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annathepiperLet’s get this right on the record: I loved this movie, and in fact, I loved it more than the first one.
Picoreview: Overall a tighter experience than the first one, without the need to do all the setup, and there was much less superfluous action. There’s a lot more changes to the core Hobbit storyline that yeah, diehard purists will definitely object to–I’ve already heard and read a lot of those objections. With wry apologies to the purists, I don’t share those objections. Every one of the changes totally worked for me in the context of the story Jackson’s telling in this movie, so I have no qualms about them whatsoever.
Which means that yes,
Overall my expectations, set by the first movie, were in the B- range. I was so delighted by so much of what I saw in this second installment that I gotta bump up its grade to a B+, though!
So let’s get into the deets, shall we? Shining starlight-colored spoilers behind the cut!
Above-cut ETA: Dara has her review post up now right over here, in which she brings up the point about Tolkien’s work as a mythos, and myths getting changed and reinterpreted. And which she also points out very correctly that representation does matter, and that’s a big big plus for having Tauriel in the movie.
Mirrored from angelahighland.com.
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Date: 2013-12-23 04:08 am (UTC)Not sold on the Tauriel/Kili bit. Not due to any canon issues or anything. One one hand, makes for a decent storyline in these movies. On the other makes the Gimli/various elves relationships in the other move is somewhat cheaper IMO. This may change based on the final movie. Love the character of Tauriel though, way more convincing to add a new character than to morph an existing one (Arwen...)
The splitting of the party that goes along with the Kili storyline is interesting. I wonder if it has people up in arms. I think it will help give some different people to follow when Smaug comes to town next movie, so it's all good as far as I'm concerned.
Had issues with Thranduil. Not due to anything they did wrong, I just can't see Lee Pace without thinking of him as Ned the Piemaker in Pushing Daisies. And because of that, every time they cut to Tauriel with him around, I half expected to see Anna Friel/Charlotte Charles. I kept waiting for him to touch the dead orcs head to get it to talk some more.
A bit more time could have been spent with Beorn I think (but not too much), at the expense of some of the interactions with Smaug. I understand why they were added/expanded, but really they could have used some more editing, IMO.
The eye/sauron/eye/etc thing was right out of a cheesy 70s flick. Took me completely out of the moment.
All in all, I thought it was a very good movie. Comparing it to the first movie in this trilogy, I think it was largely an improvement. And comparing it to the second movie in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, I think it also did a better job of carrying on the story and bridging the two bookend movies together. At least I think so. That could change if the third one meshes very badly, but it's been left nicely setup, so I doubt that will be the case.
It avoided some of the pitfalls of the second Lord of the Rings movie, I think that one changes a lot of story in ways that made it better, but left debts that the third movie had to repay to it's detriment. This one doesn't seem to have fallen into that trap.
Wow. That was way more than I intended to write. I mainly started out thinking Pie maker + cheesy 70's eye effect.
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Date: 2013-12-24 11:59 pm (UTC)*giggle* I can see that being a Thranduil problem, yeah. :D I have seen only a little bit of Pushing Daisies but enough to know what you're talking about!
It'll be interesting to see if there will be more Beorn mileage in the inevitable Extended Edition. I'm with you there on the editing.
And great commentary all around, thanks for sharing your thoughts!