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wiseheartLong rant behind the tag. If you're a fan of Peter Jackson and his version of Middle-earth don't read it. If you do despite the warning, don't complain.
I finally got around to re-watch "The Desolation of Smaug" on DVD. Well... it was anticlimactic. I thought that I'd enjoy the plotless shit better on the small screen where I can fast-forward all the gratutious fighting and I might find some forgotten shrads of characterization - how naive of me! The only piece remotely reminding of characterization was the brief character assassination of Bilbo when killing the spider that got close to his Precious.
Er... no. "The Hobbit" wasn't about Bilbo falling under the dreadful influence of the Ring, thank you very much. I'm not addressing here the totally idiotic and unnecessary scenes in Dol Guldur, or all the Orc interaction that had nothing to do in this story at all, or the nice little piece of canon rape in which Gandalf puts into Thorin's head the idea of reclaiming Erebor to begin with, or the other, even more hare-brained things that happened in Mirkwood, in Lake-town or in Erebor itself.
I'm speaking of the character assassination of the actual hero of the story, who wasn't Bard or Thranduil or Gandalf or Legolas - or even Thorin. That was Bilbo, who grew in character in the book and saved the day due to his inherent goodness. That's the very part that you won't find in this film, not even in traces. Aside from the fact that Bilbo was degraded to a supporting character here, he was also twisted out of character, and I hated that part deeply.
Of course, the fact that I've managed to get a really bad, cheap copy in which the colours were practically nonexistent helped me to discover how very shitty that film was without all the bells and whistles and unnecessary 3D tricks.
Furthermore, I've ordered - and yesterday received - the background book "Smaug - Unleashing the Dragon" by WETA desiger Daniel Falconer. If you haven't got yourself that book yet - don't! Unlike the other books showing the creative process behind the artwork to the films, this one isn't worth the money it costs. The pictures are of low quality, most of the time, and the amount of information that's there cuold easily have been included into the 3rd volume of the background albums. If I hadn't known before, now I can be sure that the whole "blowing the source material up to unnecessary proportions" policy serves one purpose only, and that is moneny-making.
I finally got around to re-watch "The Desolation of Smaug" on DVD. Well... it was anticlimactic. I thought that I'd enjoy the plotless shit better on the small screen where I can fast-forward all the gratutious fighting and I might find some forgotten shrads of characterization - how naive of me! The only piece remotely reminding of characterization was the brief character assassination of Bilbo when killing the spider that got close to his Precious.
Er... no. "The Hobbit" wasn't about Bilbo falling under the dreadful influence of the Ring, thank you very much. I'm not addressing here the totally idiotic and unnecessary scenes in Dol Guldur, or all the Orc interaction that had nothing to do in this story at all, or the nice little piece of canon rape in which Gandalf puts into Thorin's head the idea of reclaiming Erebor to begin with, or the other, even more hare-brained things that happened in Mirkwood, in Lake-town or in Erebor itself.
I'm speaking of the character assassination of the actual hero of the story, who wasn't Bard or Thranduil or Gandalf or Legolas - or even Thorin. That was Bilbo, who grew in character in the book and saved the day due to his inherent goodness. That's the very part that you won't find in this film, not even in traces. Aside from the fact that Bilbo was degraded to a supporting character here, he was also twisted out of character, and I hated that part deeply.
Of course, the fact that I've managed to get a really bad, cheap copy in which the colours were practically nonexistent helped me to discover how very shitty that film was without all the bells and whistles and unnecessary 3D tricks.
Furthermore, I've ordered - and yesterday received - the background book "Smaug - Unleashing the Dragon" by WETA desiger Daniel Falconer. If you haven't got yourself that book yet - don't! Unlike the other books showing the creative process behind the artwork to the films, this one isn't worth the money it costs. The pictures are of low quality, most of the time, and the amount of information that's there cuold easily have been included into the 3rd volume of the background albums. If I hadn't known before, now I can be sure that the whole "blowing the source material up to unnecessary proportions" policy serves one purpose only, and that is moneny-making.
