Tolkienish Tuesday: Desolation of Smaug trailer and fan film The Hunt for Gollum

[huinare]

If anyone hasn't yet seen the trailer, which premiered via the Hobbit films' official FB page earlier today, behold:

Click to view

My thoughts on the trailer.

Comments

[brookeoflorien]

I watched the trailer earlier too. I like it, not because it looks like I'll love the movie (though battle scenes, because I have a love affair with those)(but Thranduil seemed better than I had hoped after the disaster that was Celeborn. Still reserving final judgement, but he's about the only thing I truly care about in the movie), but because it seems like my little bro will like it. And if I do anything, minion is turning into somewhat of a Tolkien fan.

[huinare]

I didn't really care for Thranduil's diction myself.. Yes, convert them all to Tolkien, bwahaha.

[brookeoflorien]

It's not how I personally imagine him, but I gave up on that - I'm just glad that he doesn't sound like Celeborn did. I will! My little bro is already half way there, though he still gets bored with the books.

[bunn]

I can see that Thranduil might well be a tad pompous and prone to contorted grammar, but the decision to lead with the sentence 'you seek that which would bestow upon you the right to rule' is a tad odd.

I'm reserving judgement on Smaug - after all, we only get a quick shot of the side of his head. But I had been hoping for a more Tolkienish Smaug - after all, Smaug is one of the few things where we don't have to rely on illustrators, Tolkien drew him in some detail. But perhaps the Tolkien version would not be scary enough for modern cinema audiences.

[huinare]

Yeah that did seem not the best way to lead off.

Hmm, I'm sure with the level of talent and creativity coming from Howe and Lee, they could've managed to make a Smaug more after the Professor's design but scarier-looking (now I want to try this myself, since they apparently didn't).

[pandemonium_213]

Bilbo and the butterflies! Yes! I was thrilled to see that, too. It was one of my favorite bits in the novel, and it is pitch perfect here. Martin Freeman redeemed a multitude of sins in the first movie. I expect he will here, too. Btw, how's Tumblr Savior working for you? I clicked through (stupidly) to a rant about the movie in which the poster snarked about the butterflies in the aforementioned scene not being velvet black, re: "I expect they were a kind of 'purple emperor,' a butterfly that loves the tops of oak-woods, but these were not purple at all, they were a dark dark velvety black without any markings to be seen." <= ETA: that's the quote from The Hobbit, not from the complaining Tumblrite.

Yeah. Like dark black (what? isn't black inherently dark?) would show up against the russet colors used for the foliage of the trees. There is such a thing as artistic license, and it was used effectively here. It was tempting to point this out, but...well, it's an instance with Savior might have been useful.

so I

[huinare]

I'm liking tumblr savior. One can use it to blacklist certain words or phrases (I tend to go for short phrases, otherwise it'll blacklist anything that has the single word anywhere in the post...text, tags). Settings can be altered to tell you when something has been blocked, if so desired. As a hypothetical situation, if you blacklisted 'velvety black moth' or whatnot, you could get dashboard notifications along the lines of "a post by so-and-so containing 'velvety black moth' has been blocked. click to view post." Or you can just set it to do all of its blocking silently

[engarian]

Barrels! So wonderful, so rolling, so absolutely perfect. And butterflies! I must admit that I barely remembered the butterfly sequence in the book, but when I saw it I was once again transported.

Agree 100% about Gandalf's enunciation issues. So happy you looked it up for me. Two viewings and I still hadn't understood the words.

Legolas might grow up to be a worth heir to Thranduil after all of this. I am pleased that he is pulled into the battles this early. Lovely bow work by both he and Tauriel. She has more possibilities than I was first willing to grant her, so I guess I won't immediately cringe when I see her on screen.

Smaug - as one who adores dragons, this small view left me rather cold. Of course there's a lot of dragon yet to come....

I vaguely remember The Hunt for Gollum and Born of Hope. For amateur productions with very limited budgets they were both quite good.

- Erulisse (one L)
edited for spelling error

[huinare]

I'd seen the preview three times and could not for the life of me understand Gandalf. Of course, after looking it up, it sounded clear as a bell to me upon a fourth viewing. =P

My main concern with Tauriel was giving too big of a role to an OC when there are so many already-existing characters to explore, but I'm already convinced from this preview that she fills a very necessary void in terms of exploring the woodelves as a society and as people.

Hopefully Smaug will be more impressive when he's flying around in his rage!

[curiouswombat]

Piece of total trivia - one of my LJ friends, who I've also met off-line, has her name in the credits for The Hunt for Gollum...

I agree with you, though - not looking as if they were desperately trying to imitate PJ's stuff as much as possible would probably have made it even better!

[huinare]

That's awesome! Yes, it seemed like there was a lot of talent involved in the production, and it's a tad unfortunate they felt the need to emulate another director.