I'd go as far to say I dislike 'I see fire' intensely. It's incongruous, weirdly R'n'B acoustic weirdness. If I never hear that song again it'll be too soon.
Also it's a fucking disgrace that they didn't fly all of the NZ dwarves over, and its also a fucking disgrace that they left it so late to release the details for the fans to get in, so there will be people who have travelled and planned to get there early with little chance of getting a wristband.
I mean it doesn't bother me personally because I wouldn't go to one of these things if you paid me, I'd be spending the whole time shaking and shitting like a (fat)greyhound.
Ok so apparently some spoilers are doing the rounds, which means I'm probably going to have to bury my head in sand for the next 11 days.
I'm sure it doesn't need to be said, but can everyone make sure to use spoilertags? this is the first thing ever where I really want to avoid them, and if it gets spoiled I will have to hunt you down and slaughter you like a hound kthankzbai
The more I see clips from this film the less I know what to expect from it. I knew pretty much what was going to happen in the last two movies when I went to see them but this one is a wild card. I really need to read the book again, though I don't think that's going to help too much.
Anyway, I took a little trip this weekend. I only returned a few hours ago from London.
Me and my cousin planned to go almost immediately after they announced that the premiere would be in London. I have to say that we were so lucky. We had no idea they were giving out numbered wristbands, because they only gave out the information a few days before and the only places the information was given in was WB website and onering.net. We just happened to go to Leicester Square on Sunday at the time that they were giving out the wristbands. If we had known about it before we would have been there for the whole night, but the truth is that we were incredibly lucky, because not everybody did know about it. We got the numbers 1015 and 1016, which wasn't too good, but there was still about 1000 people behind us in the queue.
I only took a few pictures, since I prioritised autographs. Also when I tried to take any my hands were shaking quite bad, probably because I had barely eaten that day (I knew we would be queuing for a long time and for so many hours we were waiting to get to the pens without knowing when the security staff would take us there). Anyway, you can just about see Aidan Turner's heardo from this.
The only actor I got decent pictures from was Lee Pace. This was one of the two pictures.
And here is what I walked away with. My preciousss... Autographed by (from left to right) Luke Evans, Lee Pace, Richard Armitage (I like to call the autograph Lee Armitage since they overlap) and Martin Freeman. I'm a bit jealous that my cousin got Sir Ian McKellen's autograph, but I still think that I'm so lucky, since we didn't have the best places. For example I didn't even see Peter Jackson, Evangeline Lilly or Orlando Bloom, since they seemed to just walk past the last straight because they spent so much time on the carpet before the stage. But it doesn't matter, I'm happy that I was there and I had not expected to get even that many autographs. And after all it was the last possibility to go. I can't believe that I'm going to see the movie in a week and 15min!
@Kuroto: That's sooooooooooooooooooooooooo awesome. I remember meeting folks at ComicCon, but this has got to be a different level of totally awesome. :3
Also, my favourite thing from the clip is that it sets Thranduil's tone about giving the lives of his people for Middle Earth, which makes the actions of the Lorien elves at Helm's Deep seem more significant, and again emphasizes Legolas' presence in the Fellowship.
I only saw the first clip on this page, trying not to spoil myself and get too excited by seeing the others. Kuroto, you are one lucky bitch for being there. That's totally awesome!
So I've seen the film (European privilege ) and here are some thoughts.
Visually the film was great. I don't know if I've just gotten used to the HFR but the movie didn't look at all as polished as the first one, for example. Also Smaug flying above the Laketown was nicely done.
The film was very action packed in my opinion and since the story line of the Hobbit is very much already done by the beginning of the film, there is not that much story left for the film to tell. If anything it's more like a big ending, since the only thing it really does is just resolves all the plot lines. But then again the problem of the movie is a bit that it also doesn't tell us everything. It ends a bit suddenly. It doesn't tell us the faith of most of the characters. We probably can guess
: Bard goes back to Laketown, Thranduil goes back to the Mirkwood (with Tauriel?) and the dwarves stay at the Lonely Mountain
but we can't really know for sure. The movie only tells us the faith of those whose faith we already know. The things I would have wanted to know were
who will run the mountain and who gets all the gold, what Tauriel decided to do or where she decided to go after the war (the movie doesn't tell us whether she was allowed back to Mirkwood), did Dain survive
and probably many more things. Since Bilbo made such an effort to write the whole beginning of the story to the book I kinda wish now that the whole movie would have ended
with him finishing the story. But then again, I guess he only finished it in Rivendell so nevermind
.
Then a few things I really liked. I absolutely love that scene that was already linked here by X-SOLDIER where Galadriel and the other white council comes to Gandalf's aid. I also liked the beginning with Smaug and Bard. Another scenes I loved were
the scene where Dain comes with the army to fight with Thorin, the scene where Thranduil speaks to Legolas about Aragorn and of course the very end
.
I have to say that Lee Pace, Richard Armitage and Martin Freeman are excellent in this last film. There are scenes where you can just see Thorin change from sanity to madness and it's fantastic. Lee Pace is just perfect as Thranduil. And the movie wouldn't be anything without Martin Freeman. He is Bilbo, and I don't know who could do it better than he does. The scene where
he takes the arkenstone to Thranduil and Bard
was probably one of my favourites, maybe because it just shows how close he has become with the dwarves and how far he is willing to go for them. And how good he has become at his job.
Over all, I'd say that Desolation of Smaug is still my favourite from the trilogy. The Battle of Five Armies is great, but because it doesn't have that much story to it (and maybe has a bit too many characters to follow) it just can't quite get to the same level. I still liked the film and it did make me cry. You should take in consideration though that because I wasn't completely able to immerse myself to the film (I happened to sit next to people that just couldn't stop talking during the film. In the freaking premiere.) so I have to see the film again to have a more full opinion about it. Luckily I've already made plans to see it on Friday with a friend so maybe then. Let's hope that the people there are more considerate. ^^'
I so should have done that last night. 
