The Hobbit
I was predisposed to like The Hobbit.
First, it was the movie part of the dinner-and-a-movie date that David and I had to celebrate our ten-year anniversary. To put this in perspective, David and I have gone to the movie theaters only thrice since we became parents eight years ago (the other two times for the first Transformers movie and Disney’s Tangled). And nobody wants the movie they see for their tenth wedding anniversary to be a dud.
Second, Thorin is played by Richard Armitage, who also plays Mr. Thornton in my favorite period drama, North & South.
And third, the song. This song. *shivers up my spine*
Er, now on to the movie itself.
Peter Jackson is obviously trying to solidify The Hobbit as a prequel to The Lord of the Rings. Not only did he bring back familiar sets and familiar music, but he added a lot of material foreshadowing the re-emergence of Sauron. A lot of moments–like Gandalf hitting his head on Bilbo’s chandelier, and the flight and fight on the bridges in the mountain–mirrored parts of LoTR.
I liked that dwarves get to be heroes, especially after Gimli was nothing more than comic relief in LoTR. I enjoyed Martin Freeman’s Bilbo much better than I did Elijah Woods’ Frodo. He has more range of expression, at any rate.
For the first time, I saw Elrond happy. I guess I can’t call him the Bitter Elf any longer…
Captain America
I saw this recently, after having watched The Avengers. I liked Captain America. I liked his unashamed patriotism. I liked his character arc from ninety-pound weakling to lab experiment to chorus girl and finally to super hero. The romance was handled with a light touch, very nice.
I was amused to see Hugo Weaving playing Agent Smith again. 😉
I wish that there had been more time to develop the characters in Captain America’s elite team of Hydra-butt-kickers. As it is, aside from Captain America’s BFF, I didn’t even know–much less remember–the names of anyone on his team.
AND I am annoyed that the ending of the movie–emotionally wrenching as it was–is based on such utter terrible PLOT FAIL. If the writers had spent more than five minutes thinking about it, they could’ve come up with a better reason for WHY Captain America HAD to crash the plane into the ice (besides, yanno, as a convenient reason to get him from WW2 to the 21st century).
As it is, I heartily agree with this “How it Should Have Ended” video:
Have you seen either or both of these movies? What did you think?
I’ve seen Captain America a few times and think it’s pretty awesome. I never got around to catching The Hobbit, which disappoints me because I wanted to go, but I’m sure it’ll be enjoyable on my TV when it becomes available–uhh, the movie, not the TV…that’s always available 😉
Most of the superhero movies I’ve watched recently have been really enjoyable. Of course, I screen them through my husband first, so that might have something to do with it. *wry* I really liked the Iron Man movies and The Avengers, as well. Husband says Thor was fun, too, but the character is just “meh” for me, so I won’t watch it.
Enjoy The Hobbit when you get around to it!