Desolation of Smaug
Dec. 17th, 2013 02:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
brushwolfRemember how I compared the first Hobbit movie to a batch of Vampire LARPers deciding to play D&D so that there's a lot more DRAMA!!1!?
Pocket review of Desolation of Smaug; Vampire LARPers play D&D only with MOAR DRAMA, their DM does awesome with maps and descriptions, and they are joined by a veteran D&D powergamer.
Let's talk about the things I liked first, shall we?
Scenery. It's not just that DoS is full of gorgeous locations, but they get used. They're three dimensional, there's tons of depth - our heros are almost never just fighting or exploring a flat, single-level space. They're clambering around ravines, jumping across boats in the canal, moving up and down platforms in the elf kingdom, moving about the furnaces and ore buckets of a massive dwarven forge area. And it's interactive too - doors can be slammed on opponents, combatants can crash through roofs or piers, enemies can be hooked into the rapids, buckets of stones can be dumped. The orcs jumping across the rooftops was just gorgeous, the sort of scenario I want to play or run. I don't know if this is for me the definitive version of the wood elf kingdom but it was visually fascinating. I don't know where I'd rather see my PCs adventure - Mirkwood, Erebor, Dol Guldur, the tomb of the Nine, Laketown or the elf-gates before the lake.
I would be so much in love with a campaign that treated scenery this way. I'll get to the down side of that in a moment.
Horse value. There aren't many horses in this movie but the ones that show up are Vanners. Love love love.
Character competency. The last big scene in the movie is pulse-pounding action, sure, but what's really awesome about it is that the dwarves put in a very, very good effort to kill Smaug. Pretty much the only reason this does not work is that Smaug doesn't die there in canon. Characters who try with what they know and what they can do are very compelling. I am willing to forgive that the scene requires a humble dwarf wheelbarrow to be the toughest inanimate object to appear in a movie since Indiana Jones survived a nuclear explosion by hiding in a refrigerator.
Fallingoffcliffsability. It's way down in this movie from the last one in which someone was falling off a precipice of some sort every 10 minutes or so. DoS has potential falls but nearly nobody actually falls off anything, and so when that happens, it actually still has something resembling a dramatic effect.
Now what I didn't like.
Scenery. This whole movie is sort of Grimdark Middle Earth, which isn't the point of Middle Earth. I feel like what makes Middle Earth special is that there are all these places which are warm and full of wonder. That's part of why the Shire is so special - wouldn't it be horrible if the shadow were to fall over this place? With different lighting and presentation, Beorn's home, the elf kingdom, and Laketown would all be places I'd want to visit, places I'd want to live. You can see the sheer love in the designs, which are then promptly presented as about as desaturated, cold, threatening and unappealing as the nastiest bits of Mirkwood or cold tombs high in the mountains. Yeah yeah yeah Sauron's darkness is gonna swallow up these kinda charmless places which happen to have nice architecture, I don't really feel involved.
Drama! Okay, I kinda expected this movie to be basically Hobbit inspired fanfic. Having a cute elf girl show up and be part of a romantic whatevery and having Thorin be viciously greedy and self-serving, then bombastically brave, is kinda within the boundaries of what I was ready for. What I wasn't ready for and which really got under my skin was the whole Charming Irish Commoners (with the Blood of Kings) (TM) under the yoke of the Evil English Aristocracy. I suppose Kiwis have the stereotype as much as the Aussies and us. It was annoying in things like Last of the Mohicans and Braveheart and now it's annoying in Middle Earth too!
Radagast. Okay, so in Unexpected Journey, Radagast was bumbling comic relief with poo in his hair who still managed to discover the necromancer in Dol Guldur and lead off a company of angry warg cavalry. In DoS, Radagast is just bumbling comic relief with poo in his hair. I hate that character so much. But he's not the character I liked least in this movie.
Fucking Legofuckinglas. Okay, you know how, the last time you played D&D or Pathfinder there was That Guy who knew all the rules, potentially better than James Wyatt or Richard Baker or Monte Cook or whoever, and took all the right feats to fit his expert character build? Remember how fun it was to be waiting for your lower initiative to roll 'round, texting your friends, looking through all of the awesome pictures in the rulebooks, and then getting to roll your single d20 or cast your one spell which might or might not work? Remember how exciting it was by comparison to your own seeming ineptitude you got to watch the powergamer scythe through the opponents and be more proficient at skills your character took?
Yeah, that's about as much excitement as Legolas adds to this movie. Oh gee, Legolas just showed up. Who's gonna win, Legolas or the entire legion of orcs? Oh man, the excitement is sure getting to me, can we please cut from this and go see what's up with our boys exploring the Lonely Mountain instead? 'Cause otherwise I'm just gonna go to the bathroom, it's more entertaining and lends more to the movie.
No, seriously FUCK you Legolas. FUCK you, and fuck the celestial template awakened Mearas with 5 ranger levels you rode in on. Go back to fucking playing Epic level 4e where you can take out hordes of Hezrou minions and maybe get bloodied fighting Yeenoghu before this awesome Daily you took lets you do 8d6 in burst 5 when you're bloodied. I propose that, when the Awakening happens, we adopt "legolas" as the Sperethiel verb for "grandstanding/attention-hogging/minmaxxing."
Pocket review of Desolation of Smaug; Vampire LARPers play D&D only with MOAR DRAMA, their DM does awesome with maps and descriptions, and they are joined by a veteran D&D powergamer.
Let's talk about the things I liked first, shall we?
Scenery. It's not just that DoS is full of gorgeous locations, but they get used. They're three dimensional, there's tons of depth - our heros are almost never just fighting or exploring a flat, single-level space. They're clambering around ravines, jumping across boats in the canal, moving up and down platforms in the elf kingdom, moving about the furnaces and ore buckets of a massive dwarven forge area. And it's interactive too - doors can be slammed on opponents, combatants can crash through roofs or piers, enemies can be hooked into the rapids, buckets of stones can be dumped. The orcs jumping across the rooftops was just gorgeous, the sort of scenario I want to play or run. I don't know if this is for me the definitive version of the wood elf kingdom but it was visually fascinating. I don't know where I'd rather see my PCs adventure - Mirkwood, Erebor, Dol Guldur, the tomb of the Nine, Laketown or the elf-gates before the lake.
I would be so much in love with a campaign that treated scenery this way. I'll get to the down side of that in a moment.
Horse value. There aren't many horses in this movie but the ones that show up are Vanners. Love love love.
Character competency. The last big scene in the movie is pulse-pounding action, sure, but what's really awesome about it is that the dwarves put in a very, very good effort to kill Smaug. Pretty much the only reason this does not work is that Smaug doesn't die there in canon. Characters who try with what they know and what they can do are very compelling. I am willing to forgive that the scene requires a humble dwarf wheelbarrow to be the toughest inanimate object to appear in a movie since Indiana Jones survived a nuclear explosion by hiding in a refrigerator.
Fallingoffcliffsability. It's way down in this movie from the last one in which someone was falling off a precipice of some sort every 10 minutes or so. DoS has potential falls but nearly nobody actually falls off anything, and so when that happens, it actually still has something resembling a dramatic effect.
Now what I didn't like.
Scenery. This whole movie is sort of Grimdark Middle Earth, which isn't the point of Middle Earth. I feel like what makes Middle Earth special is that there are all these places which are warm and full of wonder. That's part of why the Shire is so special - wouldn't it be horrible if the shadow were to fall over this place? With different lighting and presentation, Beorn's home, the elf kingdom, and Laketown would all be places I'd want to visit, places I'd want to live. You can see the sheer love in the designs, which are then promptly presented as about as desaturated, cold, threatening and unappealing as the nastiest bits of Mirkwood or cold tombs high in the mountains. Yeah yeah yeah Sauron's darkness is gonna swallow up these kinda charmless places which happen to have nice architecture, I don't really feel involved.
Drama! Okay, I kinda expected this movie to be basically Hobbit inspired fanfic. Having a cute elf girl show up and be part of a romantic whatevery and having Thorin be viciously greedy and self-serving, then bombastically brave, is kinda within the boundaries of what I was ready for. What I wasn't ready for and which really got under my skin was the whole Charming Irish Commoners (with the Blood of Kings) (TM) under the yoke of the Evil English Aristocracy. I suppose Kiwis have the stereotype as much as the Aussies and us. It was annoying in things like Last of the Mohicans and Braveheart and now it's annoying in Middle Earth too!
Radagast. Okay, so in Unexpected Journey, Radagast was bumbling comic relief with poo in his hair who still managed to discover the necromancer in Dol Guldur and lead off a company of angry warg cavalry. In DoS, Radagast is just bumbling comic relief with poo in his hair. I hate that character so much. But he's not the character I liked least in this movie.
Fucking Legofuckinglas. Okay, you know how, the last time you played D&D or Pathfinder there was That Guy who knew all the rules, potentially better than James Wyatt or Richard Baker or Monte Cook or whoever, and took all the right feats to fit his expert character build? Remember how fun it was to be waiting for your lower initiative to roll 'round, texting your friends, looking through all of the awesome pictures in the rulebooks, and then getting to roll your single d20 or cast your one spell which might or might not work? Remember how exciting it was by comparison to your own seeming ineptitude you got to watch the powergamer scythe through the opponents and be more proficient at skills your character took?
Yeah, that's about as much excitement as Legolas adds to this movie. Oh gee, Legolas just showed up. Who's gonna win, Legolas or the entire legion of orcs? Oh man, the excitement is sure getting to me, can we please cut from this and go see what's up with our boys exploring the Lonely Mountain instead? 'Cause otherwise I'm just gonna go to the bathroom, it's more entertaining and lends more to the movie.
No, seriously FUCK you Legolas. FUCK you, and fuck the celestial template awakened Mearas with 5 ranger levels you rode in on. Go back to fucking playing Epic level 4e where you can take out hordes of Hezrou minions and maybe get bloodied fighting Yeenoghu before this awesome Daily you took lets you do 8d6 in burst 5 when you're bloodied. I propose that, when the Awakening happens, we adopt "legolas" as the Sperethiel verb for "grandstanding/attention-hogging/minmaxxing."