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

i still haven't gotten a chance to see this suggy movie. soon, soon.

 

Glad the movie never let Saruman's robe turn into "many colors".

 

Yeah. Evil, long haired hippie wizard?



Sorry, not seeing it.

 

It was just very weird when I read that scene in the book.

 

Yeah. It would have worked a lot better if Saruman the White had become Saruman the Black and it would have fit with his dialogue, that "the white cloth can be dyed, the white page over written and the white light can be broken."

 

I thought the Dol Guldur scenes were the best part of the movie. Which is funny, because they weren't in the book at all.

 

I liked the first movie best. There, I said it.

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You mean movie franchises with too much CG? I agree.

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I'd rather be bludgeoned than see it again. Admittedly, I did get bored and go for a short walk though. During which part? Oh, one of the CGI orc scenes i'm sure.

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I liked Beorn. No reason to cut him. It is a major interval, not just endless foreplay. The story is about a journey. Well, unless you're the studio and PJ, in which case it is about dollars and climax.

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Agreed. That's not that uncommon at the moment, I've found.

 

Honestly I liked Tauriel because other than her and Legolas, what Elves were there at the Battle we actually cared about? I mean Thrandruil was a jerk and the rest of his army were just redshirts. We had the dwarves to care about so by virtue we cared about Dain and his dwarves when they came to help, we have Bard to care about along with the humans. The elves needed some likeable characters in the movie.

 

Liked the movie. Bard vs Smaug felt really epic. Dol guldur and the power of Galadrial was pretty cool to see also.
The azog going under the ice part bugged me, And the whole battle of the five armies seemed to end abruptly.
Also like EHT said, The forced strider part was annoying.
I would of liked to have seen more sauron, Like him showing up back in mordor maybe.
Overall it was a pretty entertaining movie like the first two. Some of the abruptness that bugged me hopefully will be fixed in the extended version.

 

Double post.

 

While its probably a good thing that the movie wasn't super, super long (honestly, I wish there was a shortened cut of Desolation of Smaug so that we could skip that stupid chase at the end), this one in particular feels like too much was left to the Extended Edition, mainly because the ending felt so abrupt. The one time we could use a proper ending, they don't bother with it. I know RotK had a few too many seemingly ending points, but that's partially the movie's fault for making it seem like an ending, rather than simply transitions. Heck, you could probably delete every Alfrid scene in this movie and that would improve it by a lot too. It was bad in DoS, with the Master, but seriously, they made that subplot even worse in this one.

The Aragorn thing was particularly forced, and only possible due to the shortened timeline (Frodo held onto the Ring for a much shorter period than in the novels, I believe?). The part with Bilbo saying he had dropped the Ring during the battle is just kind of... random. Guess they just had to squeeze in a "Gandalf confront Bilbo about the ring" scene. And is it bad that even though we only saw Dain for... five minutes, I liked him more than Thranduil? Yet we're stuck with more scenes of him, because he's a long blond-haired pretty elf.

Even if it is hard to keep track of a dozen dwarves, wish we could have seen more of them fighting in the big battle.

Oh yeah, forgot about that Saruman of Many Colors scene. Well, I am glad they didn't bother with that in the movie, guess in book it was meant as a sign of how superior he was to just the normal one-color wizards (Grey, Brown, those blue ones). Or maybe it was always meant as a sign of just how far off the deep end Saruman had fallen, who knows.

 

As it stands now, before the release of BOFA's EE, his material IS endless foreplay, since unlike the book, he plays no follow-up role in the story. In a hypothetical three-hour theatrical cut of this story, anything that doesn't further the narrative of either Thorin or Bilbo would have a hard time justifying its place. Fortunately, his material is the only stuff from the book that wouldn't have had room in such a film... but then, there's always the EE to fall back on.

You have to remember that The Hobbit only presents the illusion of endless unconnected adventures, since almost everything that happens is an excuse to establish characters that all come into play after the death of Smaug. The Great Goblin, the Eagles, Beorn, the Elven-King, the Master, etc. Gollum provides Bilbo his luck, Elrond tells the dwarves how to get in the mountain. The trolls are the sole exception to adventures furthering plot/character. In this way, The Hobbit is actually very tightly woven. I was actually impressed with how Jackson/Walsh/Boyens integrated the troll segment into the larger plot of the growing darkness in Middle-earth.

On another note, I'm looking forward to some payoff for Gandalf's endless talk of the Dwarven rings that has all been relegated to the EE. We saw that Thrain's ring has been taken from him, but what effect could that have on Sauron's story that wasn't made obvious by the Black Speech chant of the Rings poem? Will Gandalf send Thrain's message to Thorin (making sure to include the Wilhelm scream as part of his delivery)? Will Beorn's torture scene in Dol Guldor play some role? Will they completely alter how they represent Galadriel's stand against Sauron? So many questions.

 

That was before Saruman abandoned reason for madness.

 

I loved it. Best of the three. I always liked LOTR better because Aragorn, so I was happy about that mention. I did not think it was forced at all

 

After my second viewing (with the family) I like it just as much as the first time I saw it. Personally, I think it's a very good movie.

My parents both cried at Tauriel's "Why does it hurt so much?" line. And I liked Tauriel a lot better on this viewing, too, for some reason.

Alfrid's still dumb.

 

I'm still fuming over how the women are treated in this film. Tauriel does nothing but pine for a dwarf and advocate against isolationism for thirty seconds. When Jackson says in interviews that Tauriel was written for a role that 8-10 year old girls can see themselves in, it was insulting both to those 8-10 year old girls and Evangeline Lily, who didn't originally sign up for what we see in this trilogy. I'm surprised there's not more material given to her; the role is so thin that practically anytime she's on screen the writers are either setting something up or paying it off in the most obvious way imaginable. Her role is painfully reductive and limited, given the potential.

You could also argue for a misogynistic reading of what they've done with Cate Blanchett, but the more blatantly false bit was the rehashing of the evil Galadriel face, five times as grotesque now, as if Jackson/Falsh/Boyens believe that any use of power is somehow evil. Galadriel's stand against Sauron should have used similar imagery as Gandalf's fight against Sauron (as ugly as that was) or the Balrog. Or Saruman. But no, the men take care of business until the woman loses her ****, throws Sauron to Mordor, and then snaps out of it and faints. It was conceptually the most terrible scene in the entire film.

 

I think the issue with the Tauriel romance is less that she is female and more than she is an Elf, from what I understand when elves fall in love that is pretty much how they act male or female. Heck all Legolas does is pine for her and agree with whatever she says and does whatever action makes him stay with her. And it's hard to fault the movie for including a female character and not doing enough when the actual book didn't have any.

As for Gladriel, I thought they had Galadriel do the evil face because she was using her ring of power? Basically using a weapon of the enemy to defeat Sauron? I don't see how the scene was insulting to her. Saruman and Elrond fought the Nine sure, but Sauron was clearly capable of wiping the floor with both of them. The only reason they won was because Galadriel was there.

I mean Galdriel strolls in, wipes an Orc out, carries Gandalf by herself, tends to him while Saruman and Elrond deal with the Nine, then banishes them and Sauron back to Mordor. I mean Gandalf died after fighting the Balrog, who was of the same order as Gandalf. Galdriel took on Sauron and Nine and only felt faint afterwards. I don't see how that scene could be misogynistic at all.

 

I'm not sure what you're talking about in regards to her race. The filmmakers' use of Legolas is, yes, also flat and problematic. However, it's absolutely not difficult to fault the screenwriters for writing a flat, uninteresting female character when they're the ones bringing this character to the table in the first place, nor should The Hobbit necessarily be criticized for not including a female character at all. No female parts are better than degrading female parts. The movie is a different beast from its novelistic counterpart and should be treated as such.

With Galadriel, It's not a problem of pure power as much as it is of presentation, which I've already outlined. And if Galadriel's ring was evil, she should be using her "evil face" all the time, as she's built everything she has with it. Elrond's got a ring. Why doesn't he get an Evil Dead face? Do we see Galadriel using her Elven ring? I don't think so. She's using the Phial of Eärendil, the most overt symbol of goodness in the books and films. It's forgiving that they used that effect in FOTR because the scene was addressing a hypothetical of her assumption of the One Ring, but here it made no sense whatsoever. And it looked terrible and was absolutely insulting to the character as imagined by Tolkien.

 

Well I always thought Tolkien presented Elves as very emotional beings, prone to extremes in emotion. So if they fall in love they fall hard, and if they lose love they mourn hard. See Arwen after Aragorn or Thrandruil turning into a cold jerk after losing his wife. As for Tauriel I don't think she was a bad character, I enjoyed her through both movies. Did she need to do more? Absolutely but so did everyone in the movie. I never found her character to be degrading in anyway. But I suppose it's all a matter of opinion.

Well if it's the Phial then yes I would agree her using the evil face is rather wonk. I didn't hear that mentioned when I saw it and assumed she was using the power of the ring. I mean I can understand if they wish to insinuate that all great power, good or evil, is terrifying to behold, but at the same time I see what your saying. Gandalf used great power but never appeared evil, except when telling Bilbo not to take him for some conjuror of cheap tricks.

I don't know, maybe the extended edition will explain it better. I did hear someone say that Sauron is trying to posses or control her through her ring, so maybe that's why she has the evil face and is drained afterwards, she's banishing him and resisting his control at the same time.

 

It's degrading when she's written merely to fall for and mourn a male character. I am neglecting the other aspect of her character, her interventionism established in a brief scene in Smaug, but her two dialogue scenes with Lee are both so badly written and quickly forgotten that her constant chant of "KILI!" is all that really lands. Granted, that's perhaps routed in personal interpretation, sure.

In regards to the EE, herein lies two problems these last two films have faced. One, it seems pretty obvious that Warner Brothers has been more hands-on than New Line, and I think that different management style has definitely had a hand in the final cuts of Smaug and Five Armies, limited runtimes making it difficult for Jackson to tell the story he's written without resorting to this second problem: using the extended editions as get out of jail free cards. The extended editions should never be used to tell the basic beats of a story neglected in the theatrical cut. Who can really understand the significance of Thranduil's jewels? Aside from a mention of his mother's death, where have we seen Legolas with any sort of mommy issues to establish Thranduil's comment at the end of the film? What exactly is going on in the Dul Goldur scene? The only time this was really an issue in LOTR was with Saruman's resolution, although I more or less agree with the writers that the scene never really got where it needed to be and the movie's better off without it. Needless to say, I do look forward to how the EE attempts to solve some of these problems, although I'd be happy just to see Thorin's funeral, a mention of Dain and Bard as rulers of their respective lands, and some expansion of Beorn's role. Just have him do something besides fall off an eagle. Carry Thorin's body. Flick a bumblebee. Something.

 

The worst part for me is that Kili was essentially a consolation prize because she couldn't have Legolas. Thranduil had forbiddon anything from happening between them in DOS, so she rebounds to the guy that made a penis joke to her earlier. Now she's an emotional wreck because she's a 600 year old elf who found "real love" in a guy she spent a mere 30 minutes with.