[ SECRET POST #3332 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #3332 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

01.


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02.
(David Bowie)


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03.
(Great British Bake Off for Sports Relief, Ed Balls)


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04.
[Pokemon]


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05.
[Star Wars: TFA]


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06.
[Damian Lewis, Dick Winters, Band Of Brothers]


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07.
[Daughter of the Lilies]


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08.
[David Eddings]


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09.
[Sengoku Basara]


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10.
[JJBA]


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11.
[Men In Black I, II, III]
















Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 022 secrets from Secret Submission Post #476.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[ypsilon42]

Yeah, I completely agree. I was super happy to hear that they were making a Hobbit movie and the first trailer had me definitly hooked, but the movie itself was kind of a dissapointment (with possible exceptions for the soundtrack and the scenes with Gollum in the cave). And then it pretty much just went downhill from there.

I don't want to begrude anyone their love for the movies, but I genuinely do not understand it. Not only are they bad Hobbit movies, they are just bad movie in general, :/.

[(Anonymous)]

Agreed. I'm a little puzzled about people saying well, it wasn't a great adaptation but it's still a good popcorn flick! Was it? The special effects were disappointing compared to the LOTR trilogy and Smaug was the most disappointing of all. The pace was really choppy, with slower bits that seem to be marking time while we wait for the next big action sequence. Don't get me wrong, some scenes were brilliant and gave me shivers down my spine. Other scenes were so pointless it was painful to watch.

[cbrachyrhynchos]

Thorin's climatic moment made me hungry for cheese dip.

[(Anonymous)]

Agreed. I took the films for what they were and tried my best to put away my purist hat. But I couldn't suspend my disbelief when the dwarves tried to kill Smaug with gold. It completely undermined all menace for the villain when he was chasing them around but couldn't catch them. He had Thorin on his bloody lip and still couldn't kill him. The barrel chase went on too long. I couldn't follow the battle the way I could in TT or ROTK. Where did the elven army go? Why are the orcs fighting in Dale? That at least was something I thought PJ would do well with.

There was so much that was left unsatisfying. They didn't wrap up a ton of storylines (Arkenstone, Thranduil's jewels, etc.) so that it made it feel like they didn't actually care about what was going on, which pushed me away from investing myself in the movie the way I did with LOTR. They didn't care about their own creations, telling us nothing about Tauriel, who she is, what she wants, and why she's doing what she's doing. They completely abandoned characters (see Fili's death). The whole thing was a hot mess.

[(Anonymous)]

I wasn't going to be a stickler about book canon since it's an adaptation but there were so many aspects of the movies that just plain didn't work for me. Beorn felt all wrong. The barrel sequence did go on too long and worse yet, it became another excuse to trot out another Legolas fight scene. Smaug didn't look nearly as good as I hoped, given how well they'd done the Nazgul, Gollum, etc. in the LOTR films and just about every scene with the gold or melted gold really showed its CGI. Tauriel was wasted potential, introducing a female elf who is ostensibly a ranger and a fighter but who spends far too much of the films mooning over a dwarf she just met. Far too much time was spent in Laketown, with too many sequences with the Master and Alfrid as unnecessary comic relief.

There was no feel of a climactic battle in Five Armies, again too much Legolas and worst of all, the films breeze past Thorin, Fili and Kili's end really quickly. There's no time to mourn, no time to feel the weight of their stories ending, barely any time for Bilbo to process it... what was the point? I was aghast by how badly the third movie went, and it's not like my hopes were very high to begin with.

[(Anonymous)]

Agreed. I felt like Legolas and Tauriel's characters overlapped so much that it was pointless to have both. I kind of liked some of the "Legolas moments" in LOTR but I couldn't take seriously the barrels or the bat. It felt too cartoony. Legolas was so bitchy and mean and nothing like the character from LOTR. He should've been kept to a cameo. (Or better, he should've been used to explore Thranduil, rather than the hamfisted fridging of his mom, which the movie did basically nothing with.)

The nail in the coffin for me is that I should've been bawling my eyes out when Thorin died. We've spent three movies with the guy. But at most I became misty eyed solely on Martin's performance. It only happened the first time I saw the film, and I don't feel anything now (not like Boromir's death, which gets me every time). There just wasn't any emotional weight. Smaug's death felt anti-climatic. It was stupid to put it in the third movie. It left the second movie feeling hollow, and made Smaug feel like an afterthought overall because he's taken out so quickly and seems so inconsequential really.

I agree about Beorn. I didn't care for his look, either as a human or a bear. The bear looked like a wolf - I often couldn't tell it apart from the wargs. How do you mess up a bear? And I hated how they changed his backhistory so that he's the only one now. And they didn't even do anything with that change. They never followed through with anything they were doing, and it felt like "rule of cool" ruled all their decisions. It was all what looked cool (and I have a vastly divergent sense of what's cool from the filmmakers) and there was no depth.

It really was a disappointment all around.

[(Anonymous)]

I think they should've axed Legolas or just used him in a cameo role and given more time to Tauriel. It seemed so pointless, making an original character and then not really utilizing her full potential. I'm also not a fan of Legolas' fight scenes that defy the laws of physics. Once per movie is pushing it, frankly, and after ROTK and him skating off a Mûmakil's trunk, I'd had enough. I didn't want to see more of that in The Hobbit movies, which already felt too over the top.

I thought it was a poor decision to save Smaug's death for the third film. I understand why they thought it would be a good idea, but it just didn't work. The second movie felt too open ended, IMO, and the third movie was too rushed. It seemed like they had to hurry up and kill off Smaug to get to the real action and it wasn't the climactic moment it should have been. Way to undermine all the build up of DoS. Ditto Thorin's death, which was even more anti climactic. It sounds funny to say this, but I'm not sure the movie benefitted from seeing his fight firsthand. Like a lot of the battle scenes, it went on a bit too long and a bit too predictably so when he finally dies you feel more relief than grief.


Beorn... I didn't like the overall design. You're right, as the bear, he looked more warg-like than a bear. Aren't bears intimidating/majestic/terrifying enough on their own? Look at a Kodiak grizzly, ffs. His human look was even less impressive. When I think a bear-like man, I think someone with very broad shoulders, built like a barrel. This guy?

http://vignette1.wikia.nocookie.net/lotr/images/e/e3/Beorn_in_The_Hobbit_films.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20160118133925

Look at him. Ridiculously fake hair/nose prosthetic and it looks like he's wearing a braided rug as a vest. SO disappointing. I don't think I'd be as hard on the films if LOTR had been so meticulously good about their character, costume and set designs. The attention to detail was incredible and it really showed in the final product. Peter Jackson admitted that pre-production was more rushed on The Hobbit and you can tell. It looks very ersatz in comparison.