You know the movie: inspired by The Hobbit and loosely based on Tolkien's characters. Except for the elf-maiden warrior.
The pacing was much tighter than the sloppy first movie, and of course Smaug was an excellent chiefest of calamities. Gandalf paying a call on Dol Guldur works pretty well cinematically, though the method is a tad improbable.
I have to cut Jackson some slack (despite the Elf-Maiden-Warrior). He is trying to tie together three books, with the titular one a light-hearted story without a lot of care for realism or continuity. The dwarves in the book by and large survive all dangers spectacularly easily, and there isn't much attempt to distinguish the dwarves or illustrate what makes them tough fighters.(*) So to have any sort of continuity of character you have to change the situations and plot in significant ways, and ditch most of the light-heartedness in favor of comic relief. And all the poetry.
Even the unmotivated triangle with the EMW can play a role in the continuity, as ES predicts she will die beside the dwarf in the last movie and I predict her example will effect the beginnings of a change in heart in Legolas. Still, there are other ways to do this.
If you are willing to regard it as "inspired-by" and let go any knowledge of physics or physiology, it is fun. Thorin is well-done. And Paulines are tied to railroad tracks all over the place, so to speak.
(*) The book never quite explains how a dozen dwarves are going to deal with a dragon, or can be comparable to hundreds of fighting men.
1 comment:
On the way home from seeing the film yesterday, I posited to my youngest daughter (13) my theory that Tauriel would die in the Battle of Five Armies. It just seems the logical peak of the dramatic arc, especially when considering her ties to Fili (who dies in that battle) and her non-appearance in LOTR. Similar to the way in which Rowling killed off several main characters in the battle of Hogwarts. It brings the epic down to human scale.
Anyhow...that's how I would do it. Interesting to see someone else thinking along the same lines.
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