[Legate of Amon Lanc]

Originally Posted by davem

So, certainly annoying in parts but to actually see Bag End, Moria, Minas Tirith, Erebor.... to encounter those characters in the (digital) flesh, well..... I think you'd have to be very churlish & ungrateful to wish they hadn't happened at all.

Actually, that is about the last thing I like about the movies. I did not need to see a portrayal of Bag End or Moria which are fundamentally different from how I imagine them and thus disrupt my imagination of them. I am a very "landscape-visual-type" person. In fact, I would possibly say that I would have preferred not to see a movie adaptation, if we put the stress on the word "adaptation". But it is a nice movie. I would be equally happy to watch any other movie which I would find likeable. However, I guess here comes the dimension of, perhaps, curiosity, or evaluation from the point of view of a fan, who can say "okay, this was handled well" and "okay, this was handled interestingly" (and, of course, "this was screwed up"). And as for the dimension of introducing new fans, of course, that's no debate.

There are some very annoying things, some points where Jackson seems to have let the technology run wild & also to have failed to rein in his imagination. I agree that the stone giants episode went too far - a glimpse would have been more powerfully evocative. Plus it was yet another point at which the characters, if real physical beings, would have simply died. Jackson seems to have no understanding of the effect of physical force (or fire!) on bodies. I don't care that Dwarves are physically stronger than humans, they wouldn't have survived that - & certainly Bilbo wouldn't.

Absolutely. That is what basically annoyed me the most especially this time (in LotR, it was present too, but I think less - the one thing I can think of was the "balancing on falling stairs" part in Moria, aside from Legolas stunts etc.).

Again, I think we''ll have to reserve full judgement till we can watch the whole thing.

When returning from the cinema, we met a guy who asked us about the movie and asked if it isn't annoying to have to wait for the following movies. That's when I realised: I don't care. For me, the movie is finished, and how I rate the rest, is a different thing. For the moment. Of course, once all the movies are out, I can rate them all together. But I can also rate them separately, and evaluate them separately, and have no problem with that. For example, I am able to tell you that Two Towers was easily one of the worst movies ever, while Fellowship was still quite nice.