Many Mithril Pages @ Faerylands

thankfully Tolkien did mention something about interracial couples and sterility

except for men/elves...

Name was misspelt. Apologies.

well I have seen the movie and I must admit I'm a bit perplex... at some points I thought I was looking at an adaptation of the "warhammer battle" franchise...
Surely Games Workshop will enjoy this as you can use Warhammer dwarves  to reproduce the battle of five armies?

well I will wait a bit to post comments as I would not want to spoil too much...

oh just a reminder :  The Battle of the Five Armies takes place in late TA 2941... and Aragorn was born in 2931... for those who saw the movie, maybe you'll notice there is something odd being said....

In other news, I just bought a ticket for the opening evening in Montreal. It's sort of feeling more like a religious obligation, like midnight mass, than participating in something joyous

I looked at the third hobbit before half an hour... and no golden dwarves, no old womans feeding chickens... and yes it was great movie .... first class entertainment.... I am sure that only extended versions of all three films, viewed together, will give us a true "picture" of modern view on hobbits in 21 century... but certainly I enjoyed watching it in those two and half hours....

I saw the final episode this week-end with wife and kids.
It was just as I expected. Great battle entertainment. Virtual images keep improving, that's amazing.
Now when it come to my taste, I feel there lacks again some of the non-war part, which is what I love in ME, unfortunately for me.
Hopefully this will be much better with full extended edition Hobbit trilogy.

Last edited by Milo (Tue, Dec16 2014 7:17am)

truth be told, I prefered this last episode than the second one too.

there are some "changes" indeed, and without battle there would not have been enough content for a full third movie, but still... there are some moments which are very true to the books, even in the dialogues and events and that's good to see that in this opus, we have a lot of respectful moments, as opposed to this awful "dwarves battling the dragon" in episode 2....

I am going to see the movie this weekend!! getting anxious!

I am watching these series of films from another angle and that's because of the first movie's Radagast-rasta-weed-smoking-rabbit-running-chariot thing that you mention. Instead of getting angry I actually laughted when I saw it on the cinema screen ... then I got angry because I could not understand how disrespectfull it was against my own image of Radagast these things followed by sadness because a clear pattern is repeating in a lots of films. Is there really a need to put a comical character in a non comical film i.e.: Radagast=Jar Jar Bins in Star wars? So it feels like the film industry is thinking that behind a good film has to exist a recipe: something like a pinch of impossible love, three spoons of sex, ten minutes of humour, 5 ounces of pursuit/chasing.... etc...

I love the hobbit book, I started my JRRT passion with that book, and I took it to the mountains of my grandfather's village and read it there in the "wild". So when I saw the first movie, and the weird vests on some characters (no coloured coats and hoodies on dwarfs? and then some scenes completely erased, and some others more than 15 minutes longer than they should be), I thought omg. : "well this is not the hobbit, this is a film only inspired by the adventures on the books", and because I watch them thinking on that very sentence, I am not that "demanding" with the things they present me, this way I can appreciate the movies and the reason I have more fun watching them.

Now I am anxious with this third part, because I want to see how they manage to resolve lots of things, because they differ so much from the book that I can expect new or different things to happen (dwarf-elven love? goats and wild boars on war gear? are you kidding me? ). Also because I am a fan of movies like "300" and now I am expectant to see the 5 armies battle on the screen, and how they resolve the "Smaug" thing. And why not, also because they are a presentation of the newest  computer effects and arts and crafts abilities. You can also feel that although they aren't as much "worked" as the LOTR cicle, they display uncountable hours of effort and investment in them.

Finally, with those thoughts in mind, I completely understand and share, at least in a big part, what you think about them, so really there is no need for a big tree to rush anywhere, because ents simply don't rush into anything!!

PS: I also have the glasses issue, so I directly discard watching films in 3D.

Well, my little filmmakers heart was very sad about it all.

I bet I could have made the whole thing, even with most of the "crucial" side elements, into a single 3 1/2 hour film. Of course things would have been cut, but many of them really served no purpose - the Warg sequence in the first film, the stuff with the Nazgul, even much of the White Council bit. The whole bit after Gandalf banishes the Great Goblin could disappear and the Azog confrontation would have been shorter. The battle would have lasted maybe 20 minutes at the end.  It would still have cameos, but less padding things out. Alas, this would have meant losing Tauriel or Bards kids.

The idea of the Tauriel character was great, and probably could have been used instead of Legolas, as a point of identification character amongst the Elves. The actual execution of the character was less good. Saoirse Ronan was rumoured to have been considered for the part. She would have bought some otherworldly quality to the part, and you could do more, with less with such a casting.

The whole thing needed to be filmed more like the Fellowship of the Ring or even Game of Thrones, with way more focus on the cast, and way less on spectacle. When spectacle was needed - Smaug's fall, the battle, the Eagles, then use that spectacle. The rest of the time I kept thinking: wow, they are using this lot to justify the CGI and the 3d and the HFR.  This idea of movie-as-theme park ride has been gathering some steam for a while.

I had hoped the thing would be worth it for the costume designs, or the set designs, something that would inspire miniature gaming or scenery making.  In the end, it all felt a bit sad, and a bit lost.

No golden dwarf? I can't believe there's an edition with no golden dwarf. You're teasing us, aren't you Master Archer?

Ah, so the Archer has found one of those fan edits? hmm, I am sort of looking forward to someone making a single fan edit of the entire trilogy - a single three and a half hour epic, rather than 8 hours of drudgery