The hobbit contradictions...

[Ulvenok]

Was bored last night and sat in me bed watching some hobbit. Anyway it suddenly occured to me how unrealistic this movie is even for a fantasy movie. They are 13 dwarves and managed to escape goblin town while being surrounded and hunted by what seems at least to be one hundred goblins. Yet when they are earlier in the movie hunted by like 15 orcs on wargs they all run away. Also for this thread I looked up how many Uruk hai's Gimli, that is one dwarf, killed at helm's deep. It seems that he managed to kill 42 uruk hai, the uruks are far stronger than orcs.

Was gimli more battle hardened than Thorin and Co? Or did jackson force the dwarves to run all throughout the movie to make it more hobbitish? Personally I think that he ought to have either gone full out children tale or tried to make it 100% serious. With contradictions like this within the movie and with characters like the goblin king and Radagast I find the movie to lack in seriousness for me to take it seriously as a movie. But then again, I'm sure Jackson is going to transition into more "realism" in the later movies, or at least one hopes so. So what do you think, will the movies become more serious when characters like Beorn and Thranduil enter the movie and what about Gimli, greatest dwarf warrior ever?

[Rhod the Red]

Well I don't recall that many goblins killed in the Hobbit chase out of the MM.

I guess you could say it was done for visual entertainment. I found it appropriate. But then, Toklein no doubt had the minor audience in kind at all times. EG; the narrator continues right up to the Battle of Five Armies part in the book.

PJ knew there'd be a mix of minors and adults, so logicaly mixed appeal for both kinds of audiences. Children that watch these finds of films aren't dumb or mentally vulnerable, so one can't make an anti-exposure argument.

[Rikae]

Gimli was part of an army at Helm's deep, not a party of 15: I don't think he took on all those orcs at once. But yeah, it is unrealistic. PJ should have just stuck with the book version of the escape from Goblin town, which makes sense and which also would have saved him the silliness of Bilbo watching the dwarves run by and doing nothing because, apparently, he didn't think they could handle Gollum.

As for PJ getting more serious in the future, I wouldn't hold my breath.

[Zigûr]

I think the way it doesn't make sense is one of those textbook instances in which their embellishments combine with their efforts to follow the source material to produce something which makes no sense. In the novel they're mostly unarmed and have to run, with only Thorin and Gandalf occasionally turning at bay to cut down their enemies. Yet when we have characters like Dwalin and Glóin rocking up with about fifteen axes, swords and, ugh! hammers (this isn't some Tolkien knock-off, this is the real deal, why are the Dwarves fighting with hammers raaaar!) apiece stowed in endless lengths of leather straps and bandoliers out of a modern Hollywood Fantasy nightmare it becomes very hard to believe why they're always running all over the place. The Dwarves are made to look rather foolishly ill-prepared on several occasions in the novel and it doesn't really sit very easily with the more "serious" (ie more violent) depiction many of them are given in the film.

Originally Posted by Ulvenok

They are 13 dwarves and managed to escape goblin town while being surrounded and hunted by what seems at least to be one hundred goblins. Yet when they are earlier in the movie hunted by like 15 orcs on wargs they all run away.

Quite so! One of the many reasons I thought that made-up hunt on the way to Rivendell was an unwise addition. So often PJ, Boyens and Walsh make stuff up which sits uneasily with source material elements which they then also include.
Given that many of the members of Thorin and Co. had fought in the War of the Dwarves and Orcs I'd argue that they were more battle-hardened than Gimli but given that so few of them have weapons for the majority of The Hobbit (in the original text at least) it seems to me that it's a bit hard to say.

[Aganzir]

In the novel, the dwarves are losers and Bilbo has to do everything for them. Peter Jackson wants to portray them as heroes ("We are warriors! All of us!") who won the Battle of Azanulbizar.

I somehow doubt we'll see a transition towards the more serious in the later films. Beorn will probably be a killing machine, but Thranduil (the Dwarf Racist Party King) is already a huge joke on the interwebs.

As for Gimli, I would initially and without any references say that he's more of a fighter than Thorin's Company. At least in LOTR he's portrayed more like one (heavily armed, openly wearing armour) than any of the Hobbit dwarves. Also when you think of the little encounter with the trolls, Bifur, Bombur and Thorin were the only dwarves to put up a fight.

In the film, everything is extremely unrealistic though. As somebody pointed out in the review thread, after everything that happens in the Goblin Town, you don't really believe Thorin could be hurt so bad so easily.

Oh and speaking of the Uruk-hai, I'm seeing similarities between them and Azog's bunch. Azog seems to me even more built up and vicious than the Uruk-hai, who are supposed to be orcs in perfection.

I guess this just proves what we pretty much knew after the LOTR films - PJ & co twist the plot to serve their purposes even if their changes are irrational.

[Ulvenok]

Well check these images:
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-QDGL1PlE2v...0/_DSC3122.JPG
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-I9mUo-AXvI...0/DSCN3260.JPG
Bolg is a giant much like Azog, now let's look at lurtz.
http://img134.imageshack.us/img134/2...r20middjf4.jpg
It seems to me that Azog was near Uruk Hai size, maybe a tiny bit bigger but not much. Which means that Gimli killed 42 Uruk hais while a party of 13 and a wizard and a stealthy hobbit couldn't deal with a wolf pack of what...15 orcs? Yeah I think also that if Jackson wanted the dwarves to be running throughout the movie, he should have equipped them poorly. Then maybe armed them when they got to dale...but as it is now, 13 warriors and a wizard is running from 13 orcs. Gimli a less battle hardened dwarf killed 42 Azog sized uruks at the battle of helm's deep.

The movie doesn't make much sense, they spent ages making it yet I have seen more thought through movies made by people in less than a year. Something went horribly wrong when they made this movie, I wonder who is to blame if not all of them. In the lord of the rings trilogy one could nitpick a few things that was done badly. But they aren't wholly bad movies, the hobbit part one deserves to be REMADE as it stands now. It's horrible, truly horrible. It's kind of pathetic to be crying about it like this, but it's kind of annoying. Anyone on this forum would be able to do it better I'm sure...

[Morsul the Dark]

I don't see the contradiction the ran from a few orcs and wargs and ran from a Bunch of goblins...

[Aganzir]

When you think of blockbusters, it's not like many of them had a coherent and realistic plot anyway. There are certain things that are supposed to happen in the movie, and the characters and the realism value have to bend in order to carry out the plot with all its holes. When you go to movies, it sometimes feels as if everybody was telling the same story, only with different faces and details.

The problem with doing The Hobbit after LOTR is that even though it's technically a prologue, everything should be bigger and more important so as to attract audiences (PJ seems to think) even though killing Smaug is nothing compared to Sauron. Thus we have huge orcs half a century before Saruman bred the Uruk-hai and so forth.

About the 15 or so orcs/wargs... in the dwarves' defense, they were in the open, and the wargs are fast and strong and would probably have done more damage than the orcs themselves. The elves (who were also quite few) had horses and bows which made the situation a bit more even... but my inner khazad still disapproves of them stealing the thunder. And Gimli killed 42 Uruk-hai in a melee that lasted an entire night and was in a place that he was defending against attackers, which gave him more room for maneuvering. These are just possible explanations for why the dwarves ran - but I still agree it's ridiculous they were so okay with, and good at, fighting in the Goblin Town then!

Originally Posted by Ulvenok

Anyone on this forum would be able to do it better I'm sure...

Well I would certainly make as good a Fili as Dean O'Gorman! I seriously consider working out in order to get more muscles and be therefore a more believable dwarf!