Tolkienish Tuesday: Desolation of Smaug trailer and fan film The Hunt for Gollum

[huinare]

If anyone hasn't yet seen the trailer, which premiered via the Hobbit films' official FB page earlier today, behold:

My thoughts on the trailer.

- You know what I totally fangirled over?  The shot of Bilbo in the treetops with the butterflies.  I absolutely love that scene in the book.  Hell, I love that scene in the Rankin-Bass film.  I love that scene in this film as well.

- I fangirled more over Gandalf and Radagast on principle, although Gandalf needs to fricking enunciate, as this short tumblr post aptly demonstrates for me.  [Just googled it: "It's undoubtedly a trap."]

- EREBOR.

- I'm not -too- irked at PJ for turning everybloodything into an action scene.  That's what the man does and he's set in his ways.  No one's interpretation will bear out my own in all ways, so I'll just use one of those pointless action sequences as an opportunity to visit the restroom like I did during the first Hobbit film.

- Surprisingly enough, I like Legolas here.  I also like Tauriel.  I like them because they BOTH serve a useful purpose: they give us a glimpse into how Thranduil's folk may have viewed the growing darkness around them, into the sort of dialogue that may have taken place around those issues.  Also, this might be a chance to show Legolas grow into somebody more concerned for people outside his own realm, and i think I'd like him a bit more with a backstory like that.

- LAKETOWN.

- B a r r e l s

- Smaug, however, was a let-down.  He looked like a pretty generic dragon to me.  After all the clever not-quite-showing-Smaug-directly business in the first film, I was expecting that A) they would not ruin that anticipatory buildup by showing us Smaug in the freaking trailer and B) Smaug would look cooler.

_______*_______

Right after viewing the trailer, I ran into the fan film The Hunt for Gollum on youtube, so I went ahead and watched that.  I can't recall if I watched it before--I must really not have been in the mood for it, if I did, apparently--although I knew of its existence.  While I was bored for the first ten minutes or so, I ended up quite liking it.  For regular shmucks on a budget, it's quite a decent piece of work.  I actually really loved their orcs, they still looked orcish but not monstrous (I realize this is probably just a function of not having a massive makeup and wardrobe budget, but I liked it).  My biggest complaint is that these folks, who are clearly talented, could have made it their own thing instead of trying to pretend they're making Peter Jackson's films.  It does suffer a lot from that "oh, cheap copy of Peter Jackson's work," which I find jarring as a viewer.  If you've seen it, what are your thoughts?

Comments

[pandemonium-213.livejournal.com]

Bilbo and the butterflies! Yes! I was thrilled to see that, too. It was one of my favorite bits in the novel, and it is pitch perfect here. Martin Freeman redeemed a multitude of sins in the first movie. I expect he will here, too. Btw, how's Tumblr Savior working for you? I clicked through (stupidly) to a rant about the movie in which the poster snarked about the butterflies in the aforementioned scene not being velvet black, re: "I expect they were a kind of 'purple emperor,' a butterfly that loves the tops of oak-woods, but these were not purple at all, they were a dark dark velvety black without any markings to be seen." <= ETA: that's the quote from The Hobbit, not from the complaining Tumblrite.

Yeah. Like dark black (what? isn't black inherently dark?) would show up against the russet colors used for the foliage of the trees. There is such a thing as artistic license, and it was used effectively here. It was tempting to point this out, but...well, it's an instance with Savior might have been useful.

so I'll just use one of those pointless action sequences as an opportunity to visit the restroom like I did during the first Hobbit film.

A good action sequence will raise my heartbeat and engage me. A bad one will have me looking at my watch, wondering when the director will move on to something more interesting. That is exactly what happened during The Hobbit: AUJ. I have no objection to action scenes, but lordy. PJ is indulgent, and it's impossible for me NOT to compare his approach to those of directors who handle action sequences more effectively. To me, the ham-handed approach of excessive CGI-action takes what could have been an excellent movie and shoves it down into mediocrity.

I liked The Hunt for Gollum a lot. As you aptly note, it would have been improved by less obvious homage to PJ, but I really liked the more understated quality of the film. The landscapes play a huge role (not unlike Tolkien's novels), and the soundtrack is far more subtle. Actually, birds serve as the soundtrack! The orcs are an improvement, that's for sure, although IIRC, the orcs in Born of Hope are even better: considerably less monstrous, and more human. That rings truer for me.

[huinare.livejournal.com]

I'm liking tumblr savior. One can use it to blacklist certain words or phrases (I tend to go for short phrases, otherwise it'll blacklist anything that has the single word anywhere in the post...text, tags). Settings can be altered to tell you when something has been blocked, if so desired. As a hypothetical situation, if you blacklisted 'velvety black moth' or whatnot, you could get dashboard notifications along the lines of "a post by so-and-so containing 'velvety black moth' has been blocked. click to view post." Or you can just set it to do all of its blocking silently.
My only grievance is that the settings apply to all blacklisted terms. Whereas with some things I'd prefer to know they're being blocked, and other things not so much).

Really now, I'd have -preferred- some nice close-up shots of actual velvety black moths, but you're right, they wouldn't show up well. That was one instance where I didn't care much about artistic license because I was just glad they'd included the scene at all! My learning curve with the first Hobbit film installment was pretty steep, in terms of choosing what I wanted to bother with being irked at. If I was irked at every single thing that wasn't quite how I wanted it to be, well, that way lies madness.

Re: action sequences. There's one point in the preview where the Dwarves are popping out of their barrels with swords or something, and at that point I kind of just wanted to laugh because it screamed PETER JACKSON WAS HERE.

The Hunt for Gollum - yes, the more understated tone, it's quite nice. I think I most enjoyed the scenes where Aragorn is just walking along.

(Edit for totally failing to take due advantage of my new icon.)