The Hobbit movie, part 2

[Estie]

It has been out for a while now, has anyone seen it ? I went yesterday. With very low expectations, and got very disappointed.

[Thraalbee]

I saw it. It is very far from the book both in events and tone but I expected that and found parts of it quite good. The elves fighting has improved a lot since the LoTR film and was fun for a while. Adding a female character to balance the cast is reasonable in a 2013 film, it did not really break anything so I'm ok with that. But other parts were not much. The long fight in the lonely mountain was outright boring, my oldest daughter (17) fell asleep at that part. But Gandalfs adventure was interesting even if only briefly described.

[Estie]

Elves fighting taught me a few things I wasnt aware of previously:

The bow is a melee weapon, to be drawn into the orc´s face. If the orc manages to put some distance between himself and the elf, the elf has to close the distance, either running or by horse, and when in melee range again, draw the bow.

[fph]

In the final fighting scenes (no significant spoilers in this post, I reckon, feel free to read on), lots of cranks and cart systems in the mines start to move, and then they shift the camera onto a giant golden dwarf statue. At that point, I was fearing that the statue would start moving and fight like a robot...

Well that says much about my expectations of the Holliwood filmmakers. Kinda enjoyed the movie though -- there's a lot of new made-up content, but somehow it manages to stay kinda faithful to the Tolkien atmosphere.

(apart from Legolas. Seriously, he looked like an idiot in almost every scene.)

[Mark]

Gandalf's adventure was my favourite part.

There was only one flaw really, not inserting the words 'incredibly loosely' before 'based upon the story by jrr tolkien'

I'd love to see Jackson develop a more or less dialogue-less Silmarillion summary in that style. Obviously that is unrealistic, but perhaps a Beren and Luthien story that was most voiceless (except for the battles/songs)