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specific video game. They just say that it looked like a video game, ergo is of inferior quality. People do not compare a film to a video game to say that it looked great. They say it because most people think of irrelevant nonsense from the 80s such as Mario Bros when they think of video games. Again, no one writes that a great scene in a film reminded him of “Uncharted 2”, etc. Video games are perceived as an inferior art form (or not an art form at all) and therefore any comparisons to them in the film culture are used to criticize. That’s the main problem here. Have they ever played “Heavy Rain” or “Red Dead Redemption”? I am okay with people comparing the Goblin-town scene to a cut-scene in a video game. That comparison certainly makes some sense. Cut-scenes in action-adventure third-person shooter video games such as “Uncharted”, “Gears of War”, “Red Dead” or even the latest “Tomb Raider” certainly bear some resemblance to some of the editing techniques in the aforementioned scene. You could also compare Goblin-town to the terrible 2011 VG “Lord of the Rings: War in the North”. Gundabad in the game certainly bears some resemblance to Goblin-town. People did not mainly criticize the look of Goblin-town though. They disliked the action. But the actual game-play in “War in the North” hardly looks like the scenes from the film (unless you count beheadings). Action-scenes work differently in games. Just look at the whole video. There are no cuts; everything is far slower than in the film.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vFcKqv_OrtU (wait for2:30)
“-Heroes severely overpowered relative to enemies. They dispatch hordes of them with ease.”
The LOTR films also feature many scenes where the heroes dispatch hordes of enemies. And the escape from Goblin-town in the book could be called highly improbable too. A meek company of fifteen, are able to escape a town of enemies after killing the town’s master? Their escape route takes the many miles through tunnels that they do not know?
-The enemies continue to throw themselves suicidally at the heroes even though they can see all their compatriots getting wiped out.
Well they are mindless goblins. That’s their job.
-Hyperaction. One improbable maneuver after another, and no one's even surprised that they w
I would say an overload of action works different in a film compared to a movie. One of the main criticisms was the fact that you got to see nearly every single dwarf performing his own move. The camera never really concentrated on one of characters. Video games do not do that. You hardly ever play more than one character.
-Physics suspended for heroes (especially "falling doesn't hurt")
That’s a common movie trope. Bruce Willis, Will Smith and other actors would have died countless movie deaths if gravity showed its true power in films. On the other hand I would argue that a lot of games are more realistic when it comes to plunging down huge cliffs at least. I have died aplenty in more than a dozen games by making a wrong step. Again, games do not all boil down to Mario and Luigi.
I do not think either that the Goblin-town scene was particularly well-done by the way. I can share many objections voiced by critics and fans alike. The main problem for me and many others was that the scene did not evoke any danger. You never got the feeling that the dwarves could get hurt (also the main problem of the stone-giants scene). That’s why a lot of people compare it to the “Indiana Jones” franchise, where a lot of ridiculous stuff happens at the same time, but only the baddies seem to get hurt (for ex. the “roller-coaster ride into the abyss”). This analogy was emphasized by the giant rock used by Gandalf to create a new path-way and crushing the goblins. Therefore the scene pales in comparison to the Moria-scene in FOTR. Others disliked the Goblin-King, his singing or his death at the hands of Gandalf. But the fact that Goblin-town was over the top and did not evoke any danger does not turn it into a video-game. In fact, good video games evoke danger all the time. Staying alive while proceeding from point A to B is your main goal in most games. They work, because you might get killed any minute.
“It's not the visual element, or at least not alone. It's more about the setup. It's the way that the series of obstacles is setup not as real threats to the heroes but just as the next action bit for your hero to clobber through. Jump the gap! Clobber the orc! Dodge the arrow! Pickup the power-up! Defeat the boss! None of these are real threats, they're just fun gamey challenges to get past while our immortal heroes get from point A to point B.”
I would argue that Moria features such scenes too. The whole jump-over-the-bridge-scene, Legolas taking out orcs that are hundreds of yards away, a cave-troll [boss-fight!], the balrog [main-boss fight!], narrow paths, countless enemies, unbelievable physics (that troll would have killed Frodo), etc. Why didn’t people compare this scene to video-games? Is it because all of these scenes were longer? Again, video-games take a long time. They do not feature any hectic cutting.
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