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The Necromancer?

Isn't it far too early in the story for him to be present so prominently?

Just throwing out ideas!

The plot thickens!

I dout it was originally meant to be Azog reporting to the Necromancer. I'm sure they shot that scene on Weathertop to explain why Yazneg no longer appears in the following scenes.

No way - it's not necessary at all to explain to the audience why Yazneg is not seen again. You can just assume that the Elf Hunters killed all the orcs that were chasing them. That's what I assumed when I saw the movie anyway, until they showed one surviving and reporting to Azog.

No, the scene exists (in the current final film) to introduce to the audience that A> Azog is still alive and B> He is the one in charge of the orcs that have been following our heroes.

So I guess they really did fly John Rawls back to NZ just to show him getting killed by Azog then, eh?

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It seems like the most likely idea.

And on a big budget film like this flying in an actor to do a reshoot isn't that uncommon.

They obviously wanted to show Azog as being brutal. (kinda like Bane killing his own men in TDKR)

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I was thinking lately, how much more I would have enjoyed the out of the frying pan chapter if they took out Azog and did it like it was in the book.

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No man, you need that intensity! That lust for vengeance! Those personal stakes!

Thorin HAS to completely forget about his people falling to their death and go for Azog!

It was stupid that Tolkien never put it in the book

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OK! I just watched two scenes from the film again.

First, after the Battle of Azanulbizar flashback, Bilbo asks "And the pale orc, what happened to him" - but the shot they used, Bilbo's head is to the side for the start of his dialogue, so it was surely easy to replace his originally line (which was probably "And Azog, what happened to him") with the "pale orc" ADR.

Then, it is Yazneg that is shown watching their little campfire from the distance. That means it was originally supposed to be Azog that was shown finding them! His line in this shot is "Send word to the Master... we have found the Dwarf-scum". Obviously this line could have a newly written one (especially easy when he speaks orcish and its subtitled), but what if they didn't change the line? It would give creedence to my theory that he originally went back and reported to The Necromancer at Weathertop.

Anyway, second I watched the entire Warg chase to Rivendell. For most of it, Yazneg is away from the company, off in the distance. So I thought it made sense that Thorin didn't know he was alive until the end of the movie. BUT! Towards the end of the chase, Yazneg comes right up to the party - its him that Ori fires a sling-shot rock at. Thorin is right there! Watching his performance, is seems like there are 2 shots that could have been cut to right before and after he reacts to seeing Azog alive. Wow!

~

Its interesting to think how the film originally unfolded. We see the Battle of Azanulbizar and are introduced to Azog. Then RIGHT afterward, he is shown alive, and watching the company! Then after the troll sequence, he leads a pack of wargs and comes right up to them, only fleeing when they disappear behind a rock and elf hunters show up.

The question is what were his original scenes like in the second half of the film, before the finale? Hmmm. In the final film, Azog only has 3 scenes (after the Azanulbizar flashback I mean) - The Weathertop scene, then after the Stone Giants scene when him on his white warg find the company's path and he says "The scent is fresh - they have taken the mountain pass!", then the finale.

~

Another thing to point out! Yazneg is not missing his left arm at all! So it was ALSO a last minute idea to have Thorin cut his arm off during the Battle of Azanulbizar and it get replaced by a claw.

Wow.

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Brilliant dissections guys, thanks! Jackson must be a fucking nightmare for his effects crew. A fucking nightmare.

Re: the Necromancer idea: lol! That's taking it a bit too far methinks ;)

/wouldn't put it past Whacko Jacko.

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Brilliant dissections guys, thanks! Jackson must be a fucking nightmare for his effects crew. A fucking nightmare.

He is.

For TTT they basically had to start from scratch with Gollum very late in the game.

PJ is often compared to Spielberg. But he has a far more structured schedule and usually prepares very well before he starts shooting. Far more efficient.

The tail end of the ROTK shoot seemed to have been a mess. Struggling to finish loose ends.

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Brilliant dissections guys, thanks! Jackson must be a fucking nightmare for his effects crew. A fucking nightmare.

He is.

For TTT they basically had to start from scratch with Gollum very late in the game.

PJ is often compared to Spielberg. But he has a far more structured schedule and usually prepares very well before he starts shooting. Far more efficient.

The tail end of the ROTK shoot seemed to have been a mess. Struggling to finish loose ends.

I think the special effects crew was in pieces after RotK because of the enormous amount of last minute shots they had to deliver. I don't see PJ changing his tactics in the Hobbit trilogy. He still makes these last minute changes and often major ones and the crew just has to pull this stuff off the best they can.
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I very much enjoyed The Hobbit, but structurally I thought it was a bit of a mess. I attributed this partially to the change from two films to three, and partially just b/c Jackson added so much material that wasn't in the book into the story that it naturally didn't flow together as well as it could. Parts of the end did feel sloppy to me. And I wasn't really convinced by the CGI Azog. I thought a guy in makeup would have been better actually. Though he did look less cartoonish in the 3D HFR version than the 2D on I saw.

As much as I adore the LOTR films, and what Jackson did, he does seem to lack discipline as a filmmaker at times. I thought his last really tight movie was Two Towers. ROTK felt a bit bloated to me, and some of the story lines, and their resolution, seemed forced. While I think Fellowship and Towers are pretty flawless, I have to admit there are things about the editing, and "look" of ROTK that bother me. And while the first two films were made even better by the extended editions, the case for the EE of ROTK is not as strong...some of the additions were welcome, but others (mostly related to the dead army) detracted from the overall experience, I thought.

I really believe that when a filmmaker, any filmmaker, gets so much power that no one can say "no" to him (see George Lucas), the art usually suffers. Everyone can use a good editor.

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I really believe that when a filmmaker, any filmmaker, gets so much power that no one can say "no" to him (see George Lucas), the art usually suffers. Everyone can use a good editor.

Why does this only seem to apply to films, in the minds of people?

Have a writer and a blank page too much power?

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I really believe that when a filmmaker, any filmmaker, gets so much power that no one can say "no" to him (see George Lucas), the art usually suffers. Everyone can use a good editor.

Why does this only seem to apply to films, in the minds of people?

Have a writer and a blank page too much power?

I'm not saying it only applies to film...that's just what we happen to be discussing now. :)

As a matter of fact, I do think it applies to most writers...bloat in the Harry Potter books being a good example since we're talking about fantasy. And I think George R.R. Martin could definitely have used an editor on the latter Song of Fire and Ice (Game of Thrones) books.

I have more to say on this, but my editor won't allow it.

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You could remove around 100-200 pages in each of the later books without losing any vital information. It feels like Rowling was just trying to have each new book be longer than (or as long as) the previous one. Order of The Phoenix is a prime example of this.

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What problem do you have with the Harry Potter books?

Yeah, see Bloodboal above.

Don't get me wrong, I love the Harry Potter books...and I read them as an adult! I just thought some of the latter ones, particularly Order of the Phoenix (even Rowling has said she'd like to go back and do a "Director's Cut" of that one), could have been a little tighter.

At the same time, and this may sound like a contradiction, like Song of Ice and Fire, I love the HP books partially for their legnth, because it enables you to get really lost in that world. So it's my literary instincts going against my fantasy geek ones. :)

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I used to really like Harry Potter, but the books eventually turned for the worse. And I found the last book a particularly lazy finish plot-wise.

I agree about the unnecessary bloat as well.

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I used to really like Harry Potter, but the books eventually turned for the worse. And I found the last book a particularly lazy finish plot-wise.

I agree about the unnecessary bloat as well.

I started to be a little disappointed with the sixth book and by the last I realized it had been going way off for a while.

I enjoyed the complex connections among many characters and the complicated timeline (which normally I don't enjoy by itself but this time worked at making me believe the world, all that stuff was funny and quirky but dark when necesary), but it the end it needed more bravery. The series establishes something in the first few books, but then it doesn't grow, the resolution remains within these guidelines. For example, there's never a some sort of interesting contact within the muggles and the wizards, and Rowling never goes anywhere with the Dursleys. Etc etc etc. In the last book, between the completely random deaths for the sake of putting anything into paper, the "final battle", the happy sugary ending with lots of dead people, and the subplot with the Deathly Hallows that feels almost tacked on (as if Rowling was forcing a formula of the first few books into what should be the resolution of it all), I don't know. It could have been brilliant, Rowling certainly had established a very fun canvas to pain on at the beginning of the series. My favourite book was the third one.

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I haven't read them in a while, but in my original reads I remember thinking only OOTP was too long, and she found her way again in HBP and DH.

The latter books are longer because more things happen in the latter years compared to the earlier. Until Voldemort gets a body again its mostly about Harry at school, but once Voldemort is back there is a lot more planning and scheming and politic stuff as everyone prepares for war.

I will say that its obvious 1-4 were written somewhat in a bubble with her not knowing if her books were a hit and stuff, and then 5-7 were written by a billionaire getting fan mail by the buckets every day while HP was a worldwide phenomenon of movies, books, and merchandise.

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I haven't read them in a while, but in my original reads I remember thinking only OOTP was too long, and she found her way again in HBP and DH.

The latter books are longer because more things happen in the latter years compared to the earlier. Until Voldemort gets a body again its mostly about Harry at school, but once Voldemort is back there is a lot more planning and scheming and politic stuff as everyone prepares for war.

I really enjoyed HBP, it might be my favorite of those books.

Deathly Hallows was a little hit and miss for me, and it may be the only case in HP where I like the film (particularly the second one) better than the book.

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Did anyone else feel that Tom Riddle was way more interesting than the boring Voldemort?

This!!!

I haven't read them in a while, but in my original reads I remember thinking only OOTP was too long, and she found her way again in HBP and DH.

The latter books are longer because more things happen in the latter years compared to the earlier. Until Voldemort gets a body again its mostly about Harry at school, but once Voldemort is back there is a lot more planning and scheming and politic stuff as everyone prepares for war.

I really enjoyed HBP, it might be my favorite of those books.

Deathly Hallows was a little hit and miss for me, and it may be the only case in HP where I like the film (particularly the second one) better than the book.

I actually loved HBP when I first read it, I still like it. It explored complex relationships and it made a wonderful read. It made me excited for the next one and it made me one of those rabid fans making theories about Dumbledore's fate.

Order of the Phoenix was alright, but dragged quite a bit.

But Deathly Hallows was one I could barely finish. The "hallows" was a lazy plot mechanism on Rowling's part, basically throwing away all the complex moments of intrigue, mystery and secrets that she built for the first six novels. Probably because she couldn't come up with an ending to everything she hyped about.

And then the final ending!! Wow... As Chaac said, I already lost interest with the over-sentimental, generally sappy "final battle" and relationships being built and broken. But when I came to the ending, I just didn't have any words (not in a good way).

Sadly, that final book has left me with a negative impression of the franchise in general. The more I think about the finale, the more I dismiss Potter as more juvenile fantasy, even though it isn't.

I really liked the first 4 books (with the third being my favourite). They were lovely reads and crafted a magical world full of mystery and wonder to follow. After that, the characters began to become a little bland and uninteresting (with a little quality perk in HBP).

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Well to be honest, the reason I said "it isn't" is just so I don't end up pissing off the Potter fans.

Some of close friends are hardcore Potter fans and once I went up to them telling Potter is nothing more than kids' stuff....the backlash I got is something I certainly don't want to go through again, and certainly not with the ill-tempered personalities of JWFan.

Playing it safe is cool. ;)

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I'm not sure I'd be so quick to dismiss HP as merely juvenile fantasy. And I'm far from a huge HP fan...I've read each of the books and seen each of the movies once.

But to me Twilight, for example is more juvenile fantasy than HP, though in full disclosure I haven't read any of those books and I only half watched a couple of the movies. But I see some themes in HP that I think are more than just juvenile fantasy, that go beyond blood and death. Don't mistake me, I don't believe they're the be all and end all some think they are, but I do regard them perhaps a bit higher than some others in this thread. I won't go into the reasons why here, and I don't want to send this off the rails. :)

I do agree with most of the comments about Deathly Hallows, it was a bit of a let down and anti-climatic..but a lot of works of literature and film with a long build up often end a bit disappointingly. When I first saw Star Wars, my imagination went wild about the Clone Wars and young Darth Vader and Obi-Wan Kenobi. Then seeing it on screen was a, um, let down, to say the least. I also thought the pay offs for things like Lost and Battlestar Galactica weren't all they could have been either. It's a tall order to meet everyone's expectations. But yeah, Rowling did seem to run out of steam by the time she got to the end...which is disappointing because she had so long to think about it.

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