Lit Apropos of Nothing - ACKBAR IN CAPITALS - The Lit Forum Social Thread, v2.0.15

Where was this?

 

Further proof that caecilians are basically tiny space slugs: Microcaecilia dermatophaga, from Wilkinson et al 2013:



Scale tics are in Millennium Falcons.

 

I'm curious about that myself. Share!

 

Here you go:

Spoiler

Here is the quote and some commentary: http://nobodysuspectsthebutterfly.t...53/question-about-the-faceless-mens-potential
In the novels, the Faceless Men explained to Arya that they caused the Doom as part of their history, but that had seemed beyond their abilities - until the world of ice and fire revealed that the most plausible explanation for the Doom was that the mages keeping the volcanoes under control were assassinated. In WOIAF this is attributed to Valyrian infighting, but the two quotes together....especially when you factor in how Bravos had revealed itself shortly before these events.

Though I forgot to mention that even more than the above, this book was surprisingly supportive of my favorite crack theories about the merlings and squishers.

Spoiler

http://www.reddit.com/r/asoiaf/comments/2kn8vc/spoilers_woiaf_the_oily_black_stone_structures/

 

Spoiler: Hobbit spoilers

So did the orcs count as two, or was the fifth army the animals?

 

Spoiler: spoilers from 77 yrs ago

Air-drop bear and eagles were 5th, but the way the movie arranged it it looked like orcs were 2.

 

Is there a way you can double-spoiler-tag that just to be safe? I don't want to ruin the Hobbit for any of these noobs.

 

Spoiler

You know a movie is stuck up its own rear pretty far when a battle with giant eagles and a shapeshifting manbearpig fighting an entire army of orcs and giant bats takes place mostly off-screen.

 

First of all, this is the first I've heard there was any other way to do it. Second, it's the Hobbit--as Coffee suggested, the spoiler tag was half ironic.

 

Deviants and criminals, allayall.

They're glorious, all three of 'em.

The only shame is having to wait a year to see the whole thing.

 

I was throughly underwhelmed by Five Armies. And I did enjoy the first two, even if they pale compared to the previous films. Five Armies is just... Unnecessary. It could easily have been edited down and smash the three films into two.

I'm playing through the Lego video game based on the trillogy and enjoying it, mostly because most of the dialogue is gone and it isn't afraid to poke fun at the films' foibles.

 

But you haven't seen the whole movie...



(I just realized I'm repeating a version of the smartass comment my dad would always bring out when somebody talked about watching a movie in pan & scan... "Hmm, you didn't like that? Maybe you should watch the whole thing next time!")

 

This was my favorite of the three Hobbit movies, but my bar is pretty low and I can understand why die-hards wouldn't like it.

 

Battle of Five Armies isn't as bad as Desolation of Smaug is it?? MST3K is one of my favorite shows but DOS just about broke my sanity.

 

BOTFA is my favorite of the three, but it possibly ties with AUJ because AUJ actually stuck closest to the book save for that final scene with Azog and the Wargs. Plus Gollum. But as for BOTFA, Kili/Tauriel might've been a bit much but I honestly never minded it like some people did. Star-crossed lovers have been in existence for millennia, and this was basically Romeo and Juliet without the suicide-by-Juliet.

Spoiler

Although I'm pretty sure Juli...er...Tauriel tried to commit suicide-by-Thranduil at the end there.

I liked Kili. I even liked Tauriel; Evangeline did a great job as her. Though I liked her "this is our fight" attitude in DOS a bit better than her "this is all for my Dwarf-love" in BOTFA. But, again, spoilers from 77 years ago...

Spoiler

Kili and Fili's deaths were well-done, IMO, as was Thorin's. And the final scene between Bilbo and Thorin was bloody wonderful; both Armitage and Freeman did wonderfully!

One thing about Kili, though...AUJ kind of built him up as the "Dwarf archer." He was not Legolas good, definitely not Oliver Queen good, but he was adequate. But he lost his bow when the Elves captured them in Mirkwood, then in DOS an orc scout briefly calls him "the young archer." And then...he never touches a bow again. I guess because they had Legolas and Tauriel to fill the archer role instead. It was a nice touch to Kili's character that didn't need to be removed. I don't know, he and Tauriel could've bonded over archery tips, I guess.

Oh...and I loved how much focus Dwalin got in BOTFA. In the first two, he played the dual roles of the muscle and Thorin's loyal supporter. In this film, he actually got a bit more than that, and it was great to see.

But the biggest shame about this trilogy is that Freeman didn't get more time than he did. I liked it perfectly fine, but I think it could've been phenomenal with more Martin Freeman.

 

I'm sure there'll be more Bilbo in the extended edition, but yeah... I think you're picking out the right reason to want more Bilbo. On the other hand, it's funny to me that a lot of the film's critics say that "the hobbit is barely even in The Hobbit," as if that's the fault of the movie; it's... the fault of the book. Bilbo is the audience surrogate, making moral decisions for everyone, and that means he can't always be in the middle of the action. He's largely just watching this go down and realizing there's a much bigger world out there. Like, Dan Harmon is always ragging on the Hobbit films for things like that on his podcast, and as much as I respect the guy as a writer, he's an example of the sort of person who wants to pick on the movies without picking on the book... but in fact his criticisms of the movie apply equally to the book. It's nostalgia bias.

The set pieces are fantastic. It would be stupid to make a movie with this budget but hold back on the big sequences. I loved the barrels... I loved the split-off duels at the end... I especially loved all the magic dueling at Dol Guldur. That stuff is just absolutely top-notch, with the black-and-white light going back and forth, and the stuttering wraiths. Amazing.

Spoiler

I will say CG Billy Connolly was a bummer, but I heard he was sick for reshoots and they just couldn't get what they needed from him. Maybe on the extended edition they'll composite him back in proper.

 

To balance out watching the Hobbit movies, you must all go and read Morgoth's Ring, The Peoples of Middle Earth and The Children of Hurin.

 

And yet I have seen these things, and alas, my hind quarters remain stickless as to a good time at the cinema!

 

Spoiler

I was wondering about that actually--it felt like they'd assembled their giant CG dwarf army, their giant CG elf army, their giant CG orc army, and just thought "**** it, do we really need to shoot Billy Connolly at this point?"

 

I use Tapatalk myself and this is still the first time I noticed. I know regular spoiler tags work, so are you saying we can't use the labeled version at all, or is there a different way of doing it?

 

You know, it's funny that people have decided to start a conversation about the Hobbit films just now, because they're one of the chief examples of what I've been saying recently in the ST thread about the way I kind of resent how the "nerdsphere" basically determines what you're allowed to think of a given work of genre fiction now. You shouldn't like the Hobbit films. You should like the OT. You shouldn't like the PT. You should like The Avengers. And so on and so forth.

I mean, I can certainly understand why other people wouldn't like them, and I'm not just talking about book purists. And I get that a lot of the conversation on both sides here is sort of facetious. But I do sort of wish there was more room for reasonable people to disagree on these things.