Many Mithril Pages @ Faerylands

Hm.... where is possible to find or see those fan edition movies without rabbits and goden dwarf....

How many were in the drink that made you imagine you'd seen a special edition in the first place?

I would like to add something. I do have seen this charakter. Very shortly, but I have seen it !!!!!
For your memory: it is the first Bolg-design which was abandonned . . .

well this confirms my opinion it seems... this third movie is far more acceptable and pleasant an adaptation than the second movie was...

All in all, indeed this is an adaptation, but the main plots and subthemes were quite true to the original I think (except for small little things like Tauriel indeed...)

I personnally enjoyed the Galadriel "show".... (but can't say more or I'd spoil)  ... still, even this part is true to the reports from the appendices and what is said of the attack of Dol Guldur, Galadriel rocks...

I still cannot find out what was the worst in this trilogy, wood elves fighting as 1st age Noldorin warriors, Geographical aberrations, giant worms digging tunnels, love between a dwarf and an elf, radagast and his rabbits, Radagast himself, Beorn role in the battle, the battle itself not at all representative of the book, orc coming back to life as in very bad horror films …
The list is too long

    "The Wobbit"     
Looks like something inside "Burger King": I would like to have a Wobbit, please. With double cheese . . .
So you are disappointed in general, Master M.? I can understand that. Though I am not . . . but that´s another story.

The Galadriel sequence does sort of raise the notion that the War of the Ring was not "the White Council make a last desperate play to banish Sauron once and for all" but rather Galadriel saying "don't make me come down there and beat the snot out of you, you vile little lickspittle."

I'd also echo what Turambar says: it is a film heavily influenced by 1980s fantasy. Warhammer is itself an outgrowth of Dungeons and Dragons. Dungeons and Dragons started as a weird "piss take" which gleefully stole from any material that wasn't nailed down. It stole just enough from Middle-earth to create a sort of mainstream concept of fantasy which had little enough to do with Tolkien, but created a cultural archetype of what Tolkien-like fantasy should look like. Ever since: Orcs and Goblins are somehow different, are sometimes green, Elves are pretty Vulcan things that live in woods, Dwarves have Scottish accents. In Tolkien Orcs and Goblins are the same thing, Elves are recovering genocidal demi-gods, and Dwarves are a sort of group of Jewish vikings. The Fellowship of the Ring, as a film, was both highly respectful of the source material and able to look past the "D+D-mainstream" fantasy concepts. It married the storyline to historical war films. In set design and scene construction, it went for something grounded, earthy and even dirty. It had Gladiator and Braveheart in its DNA. When the fantastic occurred, it soared out of the grounded world into the ethereal and did so very effectively. It was like nothing else before or since. It was respectful, controlled, creative.

What was harder to spot, even though its pretty obvious now, is that the films borrowed very heavily from that sort of D+D mainstream set of conceits, in much the same way as Warcraft or Warhammer might. Cultures could not be subtly different. They had to be very, clearly, obviously different.  In Return of the King, we see a 7th Century Vendel culture live right alongside an almost Renaissance one. The effect was jarring, but maybe it was a once off.  Or perhaps a twice off: note how Saruman's armies are created as an industrial process. These jarring effects served the source material somewhat, and there was no need to linger. But now, after six films, we can look back and see how everything is created in a very broad strokes fashion, and how it heavily relies on D+D esque visual tropes to draw those broad strokes. Thorin gives Bilbo a mithril mail shirt...while he himself dons armour from high fantasy illustrations. Traditional weapon design in the Fellowship becomes iconic and impractical, a way of visually differentiating the Dwarves in the Hobbit films. Holistically designed Mordor orcs wearing scraps become tyrannical armies of identically armoured villains in the Hobbit.  All the tricks D+D/Warhammer/Warcraft et al use to differentiate scenes and cultures are in full force in the films; it seems the Fellowship of the Ring was a glorious exception.

While I can appreciate the sort of pressures that drove these decisions, it does strike me that some opportunity for something greater and more timeless was lost. In twenty years, Fellowship of the Ring will still stand as an example of fantasy film making at its absolute finest; I doubt the Hobbit films will be so loved.

Master Gavin is very talkative indeed. I read wise comments, as always.
I watched the extended DOS. Better, but the less better extended movie I feel.

OK, finally seen it, and have to say that all in all I was disappointed after movies 1 and 2. There are so many places in part 3 where just a nod in the direction of the events in the book, or the introduction of a short passage of Tolkien's text could have brought it much closer to the original - room could easily have been found for such additions by taking out 10% of the fighting, which gets a bit repetitive after a while. And why did they have to change the battle as described in the book?

OK, there were some nice moments - I particularly liked the fight at Dol Guldur - but there was a plethora of absurd moments too (Giant worms? Suoer-large trolls? Beorn arriving by eagle? Really?).

Of the six LOTR franchise movies this is without doubt the one I enjoyed the least. I confess that I still quite enjoyed it, as a Fantasy (note deliberate use of capital letter...) genre flick, but if JRRT isn't spinning in his grave I'll be amazed.

Hopefully the extended edition will improve things!

I wonder what kind of film we would have got if GDT had remained at the 'Helm' to direct?

I rather like the storm giants, so - as usual - everything is really just a matter of personal taste and preference. Funnily enough, Mrs B and I watched al three extended Hobbit movies over the weekend, and as much as they're fun in parts, they really irritate me in so many ways that I really have't got the time or patience to write them all down. They're really just a contest in how many Orc heads can be chopped off in any five minutes of movie-time. And as you say, Master Gavin, silliness abounds throughout. Mrs B, however, loves these movies!

Then, last night, we watched the extended edition Fellowship of the Ring again, and the difference between these and the Hobbit efforts is distinct. Whereas the LOTR trilogy are like finely executed paintings, with a distinct quality of "otherness", the Hobbit movies are more like industrial-scale digital photographs, with few concessions to atmosphere, wonder or beauty.

Well, despite the improvements, the thing still cannot see Fellowship with a telescope, in terms of quality. It remains, alas, half a good movie. Just with bit that make it a lot more fluid and natural feeling.

Watching the second extended film now. It's as dodgy as I remember.