hobbit 2
Saw it this morning. Enjoyed it as expected, but kind of underwhelmed. It starts in the middle of nowhere, goes nowhere, and ends in the middle of nowhere. In other words, it suffers from all the typical second installment flaws (which The Two Towers actually averted). WHY did they make this a trilogy again? Sigh.
- Beorn: can't wait to see more of him.
- The people behind this franchise really like Gandalf bondage. eheh
- Thranduil = THE BEST. (Really like the actor, whom I remember also seeing in The Fall, and really like what they've done with the character.)
- Legolas got fat. #unfortunatetruths (the camera was very careful about not giving him closeups, lol)
- Fangirls are probably more upset over that than with the addition of lady elf. Wait, who am I kidding.
- Speaking of which, I guess I am okay with her. (I LOVE the choreography for Elvish fighting btw. It's like wuxia-influenced parkour, LOL.) I was expecting the worst: now I assume she's getting set up to sail into the west at the end. She still feels very... fanficcy, but still. It's fine.
- Color-coded elves: I get why they did this, and sure why not, but it's always kind of amused me that Tolkien's ideal beauty was dark hair + gray eyes. And monolithic elvenhood is... kinda weird, heh.
- On that note, multicultural crowd scenes. Thanks... I think?
- I like Bard and his family. In fact, I really LOVE the Laketown design in general, while Mirkwood was a little disappointing (yeah, I know it's supposed to be Lothlorien-lite + diseased due to Necromancer activity + power reflects its ruler etc. but it wasn't quite fey enough anyway* and it's difficult to feel that this was the homeland Legolas was so proud of). I'm kinda worried about where they're taking the Bard plotline though, what with the whole "elections"/revolutionary leader thing. I know the original is kinda problematic what with the idealization of bloodline and monarchy but um, that's at least truer to the setting and we already have a perfect contrast in Thorin himself and Thranduil??
* I kinda missed the elves trolling the party as they do in the book.
- Bilbo is a much more entertaining hero than Frodo. That said, Smaug sequence really dragged here, and I'm honestly not quite convinced by the dwarves and their motivations in this movie (made sense in the first, and there are some brief stunning moments in this one, but most of the climactic sequence was really kind of... hm). They've been trying too hard to make the dwarves sympathetic, when they really were just jerks in the book, and while I liked this in the first movie, it didn't quite gel in this one.
- - -
That aside, I have another monster post coming up, this time re: Persona 3. (This has definitely been the year of TL;DR.)
And I think the rest of my year is going to be eaten up by Vindictus. NEW CHARACTER RELEASE WOOOOOO
/bad person who hasn't gotten any work done
comments at the original Dreamwidth post
- Beorn: can't wait to see more of him.
- The people behind this franchise really like Gandalf bondage. eheh
- Thranduil = THE BEST. (Really like the actor, whom I remember also seeing in The Fall, and really like what they've done with the character.)
- Legolas got fat. #unfortunatetruths (the camera was very careful about not giving him closeups, lol)
- Fangirls are probably more upset over that than with the addition of lady elf. Wait, who am I kidding.
- Speaking of which, I guess I am okay with her. (I LOVE the choreography for Elvish fighting btw. It's like wuxia-influenced parkour, LOL.) I was expecting the worst: now I assume she's getting set up to sail into the west at the end. She still feels very... fanficcy, but still. It's fine.
- Color-coded elves: I get why they did this, and sure why not, but it's always kind of amused me that Tolkien's ideal beauty was dark hair + gray eyes. And monolithic elvenhood is... kinda weird, heh.
- On that note, multicultural crowd scenes. Thanks... I think?
- I like Bard and his family. In fact, I really LOVE the Laketown design in general, while Mirkwood was a little disappointing (yeah, I know it's supposed to be Lothlorien-lite + diseased due to Necromancer activity + power reflects its ruler etc. but it wasn't quite fey enough anyway* and it's difficult to feel that this was the homeland Legolas was so proud of). I'm kinda worried about where they're taking the Bard plotline though, what with the whole "elections"/revolutionary leader thing. I know the original is kinda problematic what with the idealization of bloodline and monarchy but um, that's at least truer to the setting and we already have a perfect contrast in Thorin himself and Thranduil??
* I kinda missed the elves trolling the party as they do in the book.
- Bilbo is a much more entertaining hero than Frodo. That said, Smaug sequence really dragged here, and I'm honestly not quite convinced by the dwarves and their motivations in this movie (made sense in the first, and there are some brief stunning moments in this one, but most of the climactic sequence was really kind of... hm). They've been trying too hard to make the dwarves sympathetic, when they really were just jerks in the book, and while I liked this in the first movie, it didn't quite gel in this one.
- - -
That aside, I have another monster post coming up, this time re: Persona 3. (This has definitely been the year of TL;DR.)
And I think the rest of my year is going to be eaten up by Vindictus. NEW CHARACTER RELEASE WOOOOOO
/bad person who hasn't gotten any work done
comments at the original Dreamwidth post