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Howard Shore's The Desolation Of Smaug (Hobbit Part 2)


gkgyver

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well thats gotta be fun when you gotta explain how Thorin, Fili and Kili die

I know! Some really hard editing to do. But I think I'll leave Azog in and pretend he is Bolg in this film. :P

You removed the river chase? It's great!

I was trying for a more closer accordance with the novel with my edit and so the chase had to go. And I am not particularly fond of it anyway.

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Or you can follow the book and ommit most of the battle completely.

True! Wereworms have to go of course!

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But the werewolfs were actually mentioned in the book!

Just not in any relation to the battle. ;)

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Will you remove the Dol Guldur stuff?

A good question. I now edited things so that Gandalf mentions the Morgul blade in the White Council and have a short moment of Radagast's finding the knife in Dol Guldur play as a flashback in the middle of the council when Galadriel says "Show me" to Gandalf. Then Gandalf produces the knife. In DoS I just cut a few lines about the High Fells and Gandalf actually leaves for Dol Guldur not the High Fells to find out if the Necromancer is really the old Enemy even Beorn warns him about. I cut Ragdy out of Gandalf's arrival to Dol Guldur and he now goes alone there. So I guess I have to use the finale of the sequence in the BotFA edit.

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If I eventually do an edit (and it would certainly be much more lenient than most) I have thought about putting the High Fells scene back in the first film where it should have been. Of course, you would have to end the scene sooner to play down the immediacy of the threat.

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Will you remove the Dol Guldur stuff?

A good question. I now edited things so that Gandalf mentions the Morgul blade in the White Council and have a short moment of Radagast's finding the knife in Dol Guldur play as a flashback in the middle of the council when Galadriel says "Show me" to Gandalf. Then Gandalf produces the knife. In DoS I just cut a few lines about the High Fells and Gandalf actually leaves for Dol Guldur not the High Fells to find out if the Necromancer is really the old Enemy even Beorn warns him about. I cut Ragdy out of Gandalf's arrival to Dol Guldur and he now goes alone there. So I guess I have to use the finale of the sequence in the BotFA edit.

Botfa has the shot from DOS without Radagast in reverse, you could use that I would think.

well thats gotta be fun when you gotta explain how Thorin, Fili and Kili die

I know! Some really hard editing to do. But I think I'll leave Azog in and pretend he is Bolg in this film. :P

So no Azanilbizar then.

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Will you remove the Dol Guldur stuff?

A good question. I now edited things so that Gandalf mentions the Morgul blade in the White Council and have a short moment of Radagast's finding the knife in Dol Guldur play as a flashback in the middle of the council when Galadriel says "Show me" to Gandalf. Then Gandalf produces the knife. In DoS I just cut a few lines about the High Fells and Gandalf actually leaves for Dol Guldur not the High Fells to find out if the Necromancer is really the old Enemy even Beorn warns him about. I cut Ragdy out of Gandalf's arrival to Dol Guldur and he now goes alone there. So I guess I have to use the finale of the sequence in the BotFA edit.

Botfa has the shot from DOS without Radagast in reverse, you could use that I would think.

well thats gotta be fun when you gotta explain how Thorin, Fili and Kili die

I know! Some really hard editing to do. But I think I'll leave Azog in and pretend he is Bolg in this film. :P

So no Azanilbizar then.

Yes it is a shame to cut that out. It also means that I should cut out some of the Thrain's flashbacks to the battle as well.

This has to be one of the few films that has ever made me want to do a re-cut and then PJ throws Azog in the works to make it very difficult. Annoying!

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is cutting Azog really worth the effort?

Is recutting these films really worth the effort?

Probably not but as long as it passed the time...

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You could justify it as that Bolg is the spitting image of his father ;) (or if you know someone that is good at CG, you could have something added to differentiate the two, perhaps hair? ;) )

What about really tacky explanatory subtitles?! :P

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well thats gotta be fun when you gotta explain how Thorin, Fili and Kili die

I know! Some really hard editing to do. But I think I'll leave Azog in and pretend he is Bolg in this film. :P

So no Azanilbizar then.

One of the worst sequences in the trilogy. Good riddance!

This discussion kind of shows what a rushed and sort of lame film the Hobbit would be if you follow the book like a slave.

Uhmm, this is a discussion about fans trying to salvage a good film from what we ended up getting.

It didn't have to follow the book like a slave, but if done well, we could have had 2 very good films from the beginning.

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Agreed - following the book like that would indeed make for a very poor film. I mean, you'd have Gandalf leaving the company 3 times with no real explanation, only to say at the end "oh yea, we kicked this Necromancer guy out of this place called Dol Guldur!"

It was very smart of the film makers to include additional story elements straight out of Tolkien, namely:

  • A meeting of The White Council
  • The showdown in Dol Goldur
  • The additional backstory of the Dwarf / Orc war

Futhermore, some of the things the filmmakers added that are not straight out of Tolkien where very good additions as well, namely:

  • Having Gandalf figure out The Necromancer = Sauron during the events of The Hobbit and not decades earlier
  • Featuring Radagast as a character who has relevance to events that go on
  • having orcs chase the company from the moment they leave the Shire up until Lake-town (it adds tension)
  • Having two featured elves stick with the company after their time in the Woodland Realm and participate in the events afterwards
  • Having one of those elves be a hot redhead. Yea!

All great ideas! Originally I didn't think the change to the Dol Goldur story made a sense, but the more I thought about it from a more film making stand point, it really would have been odd to start the films with Gandalf already knowing Sauron lives in Dol Goldur, and him just needing to convince the Council to act on it.

So, the problems with the films don't lie in these overal decisions they made I outlined above. It's more the little things, like

  • PJ changing his mind about too many things at the last minute, leading to some really bad special effects work and last minute rewrites to cover these changes
  • Having Sauron be an ACTUAL Necromancer who can LITERALLY raise bodies who had died into living bodies again
  • Building up the importance of the Nazgul, and not doing much with them
  • Building up the Gol Duldur storyline over 3 films and have it end so quickly and non-epicly
  • Changing how Thorin, Bolg, and Azog all die. The original deaths made much more sense to the story
  • The split from 2->3 films, made after you had already written and filmed everything as a 2 film structure.
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The necromancer reviving the dead never showed in the film, so that's not really something to be held against the film. You could say the film hints at Sauron "reviving" the wraiths, but they were dead before the Hobbit events (Gandalf: "the ring wraiths were summoned to Dol Guldur").

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The necromancer reviving the dead never showed in the film, so that's not really something to be held against the film. You could say the film hints at Sauron "reviving" the wraiths, but they were dead before the Hobbit events (Gandalf: "the ring wraiths were summoned to Dol Guldur").

Well for a visual medium PJ had to show the evidence of Sauron's summoning of the ringwraiths, hence the High Fells scene. Alas it was a really tacky and non-Tolkien way to do it. I am sure clever screen writers could have written something more mysterious and less concrete to foreshadow Sauron's reveal in film 2. The Morgul blade plotline seems forced in the extreme. And hey what ever happened to that blade. Did the Witch-King reclaim it? He is supposed to stab Frodo with it in FotR.

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Agreed - following the book like that would indeed make for a very poor film. I mean, you'd have Gandalf leaving the company 3 times with no real explanation, only to say at the end "oh yea, we kicked this Necromancer guy out of this place called Dol Guldur!"

It was very smart of the film makers to include additional story elements straight out of Tolkien, namely:

  • A meeting of The White Council
  • The showdown in Dol Goldur
  • The additional backstory of the Dwarf / Orc war

Futhermore, some of the things the filmmakers added that are not straight out of Tolkien where very good additions as well, namely:

  • Having Gandalf figure out The Necromancer = Sauron during the events of The Hobbit and not decades earlier
  • Featuring Radagast as a character who has relevance to events that go on
  • having orcs chase the company from the moment they leave the Shire up until Lake-town (it adds tension)
  • Having two featured elves stick with the company after their time in the Woodland Realm and participate in the events afterwards
  • Having one of those elves be a hot redhead. Yea!

All great ideas! Originally I didn't think the change to the Dol Goldur story made a sense, but the more I thought about it from a more film making stand point, it really would have been odd to start the films with Gandalf already knowing Sauron lives in Dol Goldur, and him just needing to convince the Council to act on it.

So, the problems with the films don't lie in these overal decisions they made I outlined above. It's more the little things, like

  • PJ changing his mind about too many things at the last minute, leading to some really bad special effects work and last minute rewrites to cover these changes
  • Having Sauron be an ACTUAL Necromancer who can LITERALLY raise bodies who had died into living bodies again
  • Building up the importance of the Nazgul, and not doing much with them
  • Building up the Gol Duldur storyline over 3 films and have it end so quickly and non-epicly
  • Changing how Thorin, Bolg, and Azog all die. The original deaths made much more sense to the story
  • The split from 2->3 films, made after you had already written and filmed everything as a 2 film structure.

Azog and the elves should never have been in these films. These films suffer from the exposition and faux-drama bloat that is involved with the Tauriel's part in the plot and Azog just muddies up the waters when Bolg would have sufficed as a villain with good and proper motivations to want the dwarves dead to strike a bargain with Sauron and eventually invade Erebor. Legolas should have just made a cameo, not become one of the main participants in the events.

I can't imagine how, except for vague hints, like Beorn asking Gandalf if it was true that the dead were walking amongst the living.

Visual medium! Show not tell! Gandalf is privy to all kinds of wizadly powers. He could sense Sauron in the Ring, why not have him e.g. sensing the wraiths or doing some more extensive information gathering elsewhere for the evidence of the Shadow's return. A montage perhaps? The High Fells didn't really accomplish anything as far as advancing the plot. Gandalf could have just gone to Dol Guldur instead as the blade came from there in the first place.

But trying to convince me about the awesomenes of this adaptation is like trying to talk to a brick wall. I'm not listening! I'm not listening!

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A montage? Seriously? I mean, inventing fake stuff and replacing fake stuff with it accomplishes nothing. What would a montage show? Reading tracks? Talking to people? Yeah, that would be thrilling ... And wouldn't that be a whole lot of telling instead of showing?

How do you visualize a wizard "sensing" the wraiths?

And, more importantly, is it worth bickering over a scene that is barely three minutes long and mostly quite atmospheric and well-scored?

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Well it certainly is not the worst problem these films have.

And yeah I try not to bicker about these films anymore. It is tiring I admit and I can always go to the scores for a more agreeable vision of the Hobbit.

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That US version of the special edition in your avatar looks considerably shinier and more sturdy than the Decca version Christian. I had to complete my cardboard trilogy though as I had the two previous Decca editions.

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I'll listen to Shore's fantastic music while reading the books. Done and done. :)

With descending thirds for

Azanulbizar. Get your Khuzdûl spelling straight, will ya?

Jackson changed it to Azanilbizar, don't you know?

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  • 1 month later...

Meh. She should have painted to the tune of the spider attack part of the track! Now that would have been something!

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  • 4 weeks later...

CAfR8qOWgAEwmWN.jpg

Oooh, I know what that means!

mr190d is the cue for them crossing the lake (beginning of "Protector of the Common Folk")

mr190e is the cue for the fish being added to the barrels, and then the whole "Toll Gate" scene (rest of "Protector of the Common Folk"

mr205 is "Thrice Welcome", and it looks like Doug is saying only the first 31 bars are used before it switches to the EE cue mre206, which would be the extended Master/Alfrid discussion, and the extended "World of Men" chase, etc. Looks like he's saying bars 74-77 are dropped from the final cut of the EE, and at bar 153 it re-joins the original cue (the gang entering Bard's house)

Neat!

... Does this mean they're working on CRs?

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