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Lord of the Rings Month: The Desolation of the Hobbit Trilogy
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In this episode, Satsunami and Andrew discuss the contentious Hobbit trilogy. But what was it that made this set of films so bad within the Tolkien fanbase? And are there any redeeming qualities to be had here? Without any further ado, let's find out!
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Transcript
Opening & Introduction
00:00:00
Speaker
one podcast to record them all, one podcast to promote them, one podcast to publish them all, and the darkness subscribed to them. In the land of Zencast- Andrew, what are you doing? Um, nothing. Ah, full of a podcaster. Welcome to World of the Next Month.
Love for Lord of the Rings
00:00:24
Speaker
Hello everybody and welcome to another episode of the Lord of the Rings month. My name's Sataname, and joining me for this not one episode, not two episodes, but three-parter because no one demanded it is the one and only Andrew. Andrew, welcome back. It's been an unexpected journey coming back to revisit this trilogy, I have to say. And then it became a desolation, if you will. Yeah.
00:00:47
Speaker
A battle of the five armies, if you will. The five episodes. Don't give me ideas. Don't tempt me. It's rather cool. Actually, it's not cool, but we'll get on to that. So, yeah, last time we talked about the very iconic Lord of the Rings trilogy by Peter Jackson. We talked about how much we loved
Exploring The Hobbit Trilogy
00:01:06
Speaker
it. And then we thought, you know what? We are too happy.
00:01:09
Speaker
We have watched a film that gives us nothing but joy, nothing but happiness, fond memories. Let's bring ourselves down a peg and discuss something that is rather less liked by the consensus, and that is indeed The Hobbit trilogy, which again, directed by Peter Jackson, we will get into that a wee bit more. But yeah, where do we begin with this, Andrew? Because these films, I think maybe in hindsight, have been revered as being better than they were received initially.
00:01:39
Speaker
Just having re-watched them, there are certainly aspects of it that I do enjoy. Even when I watched them initially, there were certainly aspects I did enjoy, but there was a lot of puzzlement as well when I initially watched it. And then again, watching it this time, I was just kind of like, this is dragging. I'm not as invested as I was in when watching the Lord of the Rings movies. So it's not as bad as people like to talk about it being. There's still like an element of fun and fantasy intrigue to it. I think when you're weighing against Lord of the Rings, then yeah, it's understandable why people have a more negative
00:02:09
Speaker
impression of it. Yeah because I have to say when we were talking about Lord of the Rings we of course grew up with it at the start of the 2000s. We watched them in the cinemas and everything and back then there was a real buzz for these films you know thanks to the obviously great marketing and the way the films actually turned out but when The Hobbit was announced and they said oh it's going to be two films and then they said oh it's going to be three there was a
00:02:37
Speaker
Different reaction I have to say, wasn't there?
The Hobbit's Adaptation Challenges
00:02:40
Speaker
It wasn't like people were clamouring. I mean, don't get me wrong, they were curious, I think. But at least in my experience anyway, I didn't see anyone who was like, frothing at the mouth to see Bilbo's Adventures. No offence, Bilbo.
00:02:53
Speaker
For sure, I was just baffled that they'd stretched this tiny book into three movies. Each one of the Lord of the Rings books is bigger than the Hobbit book. And each one of those is only one movie, got granted a long three to four hour movie, but still one movie. Whereas Jackson del Toro combo bonus, they managed to stretch out this tiny book into three, pretty much three hour movies. So like nine hours worth of film for a book that I read in like an evening.
00:03:21
Speaker
It's baffling the obvious cash grab and they succeeded because I looked at the box office return and it was close to $3 billion, which obviously surprised me for an outlay of, I think, $700 to $800 million that they invested into making these movies. So I mean, they got three times their return, in fact, like almost four times their return. So they certainly succeeded in what they wanted to achieve in that regard. But just in terms of actual quality, I just don't think that they hit the mark.
00:03:46
Speaker
No, I totally agree with you because it was quite funny when we were researching for the original trilogy and how Peter Jackson had to fight tooth and nail to get a Lord of the Rings trilogy. As we saw before when they went to Miramax initially, they wanted it as two films for Lord of the Rings, then they wanted it as one two-hour film.
00:04:09
Speaker
and you know, they really had to fight to get this near perfect trilogy into the box office and they succeeded. But then you've got the opposite problem where, as you said, this tiny book that isn't even as long as the Shortest Lord of the Rings book has been pulled and stretched out and then they're basically, I don't like to use this term, but they've basically stuffed their fan fiction in between The Adventure of the Hobbit and it's just such a bizarre thing because I don't really think
00:04:38
Speaker
and there probably are examples out there but I don't think there are many films that have done something so similar, have they?
Fan Fiction Elements in The Hobbit
00:04:45
Speaker
It certainly rings towards like the prequel trilogy of Star Wars in terms of its kind of reception following a successful initial trilogy but
00:04:54
Speaker
Star Wars didn't have the existing source material that Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit have. And so you kind of feel like, oh, why have they departed so much from this source material? And as you say, kind of create almost fan fiction elements, creating like a love story that didn't really exist, adding characters didn't exist, introducing characters from the previous films that didn't need to be brought in. It just kind of felt like fan service. It was very strange.
00:05:19
Speaker
Because the weird thing about that is there are elements that were added into the original Lord of the Rings trilogy. You know, like the chase between the Ringwraiths and Arwen, who had more of a prominent role. He had some reshuffling of the scenes. He had bits cut out. For example, in Return of the King, he had the Scourge of the Shire. He had that cut out. He had things twisted and turned. But in the end, they did it for the betterment of the film, which is weird how they're doing a similar thing here.
00:05:49
Speaker
with the Hobbit where they're adding their own things, they're twisting their women around here and everywhere, or they're back again, should I say. But it just didn't want the same. Funny enough, I actually have a funny story about the first time I saw this. I've ever told you this, that I nearly got burned out of the cinema. So when I was at university, my friend and I went to see this film, I
00:06:13
Speaker
it was about nine o'clock-ish, you know, quite late in the evening, or rather it would be late by the time we left. And we got to the bit, you know, when they're climbing up the trees and they're trying to escape the orks at the very end of the first film and they've got the flames around them. It's like, oh, it's so dramatic and everything. And then all of a sudden the lights came on in the cinema and we were all like, what's going on? And the guy came out to the front and was like, ladies and gentlemen, there's a fire outside.
00:06:42
Speaker
police exit through this fire escape and we had to go out of the cinema and we were waiting outside and I think we waited for about half an hour and then I turned to my friend and I was like, well, do you want to really wait this long? And he was like, nah, let's just go home. I can look up the end online. But I mean, that's the thing though. It's like if it was Lord of the Rings, then maybe I would have been invested in the fire. They really invested in this mountain dooms. Fly you fools.
00:07:13
Speaker
I didn't realise we were in the 4D Lord of the Rings experience. See, that's exactly what I thought. I thought, wow, the flames are really realistic. Oh, it's a hot day. Sauron's eyes are on you and like, whew, I'm really feeling it. Just in case anyone's wondering, the cinema was fine. I genuinely think it was like a minor fire. The popcorn machine is like bursting the flames. You know that in the image of the dog sitting in the flames and he goes, this is fine.
00:07:36
Speaker
No, the year two was fine and the anger reopened the next day. It was never the same again. No, it wasn't after watching that film I have to say. But it was alright. Again, I think that just sums it up that if you weren't captured by the very first film, then what hopes do the following two films have? But before we go on and we talk about the good, the bad and the downright bizarre,
00:08:00
Speaker
of this trilogy. I took to twitter slash x and I decided to ask people what they actually thought of this trilogy and it was quite curious because when I said that we were doing Lord of the Rings month and we were going to be covering the hall about it, a lot of people seem to have mixed opinions.
Trends in Movie Adaptations
00:08:17
Speaker
I was genuinely braced for everyone being overly negative to say oh it's terrible, it's just like the prequels which apparently is a thing that a lot of people take offense at comparing it to the prequels but
00:08:29
Speaker
I had asked people 10 years on from when the film initially debuted in 2012, what did they think of it? So our first comment comes from the human paladrome Mark, who says,
00:08:49
Speaker
and I feel as if that is the very general feeling for these films that people thought oh it's going to just be two films which is a bit long but it's manageable to tell a fully fleshed out story and then when they announced there was going to be a third one it was downhill from there wasn't it.
00:09:06
Speaker
Yeah, when it came out that they were going to do that, it was very much a case of why have you done this? It seemed to be kind of a trend of Hollywood stretching these out. Like, I mean, if you look at the Hunger Games, for example, the final Hunger Games book being stretched into two movies. I think the final Harry Potter book was stretched into two movies. It was very much a trend that was ongoing in Hollywood. Sometimes it makes sense. And other times you're left wondering, was this really necessary? And especially for The Hobbit, one could argue the two films made sense.
00:09:32
Speaker
given that the Hobbit did brush over a lot of its scenes and it would have felt a bit jarring as a movie to have adapted it in that way. And so splitting it up made sense in that regard, but it did feel like there was a lot there that just didn't need to be included.
00:09:47
Speaker
I did like that we explored more to an extent with Bard and the River Folk because it then makes the scene where Bard defeats Smaug. It then feels like we've learned more about him and isn't just like some random dude in the town over killed the dragon and the dwarves didn't really have anything to do about it. It was just a random village folk that killed him. And so having an understanding of who this person was does make more sense
00:10:10
Speaker
that regard. But then for every one of that you'll have Evangeline Lilly's elf character and her strange storyline about it's not a faze elf dad trying to like make her own way in the world outside of the woodland elves and then having this relationship with the most handsome dwarf you ever did see. You're not wrong.
00:10:26
Speaker
to be honest, you're really not wrong in that regard. It feels as if reading through these replies, it feels as if this is quite a common theme throughout them, because reading these, there are a lot of people who are saying I liked bits and pieces of it, but for the majority of it, as you said, there was the Evangeline Lilly scenes with, I think her name was Toriel,
00:10:48
Speaker
and that fell off.
Character Portrayals in The Hobbit
00:10:50
Speaker
The only reason I remember that is because of the L'Oreal adverts, L'Oreal, because clearly she's not worth it since, or you know what, I would spoil the whole bit if nobody's seen that in the intro, but yeah, so Nostalgia Cast said in reply to this,
00:11:04
Speaker
I only made it halfway through the first one before I realised that I was all middle-earth now. You can tell from the start that Jackson's heart just wasn't in it. Shooting in 48 frames per second only made the effects and actors make up look fake and disproportionate from Lord of the Rings. Then following up from that we also have Talking Smack
00:11:24
Speaker
who says, in the first movie, the first 20-30 minutes until Bilbo announced he's going on an adventure is a great interpretation. Then it's diminishing returns for the remaining 6 plus hours, with the exception of the scenes Bilbo shares with Gollum and Smog respectively.
00:11:41
Speaker
We also have the film scorers. I watched all of them earlier this year only to see the first one before back in the theatres when it was first released. I liked that one way more than I remembered. The other two were utterly mediocre. Fiery Discourse Podcast said I unironically enjoyed it and always have to be honest.
00:12:00
Speaker
the Geeky Dad podcasting, I covered it on our show, the kid seemed to like it. You know, there's a lot of varying degrees of how people enjoyed this. And the final one we've got here is, and again, I think I just encapsulates all of these from Podcast Tonight, who says, I've got a soft spot for the Hobart trilogy. Not gonna lie, even though it doesn't quite hit the heights of the Lord of the Rings series, it's still a fun ride.
00:12:24
Speaker
Bilbo was well drawn in the trilogy. His character arc from a timid hobbit, a brave adventurer, really stood out. Gandalf however seemed a bit more whimsical compared to the graver persona in Lord of the Rings, but still very much the wise wizard. The dwarves brought humour, while Thorin Oakenshield's journey from pride to humility was captivating.
00:12:45
Speaker
As for Legolas, he's just as badass as ever. See, without any further ado, will we just jump in on that note? Sorry, I say jump in just after saying Legolas reminded me of how he jumped up. From stone to stone, yeah. Yeah. Even Taylor, who loves Legolas, and is very much a Legolas apologist for all this ridiculous over-the-top Legolas stuff. She's like, hmm, not sure that's how that works.
00:13:04
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, there is technically a scene that I never realised was in Lord of the Rings when he walks over the snow without making footprints, which I thought was cool. That is very cool. See, I guess if you can excuse that from a fantasy perspective, you could maybe excuse jumping from stone to stone. But then again, that is in the background. They never draw attention to it. Whereas in that one, it is the focal point. But see, without any further ado, while we jump from stone to stone,
00:13:32
Speaker
of this and see whether or not the Hobbit trilogy. I would say stand the test of time, but I feel as if we know the answer when we jump into it. Yeah, I think so. And we will be right back after these messages. Welcome to Chatsunami, a variety podcast that discusses topics from gaming and films to anime in general interest.
00:13:51
Speaker
Previously on Chatsunami, we've analysed what makes a good horror game, conducted a retrospective on Pierce Brosnan's runs James Bond, and listened to us take deep dives into both the Sonic and Halo franchises. Also, if you're an anime fan, then don't forget to check us out on our sub-series, Chatsunani, where we dive into the world of anime. So far, we've reviewed things like Death Note, Princess Mononoke, and the hit Beyblade series. If that sounds like you're a cup of tea, then you can check us out on Spotify, iTunes, and all good podcast apps. As always, stay safe,
00:14:21
Speaker
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Speaker
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00:15:47
Speaker
So let's start this discussion with a positive, because I feel as if when people talk about Lord of the Rings, and in particular the Hobbit trilogy, they really act as if it's the worst thing ever, like oh it's the most atrocious thing to come out of, fantasy world blah blah blah, but
00:16:05
Speaker
Why don't we just start with the good of this trilogy? For sure. I think that some of the casting is wonderful. I very much enjoy Martin Freeman, just in most things he does, but I think he plays Bilbo very well. It's very humble, earnest portrayal, and I think that does the character justice. I very much enjoyed watching him. He very much was the highlight for me of the movies.
00:16:26
Speaker
Oh, I'd 100% agree with that. I think the casting in this film is really well done. And I was actually quite surprised that Martin Freeman actually filmed this alongside Sherlock, because I don't realise that both of them were going on at the same time. Sorry, BBC's Sherlock show, which was kind of ironic because...
00:16:47
Speaker
Yeah, because of Smaug, which I don't think they were together for all these reasons filming side by side with Cumberbatch crawling on the floor. But yeah, it was quite interesting to see that both of them were in Sherlock and then both of them were in The Hobbit. Well, sorry, one of The Hobbit films, one of the bit. No, I completely agree with you. I thought his acting was great. He encapsulated the kind of whimsy and the old madness of
00:17:12
Speaker
That's even the term. You know, like the grouchyness of an old hobbit. Or not even an old hobbit, but like a hobbit that was ahead of his years, if that makes sense. Like a young hobbit acted like an old man saying, I don't want adventure, I don't want any disruptions, I just want to live my life. And I thought that was really cool.
00:17:32
Speaker
as one of the tweets we read out earlier, described the fact that he went from this quite shy and introverted character and he really came into his own. I totally agree. I thought the casting for him and the main core of characters, like obviously Ian McElin, fantastic.
00:17:48
Speaker
the returning characters, they did their jobs well. Even Tori Elle, I think, eventually Lily, although her character wasn't great, I didn't think she was a bad actress. I'm going to say that now, I think, for the most part, a lot of the actors, even if they were a bad character, I don't think they deserve to be called bad actors because of their characters.
00:18:12
Speaker
I agree. Just on the Toriel point, I think Evangeline Lilly did play it very well. And I even said to my partner, she looks very convincing as an elf. She has very elvic features, elfish features. You can see her as being a fae fantasy character. And so I think she's convincing in appearance and I think her acting is serviceable for the role. I think she portrays it well. It's again, just a matter of writing that I take issue with for her.
00:18:34
Speaker
because I mean looking at the other cast you've got Richard Armitage as Thor and Oakenshield and again he has some really weird scenes at times but I felt as if he did a good job. You also have Luke Evans as the bard and I know we'll get into the negatives later on but I actually thought he did a really good job as his character you know as this family man that's
00:18:59
Speaker
I would say looking after his family until I remembered he shot like an arrow off his son's shoulder, which I have to say I was howling in the cinema when I first saw that. I was absolutely laughing my head off. It's like the look of fear in these child's eyes is like, stay steady son, I'm just gonna kill this dragon. I would be horrified if I was in that position. I'm gonna lie. It's already a pretty horrifying position to be at the mercy of a dragon. Oh absolutely.
00:19:26
Speaker
But then, of course, you've got your usuals. As I said, Ian McKellen does great. You've got Aiden Turner, who is Keely. And again, that links back to the Toriel question of bad writing. Not bad writing, but not as polished, but still does a good job with what he's given. Bendy the Cumberbatch. I mean, I know he's a disembodied voice in this. He's two disembodied voices. So he is! He's Sauron and Smaug.
00:19:52
Speaker
Well, he's not Sauron, he's the necromancer. Potato, tomato, same thing. You've got Andy Serkis, which, let's face it, never really lost the Gollum voice. No, and I actually made a note on that, that his Gollum in this is brilliant, because it's ever so slightly different from his portrayal in The Lord of the Rings, but you can kind of see an aspect of why, that he still has had the ring at this point. So he hasn't gone through 60 years deprived of his precious, and so he's a very different kind of mood. He's much more inquisitive.
00:20:22
Speaker
And the whole riddle scene between the two of them was one of the highlights of the first movie especially, and potentially the entire trilogy. In all honesty, I can't really fault many people in this film. I mean, again, I'm struggling. There's two actors in particular I wasn't a great fan of. And again, it's not because they did a bad job. I think it's just the characters I didn't like. That, of course, being Stephen Fry as the master of Laketown and
00:20:50
Speaker
Sylvester McCoy as Radagast, which again, I like both actors, but just not in this role. You didn't like the Radagast's character then? I quite enjoyed him. I thought it was a very kind of interesting take and kind of foggy brain forest wizard. I quite liked it. Yeah, I liked the idea of him, but I feel as if I felt like Milhouse and the Poochy episode crying going, when are they gonna get to the Lonely Mountain?
00:21:14
Speaker
because they kept just detouring every five minutes and I know that's in the first column but it was all right. It's just the certain things that we will get into, sorry, I know I'm ironically enough I'm detracting now into the negatives but I feel as if all actors, you're completely right, did a fantastic job. And the one thing that I
00:21:33
Speaker
feel as if it's a double-edged sword and I'm curious to hear what you have to say about this but there was a lot of moments in this that felt like a real love letter to Lord of the Rings. I've said this to you half-jokingly saying my favourite parts of this trilogy are the beginning and the end.
00:21:50
Speaker
because it just feels like that same world that was built up in Lord of the Rings. You know, you have the Shire, you have the kind of whimsy, the light-heartedness, and even when Bilbo comes back and you get the cameos between the older Bilbo and younger Frodo, I suppose is the right word, you know, you get them as well returning. I don't know, I like that. It may be feel nice and warm and fuzzy inside, especially when we get the
00:22:14
Speaker
he lost goodbye song sung by Billy Boy to of course played Pippin in the original films and that is just such a beautiful song to end on. You know it feels as if it just wraps up the whole trilogy very nicely. Until we get the sequel trilogy where the opening line is like somehow Sauron has returned. I agree with that, I very much had a warm fuzzy feeling at the end and I'm usually quite critical of
00:22:38
Speaker
films doing this. But I think because of my attachment to Lord of the Rings, the final scene, which kind of just leads into the opening scene of Gandalf coming to Bilbo's door very much hit me hard. And I was like, Oh, that was such a lovely kind of end to it. And my partner was at that point being like, when is this going to end? Because it has gone for quite a while. I explained to her the in the books, the battle doesn't really happen or rather isn't really told because Bilbo gets knocked out and then wakes up in the aftermath of it. I can't remember. Sorry. Have you read the book?
00:23:05
Speaker
Oh yeah, that was something I was really disappointed in because they built up that. I know this is something that Tolkien wasn't a big fan of. I don't think he was a big fan of writing the big battles and things. He was more obviously into the linguistic side and the building the load and everything, which is something they done absolutely masterfully.
00:23:24
Speaker
But I remember reading The Hobbit and being so annoyed that Philbo gets knocked out, and then he just gets this speech by Gandalf about, oh, here's who's dead. This guy, this guy, this guy. That guy. What? He gets an in memoriam.
00:23:39
Speaker
I tell me, it's like waking up in the aftermath of the funeral. It's like, yeah, we burned our bodies over there. Imagine if in the movie the battle's about to happen, he gets knocked out and then the credits roll and he's got an immemorial, like Billy Boyd song playing and there's also characters like that. I was thinking more, you know, the Ed Sheeran one at the end of it.
00:23:58
Speaker
Desolation is small. I hate that song so much. I'm like, why is this so poppy? I hate the fact that there's such a pop song in the End of the Lord of the Rings movie. It just doesn't sound right. I have to admit, as a song on its own, I actually don't mind it, but I entirely agree with you as like a song to attach onto Lord of the Rings. It's a bit like remembering when Ed Sheeran was in Game of Thrones. Don't remind me. And it wasn't even like he was a character, it was just Ed Sheeran.
00:24:26
Speaker
Game of Thrones, it's like that. I mean, don't get me wrong, they didn't put Ed Sheeran in this film, thankfully. No offense to Ed Sheeran, but yeah, there wasn't anything like that as such, but I did feel as if when they did callbacks to the original trilogy, they did it really well, but as I said, that would have been hilarious if they just cut to black after he gets knocked out. I would have to say one other thing, which again is like a double-edged sword, is see in terms of the scenery. Did you think that was done well in these films?
00:24:55
Speaker
What do you mean? Like environments. There's some bits that are really well done, you know, your usual New Zealand countryside and up the mountains. Those were beautiful. That is kind of a note that I made that New Zealand again, star of the show, the shots were climbing through the countryside. Gorgeous. Absolutely love that. It's like one of the best bits of Lord of the Rings, one of the best bits of this.
00:25:17
Speaker
When we get into the CGI forests, the CGI caves, so much computer-generated environments in this that have such a strange glow to them. It's not just the environments. The movie in general has a strange glow to them, but every environment is so different in tone and appearance to The Lord of the Rings, which is fine in many ways. The movie's allowed to be its own thing. The Hobbit itself, the book, was a somewhat different tone from The Lord of the Rings books as well.
00:25:44
Speaker
but it just looks like such a departure in a pretty negative way. I just felt like it kind of had a very icky taste from how each of the scenes looked. What are your thoughts? I feel as if in comparison to, again, the original trilogy, which is going to be a running phase of the episode, so I apologise in advance, but
00:26:02
Speaker
The fact that they use things like biggatures and they use a lot of practical sets, because don't get me wrong, there was still CGI in the world of the rings. I'm not going to pretend that they made a huge helm stapler. They constructed the mines of Moria because I'm pretty sure when they're running through the corridors, that's all blue screen and there's bits in the fellowship where Frodo's walking through Bag End and he's just like in a blue room.
00:26:30
Speaker
very similar to what it was like for the prequel trilogy and Star Wars. Okay, one thing that Lothering's films, they knew the limitations of their CGI. And so everything that they used for CGI was very subtle and low key. They didn't really put too much into it to add like a lot of detail.
00:26:51
Speaker
In this, they've grown more confident in their CGI, and so making a lot more of it apparent CGI with a lot more detail to it. But the effect of that just makes it look a bit uncanny. Is that kind of your interpretation? I'm sorry to interrupt. Yeah, no, no, not at all. I know what you mean.
00:27:06
Speaker
Funny enough, when I was watching this film with my partner, that's exactly what she was saying. There were some moments when she turned round to me and said, is this a video game? This looks like a video game. What I will say is, seeing terms of CGI blockbusters and things, when I say this looks bad, I don't mean you're cheesy knock-off-the-lum CGI, if that makes sense. Not your bird dynamics, not your terrible CGI. In terms of CGI as a whole, it's serviceable for the most part, but when you can
00:27:36
Speaker
painting it to the original trilogy. And again, I feel as if that is one of the biggest problems that we will get onto later. But because it was trying to compete with the reputation of its predecessor, that we look at it a lot more critically. And I see what you mean. A lot of it just feels quite grand.
00:27:56
Speaker
if that makes sense. In terms of Lake Town, Lake Town looks absolutely fantastic and I actually think that during production I can't remember the reason but they had to build up Lake Town and they had to destroy it and then they had to rebuild it again or not destroy that's the wrong word but they had to take it down and then they had to rebuild it again and the amount of
00:28:16
Speaker
attention to detail in Lake Town and places like that. Those are the sets I have to say that are my favourite, although they're not my favourite parts of the story. I can still appreciate how amazing it looks, even though it looks like a kind of run down Venice somewhere.
00:28:31
Speaker
with people living in these shacks above the water, it's just so well done. But again, going back to your point about the CGI areas, you're right, it feels as if I don't want to say the easy option because I don't want to undermine the work of these artists that painstakingly tried to build the Lonely Mountains interior and things like that. But
00:28:52
Speaker
it definitely feels a lot more fake, I suppose. I mean, that is a problem that we'll definitely go on to talk about, but it doesn't feel real, if that makes sense. When you look at Lord of the Rings, and in particular the Fellowship of the Ring, you see Aragorn fighting with the urakai and Lurch, and how that's just two guys dressed up fighting in the woods.
00:29:14
Speaker
And that is amazing. It's such a simple set, and yet it does so much more than if they had, I don't know, like a huge CGI backdrop to that fight. Whereas, again, I think the problem is they were trying to make it a lot more grand and fantastical, but then it counteracts to what they were trying to go for. Sometimes less is better. Totally.
00:29:37
Speaker
And again, I don't want to say, oh, it's all terrible and things, because I know a lot of people worked on this film, but I just, I don't think the end result was what they were expecting. But before we go on to the negatives, because I know there's a lot more opinions we have on what went wrong rather than what went right, but is there anything else you've got to say about the good parts of the trilogy? I liked smog. Bold opinion. I was going to say, our listener shipping the like town's going to go down.
00:30:18
Speaker
going back to
00:30:20
Speaker
ridiculous or too cartoony. Too ridiculous in terms of fake and like janky or too cartoonish or too computer generated. And I feel like it was a convincing looking dragon and I enjoyed the motion capture that they used with Ben at Cumberbatch and Annie Serkis to make it feel more lifelike in terms of its movements, in terms of how its spoken mouth moved.
00:30:44
Speaker
of such a long creature that it would curve around in very kind of scary, interesting ways. And I think that Benedict Cumberbatch's portrayal of Smaug was brilliant. Oh, I love it. I have to say his raspy voice and that role, as you said, the way he moves, because I don't think
00:31:01
Speaker
they actually had a solid image of Smaug seeing the first film. I know you get the brief glimpse of him but I don't think they really had an idea of what he was going to look like in the end but no I totally agree with you the way that he moves and he has that very
00:31:18
Speaker
that kind of voice that is really damn cool. That's already gone. I had to integrate that. I really enjoyed some of the musical themes, especially the Misty Mountain theme. I think it's beautiful. I think it very much fits into the tone of this Tolkien series. It's such a beautiful composition. And I enjoyed its reoccurrence, mostly in the first film, I think, over the others. But I think it did reprise in the other films.
00:31:41
Speaker
Funny enough, I know Howard Shore came back to compose some of the music for this, and I think for the most part his music, as always, is straight fire. Much like Smog burning down Dale, it is straight fire. It is absolutely fantastic. But there's one weird scene that I never thought of, to be honest, until someone brought it up. When I was researching this, I was watching a lot of retrospectives and things to see if there was anything that I'd missed in my initial watch-throughs.
00:32:10
Speaker
interesting ones was seeing the very first film where they are climbing up the trees and they're burning them and they're also burning down cinemas at the same time. That scene where Thorin goes to challenge them as the tree falls down, they actually play the ringwraith music at that point and I know it's supposed to be to put it in this like a big dramatic moment you know where he puffs up his chest, he pulls out his sword and then you've got the dramatic ringwraith music
00:32:38
Speaker
But see when you think of the implications, as we talked about last week, the fact that it's done in the language of Mordor and it's more relevant for them. I'm not saying Thoden appropriated the song, but I feel like he appropriated the song for his badass moment. It just kind of seems... Again, it's not a thing that initially when you're watching it, it would put you off. You wouldn't really think much about it. But the more you think about it, the more you think,
00:33:04
Speaker
Huh, that was a really bizarre choice for them to make. Again, no, I completely agree. Other than that, the music is great. And yeah, I do feel as if there are redeeming factors to this film. Another couple of things that I quite enjoyed. I've already touched on it, but I thought the scene between Bilbo and Gollum, particularly the Riddle game, was so well done because it is a real kind of highlight of the book.
00:33:28
Speaker
that kind of riddle game that they have going back and forth with each other. And I think that the movie really does it justice. And often the non-battle scenes are where the movie is at its best. When there's not like a high level of action, it feels a lot more grounded and rooted in source material. But when they start deviating from that is when it starts becoming a bit more of a CGI slop fest.
00:33:51
Speaker
And that particular riddle scene going back and forth is very fun because you find yourself also trying to solve the riddles with them. And I've seen the movie before. I've read the book before. I know what the riddles are, but I'm still like, hmm, what could this be? What is a Bilbo's pocket? Oh my God, it's gone. No, that is actually a great point. Because if you look back at the word of the rings, you've got these
00:34:12
Speaker
huge battles, don't get me wrong, they're mainly practical when obviously you get some of the CGI stuff there, like they all are getting failed by Legolas, which we don't talk about, but in a way the action in those films complemented the downtime moments and the character building stuff, you know, it wasn't just
00:34:31
Speaker
constant action. It wasn't just constant battles, they built up to it because it was this gradual crescendo into the finale of them taking themselves to Mordor for that last fight and everything. But in terms of the Hobbit, you're right, it did feel as if when they had battle scenes they sprinkled them throughout the film. It just kind of got boring after a while, like especially for the last one. They had a
00:34:55
Speaker
interesting idea and it was just all the CGI elves, CGI dwarves fighting CGI orcs and everything and I'm completely behind you there. I think that especially the same between Goblin and Bilbo was just fantastically done and it is a very interesting moment where I think
00:35:15
Speaker
think it kind of relates back to what Frodo was saying both in the books and the film where he discusses about how Bilbo should have killed Gollum essentially, and even Bilbo in this film in the first song, he nearly shanks him from behind because he's got the ring on but chooses not to, Gandalf says that's the thing that takes
00:35:34
Speaker
true courage. You know, it's not about being this super macho action hero, it's about knowing who you are and having the strength to essentially just commit to your own sense of ideals and morality. And I think that is amazing and it's just so perfect. But then it's undermined by Thorin and co. killing a bunch of orcs and goblins in the next scene and you're like,
00:35:58
Speaker
Can they have it both ways? You can't have your lamb is sprayed and eat it too, because otherwise you're going to clear out Bilbo's store cupboard. Yeah, I actually know about like poor Bilbo being eaten out of house and home. Especially with the cost of living crisis. Come on, guys. I know. The Shire Oyster List is more expensive by the day. But to be fair, can you imagine like a whole bit pantry? It would be stopped full of everything. Pretty amazing, yeah. I'm very jealous of Bilbo's home in general. Same. It would be too small for me, I have to say, but I think we could make it work.
00:36:26
Speaker
We can make it work, do we better de-decorate with the CL and W bit movie fight? So this point is not so much the films, but just the story in general, but I very much enjoy the background behind Thorin getting the Oak and Shield title from his fight with Azog and the log he used as a shield. I thought that was really cool, just as a small little side point. It feels very much like a D&D plot, doesn't it? Yeah, I'll be honest, I did name a character one time on a very similar naming convention. It's not the Green Shield name, that's different.
00:36:55
Speaker
It is a cool name, to be fair. Especially when you hear Ian McKellan say it, and he's like, Thorin Uckenshirld. And you're like, oh my god, that is so cool. I mean, it's not like if you had Balfour cover. It's like, Balfour Uckenshirld. Now get out of here. Get out of here.
00:37:10
Speaker
And then my final good point, and again, this would normally irritate me, but I quite liked it, was the reunion of the council meeting in Rivendell, where you had Elrond, Saruman, and Galandriel there with Gandalf. And I was like, oh, they're the gangs back together. You're not wrong, actually.
00:37:28
Speaker
It was a cool reunion. I kind of wish they kept it to that though. They didn't have them coming back later to fight that weird fight against the necromancer. I left the room to go get some ice cream, came back and all of a sudden Christopher Lee was just like, and then Elrond was just like fleeing a sword around. And I was like, what the fuck?
00:37:51
Speaker
That mental image is amazing in itself, but what the hell? Christopher Lee, I think he died a year or two after, but relatively soon after, the whole bit came out. And he was like a nice 90s, wasn't he, when they filmed that? That kind of been him, though. Well, no, he didn't do flips. He passed in 2015. Wow.
00:38:10
Speaker
He was definitely a lot older, of course, when he did these improps to him for actually doing that, but I'll leave that for the negative, but it did feel unnecessary to bring them back, at least for the later films. Like, as you said, that is just such a weird scene, where it's like Gandalf's been captured, and they're all there, and then Gandalf returns to the party completely fine, otherwise he's like, oh, sorry. What's all this about an Arkenstone? Thorin, I've had a bad day. I'm sick of your shit.
00:38:38
Speaker
I don't know the day I've just had. Yeah, and just the scene with Galandriel is really annoying there as well when she did her whole like weird... What turned into negative Galandriel? Yeah, negative Galandriel. There was like a scary scene, didn't age particularly well in Lord of the Rings, but it was done for like a very brief moment, just kind of emphasise her potential turn to owning the ring. To have like an entire scene where she's doing that consistently, it's made her look like the drowned lady from like a horror movie, just seemed very awkward. It didn't come across particularly well, in my opinion.
00:39:08
Speaker
until you see what they did to her in rings of power. I agree with you. It didn't age well as you said in Lord of the Rings and it doesn't really age well there. And speaking of things that didn't age well, will we go into the negatives? Yes, let's depart from what we thought was positive and wade into the dead swamp. Because I know we kind of had like a wee bit of smatterings of negativity there but this time we can just drop everything, get our knuckles out. Even in the positive section we still just brought it back.
00:39:35
Speaker
really hard though because this is the one thing that I mean don't get me wrong there's many things that I feel as if went wrong with the trilogy even though there are positives but the one thing that I personally think above all else and it's something that I don't think many people talk about as much you know people always point to the bad CGI they point to the bad romance or Lady Gaga
00:39:58
Speaker
But the one thing I think above and beyond is the worst part of this trilogy is its lack of identity. And it's something I brought up to you when we were talking about doing this episode. It's the fact that on the one hand, it's an adaptation of The Hobbit. The Hobbit is, as of course many of you out there know, is a very child-friendly adventure fantasy room.
00:40:20
Speaker
where a hobbit gets visited by a wizard who says, let's go on an adventure. He takes these dwarves who want to reclaim their mountain. It's like a very much stereotypical fantasy. Well, I say stereotypical, that is the thing that stereotypes probably came from.
00:40:41
Speaker
It's just a light-hearted adventure with quite a bittersweet ending. You know, you get people who unfortunately fall in the battle and everything to protect their home. There's a lot of simplicity but a lot of lovely moments in it and just it's so well done. But when we look at the trilogy it feels as if it's trying to be more of a Lord of the Rings prequel. If that makes sense, it's not trying to be the Hobbit because for the most part you get the bits initially at the very beginning.
00:41:09
Speaker
where we get to know Bilbo, we get to know the other dwarves and everything. And then at the very end, they're just like, eh, yeah, that's all fine and good, but remember those moments we didn't see Gandalf for? The bits that were just essentially an excuse to get him out of the story because he was so overpowered. Yeah, let's tie this into The Return of Sauron and The Necromancer and all of this.
00:41:32
Speaker
And there is just such a tonal clash with that. You've got a scene in the first film where, you know, when you see Thorin's origin story, as you said, how he gets the name of Oak and Shield and everything. And there's a scene in that where an orc straight up decapitates his dad, I'm sure.
00:41:49
Speaker
or he's grandad and holds up the severed head and he's like whoa that's horrifying but then a couple of scenes later you get them in Rivendell and one of the dwarves is like oh you got any chips is this the same film it's just such a tonal clash and i'm not saying you can't have humor in a film like this but yeah i just feel between that and the fact it is trying to link itself too heavily into Lord of the Rings there's just too much going on there
00:42:15
Speaker
Yeah, it certainly suffers from a tonal identity crisis. The Hobbit book was a more childlike, more comedic tone than the Lord of the Rings trilogy. And so if you're going to adapt it and want to do that tone instead of the Lord of the Rings style tone, then do it and commit to it. But they are caught between both trying to make it comedic like the Hobbit book was and trying to maintain the tone of the Lord of the Rings film.
00:42:42
Speaker
which people are familiar with and were such a success and so you do get scenes like the trolls in the first movie who are bumbling and idiots and they're almost like characters from a Roald Dahl story but then you'll balance that out with Azog the defiler and all those like serious orcs.
00:42:58
Speaker
pillaging and fighting and trying to make the council very serious and all that kind of stuff. It feels like they don't quite understand what they're trying to be. The constant referencing Lord of the Rings bringing Legolas back in, it gives it a feel that they had so little confidence that people would be interested in this film on its own that they had to bring Legolas back into it.
00:43:19
Speaker
But what are your thoughts on bringing characters like Legolas and making some references to Sauron? I referenced it as being a good thing, having the council members from the last movie come in, but what are your thoughts on having them as well? Should they have refrained and kept this as its own film? I would say yes.
00:43:38
Speaker
it detracts from the overall story. And again, I agree with you, I do think it was cool to see the original council, to see Bilbo and Frodo in the Shire at the very beginning and the very end. Ian McKelland obviously has to be there because he has integral to the overall story.
00:43:56
Speaker
I liked those moments when they were done sparingly because they didn't always flash back and forward between old Bilbo and then young Bilbo. They had it in very strategic places, and I thought that was just so well done. But then, as we said, you have Sauron, which in all honesty was just an excuse for Gandalf to go away in the story because, as I said, it was just
00:44:21
Speaker
too overpowered, and then they'd come back and be like, oh, I saved you from the trolls, or oh, I saved you from this situation. There was no rhyme or reason, and I know what Peter Jackson and the writers were trying to do. They were trying to make us a big narrative and everything, and I think it is commendable, to be honest. I think it's commendable that they gave it a shot, but when you have 90-plus-year-old Christopher Lee swinging his stuff about being like, leave Sauron to me. We know that doesn't go well. Yeah, obviously.
00:44:50
Speaker
That is the thing though, when you see a Legolas on screen, you know he's not going to die because he's in the original trilogy. You know, other people like, as I said, Christopher Lee is Saruman, you've got Hugo Leving as Elrond, you've got Galadriel, these characters, and again with Gandalf as well when he's captured by Sauron and he's like, oh no, it's Sauron!
00:45:13
Speaker
we know you're not going to die here because you don't die until spoilers and I'll fellowship in the ring. So it feels more like a waste of time that could have been used building up the existing characters. Like as I said, I really like the idea of Toriel and I know Evangeline Lillie, I think she said she agreed to if
00:45:34
Speaker
they didn't put in a romance subplot and I think regardless they just did what they wanted. Yeah I feel as if they're trying to, and again going back to this phrase, have the lamb this bread and eat it too and they're trying to make their own story but then heavily link it into Lord of the Rings and it's just it's two separate films. The end of the day Sauron and all of that him trying to come back and everything, that is a separate film.
00:45:59
Speaker
That's why it's called The Lord of the Rings. That's who it's about. Exactly, yeah. The Hobbit is about the story of this Hobbit. There doesn't need to be such an emphasis on Sauron. And I mean, even in The Desolation of Smaug, we don't really get to see Smaug until the very end of that film, and then slightly at the beginning of the third film. That will never confuse the hell out of me. I genuinely, I turned around to my friend in the cinema and went, wait, is that it? See at the very end when he does the whole,
00:46:31
Speaker
And you know, Bilbo goes, what have we done? And then it cuts to black. And I'm like, what is a soprano's ass ending here? Are we not going to see the desolation? Where's the desolation? We watched the third one not too long after watching the second one, like it was only a few days in it. So it wasn't too big of a gap, but just the after
00:46:48
Speaker
20 minutes maybe. Smaug was defeated. My partner turned to me and was just like, is that it? What else is there to happen in this movie? And I explained like there's a whole thing about a battle for Erebor now. And she was like, Oh, okay. The battle scenes are always her least favorite part as well. The fact that the movie was just all about that. All right, so not all about that, but it was largely about that.
00:47:07
Speaker
Oh, it was 90% about that, yeah. Yeah, it was very much a, I'm not going to pay attention to this movie now. I'm not going to lie, I had to really sit down and think who the five armies were. Yes, we did this exact same thing. We had to figure out who it was because you can't count this small group of dwarfs as their own army because they're not. There are 10 of them or however, like 13 of them or something. But is it not?
00:47:29
Speaker
This is the technicality that really gets me, and I know the battle of the four armies might not be as eye-catching as it were, but you've got the dwarves that eventually come to rescue them. This is the way I interpret it anyway. You've got the dwarves, you've got the elves, you've got the humans, and then you've got two sets of orcs.
00:47:48
Speaker
that come in. Oh, you think it's two sets of orcs. See, that's what I thought. But then I thought, are they combining? Why wouldn't they just combine one set and the other? I mean, don't get me wrong, I know Rohan and Gondor are separate, but it's almost like the orcs and, you know, the Black Fleet or the fleet of ships that attack Gondor and the third fellow that obviously get taken over by ghosts. Do they count as a separate army? Do they count as? That's the way I interpreted it anyway, but it's really stupid.
00:48:17
Speaker
I don't want to be lumping all orcs together, but it's just really stupid. If you don't, then you're all saying that the two dwarf armies are separate. There's the dwarf army and then there's Thorin's group. Is that two distinctive armies, or are there distinctive orc armies? But then if they're working together though, I know that's simplifying it and grouping them together, but then you would just group
00:48:39
Speaker
the elves, the humans and the dwarves together against the orcs. I think you'd have the battle with the two armies. Even just the two dwarf factions, you'd lump them together. So if you're lumping the orcs together, you should lump the dwarves together, in which case it is only four armies. This is such a stupid film.
00:48:55
Speaker
This is genuinely the one that barred the ending. The ending is the only bit I like about this song. The rest of it is just so damn stupid. And I went and I rage paid to get into this song. You rage paid? Yeah, because I was like, I'm so angry about having to pay to go see this song because it was my friend who was like, oh, do you want to finish it and see how this ends?
00:49:17
Speaker
and it's like it wasn't bad enough that I thought this is the worst thing ever, I'm never gonna see it but at the same time I was like I have to see how it ends because it's just not bad again, it's not the worst thing I've ever seen. If it was then I would have never seen it but I was just so angry paying for a ticket and then I was like right okay how are they gonna mess this up? Surely there's no way this could be worse than the desolation of smoke and lo and behold it was. As we said the whole naming convention of it because I think
00:49:44
Speaker
the original idea was the first one was going to be called an unexpected journey, and then the second one was going to be called their and back again. That is what I understood there, yeah. But then they changed the third one to their and back again after they called the second one Desolation of Smog, and then the third one turned into the Battle of the Five Armies because their and back again made no sense as a title, but as I've explained, neither does Battle of the Five bloody armies.
00:50:10
Speaker
it's just a mess. That whole film is just a mess and it actually links on to something we're alluding to in the good parts of the film. And that is the overuse of CGI. At times, and don't get me wrong, in The Desolation of Smoke there is a heavy use of CGI. I mean the battle scene is kind of cool at times but then you get them rolling and doing combo moves and things which is just stupid.
00:50:35
Speaker
I hated them throwing the axes to each other and finding them. That just seemed so ridiculous. It just felt like a video game. And again, it feels weird seeing that about Lord of the Rings or the Hobbit in general, but during the Battle of the Five Armies when the elves turned up to the Lonely Mountain, I can't confirm this, but I'm pretty sure that they're all just copied and pasted.
00:50:57
Speaker
together, they all just look the same. And that's not me being anti-elvish or anything. I mean, genuinely, they all just look as if they're the same CGI model. They do that a lot, though. Yeah, I don't. I can forgive them for that, because that is the industry norm. I did find it look very strange when all the elves drew their bow in sync with each other. And I don't know if maybe that wasn't CGI. Maybe they just absolutely nailed those actors nailed doing that scene of them all doing it together. But it did look very strange to me.
00:51:25
Speaker
feel as if it's maybe not a problem of them copying and pasting, but more like, as you said, it's the way they move more like characters as if they've been literally programmed to move and sink. And I know that's an elvish thing, and books and things are supposed to be perfect beings that have been practising this for thousands of years and things, but it's really weird.
00:51:48
Speaker
because the weirdest thing I found while researching this was the fact that the CGI Billy Conley's face in this film looked awful. So apparently this is so weird. So Billy Conley, for anyone who doesn't know, is a very famous Scottish comedian and he plays the, I can't even remember his name, but Dane, isn't it? Yeah, it's like Dane. The second. The second army.
00:52:11
Speaker
or a third army, depending on how you're counting on this. But yeah, he leads the dwarf army. He's got like a weird CGI face, again like he's at a video game, and from what I understand, apparently they put prosthetics onto his face, but then they realise you couldn't really see very kindly under the prosthetics.
00:52:31
Speaker
or there was something wrong with the prosthetics. So they had to CGI his face over it to make it look more like Billy Coddly. It's just bizarre to me that they would go to that effort to CGI someone who's already there. And speaking of the looks of characters, can I just point out, I don't know how you feel about this, but do you feel as if the dwarves almost don't look like dwarves? It was not the ones in the Battle of the Five Armies, but the main fellowship, as it were, of dwarves.
00:52:59
Speaker
It varies from dwarf to dwarf. You have some like Gloin, who looks very dwarfish. You have that older, very mature dwarf, the big nose. You have Balin, who looks very dwarfish. Even I would say Ian McTavish's character, Dwaylon, I think looks convincing enough as a dwarf. And there's a few of the others too. Most of them don't have enough of a significant role to comment. But people like Richard Armitage's Thorin, Keeley, played by Aiden Turner, Feeley, played by Dean Gorman and James Nesbitt's Beaufer.
00:53:28
Speaker
Oh yeah, 100% James Nesbitt. Yeah. They don't look dwarf-like. They look too humanoid. I think the consistent theme of those is generally they're not chunky. They're much more lean than your understanding of a dwarf, and they don't have the same exaggerated features.
00:53:44
Speaker
the dwarves generally do, and so it does feel off. Aiden Turner's one in particular is the one I have the most issue with, and he's supposed to be like a very young dwarf, I guess, hasn't quite filled out. He hasn't got like the long beard like the others do, and his nose isn't engorged and he isn't more rotund than your standard dwarf is. So it might be that just a case of due to his age, he hasn't quite matured into that kind of appearance, because we've not really had much experience of seeing young dwarfs otherwise.
00:54:14
Speaker
I think his name is Orey, who's the more younger dwarf of the group. So you know the one who keeps asking for chips in Rivendell? Yes. Which I have to say was a line that made me recoil and hoarder, because before anybody says, probably hardcore Lord of the Rings said, oh yeah, they mention chips in Lord of the Rings, which I think they did after the whole boy on mashem sticking in a shoe speech. The wonders of what you can do with a potato. Yeah, there's a scene in Rivendell where this younger dwarf is like,
00:54:41
Speaker
Oh, have you got any chips?" And I was like, oh, what would Tolkien say? Would he be writing lines like that? But again, he has all of the features of a dwarf. He's got the prosthetics for a browser nose. He's got the curls. I don't know if it's not dreadlocks, but you know how it's braided hair coming down from the straight hair.
00:55:02
Speaker
So it's like, they could have done it, and I kind of probably get why they didn't do it, but the skeptic in my thinks that they don't want an ugly looking character or rather a dwarvish looking character for the love story and the main lead. I've just looked it up by the way, Feely and Keely are the youngest dwarves in the company. Oin is actually the brother to Gloin. Oh, so it was Ory we were looking at though, wasn't it? Ory, yeah. The remote kinsman of Thorin, and just as Warra Grey Hood played the flute.
00:55:32
Speaker
That is an amazing... Well that's the thing, some of the dwarves are really kind of built out in their backstory and then some of them just have no information, they're just there. With the Lord of the Rings Fellowship, and again this is more of a criticism of Tolkien's work rather than the films, but with the Fellowship you felt like you got to know each member. You don't feel that. You have three films with these dwarves and I feel like I only really know maybe five of them of the, what, 13 dwarves? That was something I have to say that when I first read the book I was like, oh Jesus, there's 13 of these guys.
00:56:02
Speaker
I feel as if I related more to Bulbo, you know, when they first came in and they started smashing these plates, I was like, oh my god, there's 13 names. And that's the thing though, you're completely right. And again, it's not the film's fault because they are adapted from the original source material, but there are
00:56:18
Speaker
far too many of them that are there and you don't get the same exposure to them. I can't even remember James Nesbitt's character. All I see is James Nesbitt as a dwarf. I remember Keeley and Feeley because you're the writing spall for her. I remember because, oh, he's the big one that's always eating. You remember of course Thorin because he's the leader. You remember Balan
00:56:41
Speaker
because he actually had referenced in Lord of the Rings, which I have to say something that made me really proud was when my girlfriend and I, we were watching the Desolation of Smoke and she saw Balan pop up and it got mentioned by name and she was like, is that the guy who ran Moria before it got overtaken? And I was like crying in the corner going, I'm so proud of you.
00:57:04
Speaker
You'll remember the lore. But beyond that, it's like the others don't really get a chance to shine. I don't know how well we would have got to know them if the supplementary material was cut out, hunting Sauron and things like that, if that got cut out. Do you want to know a fun fact about Baelin? Yeah, do too. He's the only dwarf to return to Bag End to visit Bilbo after the events of the Hobbit. To be fair, Thorin was dead. And what's his name? Cili and Cili. Cili and Cili, yeah.
00:57:32
Speaker
Okay, there went off. What happened to the other nine then? So you're saying Bailin takes over, is it Moria or Erebor? Because like who's now in charge of Erebor? Was that ever discussed? Because I mean, the House of Durin's dead. So like, who else is there? I'm looking up on comic book reporter. Some hard-hitting fashion. Oh, Dane. Yeah, I was about to say it's Dane. That makes the most sense. Who the fuck? Who's Dane? Who's Dane? That's Billy Connolly. Is that? Yeah.
00:57:59
Speaker
Billy Connolly is the Lord of Erebor, and then CrossFit for a few decades, and then Sauron came back in a base ruin again. So the entire events of The Hobbit were for fucking naught, because Sauron rocked up and was like, actually, I'll have this. That is a cushy prize though, isn't it? Billy Connolly rocking up after naught talking to Thor and after years, and it's like, oh yeah, he's dead, I'm going to take over your mountain. Cheeky bastard.
00:58:22
Speaker
As Sauron's armies waged war across Middle-earth, hordes of Easterling soldiers swarmed into the north to attack Erebor. The Dwarves and the men of Dale took shelter inside the Lonely Mountain, whilst proving difficult to breach. It's unclear how long the battle lasted. Daen and the King of Dale fought side by side, and lost their lives protecting Erebor. The people inside the mountain were able to hold off the Eastlings for a long while, eventually knew the spread of the One Ring's destruction, and the Eastlings fled as the Dwarves cut them down. For the first time since the ending of the Hobbit, pieces once again brought back to the kingdom, albeit with heavy losses. Their throne then passed to his son, Thorin Stonehelm.
00:58:51
Speaker
not as cool as Oakenshield. The next suggested article is why the Balrog would demolish Smaug in a Lord of the Rings deathmatch.
00:59:12
Speaker
particularly, but yeah, just absolutely, again, ruined is the wrong word. But I mean, compared to some of the other characters, it was like, oh yeah, let's build up this huge threat and then dispatch of them in five minutes. Well, I'm not convinced that fire would do much against the Balrog, considering it's already on fire.
00:59:30
Speaker
Yeah, but there's a whole argument that the Balrog's like a super demon of Middle Earth and everything and I don't know, maybe he has like a magical black arrow that he can summon or something. Well, okay, we're getting into this now. I reckon the way this plays out, the Balrog gets his whip, whips her own smog, and then just absolutely like shafts him with his Balrog's sword or the fuck he's got.
00:59:53
Speaker
Yeah, but see, this is a question for you listeners tonight. Can the Balrog sword stab the Rua dragon of Middle-earth, or are its scales too tough? The implication of the Black Arrow was that it was just big. Like, I don't think it was anything special. No, it's the material, is it not? Oh, I assumed it was just like a big thing of metal, and so firing that was a lot better than firing a general arrow, because they were like trying to fire arrows at it and it was like,
01:00:14
Speaker
hit his mark. No, but it's not pierced or tied. I think it just needed to be bigger and heavier. And I reckon whatever the Balrog has is probably some dark shit that's equivalent to a Black Arrow. Much like Peter Jackson, we feel like we have to come back and ripen to the Lord of the Rings. Which brings us on to the point of Legolas.
01:00:30
Speaker
I feel as if he didn't really have a point, to be honest, to be in the film. Like, I feel as if, of all the cameo characters, he was the one that probably didn't deserve to be in it as much. And this is, again, no shade to Orlando Bloom, because I feel as if Orlando Bloom played the role really well. But at the same time, I didn't think it was necessary.
01:00:51
Speaker
One of the issues with doing a prequel and having someone who was cast in a film long ago to be in that prequel is the age. And then it doesn't make sense. Why is an elf look older than he did a hundred years later? Just look at the Terminator.
01:01:05
Speaker
They did their best, it looked like, to make him seem the same, seem as young. But you could tell there were lines in his face that you're like, he's not the young person he was 20 years ago, or I guess 10, 15 years ago at that point. He looked not quite right. And his scenes, they were so silly, even from a Legolas perspective, riding on the barrels and shooting people and then they're riding the bats.
01:01:26
Speaker
going up with the bat and then shooting the bat and then sailing down onto the ground from there and then they're running up the stones as they were falling. Why have they done this? Stop trying to make Legolas cooler than he needs to be. He's a cool archer. You don't need to add in extra things.
01:01:39
Speaker
They did feel weird that they wanted that spectacle action set pieces there because obviously they couldn't have Boromir in there. They couldn't have Faragorn even though technically it was around. That hint at the end was so, ugh god, there was a strider in the west or something. Sorry, it's just the way you said that. It's with all the energy of Woody from Toy Studio. There's a strider in the west!
01:02:03
Speaker
I will give Gimli's reference a pass. That was kind of funny. Yeah, it was like, oh, that's my son Gimli. It's like, okay, that I can believe. That was an innocent enough reference. But again, the whole leg of this being there, you know he's going to live. As I said, you know he lives, you know he has a very happy and full life after the events of Lord of the Rings. So
01:02:22
Speaker
I did think that Toriel was going to die, to be honest. I kind of forgot that she lived at the end. I was like, oh, where were you in the later films? Yeah, I feel sorry for her character, to be honest, because I like the idea of a character, and as I said, her acting is still really good. But the fact that they had to shoehorn this love
01:02:40
Speaker
drama, romance that, let's face it, no one cared about. There's just too much going on in the films. You've got the main... I don't even know what you call a group of 14 people, because they're not the fellowship, but you know, you've got the whole group trying to get to the lonely mountain. You've got Sauron returning. You've got the whole weird politics of Lake Town. Okay, can I just talk about how much I hate some of the characters in Lake Town? In particular, Stephen Fry and Wormtongue Light.
01:03:10
Speaker
that's the one. The guy who plays Alfred granted his acting is really good at they're always kind of slimy and you know kind of sleazy and everything. He keeps coming back and I don't know why they keep reusing him because I'm like they keep going in jobs and I'm like have you not learned your lesson this guy will not do that job.
01:03:25
Speaker
Oh I hate his character because he's obviously the comedic relief and it's like we've got 13 dwarves off screen. Half of them are the comedic relief. He doesn't even get his comeuppance. Oh he does in the extended edition. He gets thrown into the mouth of a, I think it's an orc or a troll, as he's dressed as a woman.
01:03:45
Speaker
I thought that was going to happen because there was some Attack on Titan shit going on in Dale. And then I was like, Oh, is he gonna get eaten here? And then like he gets saved by Bard fucking Chin McGee. And then I'm like, Oh, okay, maybe he's gonna make a whole deal here. And then he's gonna be eaten by another one or something like that. But he doesn't, he runs off. But I'm like, Oh.
01:04:03
Speaker
Yeah in the extended edition I think he's on a catapult or something and one of the coins falls out of his fake breast as it were of coins and it hits the trigger for him to get fired into the mouth of a troll and it chokes him. I think it inadvertently saves Gandalf for some
01:04:22
Speaker
I didn't even know there was an extended edition. Christ, who once was an extended edition piece? Well, before I go back to talking about how much I hated Stephen Fry's character, let me just say the extended edition of The Desolation of Smoke has one of the worst extended scenes I have ever seen in my life. So in the extended edition, you know how Gandalf finds the lair of the orcs of Azog and everything, and he's like,
01:04:50
Speaker
Oh no, the Orcs are preparing for battle, and then that's the first time he meets Sauron. Absolutely crazy scene. But in the extended edition, he finds Thorin's dad. And Thorin's dad's apparently alive and kicking. There was a whole thing where Thorin was talking about how he was convinced that he was still alive, and that he'd been hearing that he was still alive, and then that never really got touched upon again.
01:05:12
Speaker
actually quite a poignant scene, surprisingly. He finds his dad and he's throwing into the cage, he's very disheveled and everything, he's quite mentally drained, essentially, and they escape the orcs and it leads up to, you know, the scene where Gandalf faces off against the necromancer. Right. And he's sitting there, Thorin's dad, I can't remember his name, but... Thrain, I think? Yeah, Thrain, that's the one. I was going to say Oak and Shield Senior.
01:05:41
Speaker
Yeah Thrain, he's like, tell my son I love him as the dark storm is brewing up around him and Gandalf has this very impassionated speech I say, you will tell him that yourself. I kid you not, and this is 100% true for anyone listening who doesn't believe me, but
01:05:58
Speaker
please, please, please go look this scene up in YouTube, that is hilarious. Because Thrain gets caught by Sauron, Gahan reaches out, grabs him, pulls him in and they put a Wilhelm scream over it. They kill off Thorin's dad essentially for a fucking Wilhelm scream. I'm bringing it up now on YouTube just to watch it. Please do. I'll wait.
01:06:18
Speaker
Oh my God, that was such an awkward Wilhelm scream. Wasn't it? What the fuck was that? The first time I saw that, I genuinely thought someone had edited the Wilhelm scream over. I thought it was like a shitpost. It was dreadful. Why would they do that? I genuinely thought that was like a meme. 100%. I thought that was a meme. And then I saw that was the real official thing. And it goes back to what was said about the total whiplash. It is just... Oh, it's so bad, isn't it?
01:06:44
Speaker
That was so poorly done. You'll never look at The Hobbit the same again after seeing that scene. That terrible scene aside, going back to what I was saying before about Stephen Fry, because I have to say I hated his character. And also, speaking of the extended editions, there is also a scene where you actually get to see him eat testicles.
01:07:05
Speaker
Yes, he discussed that. He probably discussed what Peter Jackson made him do, like eating testicles and that kind of thing. It's a very, very interesting choice. I hate it. I absolutely hate that scene because I watched it. I was like, what is this? Is this like a comedy scene? Is this like SNL? What is this? I was like, no, no, no, it's real. We just got a guy eating ballworks in the middle of the Hobbit trilogy, sequel to one of the greatest trilogies of all time.
01:07:31
Speaker
And I know he's supposed to be just lazy and horrible and everything, much like Alfred, but I felt as if they overstayed the welcome. Like, again, it's this idea of total clash. It's like, you cannot have these light-hearted, oh, we're gonna reclaim the mountain, blah blah blah, we're gonna kill the dragons.
01:07:49
Speaker
and then have like this weird political drama on the side but with characters that feel like something out the thick of it rather than Game of Thrones or something you know it just nothing mixes it's like oil and water it just it doesn't mix but yeah no that's all I wanted to say about him
01:08:05
Speaker
So what we didn't really kind of touch upon was the creation of these movies and like who was involved in it. And for a long time in the preparation of the movies, he eventually did step down from it, but was very key in the design and writing of the movies was Guillermo del Toro. And to me, these films very much display his influence. A lot of the character designs and set pieces feel almost like a Hellboy movie.
01:08:29
Speaker
There were some where, like, trolls and orcs had, like, mutilated body parts and would have replaced with a weapon. There was a couple I saw that were trolls that had chicken feet, because they had, like, maces as their feet. And there were, like, trolls with big stone slabs on their head, and there were ramming trolls. And there was lots of, like, very strange character designs that felt very, kind of, out of place.
01:08:47
Speaker
They've made a decision to change up a lot of the designs that I was very attached to from Lord of the Rings, so it may be certainly that I have a pre-existing notion of what they should look like, and so I was disappointed that they didn't look like that. But the orcs look very different, the goblins look very different, and the wargs look slightly different.
01:09:05
Speaker
On the wargs, apparently they wanted to appear a bit more fantasy-like and less like hyenas, because in fantasy and Tolkien's work, wargs weren't very hyena-like, which is how they looked in the original trilogy, so they wanted to kind of move away from that. So that's fine, but I took a lot of issue with how the orcs looked. I didn't feel like they were the same species as what I'd grown used to seeing from the original trilogy. And the goblin city, whilst it was very interesting to see the goblin society and a goblin king and all that kind of thing,
01:09:35
Speaker
still felt very hellboyish, like there was this strange CGI inner cave multi-level city with all these kind of planks and there was like little teeny goblins that rode on a little cart to deliver messages on a zipline and then big testically chined king goblin. That was all very strange, I didn't enjoy that set piece.
01:09:53
Speaker
Now I was the same. Again, it's like on the one hand they were trying to be more comedic with the bulging goblin king. I felt the orcs, at least then, and again this will probably be the final time I say it but in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, I felt as if they were a lot more grittier. You could tell they were corrupted beings, the fact that they were hunched over with their dark features and they were just such
01:10:20
Speaker
twisted beings that you could believe they were. Beings that you would be afraid to meet in a dark alley, or rather a darkfield. You know, you wouldn't want to face these opponents, but I still get me wrong, the other ones did have creative designs, but
01:10:35
Speaker
I didn't like the fact they all felt CGI-esque constructions, you know? It sounds weird to call them that, but it didn't feel as if they were as real. As lifelike. Yeah, exactly. As lifelike is what we got before. And again, I'm not expecting a way to workshop, to painstakingly do all the prosthetics and things.
01:10:55
Speaker
for the orcs in this film but at the same time though it feels like a step down and especially with Azog because I think they did have a prosthetic makeup for them initially and then they decided to go the more CGI route which personally I think armed that character because it's not like
01:11:13
Speaker
like Golan, which at the time was a technological marvel, and then they just kept him CGI, which I totally agree. I do think that they should have kept him as a CGI creature, but for the orcs that just that loses its fear factor, if that makes sense, it loses that sense of worry, that kind of, you know, you just see that when you think.
01:11:34
Speaker
Oh right, orcs, bad guys, great. Whereas you felt genuine concern when you saw the orcs in the other film, but nah, I totally agree with you. It's not something that I feel as if they did very well in the trilogy. Yeah, no, I don't think that they pulled
01:11:49
Speaker
that off particularly well. I think Manu Bennett did a good job as Azog in his best that he could. I'm a big fan of Manu Bennett.
Technical Choices & Audience Reaction
01:11:56
Speaker
I enjoyed him in Spartacus and Arrow and those kind of properties, but it didn't really sit amazing with me. I didn't think that it came across very well. But again, it's just a personal preference on the aesthetic of those characters and those monster designs. The last one I want to touch on is framerate.
01:12:12
Speaker
So quite controversially, there was a decision made to film the movie at 48 frames per second, which is double the usual frame rate of a movie. This was to kind of capture a much more high definition picture, but does at times almost look like the movements are sped up. And it was a lot more apparent when I was in the cinema and I watched this in the cinema wearing the special glasses you wore. And a lot of people got very nauseous from it and people had to leave and people were sick watching the movie because it does make you a little bit dizzy kind of getting used to that frame rate. And I remember like it gave me a bit of a headache when I watched it in the cinema.
01:12:42
Speaker
Didn't have as much of an issue in my most recent home watching. I don't know if there is a different effect at work in the cinema as opposed to at home, but it wasn't as jarring this time. But I do remember finding that to be an unpleasant experience at the cinema, watching it in that initial frame rate.
Comparisons Between The Hobbit and LOTR
01:12:57
Speaker
Yeah, I have to say, I don't really remember noticing it as much as you said in The Home Release either, but I mean, I suppose it's like the avatar effect, isn't it? Something that they've made purely for the cinema-going experience, that they want it to look as impressive as possible, they want to try new things and new technology, but yeah, when you get it in DVD or Home Release, you're like, well, OK, it looks all right. What I will say is I don't think this fellow looks bad.
01:13:25
Speaker
Percy, you know, there's effects that don't hold up or look quite janky, but I wouldn't say this is a bad looking film for the most part. But I know what you mean, the frame rate thing. That was a big thing at the time, wasn't it? Yeah, I didn't really get spoken about much after the initial movie. I think people kind of got used to it, I guess. But yeah, it was my first real experience with that. And it did give me a headache watching the movie at the cinema. Are you sure that wasn't just the film itself?
01:13:49
Speaker
No, it was immediate. Seeing old Bilbo walking around his house in Bag End and then transitioned to him being young Bilbo, I was like, why is he walking so quickly? Like, oh, my eyes are kind of hurting watching this. But yeah, I did adjust to it, but it did certainly initially feel jarring. Yeah, it's kind of weird, as you said, that they didn't really speak about it after. They just brushed it under the rug, really. To kind of summarise though, I feel as if
01:14:14
Speaker
the Hobbit is definitely one of those trilogies that I would say personally is overheated. It's almost like the prequels but again I wouldn't say it's as badly handled as the prequels because much like the prequels there are things to love about them but at the same time equally criticise because I know people online who have said they love new characters like
01:14:37
Speaker
tutorial or they love the extra lore that's been put in, things like that. But alternatively you get these weird rage YouTubers that come in and they're like, oh this is the worst thing ever, oh this killed my family, and you're like Jesus Christ. But it's that way that they act as if it's the worst thing ever. But I feel as if at the end of the day the thing that damages this film the most
01:15:01
Speaker
is the fact that Lord of the Rings was so good. It sounds like a weird thing to say but it's just absolutely true in the sense that Lord of the Rings made such a cultural impact. I mean to this day we've been talking about hundreds of thousands of people have been talking about it, if not billions. It is just such an iconic franchise and to go from the success of that to what eventually turned out to be The Hobbit, I mean Peter Jackson was right and feeling apprehensive about what he could actually do with The Hobbit
01:15:30
Speaker
Because how do you follow up on your perfect trilogy of films? As I said, I don't think this is as bad as some people criticise it to be, but because it's held to the same high regard as The Lord of the Rings and it's the same with The Rings of Power, because that's also held to the same high regard as The Lord of the Rings, then there's definitely a more harsher critique
01:15:54
Speaker
that's going to be placed on it. At the end of the day, I think there is still stuff to like about this one. I'm just kind of touching on how it's very similar to what you were saying. I don't think it deserves as much of the criticism as it often gets. I don't think that it is a fantastically enjoyable trilogy. I think it does go on too long. I think there is a lot of subplots it doesn't need to delve into, but there are good aspects of this trilogy and it's still an enjoyable watch in many ways. Interesting story that is told. Toriel is an interesting one.
01:16:21
Speaker
There'll be a lot of criticism of her as well, because she's a woman. And one of the big criticisms of Tolkien's work is kind of the lack of significant women, which is why in the original Lord of the Rings trilogy, we had Eowyn have more of a role and we were supposed to have Arwen have more of a role until initial criticism from the Fellowship of the Ring. And she kind of replaced her brother's character who isn't really in the movies. And so she was supposed to be fighting in the Battle of Helm's Deep and was removed from that. And so they already have kind of a history of
01:16:50
Speaker
including women more in the Lord of the Rings franchise than Tolkien had initially implemented. And that doesn't often sit right with a certain demographic of people. And I think that those people are often quite loud over their criticism of inclusion. And so it is cool to see a female like Alaska kicking butt a little bit.
01:17:10
Speaker
I just do wish that they hadn't included a romance subplot for her. You understood in some aspects why it existed because it allowed her to have a connection with the dwarves and bridge that gap of hostility between the two races, but it still read as quite awkward.
Final Thoughts & Recommendations
01:17:24
Speaker
The movie overall, as I've said, was enjoyable enough. It has its criticisms, it has its positives. I do recommend for those who enjoy Lord of the Rings if they've not seen it due to the over criticism, but they at least check it out and just brace yourself to know that it's not going to be as good as Lord of the Rings, but it's still an enjoyable fantasy story.
01:17:40
Speaker
I do think that even though these films aren't as good as the original trilogy, and this is something that I have been seeing throughout the whole episode, you've heard me say, oh in the original trilogy this and the original trilogy that, because we have such a high respect for the original trilogy in the sense that we think that at the time you know it was just such a marvel of what they got away with, you know with
01:18:04
Speaker
practical effects were the fact it was an adaptation of a book that was initially touted as being unfilmable, and then of course we got The Hobbit which was rightfully so criticised as being very overstretched, it felt bloated, a lot of unnecessary material, there was just so much in it that wasn't needed. And at the end of the day I think even though despite all the criticisms, despite all of our joking and things,
01:18:29
Speaker
If you like this film trilogy, if you think, oh this is the best thing ever or even dare say, oh it was better than the Lord of the Rings trilogy, then you know what, if you love the Hobbit trilogy, fair enough, this podcast isn't here to say, oh you should feel terrible for liking these set of films. If you
01:18:47
Speaker
them, you love them, great for you, but if you haven't checked them out and you're a Lord of the Rings fan, I would say I'm completely co-signing what you're saying, Andrew. Don't let the critics tell you, oh, this is a terrible film, you should avoid it, because it's not the worst. There's certainly worse material out there, and I mean, as someone who's watched the animated version of Return of the King, trust me, you got lucky with this one.
Podcast Details & Invitation
01:19:10
Speaker
Here you go, so lucky with this adaptation. So definitely go check it out if you haven't already and you're curious. And if you don't like it, fair enough. If you like it, also fair enough. But on that note, Andrew, thank you so much for, yeah, enduring these films again.
01:19:26
Speaker
Thank you for asking me to revisit the trilogy. It was good to rewatch it again after so many years. As always, if you want to check out more of our episodes on Lord of the Rings month, as well as our other episodes on different topics, you can check us out on our website, chatsanami.com. I'd also like to thank our Pandolorean patrons, Robotic BattleToast and Sonya,
01:19:46
Speaker
once again thank you so so much for supporting the show. But yeah if you would like to get more exclusive content on our patreon such as early access episodes, exclusive episodes, even commentary tracks, although not more do the drinks ones yet, we are working on that, yeah if you want to check that out then as I said check us out on patreon.com. But until then thank you all so so much for listening, stay safe, stay awesome and most importantly stay hydrated.