I agree with a lot of what you've said, and even have more to expand on.
Frankly, with how many big names were on this film, I truly expected WAY more. I was so disappointed after watching the film that I seriously feel like not going to the third.
The main things that I had a huge issue with were 1) shitty CGI, 2) I swear they used a damn GoPro camera during parts of the barrel scene, 3) the unnecessary love triangle that is oh so popular in hollywood right now and 4) the rushed and sloppy feeling that it had.
1) Shitty CGI
-After having seen the entire LotR series and what they are completely capable of, it was embarrassing how early 2000s video game like the CGI was in some scenes. Especially a lot of the scenes with Smaug and the gold. Those scenes particularly stood out to me because they were so horribly bad, it was like they did zero research at all on how molten gold looks, or how metal looks for that matter. Also did anyone notice that instead of having Orlando Bloom wear contacts, they digitally changed his eye color to blue, and that at TONS of parts you wouldn't be able to see the eye shine, or even the pupils would be uneven or one bigger than the other? Please tell me I'm not the only one who caught that!
2) Did they seriously use a GoPro?! emotion_eyebrow
-During the barrel scenes, every now and then it would jump to show you a dwarf view of what it would be like going through the river. In my opinion that was completely unnecessary, and would have been better off left in the deleted scenes section. But what made it worse was how the movie went from being pristine and clear, to suddenly grainy, choppy, and like a GoPro was used.
Now I say GoPro strictly because I've worked with them before and know what the video quality looks like (and in those scenes, it even seemed a bit worse than what you can expect from a GoPro) what was shown in theaters.
3) Is it really so hard to insert a female character without making her role solely based on romance?
-When Tauriel was introduced, she was ******** awesome. A badass captain of the guard, killing spiders left and right! Then enter Kili and Legolas, and it was all down hill from there! emotion_facepalm If they had just kept her as a badass who encouraged Legolas to help the dwarves with their quest because eventually s**t would get bad in Mirkwood if they didn't help anyone at all, I would have been totally fine with her character. BUT NO!!! The writers had to go in and do the typical hollywood thing where a chick can't be added to the movie unless she's someones love interest and helps move the dudes story line along. Omg just gag me with a spoon with how cliche it is. emotion_puke
Also what the hell was up with her hair? Now I've never read the books, I don't know anything about what Tolkien may have meant for his elven characters (because I know an earlier post mentioned something about elves and their hair), but just from a characters developmental stand point, the hair was ridiculous. She is supposedly captain of the guard and yet has hair that goes down past her a**....for someone who is supposed to be combat ready at all times, the hair at that length is just impractical.
4) Even though it was 3 ******** hours long, it didn't seem like time was taken with the movie
- The characters, the costumes, settings, some of the acting, and the CGI looked like it was all rushed just so the company could pop it out and be able to make money off of it. I really felt like if just a little extra time had been taken in the production a much better resulting movie would have come from it. And maybe a more refined version could have been released, instead of this which rushed through everything without very much care.
Overall, it seems to me that they're trying to cash in while they still can. They're taking short cuts, cutting corners, adding in things that should never have been there in the first place, just to make a movie that will make a big profit. I'm also wondering why they even got Benedict Cumberbatch to voice Smaug, seeing as so much special effects is used on his voice that he just sounds like a more menacing version of Tree Beard. I seriously feel like they were trying to cash in on the Martin Freeman/Benedict Cumberbatch, Sherlock fandom with that choice. You can't here any bit of his voice in the movie that I had a hard time believing that it was even him! emotion_0A0
Just overall, bad, I can't believe they actually made this movie. I'm so glad I had a military discount and only paid $7 instead of $13 to see this movie. emotion_8c
END RANT
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