(Note: this of course contains spoilers, so watch out. It also won't make much sense unless you have a pretty decent memory for what went on in the movie, because I tend to talk about some fairly specific moments. Anyways, enjoy!)
Pete,
It's me again. I promised I'd send a followup letter to my last one, and here it is. The bad news? I'm afraid that I'm going to have to be just as critical in this letter about your movies as I was in the last one. I hope you can understand.
You'd done a lot of setup for this movie- the dragon ending last time, the conflict between the orc and Thorin. You'd put us through two movies of preparation- I'd hoped that maybe the third movie might begin to make up for the first two, terrible movies. Of course, I was disappointed.
Let's imagine the very beginning of the movie, shall we? We've got the dragon, bursting forth from the mountain, ready to rain death and destruction down on the people of lake town. It takes the audience a minute to remember all that had went on with the dragon in the last movie- after all, it's been a year since you built up to this climax. The tension had rather diffused.
Still, we're at the climax now. The audience is just remembering all that hinges on whether or not this dragon can be destroyed; and then, just like that, the dragon is dead. Oh. All that buildup for nothing, I guess. Pity the dragon couldn't have taken discount Grima Wormtongue with him.
Now that the dragons dead, at least we can move on with the plot. We're taken to Thorin's new palace, to find a triumphant, happy Thorin. But no! Inexplicably, Thorin has gone mad. That sure escalated quickly. He was fine last movie. Oh, well. Because here come the people of lake town asking for aid, and an army of elves asking for something or other. And yet Thorin decides to be an idiot and deny all of there requests. Seriously, though, I don't know why the elves didn't just take they're thousand soldiers and kill Thorin right then.
Soon, however, it's too late. About three more armies come marching in... And only then does the movie truly go to shit. Excuse me if I have to rush through why. There are just so many fails.
Where to start, where to start? I suppose the place to be would be when the dwarf army and orc armies first meet each other in battle. The elves seemed to be being stubborn and idiotic, but then they decide to join the fight at the last minute and literally leap over the dwarves heads. Overly dramatic, much? Don't these people realize that over-the-top effects, drama and hollywood-ness aren't appreciated?
That particular instance isn't so bad. Naturally, though, you can't learn from your mistakes, can you Pete? Next thing you know you have giant freaking worms popping out of the ground, writhing around for a minute, and then leaving. What? What's with the giant worms, Pete?
Your entire battle just has multiple, small instances that undermine it's quality. This might seem pretty knit-picky, but you have the shot of all of those trolls smacking the ground at the same time. Overly dramatic, unrealistic stuff, again. And then we have that random dwarf dude defeating enemies by head-butting them. We've talked about this, Pete. Cut the random attempts at humour.
I might have been able to forgive these things if you'd stopped there, and didn't do any more lame humour or over-the-top action. Instead, you made it worse.
As soon as the lead dwarves arrive on the scene, it goes insane. Lets start with the deaths of the hot dwarves. They're running up a mountain for some reason or another. Suddenly, one of them gets wind that about 100 goblin scouts are coming the dwarves way. Two dwarves say "We'll take care of them!," and guess what? The next scene all of the goblins are magically dead. The case of the invincible heroes strikes again.
And then the two hot dwarves decide to run into some building by themselves, and then to split up. Next thing you know, one has a sword through him, with the other soon following. They don't really get proper deaths, as I recall. Just "Take that! Your dead!" And you know what? I don't really care. Because there were so many dwarves, I'm almost happy some of them are gone. Less names to remember, at least. I don't even remember the hot one's names. Now I just need to remember who's Buffer and Biffer and Bamber and Bambie, and who's Snoopy and Gloopy and Sneezy and Wheezy...
Anyways, they're dead, and thats fine. Now we get to see two more epic fights, each with there own moments to make you groan while cradling your head in your hands.
Let's start with Bolg and Legolas.
I don't really remember too much of this fight. I remember that Bolg was rather hard to kill, though. Why is it that two dwarves can kill 100 bad guys between them, and that doesn't get a second of screen time, where as bring one "boss level" bad guy into play and he's invincible? It doesn't make sense. At least in The Lord of the Rings, the numbers of bad guys seemed somewhat manageable, and people actually got hurt fighting them. If they had guys that were harder to kill (and there were only a few of those) there was a reason behind it. The cave troll was a troll, but it took the entire fellowship to take him out. The Balrog was a crazy demon dude, and they barely defeated him. Only at the expense of a characters life did they manage to do so. Lurtz (I think that's the Urak-hai's name) and Aragorn had a fairly long fight, but it still only took a minute of decent action. No CGI, either. Borimir was taken out, and, incredibly, it wasn't one single boss dude that killed him. Sure, Lurtz fired the arrow that killed him, but that could have been anyone.
In the Hobbit, however, only boss level orcs kill people. Normal bad guys are easy, and then two are nearly invincible.
So Legolas and Bolg have a good long fight, and then, for some reason, they start fighting on a bridge. This bridge somehow survives falling over a chasm, and yet Legolas trips and falls on it, and it starts crumbling. Again, what? It survives falling over, and then touch it once and it starts crumbling? It doesn't make any sense!
And then- oh me, oh my- possibly the most stupid movie moment of all time comes to light. The part of the bridge that Legolas is on starts crumbling- so what does he do? He runs up falling bricks, of course. Because, physics!
But wait! This movie has even more to offer! Now comes Thorin into the picture fighting Azog, and it's almost as bad as the Legolas fight. Thorin kills- I swear, completely kills- Azog, and he falls under the ice. He floats underneath the ice for about fifteen seconds, dead. And then he somehow finds a good foothold in liquid water, pushes himself up through five inch thick ice, ignores his wounds, and then kills Thorin. Just let that sink in.
Bot of those fights were terrible. Long, drawn out, and unnecessary. It's like if you showed the entire Gandalf VS Balrog fight. It wouldn't make any filming sense. Although, in truth, I would like to known how Gandalf got from fighting the Balrog in some cave underneath Moria to the top of a mountain, still fighting the Balrog.
Pete, I'm surprised that nobody in your cast and crew told you what a mess you'd made. It was just... pathetic, really, and I'm sorry I have to say that. It's just the way it is.
Do something, though, for me. Could you please tell the movie making people that I'd still be open to more Lord of the Rings movies? You've really messed up the Hobbit. Maybe somebody else could do a better job.
Thank you, though, for reading this letter. I hope I didn't make you feel too bad, and I half hope you'll keep making movies.
Regards,
-Mark
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