The Hobbit: Desolation of Smaug

[animate_mush]

So Tuesday Night is Date Night at the Dollar Theater. But now we play D&D on Tuesdays, so Monday Night is Date Night! And the second Hobbit movie was finally flat enough and cheap enough for us to go see. WOOHOO!

Well, I say WooHoo...and I mostly mean WooHoo, but golly, that movie gave me so much approval whiplash. It would go from Awesome to

Comments

[animate_mush]

:D It's a Mea! How have you been, dear lady?

I am very glad I continue to entertain. Any thoughts of your own on it? I overall enjoyed the movie, but...well, you know me, I quibble.

[animate_mush]

Hooray for new job! :D

Well, I think it only felt slow because they rushed some parts and then dragged others. Like, if they'd spent most of this movie in Mirkwood, it wouldn't have felt slow. Which is odd. But yeah, Trilogies are popular. Whatever.

Right? Wimmins does not equal love triangle! But it was so much less bad than I'd feared that I'm not too upset about it.

[mildred_midgard]

"Sorry, but your comment of 7286 characters exceeds the maximum character length of 4300. Please go back, shorten it, and try posting it again."???!!
Fine.

golly, that movie gave me so much approval whiplash. It would go from Awesome to Terrible and back again with utterly no warning and often within a single sentence.
Yep.

My biggest problem with the movie was the pacing.
I complained about this a lot in my post. They rushed through everything that was in the book so they could insert an Orc-elf fight scene every 10 minutes because it's been a WHOLE TEN MINUTES since a fight scene!!!*ohnoes*!!1!! WTF.

So, by my count, in the movie, from Carrock to Erebor takes them...about nine days. In the book it takes them three months.
I seem to recall the movie Troyfitting a 10-year war into two weeks. Fun times.

with special guest appearance by Peter Jackson and the 60 Year Carrot
Looooool.

Also it breaks the nice Beowulf parallel Tolkien obviously put so much work into with the great two handled cup, twelve warriors and their angry king

[animate_mush]

Hahahaha Troy. Indeed. And you know, I had the same exact complaint a the time.

But they had him pick up the cup and think about taking it back!
You're right, so they did. It didn't ping that scene for me because it was a fairly generic looking puny goblet thing, rather than a huge two-handled dealy. Which I only mention because I arrived at a love of Beowulf and a love of Tolkien completely independently, and it was specifically the two-handled detail that made me first put them together. And it probably says a lot about me that when I read the line "twelve warriors and their angry king," where most people would go "a-hah! obvious christian allegory!" my brain instead went "ZOMG THE HOBBIT."

But anyway, I did notice him carrying that little cup around for a bit and sort of wondered "so, is that supposed to be the Cup?" but just figured that that plot point had gotten engulfed by the Arkenstone plot. I do not particularly expect the movies to include all of Tolkiens puns that are only funny to him, or preserve his bizarre

Part 2

[mildred_midgard]

Maybe they needed to throw in that line about the Master of Laketown disdaining elections so that it doesn't seem too much like we're replacing democratic leadership with dynastic leadership.
That's exactly what I think they're doing. I feel an itch for a post, if not an actual paper, about the seventeenth-century Netherlands and fifteenth/sixteenth-century Venice and Laketown. Since neither period is my specialty, it would require a fair amount of research and I would learn a lot, which is appealing.

We can tell because you have character flaws.
Are you being sarcastic here, or just referring to the high elves of LOTR as opposed to the Silmarillion?

I need me some more party elves, all I'm saying.
Also I have a post on this...I'll stop now.

Also, I guess Tauriel is a king then?
Absolutely.

The athelas thing bugged me. It was so, just, no.

Maybe Bolg is here to kill Tauriel? I suppose we shall see...Could be. I honestly have no idea where they're going with the Battle of Five Armies, except that I think Tauriel's going to play a

Re: Part 2

[animate_mush]

I feel an itch for a post, if not an actual paper, about the seventeenth-century Netherlands and fifteenth/sixteenth-century Venice and Laketown.

Looking forward to it! And yeah, the things you were saying about the painting were super interesting. I noted the painting in the movie, but hadn't really thought hard about it. And you're right...painting is strikingly absent in these movies...and possibly in the world generally. Now I'm wondering whether there are portraits of Bungo and Belladonna in Bag End. I feel like I have some memory of such a thing...but it might be from Tolkien's own illustration at the very end of the Hobbit.

Are you being sarcastic here, or just referring to the high elves of LOTR as opposed to the Silmarillion?
Mostly the latter. Thranduil's character flaws are front and center, whereas the High Elves of the Lord of the Rings are very ...mature. Mostly because they used to be the High Elves of the Silmarillion and have learned from their past mistakes. The fact that Thranduil is presented as (

[mildred_midgard]

Me again!

(hah, I've been watching so much Star Trek that I honestly expected the Elves to have green blood. My bad).
I'm working my way through the Stupid Ring parody and taking notes, and I just hit on Eomer referring to Legolas non-stop as "Spock" and "the Vulcan." Since you were up to Helm's Deep at last mention, you must have gotten to this part and appreciated it!

Oh man and I was waiting for Thorin to rise like Boticelli's Venus out of the barrel, scattering fish everywhere, yet every inch a King.
I was going to say I love this imagery and metaphor, but I got distracted by all the other things I said! So I'm saying it now. Thank you for giving me this mental image!

[animate_mush]

Yes, I noticed that! : ) I think the joke they're going for there is that Karl Urban also played Dr. McCoy.

Hee hee hee - happy to be of service!