There was too much killing (!) He was wondering why they had to kill everything they came across: trolls, goblins, wargs (which he thought were wolves; he did not like it when he thought they were killing animals)

Felt that The Company was totally useless and kept getting themselves into trouble and always had to wait for Gandalf to save the day.

I finally managed to convince my boyfriend to go see AUJ. He is not really a fan of fantasy, and only has a very vague impression of the Lord of the Rings movies. He used to get Gandalf mixed up with Dumbledore.

Anyway, after much hype from me, he agreed to see AUJ -- a bit reluctantly of course. I think he was just wondering why I liked it so much.

Here are some of his comments after the movie:

- The Erebor flashback was AWESOME

- He liked all the wizards (yep, all three -- Saruman included). He asked with interest about the blue wizards and whether they were going to appear in the next movie. He was not quite sure if Galadriel was also a wizard. His favorite wizard was Radagast, who he thought was very entertaining.

- Liked the bunny sled and the hedgehog.

- Felt that The Company was totally useless and kept getting themselves into trouble and always had to wait for Gandalf to save the day.

- Gollum was great.

- There was too much killing (!) He was wondering why they had to kill everything they came across: trolls, goblins, wargs (which he thought were wolves; he did not like it when he thought they were killing animals)

- Overall, the movie was entertaining to watch, but the main problem was that he felt that nothing happened, and it was just a series of the same thing (company gets into trouble with some enemy, Gandalf saves them, repeat).

- He looks forward to seeing more of the dragon in the next film.

That's it. Just sharing :)

For the goblins, however, it felt a bit like slaughter. I don't know why, but I had always felt that the Goblin King's death was quite violent, and his body falling on top of the dwarves at the end seemed a bit much -- since it was played for laughs. In the EE I hope they would extend the Goblin King's scene and actually have him do something horrible to the dwarves to sort of 'justify' his death.

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I actually had the same feeling, at times. Not because I have issues with movie violence as such (I guess I play too much evil videogames), but because it felt we were leaving the cartoon violence territory and crossing into the real violence territory in scenes that still had too much of a fairy-tale feel, and the fairy-tale elements and realistic elements didn't mix well in those moments where more realistic violence had to be shown in order for us to believe the dwarves were fighting for their lives.

For me, this was very apparent in the the trolls scene. Their appearance, the snot joke, the funny voices, smacking each other with saucepans, dwarves in their undies (later), all this indicated a light, fairy-tale tone. Then suddenly the dwarves run in and start this fierce, brutal fight. Even though there was no blood shown, I found myself wondering if this was necessary, and I felt sorry for the trolls because after all, they were just hungry.

Goblintown suffered a little bit from similar discrepancy in my opinion, but at least we know the goblins are essentially evil. It wasn't a huge problem for me.

Granted, I think the Trolls scene might have been the most difficult in this respect and from now on the more realistic violence should't be causing too many issues. We crossed the Misty Mountains, we're now past the funny Trolls and cartoony Goblins, and we'll be dealing with dark and evil spiders, orcs, dragons and... um, zombies.

As for killing the Wargs - I understand why would anyone feel there's too much killing here. I'm kind of sensitive to the whole wolves/hyenas = evil prejudice, even if they are magical half-wolves.

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Hehe, too true :)

I think the goblins are very evil, even if there are humorous moments. It was like slaughter, but not unjustified. What else could the dwarves do? If the goblins had nicely stepped aside, they would have run out of there without any killing. The goblins were attacking them as they were trying to flee, so they did what they had to do.

The goblin king was indeed about to do horrible things (or get his underlings to do them). "Bones will be shattered, necks will be wrung. You'll be beaten and battered, from racks you'll be hung. You will die down here and never be found, down in the deep of goblin town." I think that pretty much says it all right there.

Just for good measure though - what about "kill them, kill them all! Cut off his head!" :)

None of this is to say that I'm in favor of all the killing or battle scenes. I generally prefer for action scenes to be shorter - in this movie, LotR, or pretty much any other movie with long action scenes, fantasy or not. I do enjoy the battle scenes in the Hobbit, but had they opted to shorten them up in favor of something else (maybe more dialogue from some of the dwarves we didn't hear from as much), I'd have been perfectly happy with that.

Glad he thought the Wargs were wolves! Clearly giant, monster, evil wolves, but wovles just the same. We couldn't figure out what the Wargs in Two Towers were. . . mutant Hyena at best. I understand his sympathy for them though. I think the films could have done a better job of making clear how independant the Wargs are. They seem totally at the beck and call of Azog, not as much like the seperate but cooperating agency of evil beings that they are.