The Desolation

[Zigûr]

One thing I'm not seeing a lot of people mention here (and elsewhere) is Bilbo. Is he as badly sidelined as all that? The lack of focus on him at points in the first film was troubling enough. It seems like most of what people are talking about as regards this film are "Tauriel", Legolas and to a lesser extent Bard.

[A Little Green]

One thing I'm not seeing a lot of people mention here (and elsewhere) is Bilbo. Is he as badly sidelined as all that? The lack of focus on him at points in the first film was troubling enough. It seems like most of what people are talking about as regards this film are "Tauriel", Legolas and to a lesser extent Bard.

I think Bilbo was one of the absolute highlights of the film! Martin Freeman does an excellent job, and while he isn't given as much room to develop his character as I'd like, he's still given loads more than most of the others and he uses it well. This time around, in scenes of him and the dwarves, he's clearly the protagonist and the dwarves just sort of hang around.

[mark12_30]

Formie: yes.

And Bilbo was excellent, IMO.

[Legate of Amon Lanc]

Originally Posted by Zigûr

One thing I'm not seeing a lot of people mention here (and elsewhere) is Bilbo. Is he as badly sidelined as all that? The lack of focus on him at points in the first film was troubling enough. It seems like most of what people are talking about as regards this film are "Tauriel", Legolas and to a lesser extent Bard.

Personally, I think Bilbo is of course good (Martin Freeman can't really do it badly), but was given a little too little time still, along with the rest of the Dwarves. And he was good, but the space and scenes in which he could truly shine were only a few. Like I mentioned above, the moment when he realizes he's alone with all his friends gone in the barrels was brilliant, possibly my favourite moment of the whole film; but that's like a five-second thing. Okay, maybe fifteen-second, actually And there are similar occassions like that all over the movie: minor highlights, but nothing "big", in my opinion. Which is a pity. Still, he is definitely one of the things that make this film enjoyable.

The reason why I e.g. put so much emphasis on how good the Wood-Elves or the Master of Lake-Town are was that I had expected especially Tauriel to be a total uncanonical infiltration of wannabe-female character who in reality is just Xena, Warrior Princess or somesuch with badly written lines and no personality. While the opposite is true; in this movie, it's Thorin who is Xenophobe, the Wheelbarrow-Rider, with badly written lines and no personality for most of the time.

[dancing spawn of ungoliant]

I read the Hobbit earlier this year after watching an Unexpected Journey to remind myself what really happened in the story, and I was surprised how flimsy the book actually was. In my opinion, the dwarves weren’t distinguishable from each other except for Thorin, who seemed to be quite an unpleasant fellow and Bombur who was really fat (ha-ha). Tolkien’s bedtime story-like narration made me cringe a few times, and overall I found the dwarves to be quite helpless and dislikeable.

In comparison, the movies portray the dwarves as individuals who are quite capable fighters (as they should be) and really sympathetic characters. All in all, the casting is superb. Like Lalwendë said:

while Tolkien's story may have been stripped out, Tolkien's characters are there, very much big and bold and perfectly done.

As for the changes in the story, I believe that they have sincerely put thought into it. For example, I initially disliked the idea of splitting the dwarves into two groups in Laketown. Then I saw a video where PJ explained (when asked about the battle of five armies) that you can’t portray a battle and keep the audience interested without showing some of the main characters often enough. I believe this is true and this decision will play out very well once Smaug attacks Laketown.

Of course, the movie wasn’t perfect. I agree with the comments that the lack of new material in the score was a let-down. Also, some things could have been done a bit differently (or left out, like the athelas scene), and I have more ominous forest growing in my backyard than the Mirkwood we saw...but then again, this is just a movie. If you didn’t like it, you can always go back to the book. However, I’m sure that having seen both films will actually improve my future reading experiences with the Hobbit.