Desolation of Smaug reviews

[axordil]

I'd been thinking almost exactly that for the last several days, Alatar--though even in the movie Gandalf forces the issue re: the eagles.

The whimsy, charm etc. of TH comes with a price tag: it's basically a series of bedtime stories that takes a serious turn or two toward the end. I have nothing against bedtime stories, obviously--but there are limits to their potential for supporting narrative unaltered.

[kzer_za]

There's also a new "Eagle Question" introduced by Peter Jackson - "Why didn't they kill Azog?" A couple of my friends have asked me that! I mostly like the movie version of Out of the Frying Pan though.

[axordil]

Well, they're not remote control drones, for one thing...I can hear the conversation now...

"You asked us to come rescue you. We rescued you."
"But you didn't kill the orc leader!"
"You said rescue, not search and destroy."
"You killed a bunch of his soldiers, though!"
"They were in the way."

[yovargas]

Well, they're not remote control drones, for one thing.

You sure about that?

[axordil]

Well, they're not remote control drones, for one thing.

You sure about that?

I assume your question is in the context of the movie, since the books are consistent on the point. Admittedly the lack of speech makes it harder to demonstrate...but the fact that they're not the taxis of Middle-earth itself suggests some limits to their utility.

[yovargas]

I'd assumed they just had very short battery life and needed to make sure they got back to a charger quickly.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

But they are so purdy!

[Smaug's voice]

Well, they're not remote control drones, for one thing...I can hear the conversation now...

"You asked us to come rescue you. We rescued you."
"But you didn't kill the orc leader!"
"You said rescue, not search and destroy."
"You killed a bunch of his soldiers, though!"
"They were in the way."

[Passdagas the Brown]

I'd assumed they just had very short battery life and needed to make sure they got back to a charger quickly.

Their batteries are solar powered, it was nighttime, and they were running low. Duh!

ETA: convenience aside, the eagle rescue is one of the most visually glorious moments in PJ's films. So I'm not convinced that sticking with Tolkien is a bad idea for cinema.

[Smaug's voice]

ETA: convenience aside, the eagle rescue is one of the most visually glorious moments in PJ's films. So I'm not convinced that sticking with Tolkien is a bad idea for cinema.

I agree. What I loved even more was the scene right after the eagle-rescue. When the eagles are flying through the mountains and gorges with one of the best pieces of Shore-music in AUJ playing in the back.(pity, that missed the OST).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LNbgPBRURWo

[Passdagas the Brown]

Agreed. Especially that long shot with the sun setting over the mountains. Great image.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Fanboy!

[Passdagas the Brown]

Um...er...yeah...ah...Goblintown sux!

[Elentári]

The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug First Impressions…It’s Complicated

Well-written 4-part review...links to the further musings are at the bottom of each page, just above the "leave a reply" box.

[kzer_za]

Well-written, but I disagree with a lot of it, especially that the characters' heroism is seriously damaged. The Hobbit is a book where the "good guys" don't get along very well and make a lot of mistakes. Even Bilbo has a shady moment in pocketing the Arkenstone. Bilbo, Bard, and Balin (lots of B's!) all still stand out as good and noble characters in the movie, too.

Also, he seems to miss the forest for the trees on Durin's Day. PJ's take on it compresses things to make it work on screen (do we really want them sitting there for days?), keeps Bilbo's agency, and looks great. Banging on the mountain wall is obviously ineffective, but they do it a desperate last-ditch measure. And honestly, the dwarves are frequently much more incompetent in the book!

[anthriel]

So I'm not convinced that sticking with Tolkien is a bad idea for cinema.

[anthriel]

The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug First Impressions…It’s Complicated

Well-written 4-part review...links to the further musings are at the bottom of each page, just above the "leave a reply" box.

I quite enjoyed reading this, Elen, as the writer (who is he?) had so many of the same reactions I did. He even used the word "sad" (as I did in a different thread), and talked about the damage to the heroism of the characters, as kzer_za points out.

I think the heroism of the characters was subtle, in the book, and not always a uniform characteristic in many of them. For me, a welcome depth was added to the story because of that very subtlety. There was little that was subtle about this movie.

[axordil]

http://jacobbacharach.wordpress.com/201 ... hall-live/

I don't think I can add much to this analysis.

[N.E. Brigand]

Excellent review from Ars Technica

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2013/12/o ... -material/

Of note:

An Unexpected Journey was pretty faithful to Tolkien's source material, which meant that it imported some of The Hobbit's less-plausible turns of events. The most noticeable of these are the story's many dei ex machina, the times when Bilbo, Gandalf, and the dwarves are saved from certain doom through coincidence and luck rather than their own skill and resourcefulness. Any time an eagle has to fly in from nowhere to save the day, you should realize you've written yourself into a corner.

These kinds of narrative turns are just fine for a children's story, because kids usually don't have the critical faculties necessary to recognize an implausible rescue when they see one. In a movie made for a more general audience, the use of too many coincidences quickly begins to feel cheap and lazy. This is all to reiterate that The Hobbit is a simpler story than The Lord of the Rings—events and characters are mostly too simple to carry a series of major motion pictures all by themselves. The Desolation of Smaug recognizes this, and rather than portraying the events of The Hobbit exactly as they happen, it uses the book as a blueprint and builds on top of it.

My bold and underline. Does this reviewer know that the entire plot of Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings turns on such a coincidence--that it was central to Tolkien's point? I also wonder: is the review colored by its appearance in a gaming magazine, since, I guess, games more consistently than life reward players for their skill? I'm no gamer: are there video games in which you can make all the right moves, and then still lose because sometimes things just don't work out? Or vice versa? And what are the other "times" (besides the appearance of the eagles) in chapters 1-6 of The Hobbit, given the reviewer's use of the plural, where "certain doom" is avoided by more luck than is shown in Peter Jackson's first Hobbit film?

As for Tolkien having written himself into a corner by using the Eagles, his own view was: "I knew I had written a story of worth when reading it (after it was old enough to be detached from me) I had suddenly in a fairly strong measure the 'eucatastrophic' emotion at Bilbo's exclamation: 'The Eagles! The Eagles are coming!'"

[axordil]

are there video games in which you can make all the right moves, and then still lose because sometimes things just don't work out?

As a rule, no, at least not in player vs. environment games where you're dealing with a challenge appropriate for the character's power level. Games that don't work like a Skinner Box had better have something mighty interesting going on.