to-fight orcs can be killed by an untrained boy with a sword or a hobbit with a rock and the Dwarven pig-riding Chief can apparently headbutt people to death.
The CGI that was used to create massed ranks in LotR is back but this time they seem to have forgotten that people don't look identical and we see line upon line of identikit elves and dwarves fighting indentikit Orcs. The trolls - who seemed to have mysteriously grown in size while now becoming so feeble a single arrow will kill them - get to be individually characterised but in ever more stupid ways. One is apparently missing both arms, both legs and both eyes. I guess it's nice that they include the disabled.
Oh, and at one point the Nazgul turn up, only they seem to have forgotten what they look like since they look completely different in The Hobbit to how they look in The Lord of the Rings. I'm really not sure why.
The closing scene of The Hobbit book does make the cut which is a relief after they chopped off the ending of LotR but overall it's a remarkably poor film compared to the LotR movies and a bad tribute to the books. Which is a real shame, because the look of the films is frequently brilliant and they've got a slew of good actors in there and great source materials. It's a sad indictment of the trilogy that the best moment of the lot is the Dwarves singing in the first movie.
I don't know where it all went wrong but at least the third movie is marginally better than the second: 5/10.
If you think it's the worst instalment then you obviously don't remember this classic scene
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__UjBbz2PoA
Most people seemed to love it, I just don't get it....
I don't dislike hardy and it's a wasteland movie with violence, great effects and visually very well done - but I've never been so bored in my life, that includes being dragged to see train wreck/Cinderella/into the woods and so on.
I watched Nightcrawler last night. Great film. Probably Jake Gyllenhaal's best performance to date.
Tangent, but Cinderella was great.
The worst thing about the films is the complete disregard for physics, weight, momentum... I know elves are strong and light on their feet, but this is ridiculous. Legolas had some pretty ludicrous moves in the LotR films, like the shield surfing and climbing the monster elephant, but this is just absurd. To say that the CGI for him and Tauriel looks like Neo in the burly brawl from Matrix Reloaded, which was released over a decade ago is pretty damning. Combine that with the other ridiculous things like the dwarves turning away massive orc swords with what may as well be daggers or Bilbo managing to throw a massive rock upwards and a good 10 feet and killing an orc and it's just impossible to take things seriously. I barely bothered watching the battle scenes - they were badly shot and so implausible that it just wasn't worth it.
^ Fully agree.
I always remember going to watch The Two Towers and that part when Legolas mounts that beast in that battle was lol worthy! I cringed so hard and almost wanted to walk out. The CGI in these new films is rather dodgy too, even though they's over a decade newer
I always remember going to watch The Two Towers and that part when Legolas mounts that beast in that battle was lol worthy! I cringed so hard and almost wanted to walk out. The CGI in these new films is rather dodgy too, even though they's over a decade newer
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Yup, there were a few bad moments in LotR but they were reasonably uncommon. They're all other the place in The Hobbit and it while I can forgive the odd dodgy moment; the never ending parade of absurdity in The Hobbit makes it completely unbelievable. It tries too hard to be realistic to get away with it; absurd martial arts physics can work in a Hong Kong action movie but it's totally out of place in these movies.
I thought the CGI was really good; the problem was what they did with it. Simple ridiculous disregard for physics and plausibility.
Soldato
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You do know this is fictional
Yeah but still...Sheild surfing is just well.....silly
You do know this is fictional
Yes, but the physics of fighting isn't. If you watch The Matrix or something, there is very clear establishment of the fact that the normal rules don't apply, so it's perfectly reasonable for Neo and Smith to literally hang in the air and exceed what is possible. There is none of that in The Hobbit, or Lord of the Rings for that matter. So far as we know, physics on middle earth is the same as on our earth. The normal rules of swordfighting etc should apply, people's strength is commensurate with their size, conservation of momentum exists, etc. So when a dwarf wielding a relatively small sword turns a massive orc blade wielded by a creature twice their size it looks wrong. When Bilbo can throw a rock the size of his own head hard enough to kill an orc, it looks wrong. When elves slide across surfaces and change direction with ridiculous ease and no regard to their weight or momentum, it looks wrong.
Just because a story is fictional doesn't mean that all rules cease to apply. The fact is, if you want to break rules that might otherwise be assumed, then you need to telegraph that up front so that the audience knows what to expect. The aforementioned Matrix is very good at that, because it explains why people are able to do things that they should not otherwise be able to do. The audience learns as Neo learns, and as things are explained to Neo, they are also explained to the audience. The gold standard for this is Back to the Future, when the doc explains in a matter of moments that he has built a time machine out of a car, and here is how it works - flux capacitor, time circuits, 88mph, serious ****. Oh yes, and you need some plutonium. Job done. We accept that time travel is possible, because the scientific voice of authority in the film has told us that it is possible.
I don't doubt that Tolkien might have described the elves as quick, elegant, lithe, light on their feet, catlike, whatever. That's fine, but that is not what gets translated on to the screen. What appears on screen is impossible by normal standards and - by all reasonable estimation - the standards of the world in which the story takes place.
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You do know this is fictional
Yes, what we're talking about is whether it's good fiction. Ensuring the presented fictional world appears to have internal logic and believability is a big part of making good fiction.
