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and now blather about Hobbit 3; the Battle of Five Armies
10 years ago
There'll be legit content here soon.
Okay, so I know Hobbit 3 is old hat, having come out last Christmas, but I skipped it because it really didn't sound appealing. This means that only today have I clicked on enough YouTube links to watch, oh, some 20+ minutes or so of the thing all told. The movie's namesake battle at the end.
Elves are an ancient race, few in numbers, expert archers with swift reflexes and an affinity for animals, which is why their general is the only mounted guy, and the rest of them are all mass in formations of hundreds of tightly-packed plate armored infantry, which then move uphill to attack the dire-goat cavalry army. Firing volleys of arrows to prompt the dwarves to charge and give up the advantage of the heights isn't a terrible move (if you're okay with having cavalry charge downhill and smash through any ranks you might be able to form) and charging your dire-goat cavalry downhill isn't a terrible idea either, but giving up on firing your ballistae into big formations of hundreds of armored elves just so you can have a cavalry charge isn't exactly the smartest tactic out there. Lest you think only elves and dwarves did dumb things, the orc response to a sheep chariot is not to pull back and fire arrows at it, but to send warg-riders and trolls charging cheerfully towards it.
But then this movie is about rule of cool, not about wargaming.
The way Bard inspires his unarmored, poorly armed militia well after the elite plate armored units have already gotten into melee suggests Peter Jackson hasn't played Warhammer, but... I dunno, that rideable blinded war-troll with ball-and-chain arms and morning star prosthetic legs sure seems like a recent casting. The troll with the ladder full of goblins is reminiscent of the old Grenadier miniatures War Giant - anyone else remember that thing? http://www.mirliton.it/product_info.....blin-war-giant - pretty cool huh?
And then we get into the really silly stuff. PJ has to stick in unfunny slapstick with Bifur getting stuck to an orc he headbutts ('cause he has an axehead stuck in his skull, hur hur), Legolas hangs upside down from a bat while slashing orcs before he gets into combat with Bolg, literally jumping from piece to piece of a bridge falling from under him because dude, he is so totally The One. And then there's LALO dropping a werebear into melee combat. Or ripping off the end of Alexander Nevsky with Azog disappearing below the ice forevermore.
So I can finally add to my summary of the Hobbit movies.
An Unexpected Journey is about a group of Vampire LARPers trying to play D&D. They aren't very good at it, the DM's idea of excitement involves lots of dangerous heights, and every five minutes there's some sort of gigantically dramatic confrontation among the player characters. Devastation of Smaug sees the players getting more familiar with the system, including the DM, whose mapping and description skills have really improved, and the group's joined by two veteran powergamers.
Battle of Five Armies is the epic length last game session and as part of it, both DM and players get more and more slap-happy and try sillier/more over the top stuff as the game winds on past midnight.
Okay, so I know Hobbit 3 is old hat, having come out last Christmas, but I skipped it because it really didn't sound appealing. This means that only today have I clicked on enough YouTube links to watch, oh, some 20+ minutes or so of the thing all told. The movie's namesake battle at the end.
Elves are an ancient race, few in numbers, expert archers with swift reflexes and an affinity for animals, which is why their general is the only mounted guy, and the rest of them are all mass in formations of hundreds of tightly-packed plate armored infantry, which then move uphill to attack the dire-goat cavalry army. Firing volleys of arrows to prompt the dwarves to charge and give up the advantage of the heights isn't a terrible move (if you're okay with having cavalry charge downhill and smash through any ranks you might be able to form) and charging your dire-goat cavalry downhill isn't a terrible idea either, but giving up on firing your ballistae into big formations of hundreds of armored elves just so you can have a cavalry charge isn't exactly the smartest tactic out there. Lest you think only elves and dwarves did dumb things, the orc response to a sheep chariot is not to pull back and fire arrows at it, but to send warg-riders and trolls charging cheerfully towards it.
But then this movie is about rule of cool, not about wargaming.
The way Bard inspires his unarmored, poorly armed militia well after the elite plate armored units have already gotten into melee suggests Peter Jackson hasn't played Warhammer, but... I dunno, that rideable blinded war-troll with ball-and-chain arms and morning star prosthetic legs sure seems like a recent casting. The troll with the ladder full of goblins is reminiscent of the old Grenadier miniatures War Giant - anyone else remember that thing? http://www.mirliton.it/product_info.....blin-war-giant - pretty cool huh?
And then we get into the really silly stuff. PJ has to stick in unfunny slapstick with Bifur getting stuck to an orc he headbutts ('cause he has an axehead stuck in his skull, hur hur), Legolas hangs upside down from a bat while slashing orcs before he gets into combat with Bolg, literally jumping from piece to piece of a bridge falling from under him because dude, he is so totally The One. And then there's LALO dropping a werebear into melee combat. Or ripping off the end of Alexander Nevsky with Azog disappearing below the ice forevermore.
So I can finally add to my summary of the Hobbit movies.
An Unexpected Journey is about a group of Vampire LARPers trying to play D&D. They aren't very good at it, the DM's idea of excitement involves lots of dangerous heights, and every five minutes there's some sort of gigantically dramatic confrontation among the player characters. Devastation of Smaug sees the players getting more familiar with the system, including the DM, whose mapping and description skills have really improved, and the group's joined by two veteran powergamers.
Battle of Five Armies is the epic length last game session and as part of it, both DM and players get more and more slap-happy and try sillier/more over the top stuff as the game winds on past midnight.
I mean, yeah... was it necessary to have a scene where Saruman, Elrond and Galadriel roll in like the Middle-Earth Expendables to rescue Gandalf and get into a contrived knock-down drag-out with the Nazgul? No. But it was awesome. And I'm glad I saw it. Besides, all that business in Dol Goldur was necessary for a film-adaptation of this property. In the book, Gandalf simply drops out of the story to do wizard-stuff in order to put the Company Of Thorin into situations they can't easily get out of if they don't have an all-powerful wizard in their party. For a movie, you KINDA have to give Gandalf something to do.
Still don't understand the damn Dune Worms and why those didn't just get used to win the battle instantly, but that's just because I'm the kind of guy who looks at that sort of thing and can't understand poor tactical decision making.
Thanks for posting that link, I had been trying to figure out where I had seen that miniature. Thought it was RAFM or Ral Partha and it was bugging me that I could not find it.
Meanwhile, many of my favorite parts from the book were just glossed over or made pitifully short- the famous riddle contest was cut down to, what, three riddles? The long, dark, spooky journey through Mirkwood with them running out of food, crossing the black river and growing more and more desperate was made so short that I literally don't even remember it being in the movie. Every part where Bilbo is lost, afraid, bored or miserable is as short as possible or omitted entirely (a stark contrast to LotR, which really emphasizes how hard the journey is for Frodo). Thorin's touching death scene is completely changed and pretty much ruined, along with his greed being ascribed to some kind of dragon-virus rather than just, you know, greed.
I can understand them adding some things to make it more movie-suitable, but it needed to be two movies at most, not three, and the padding really shows. The frantic pace and over-the-top action also wreck the cozy, relatable feeling of the book. It doesn't feel like Bilbo or his companions ever become braver, wiser or more experienced because they're invincible cartoon characters from the very start. On the plus side, I can't really say it ruins the book for me because it's so different that it doesn't even come to mind when I read the story again.
Tolkien's sense of pacing and humor is a lot subtler and slower. It takes ages to get from here to there, enough that you can have things like the dwarves nearly starving in Mirkwood, or wanting to spend forever hanging out at Beorn's place. Some of it's movie pacing and some of it's editorial choice that this gets hurried through, and I don't know how I'd handle this differently, but I wish it was handled differently.
One of the big things that really stood out about the difference in series is how places are handled (JRRT is so obviously into location) - in The Hobbit Beorn's place, the Last Homely House, and even Laketown are these really appealing places, and it fits the story too. If you're Bilbo or the dwarves you don't want to leave and you know you have to, it's part of the whole hero journey deal that the hero knows this. But the Jackson version really zips through these places and makes them so unappealing - Rivendell is just kinda this nice gentrified place full of elves who are Too Good For You, Beorn's place is this cold unappealing recluse murderhut, Laketown is this always cold, always fishy smelling place where you dump poo in the canals if they're not frozen solid. They're like more WoW scenery, where some players would love to just stay there and check out the visual details and others are all eh screw it, I wanna go grind my fishing skill - and it's obvious what sort of player Jackson is.
I feel like, given any opportunity, Jackson will go for kinda childish comic relief and big, obviously epic action. I think this worked in LotR because he had to stick largely to these big, story-rich books, so when there's childish comic relief and big epic action that wasn't in the book, it's "huh, neat, that's not what I thought, but it's kind of a fun interpretation." With a lot less of that framework, The Hobbit winds up being proportionally much much more childish comic relief and big epic action. It's kinda like listening to someone else talk about the game they were in if nothing's keeping them on task telling the story.
My bf loves them for some reason, he has the even-more-drawn-out editions which I can only imagine being a special form of torture.
You mentioned Warhammer though -- did you see that they had a big End Times event that shook things up and spawned some fantastic new minatures (and new rules for some existing characters), then blew up the world, and replaced 8th edition with a new game line that's much more simplified/streamlined and now has Totally Not Space Marines? Opinions are, expectedly, mixed.
I kinda feel like the feel of old-school WH Fantasy was a little subtler too, that now nobody thinks people would go for just Landsknechts and Knights fighting slightly spiky dark elves, that sort of thing. Whether anyone would go for that is different from what the GW people think.
It does have a lot going for it compared to old-school Fantasy: The main attractions being that you don't need a vast amount of models, and it's fairly quick and straightforward to play, the opposite case being a major obstacle before. The complaints are mainly that it's perhaps over-simplified, and that there's no points system so it's difficult to readily compare one force against another.
I've been getting back into the miniatures stuff lately, though I suppose I never really gave up on it, just took breaks. Probably been doing this about 20 years now.
What might also be of interest is a maybe-limited-edition Horus Heresy box set that's coming out any time now. "Betrayal at Calth", I believe the name is, and you get a -bunch- of models for a relatively modest price, at least compared to buying the Forge World equivalents of the minis.
Me, I want the 3 hr version with all the stuff not in the books edited out...
Oh yes.. and the Big Goblins, killed by the folks who killed them in the books..
... I'm biased. As a 13 year old, I was all about the cool stuff over substance. Which is okay; you grow up and you have your whole life ahead of you to appreciate plot twists, character development, story construction, even the craft of making awesome scenes. I figure if you put this stuff in a movie, there'll still be something there beyond nostalgia when people get older.