The Hobbit Desolation of Smaug support thread.

[alatar]

Interestingly, the folks over at Red Letter Media (caution, language etc), who did the excellent Star Wars prequel reviews, consider Peter Jackson to be more of a Tolkien 'purist.' They gave a positive review of DoS, though found it a bit long.

[Alcidas]

Originally Posted by alatar

Interestingly, the folks over at Red Letter Media (caution, language etc), who did the excellent Star Wars prequel reviews, consider Peter Jackson to be more of a Tolkien 'purist.'

Let me guess...they also thought the ending was a "cliffhanger", right?

[mhagain]

One of the things I actually loved about this movie was the portrayal of Thranduil.

OK, it may not have been faithful to Tolkien's Thranduil (who we really don't actually know that much about), but it did accomplish one other important thing.

Basically it reminded me of a son of Feanor - one of the middle ones, Celegorm, Curufin or Caranthir - more than anything else.

So he's a bit of a jerk, slightly "wild", you get the sense that he's dangerous to be around, liable to do anything, "of perilous mood" indeed.

I've no idea if this was intentional or not, but it did bring forward a side of Tolkien's elves that's otherwise not present in these movies, and that was something I thought important and was happy to see done.