Amph One Thread To Rule Them All: The Rings of Power + The Hobbit & Lord of the Rings Trilogies

Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven...

 

Oh, I'm not saying you are. But him doing that rock thing sounds like something from troll science.

 

So, I watched it. Before I get into all the spoilery details, let me just say, I loved it. I personally would consider it the best of the Hobbit trilogy (though some may argue the first is, and I will also admit that the first one was great). This is how much I loved it: when I left the theater this morning at 1:00 a.m., I was literally giggling hysterically, and almost could not stop. I simply enjoyed it that much. Now, onto the spoilery stuff.

Spoiler

Things I Liked:
-Bard was awesome throughout the whole movie. Really got a chance to shine here.
-Thranduil. I loved how he made my emotions sway. First I loved him for bringing food for the survivors, then hated him for having selfish intent, then loved him for his awesome fight skills (chopping off eight Orcs' heads at once while riding his Elk; duel-wielding swords), then hated him for his casual disregard for non-Elf life (though admittedly, his argument for it made a lot of sense), then loved him again for his final scenes with Legolas and Tauriel.
-Bilbo was, as ever, astounding. Martin Freeman was beyond the perfect choice for his character. I admit I was on the verge of tears when he began sobbing at Thorin's death.
-Speaking of which...Thorin. Armitage did a great job of depicting Thorin's dragon sickness, and subsequent recovery. And honestly, I'm ready to put Thorin against Elrond as the best one-on-one duelist in Middle Earth. His duel with Azog was perfection. And his death scene was amazingly emotional.
-Kili and Fili. I'm not glad they're dead, but I'm glad they followed the book. They did a great job of putting some emotion into their deaths; we already had emotional attachments to Kili from the first two, so when Fili died, even if I didn't so much feel sad about that (although I was sad), it was more for Kili's sake. And then when Kili died...it wasn't as emotionally awesome as Thorin by a long shot, but it was pretty good, as death scenes go.
-Dwalin. I feel like Balin's shining movie was AUJ, and Bofur's was DOS, and now Dwalin gets BOFA. Dwalin always seemed the most loyal to Thorin, his right hand, and seeing him now so disillusioned by his boss was great. And he was a pretty awesome fighter, too.
-One of my favorite interactions with Dwalin and Thorin: "There's an army of Goblin mercenaries on the way. Can't be more than a hundred." "We can handle them." *cuts away* *cuts back, all the Goblins are dead*
-Legolas' personality in this movie was way better than in DOS, IMO. He almost instantly redeemed himself for me after being such a jerk in DOS. Maybe he was just having a bad day that day?
-The whole White Council scenario. Elrond and Saruman are pretty wicked fighters, and Galadriel using her phial against Sauron, and going all crazy-mode again, was pretty cool (and scary).
-Was pleasantly surprised that Tauriel didn't die; I expected it to happen, honestly. I thought she was a pretty good character, though her survival here does make one wonder where she was during the LOTR trilogy.
-The mention of Strider at the end was pretty cool.
-Hey, they finally showed Lobelia, after playing her up for this long without any appearances!

Things I Disliked:
-When Legolas was running up the collapsing rocks. That was the only one of his stunts that felt over-the-top to me; it was pretty silly, IMO. Everything else, I was okay with, but that was...
-Too much time spent with Alfrid. The guy was annoying to start with, and I think they kept him around to be comic-relief because no one else was, but he was really just obnoxious in this movie. Between the repeated showings of him being a coward (to the point of even handing an underage teen a sword to fight in his stead!) to cross-dressing to hide the gold he was running off with during the battle. I wish the guy had died with the Master, or better yet, been horribly mutilated by an Orc. His time could've been better spent on Beorn, who only got a brief appearance.

Overall, I personally greatly enjoyed it, and am looking forward to going to see it again next week, this time with the family!

 

Did any book source say Galadriel went dark side to defeat Sauron?

 

Idk, what does you're heart tell you? Slowpokeking

 

I think that scene is quite weird.

 

bad

 

Great.

 

Yeah that's what I mean. A special edition of the Lord of the Rings films with that extra stuff, that and what happens in the north with Dale and Erebor too.

Really? Sauron is weak, the White Council drove him out by the books, Galadriel has a ring of power, she's a very powerful and ancient elf. When she tears down Dol Guldur it notes the only one at the time who could've overpowered her was Sauron, and that was after he had regained much of his strength.

At this point I see no reason why a weakened Sauron couldn't have his butt kicked by Galadriel. Heck the first time he got beaten up by an Elf and a Man and that was with the Ring of power on him.

 

Gandalf has a ring as well and he's a Maia, but he still got beaten by Sauron.

 

Hobbit 3 had a $24.45 million opening Wednesday, down 6.5% from the Wednesday opening of The Two Towers (not adjusted for inflation) and down 29% from Return of the King's opening Wednesday.

Adjusted for inflation, that represents a massive audience decline in the U.S. relative to the end of the LOTR saga. Foreign audiences don't seem to care. All Middle Earth movies are alike as far as they're concerned, apparently.

 

All 6 Middle-Earth films receive a 10

 

they're all the same

 

I guess my rankings would go like this:
FOTR
ROTK
TTT
TDOS
AUJ

I will know where TBOTFA falls into that in a little under 48 hours (have tickets and reserved seats for my son and me). Even though I have mixed feelings on the movie, I'm still really looking forward to going to see it anyway.

 

I will go with
TTT 10
FotR 9.5
RotK 9(Blame the Undead Army)
AUJ(8)
TBoFA(6.5)
TDoS(6)

 

It's interesting that...

Spoiler

two Draculas each battle an aspect of Benedict Cumberbatch.

 

Sir Christopher Lee will also be remembered as Dooku.

 

His finest role for sure.

 

Richard Armitage, Martin Freeman, Benedict Cumberbatch and Sir Christopher Lee really gave us great performance despite the quality of the movie.

 

Indeed his finest role.

However I say the character really got to shine in ROTS over AOTC.

 

The movie gave Dooku too little screen time to show his character still.

 

Saruman is a badass

 

Sir Christopher had three nipples in one of his films. Sorry, but that trumps anything and everything he's ever done.

 

No that's just creepy.