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I need to see The Hobbit trilogy a few more times to really form a solid opinion, but the Star Wars prequels have a lot going on regardless of what you think about the acting or the visuals. There's plenty there to think about and interpret, they are actually very interesting if you can get past some of the flaws. I'm not sure the Hobbit films really have as much going on beyond whats already in the book, so there isn't a whole lot unpack. The Star Wars prequels have the advantage of being brand new stories from the brain of a (at the time)beloved filmmaker, not an iconic decades old book who's fans already knew the story backwards and forwards. Are there any ways in which the new content from the appendices added to/changed the themes of the story? I'd need to see movies again to really decide that. Basebf555 fucked around with this message at 22:27 on Dec 17, 2014 |
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Dec 17, 2014 22:25
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There's nothing wrong with Gandalf's character or McKellan's performance, jesus christ.
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Dec 17, 2014 22:28
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Mr. Flunchy posted:Primarily an over reliance on CGI as a panacea, with the knock-on effects of harming the actor's performances. But in terms of aesthetics there's a chintzy "kitchen sink" approach. Why have a sunset over a mountain when you can have some purple and orange dappled monstrosity that looks like something Thomas Kinkade might have shat out? The top one is a model, as has been pointed out, and the bottom is an actual location in Italy. 
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Dec 17, 2014 22:29
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Jiro posted:So you'd compare Hayden Christensen's acting to Martin Freeman's acting, the mixture of physical sets and cg sets compared to the blue screen and green screen rooms that the prequels had. And you'd compare Smaug to Jar Jar? Yes. This isn't even correct. I will grant you that Smaug looked better than Jar Jar Binks, forums poster Jiro. Oh yes because criticizing an over simplified CGI fest with video-game action sequences across 3 movies adapted from a 300 page book is such troll bait. These movies loving suck next to the previous trilogy just like the prequels did. This isn't hard.
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Dec 17, 2014 22:29
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Yeah ok. I guess I'm the idiot for taking the troll bait.
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:The top one is a model, as has been pointed out, and the bottom is an actual location in Italy. To be fair, they clearly altered it with CGI. Not that I care because who actually cares.
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Dec 17, 2014 22:31
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Mr. Flunchy posted:Semantics. You seriously think script and performance are the same thing? By the way your original comment stated that cgi environments hobbled the performances, which has nothing to do with the script. I'm just trying to figure out what you meant but it sounds like you don't really even know.
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Dec 17, 2014 22:32
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Vaall posted:Yes. This isn't even correct. I will grant you that Smaug looked better than Jar Jar Binks, forums poster Jiro. Oh yes because criticizing an over simplified CGI fest with video-game action sequences across 3 movies adapted from a 300 page book is such troll bait. These movies loving suck next to the previous trilogy just like the prequels did. This isn't hard. Your incredible ability to articulate why these films are so bad is really swinging the pendulum of opinion here!
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Dec 17, 2014 22:33
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:The top one is a model, as has been pointed out, and the bottom is an actual location in Italy. So what? I don't care how the image was produced, what matters are the off-the-charts levels of kitsch. Colonel Whitey posted:You seriously think script and performance are the same thing? By the way your original comment stated that cgi environments hobbled the performances, which has nothing to do with the script. I'm just trying to figure out what you meant but it sounds like you don't really even know. I didn't say that the CGI environments hobbled the performances, I said that they were a part of why the performances suck. Over reliance on greenscreen and CGI doubles, bad screenwriting and a rushed production lead to bad performances - it's like a perfect storm for making great actors perform woodenly
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Dec 17, 2014 22:37
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Mr. Flunchy posted:I didn't say that the CGI environments hobbled the performances, I said that they were a part of why the performances suck. Over reliance on greenscreen and CGI doubles, bad screenwriting and a rushed production lead to bad performances - it's like a perfect storm for making great actors perform woodenly Just so we're all on the same page, please tell us which performances suck so I can see where you are coming from.
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Dec 17, 2014 22:39
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Mr. Flunchy posted:off-the-charts levels of kitsch. You're watching an animated children's movie about elves.
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Dec 17, 2014 22:41
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Mr. Gibbycrumbles posted:Just so we're all on the same page, please tell us which performances suck so I can see where you are coming from. Ian McKellan, Stephen Fry, Nearly all of the dwarves save James Nesbitt and Ken Stott, maybe Richard Armitage is good off and on. Luke Evans, Orlando Bloom Evangeline Lilly.
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Dec 17, 2014 22:46
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The Battle of the Five Armies is an okay movie. It's shorter than the rest by almost 30 minutes and contains a ton of filler, most of it being overly drawn out action scenes. It was entertaining and I didn't fall asleep. That's about the most I can say. But the absolute biggest loving slap in the face is how absolutely useless Legolas/Tauriel truly are and how much screen time is wasted on these characters. Apparently Tauriel was added to expand a completely thin female cast which is actually more of a slap in the face as they cast her off completely in the end. When Bolg kills Kili I was fully expecting Tauriel to take him out. I'm sure the whole audience was expecting this. Instead she's literally knocked out so Legolas can have a 10 minute long fight scene. I can't remember the last time I felt let down by a movie. The two characters who never should have been written into the movie amount to nothing but a couple protracted fight scenes, a few talking points about how much of an rear end in a top hat Thranduil is, and a passing mention to a character in a better trilogy of movies.
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Dec 17, 2014 22:49
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While I think the LOTR movies are overly long for their own good as movies, they do have a better sense of pacing and plot going on. Compare Desolation of Smaug to Two Towers. DOS one goal in the film is to get to The Lonely Mountain to meet and kill Smaug. They only do one of those things. They spent the last 20 minutes of the movie with an incredibly pointless action sequence that didn't really resolve anything. That kind of pointlessness is why people have a problem with these movies. None of them tell a full story. They're just parts. And that's honestly a bad thing. Even the prequels had stories within their stories. They always gave their films an ending. The audience feels cheated. Maybe they don't notice it right off the bat, but their brain did.
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Dec 17, 2014 22:50
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Mr. Flunchy posted:Ian McKellan, There is nothing wrong with McKellan's performance. As for the others in your list - have you actually seen them act in anything else? in which films are they putting in performances that are better than their ones in The Hobbit? You are confusing actors with middling talent with actors being hamstrung.
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Dec 17, 2014 22:53
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Mr. Flunchy posted:Ian McKellan, Yeah I strongly disagree. Say all you want about overuse of cgi, I'm with you there, but the performances were uniformly solid (aside from maybe Bloom, but he just always sucks). I still think you're confusing performance with script and maybe editing.
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Dec 17, 2014 22:55
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Mr. Gibbycrumbles posted:There is nothing wrong with McKellan's performance. Ian McKellan, as explained above, is dramatically crippled by being extraneous to the plot - he does NOTHING in the last film besides spout platitudes Stephen Fry is better in Wilde, though admittedly he's stunt casting in this so even though he's bad he gets a pass. (edit: got mixed and praised actors I liked - I can't be arsed to evaluate the careers of the various dwarves) Luke Evans, fair play he's not much better in this than anything else. At least he's fun in No One Lives. Orlando Bloom is pretty bad across the board Evangeline Lilly, I dunno - she seemed okay in the odd episode of Lost I watched. At least she appeared to have a character in that. SuperMechagodzilla posted:You're watching an animated children's movie about elves. Yeah, but I didn't particularly want to watch it, I was obliged to. Necrothatcher fucked around with this message at 23:08 on Dec 17, 2014 |
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Dec 17, 2014 23:01
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I don't like some of the choices made in these movies, but their main problem is pacing. When things get moving, it's not as bad as people make it out to be. I haven't seen the final one yet.
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Dec 17, 2014 23:03
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I don't think anyone turned in a particularly bad performance. Some of them didn't have great material to work with, but none of them were downright bad, acting wise. And it's not a case of 'CGI made the film bad'. That's massively oversimplifying.
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Dec 17, 2014 23:05
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CelticPredator posted:While I think the LOTR movies are overly long for their own good as movies, they do have a better sense of pacing and plot going on. Compare Desolation of Smaug to Two Towers. DOS one goal in the film is to get to The Lonely Mountain to meet and kill Smaug. They only do one of those things. They spent the last 20 minutes of the movie with an incredibly pointless action sequence that didn't really resolve anything. That kind of pointlessness is why people have a problem with these movies. None of them tell a full story. They're just parts. And that's honestly a bad thing. Even the prequels had stories within their stories. They always gave their films an ending. This movie is also very poorly edited. I'm sure that's attributable to the smaller run time and I'm curious as to how much was cut from the final release. But there's a lot of scenes that feel disjointed like the 100 or so "goblin mercenaries" they cut away from and some stuff that's outright missing like a scene from the trailers where some guys are riding on a ballista mounted wagon. I have no complaints about the actual editing in the previous two films but this one feels like it was actually scrapped together with discarded footage. I feel like I can separate the scenes that would have made this a two-part movie. The stuff that happens with Gandalf and Tauriel/Legolas, this expanded material from the books feels like it was filmed separately from everything else. Then there's a lot of goofy scenes that I can't wrap my head around. Why does Bard bother shooting Smaug with his bow knowing it's not effective? Why does Smaug single out Bard and have a conversation with him from like a mile away? Who in the writing room actually thought turning a child into a makeshift bow was a cool idea? What happened to the ballista they were foreshadowing the entire time? Did anyone actually think Alfred was funny after the 9th time he was being a certified bastard? They didn't even give me a denoument with Alfred wandering the wasteland with his arms full of gold like the books did to the Master. al-azad fucked around with this message at 23:14 on Dec 17, 2014 |
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Dec 17, 2014 23:09
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I definitely noticed the terrible editing as well, and I wish anything in the morass of animated action sequences had stood out enough for me to actually remember specific examples. The only reason it's any shorter than the standard Jackson Tolkien picture is that they hacked half the scenes up, and I was still checking my phone at the end. I was similarly perturbed by the way they cut from one of the best scenes in the entire novel (Bilbo confronting Smaug) to show us what the elves and orcs were up to in Lake Town in Desolation of Smaug, but that's less a "bad editing" issue and speaks to more fundamental creative problems with their ~epic trilogy~ format. Nipplebox posted:I don't like some of the choices made in these movies, but their main problem is pacing. When things get moving, it's not as bad as people make it out to be. I haven't seen the final one yet. See it and come back, then. The last film is filled-to-bursting with things that move inconsequentially.
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Dec 17, 2014 23:30
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I liked those earth eating mother fuckers and really wished they would have hosed some poo poo up. It could've been a loving Tremors sequel.
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Dec 18, 2014 00:00
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So this film was pretty bad I thought. Lots of strange decisions made. Off the top of my head, why did Legolas do Tauriel's fight scene? Seriously, it's like they CGI'd the hair blonde to take as much emotion and tension out of the fight as possible.
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Dec 18, 2014 00:37
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Outside the awful intro the movie was ok. There's tons of dumb overplayed CGI action sequences but there's nothing as pointless or ridiculous as the low points of 2nd film. The intro really obviously belonged as the climax to the 2nd film and I was confused for the first 10 minutes trying to remember all the characters and plotlines flashing around. I thought the art design was really on point for the most part with a few exceptions (the troll on the ice that had literally all 4 limbs as prosthetics is maybe the dumbest design in the whole series), all the armies were a lot more obviously repetitive samey cgi models than in the original trilogy (it felt like they weren't even trying with the elf and dwarf armies). Even with the orc armies there's too many identical skulls on a stick. There was some actual character development in this film which was nice. The finale with the dwarves was really obviously cut badly, even to the point of very obvious visual gaps. It's a capstone to the series that never really hits any highpoints but doesn't dip down into the worst of the aspects of the 1st or 2nd movies either.
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Dec 18, 2014 00:55
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I really wish I could have seen these movies given appropriate time, I don't think they resorted to so much CGI out of laziness, but out of time constraints.
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Dec 18, 2014 01:15
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Basebf555 posted:I need to see The Hobbit trilogy a few more times to really form a solid opinion, but the Star Wars prequels have a lot going on regardless of what you think about the acting or the visuals. There's plenty there to think about and interpret, they are actually very interesting if you can get past some of the flaws. I'm not sure the Hobbit films really have as much going on beyond whats already in the book, so there isn't a whole lot unpack. The Star Wars prequels have the advantage of being brand new stories from the brain of a (at the time)beloved filmmaker, not an iconic decades old book who's fans already knew the story backwards and forwards. Well, in my opinion friend, the star wars prequels politics were banal liberal trash that people desperate for substance have elevated beyond even their meager station of framework for boring rear end drama and I would say that Thorins self flagellation in the The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies is probably as deep as anything found in those films, which is to say not at all.
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Dec 18, 2014 01:59
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TheNakedFantastic posted:Well, in my opinion friend, the star wars prequels politics were banal liberal trash that people desperate for substance have elevated beyond even their meager station of framework for boring rear end drama and I would say that Thorins self flagellation in the The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies is probably as deep as anything found in those films, which is to say not at all. Both Thorin and many of the characters in the PT are cut from the same mold. They're tragic heroes, similar to a Shakespearean play, and like Shakespeare, they do sometimes "act dumb" for the purpose of the story. Thinking about it, the fact that Dwarves were modeled after Jews sort of gives Thorin's reluctance to share anything a sort of Israel vibe, especially with the whole "a shattered Kingdom and people living in foreign lands" stuff.
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Dec 18, 2014 03:18
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Just saw it and my god this was loving awful. The good (still subpar, but not atrocious): -Smaug torching Laketown and talking poo poo to Bard. -The army of orcs going towards the lonely mountain/Bolg taking the army out of Gundabad. -Azog's battle crys/commanding the orcs from the tower. -Azog vs Thorin & Bolg vs Tauriel & Legolas. The bad (as in mindnumbingly stupid): -The entire encounter between the White Council & Sauron. Like, what the gently caress? The ghostly Nazgul looked absolutely ridiculous and fake. And Sauron? I'm sorry but his depiction in these Hobbit movies sucks. Having the constant alternating between the physical armored form, flaming humanoid form, and the Eye is just stupid. And it just looked WEIRD. When the Nazgul appeared in front of him before Galadriel gives him the final gently caress you he just looked proportionally out of place—his head was as big as his body. Also Galadriel's corrupted appearance felt so forced from the scene in FoTR. The whole scene just felt really campy. -Bird poo poo wizard and rabbit sled -The armies and their movements simply looked fake—especially in some of the larger shots. Digital Dain looked absolutely stupid on the pig thing especially when it was running. When the armies finally clashed it felt weightless & out of place. -Giant worms that drill through mountains? loving seriously? Some Men In Black/Tremors poo poo right there. -"Dragon sickness." -Thranduil telling Legolas to go find Strider. -Legolas talking about Bats. Legolas running up falling debris. Legolas being Legolas. Overall I'd say its the second best out of the trilogy, behind DoS. Still had the same problems the previous two suffered from such as over-the-top CGI, mediocre acting, etc. At least with DoS we had some dialogue from Smaug.
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Dec 18, 2014 03:38
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TheNakedFantastic posted:Well, in my opinion friend, the star wars prequels politics were banal liberal trash that people desperate for substance have elevated beyond even their meager station of framework for boring rear end drama and I would say that Thorins self flagellation in the The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies is probably as deep as anything found in those films, which is to say not at all. The problem is that, like I mentioned earlier, it all comes down to nothing of importance because these filmmakers forgot that there should be any ultimate point or theme to any of this conflict and tribulation.
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Dec 18, 2014 03:41
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computer parts posted:Dwarves were modeled after Jews 
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Dec 18, 2014 03:45
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I kind of liked Sauron's depiction as a formless fire man who sends you on mind melting LSD trips. It's so rare in fantasy depictions to see something visually depicted that's beyond description, like normally we get something lame like Galactus as a penis vortex or the poison cloud... face in Green Lantern. How they interacted with him was dumb as poo poo, though. I swear I've seen a similar scene in a PS1 cutscene.
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Dec 18, 2014 04:11
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Just going to dump a bunch of thoughts here that I might not even agree with later: -Smaug's attack on Laketown is the cold opener and it's literally seconds after the second film ended and would have worked better as part of that film. The Laketown stuff is the film's best action sequence. -Amusement Park Rides: Second movie has the barrel ride, this one has Tauriel and friends slowly and safely drifting down the river watching Smaug rampage. I liked both of these scenes. Yeah, they're pretty dumb. -Bard gives a heroic speech but I missed parts of it because a bright colored dog was dancing around at the bottom of the screen and that stole my focus, dog was awesome. -I can't believe there's a character named Lickspittle and I can't believe how much screentime he got. He's straight out of Monty Python and the Holy Grail. I actually liked most of his crass, stupid humor, but man oh man was it out of tone in the middle of Epic Battle Scenes. Not sure how I feel about this yet. -Cate Blanchette, Hugo Weaving, and Christopher Lee fight ghosts that move like puppets and then Cate goes Super Elf and turns blue and shoots all kinds of word-based magic and flings Sauron thousands of feet away while the camera zooms everywhere and goes insane. It's both the stupidest and the best scene in the movie. This is 100% classic trash horror Peter Jackson. -There are two giant pigs in the movie, both are funny. Rabbit sled is also funny. Radagast still isn't. Mountain goats prancing up sheer cliffs and not caring a bit about all the noise and battle going on is also funny and good. -The Shire stuff at the end is good. -The titular Battle of Five Armies was about an hour longer than it needed to be and was often so zoomed in and shaky that I couldn't follow it even if I cared to. But there was one Troll with a house stuck on his head that ran into a wall and that was funny. -Don't introduce giant god worms at the start of a battle and not have them show up the rest of the fight, worms are awesome. -There was a troll with maces for arms and legs and chains stuck in his eyes that was 100% a Guillermo del Toro creation, it was gross and I dug it. -Legolas the Video Game: He ran up a series of falling rocks that felt straight out of Bayonetta. So stupid and I liked it. -Thorin the Video Game: His boss fight with the orc leader. Really funny stuff. Circle strafe the enemy while he knocks down the environment to win the fight! -Legolas hangs upside down from a bat and just has so much neck it's ridiculous. Also he's hanging from a giant cartoon bat. -Legolas's dad is still campy and ridiculous and I like him a lot. He's such a pompous doofus. -There is zero way I can buy the romance between Kili and Tauriel. -Legolas's dad saying "GO NORTH AND MEET THE NEXT HERO. STRIDER" should have had a stupid sick guitar riff after it. -The Arkenstone is a big item of power that influences the whole first half of the movie then it vanishes and is never mentioned again once the big fight begins. -Thorin breaks his curse by re-enacting Winnie the Pooh's hephalump nightmare with the living giant honey pot. -I'd heard Beorn had a minute of screen time. It was actually closer to five seconds.
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Dec 18, 2014 05:36
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I'm convinced someone on the staff hates Beorn
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Dec 18, 2014 05:40
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Pureauthor posted:I'm convinced someone on the staff hates Beorn Must've liked the Rankin Bass version. 
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Dec 18, 2014 05:42
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Pureauthor posted:I'm convinced someone on the staff hates Beorn There really is no other way to explain how bad he got shafted in both movies.
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Dec 18, 2014 05:44
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Beorn exists in the films in the way he does so that fans can look back at the original trilogy and say, "Yeah, I guess they were right to skip Tom Bombadil."
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Dec 18, 2014 05:49
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Surlaw posted:-Legolas's dad saying "GO NORTH AND MEET THE NEXT HERO. STRIDER" should have had a stupid sick guitar riff after it. "I do not know his name but they call him... Strider." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6DU6gfeg8Fc Pureauthor posted:I'm convinced someone on the staff hates Beorn I think someone was confused who the "five armies" the title referenced. Moria and Gundabad were a single unit, the eagles lead by Beorn were the fifth army. I would have traded Legolas' fight with Bolg for Beorn for an extra 10 minutes of a spinning bird's eye view of Thorin standing on a pile of gold.
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Dec 18, 2014 05:54
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al-azad posted:I think someone was confused who the "five armies" the title referenced. Moria and Gundabad were a single unit, the eagles lead by Beorn were the fifth army. I would have traded Legolas' fight with Bolg for Beorn for an extra 10 minutes of a spinning bird's eye view of Thorin standing on a pile of gold. I thought it was originally goblins/orcs, wargs, dwarves, elves, and men? But then they didn't bring the wargs so who knows what the five armies were.
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Dec 18, 2014 06:35
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Anyone else notice that Gloin's helm at the end during like maybe mid battle was Gimli's helmet from LOTR? Thought that was a neat little thing. After having a full day to sit on it. I liked the movie, poo poo was finally happening both at Erebor, and Dol Goldur. There was no loving reason to head out to Gundabag, there was no reason to have Legolas in there Tauriel was meh, and needed to not be in the movie as well but not as egregious as Legolas. After all that poo poo about the Black Arrow, and the special crossbow thing that was built to fire them.....................well.........yeah.  I would have LOVED an hour of Smaug just charring Laketown and talking tons of poo poo to everyone. I would have even accepted Smaug just resting on the mountainside during the final battle with a giant cup of tea and trolling everyone. I'm probably the only one but I thought the Dol Guldur parts of the movies the most interesting bits, it always pissed me off that in the book Gandalf would just pop in and out at random rear end intervals for seemingly no reason. I realize that in FOTR the main reason they kept the Nazgul in black robes was for budgetary reasons, the different armor on each king was interesting but it looked like it was ghost film laid on top of the movie. I think I would have preferred the ROTK style of them in the black robes in some bitchin black cast iron armor over it. Galadriel going dark like in FOTR was kinda neat but kind of just as cheesy as when it happened the first time. Can someone tell me where Gandalf keeps getting new loving wizard staffs? Whoever said that Thorin has Winnie the Pooh Hefalump acid trip was spot on. As of right now it's a chopped up mess with glaring omissions in plot and pacing with some enjoyable parts in there, much like with the rest of the movies the EE of this will probably be way more coherent.Austrian mook posted:Using his son as a makeshift crossbow was way cooler than whatever they set up in the second movie Ehhh maybe? It was a nice McGuyver moment but that thing was said to be a loving metal spear made of special bullshit Dwarven metal hence the need for the Windlance. Smaug taunting him while he did it was pretty great. Jiro fucked around with this message at 06:51 on Dec 18, 2014 |
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Dec 18, 2014 06:37
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Using his son as a makeshift crossbow was way cooler than whatever they set up in the second movie
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Dec 18, 2014 06:48
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I love that everyone missed Bard's speech because we were all like hey, a dog.
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Dec 18, 2014 07:42
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