A work, worthy of Sauron!

Rating: 1/10 (4 January 2015)

This "movie" is definitely worthy of being thrown into the fire! My in-laws gave us the tickets (to be fair - we would have been so stupid and payed for it ourselves... so... there you go: We FINANCED further abominations like this!) Whatever happened to good, decent filmmaking? This was a terrible, over-the-top, soulless WAR MOVIE!!! It feels as numb and un-emotional as a general anesthetic. There were main-characters dying? Oh, true... well, who cares? Remember anyone the death scene of Sean Bean in THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING (yes, he always dies - but he died really well in that one) Oh, or who the F cares about some CGI-Mega-Orc fighting a dwarf on ice Flash Gordon Style? And also: Did he touch the ground of that frozen lake before he jumped back to ruin some more or less decent CGI-Death-Scene? - or did he do the Legolas "I don't care about gravity" thing? Questions above questions - yet now answers! I'd like to ask Peter Jackson what the hell happened! Was he forced with a gun to his head to make this? Or did he just direct it from a smart-phone, while sitting on his couch at home and counting his money? Yes, I'm aware that the TRUE EVIL, the true Morgoths are the Studios and the endlessly greedy film industry! If young people like Playstation graphics and action, shaky-cam and *beep* 3D - let them have it! Who cares about nice cinematography when the highest grossing movie are made in absurd-looking 3D and with completely over-the-top everything! In the last 14 years since the FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING came out, I was telling my nerdy friends (and everybody else) how amazing the Lord of the Rings movies are, how muche love and effort went into them.
I was amazed about the fact, that Peter Jackson said NO to too much CGI, that he used real sets, models, amazingly detailed costumes and beautiful cinematography.
ALL of that went down the drain with this one... this boring, crappy looking CGI-disaster, this Mexican Standoff in Middle Earth.
What was the "story" again? Some greedy dwarf does not want to come out of his cave - and suddenly all kinds of armies show up... to fight each other in a ridiculous way...
The last 10 minutes then felt like some different move... somehow like the original Trilogy... BECAUSE THERE WERE REAL LANDSCAPES.
It felt like something really beautuful standing next to something really ugly. But this short moment of "how to make a nice, decent, GOOD movie" did not save and also not redeem this perversion of cinematic history! This could as well be titled: WORLD OF WARCRAFT - THE MOVIE.
Other titles: Legolas, Dwarfes, CGI-ORCS and other stupid stuff in: TO HELL WITH GRAVITY! Watching THE FELLOSHIP OF THE RING makes you believe in the good things in this world: Friendsip, beauty, decency, good filmmaking... everything that is right and just and good. Everything a guy like Aragorn would put into an epic speech before a battle that mattered.
The battlescenes of the CGI-Creatures did not matter. And having too many trolls with too many artificial limbs - or an Orcs with a Klingon Bathleth-Prosthesis (and I usually like STAR TREK references... maybe just not in a Middle Earth Movie) I am not just disappinted. I am shocked by this mess. How can the SAME director that made the BEST TRILOGY EVER do this? Well, the same question has been asked countless times about George Lucas.
Good Job, Peter - you killed filmmaking. I am also not sure if you are honest about promoting this disgusting gimmick called 3D or you just have to do it because the industry wants you to do so! Damn it - this is the time of bad movies gone too far, the age of darkness... J.R.R. Tolkien could write some words of truth about this - but he's dead (lucky him... so he does not have to bear what they did to his beautiful vision!) This is the age of darkness indeed. The age of greed! I tend to believe that it is not completely Peter Jackson's fault - it is the perverted, greedy film-industry. They do not think in art or beauty or decency - they think and care only about profit! They exploit everything.
The sad part is the people defending all that because the wrongly connect it to something that is good and beautiful. But the connection is wrong! Just because it has partly the same actors, the same director and is supposed to play in the same universe as the good trilogy does not make it the same.
George Lucas tried (and failed) in doing the same. Overkilling something with CGI and bad writing is not filmmaking - it's a shame! Personally, I do the same here that I do with this terrible STAR WARS PREQUEL TRILOGY: I never watch it again. I imagine the events of Bilbo's adventure with the dwarfes from the visual and artistic perspective of Ian Holm in THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RINGS - there could still be something great being made - but please by another director.
Somebody young and hungry and talented. Some person like the Peter Jackson of the 1990s. Somebody who LOVES the source-material and has a vision of it - but not a financial one! What also works - and it's totally for free: Imagination. Having a good actor talking about something rather than showing it invokes a million times more beautiful images than cramming it down your throat with a CGI funnel! Anyway - whatever. This needed to be said! And somebody like RED LETTER MEDIA should really make a review similar to the STAR WARS PREQUEL reviews! May the Force be with you - Gandalf