redxavier wrote:On the subject of the violence, it's tempting to forget that you're an adult with years of experience and desensitivation towards more severe forms, but I'd encourage all of us to not to think that the lack of blood spurts and gore somehow makes violence more acceptable or more appropriate for kids. A beheading is still a beheading, and firing an arrow through an orc's head is just as violent without blood as with blood. The DoS EE has been given a 15 rating here in the UK, which puts it on the same level as Taken 2 (which I'm sure we'd all agree is not for kids).
There was a bit of debate over violence and ratings over Christmas (my siblings all have young children) and it was interesting to hear how even 'clean violence' was still influential. I've seen the young ones attempt to duplicate the fighting of Power Rangers, so on the face of it, there's no such thing as clean, appropriate violence, no matter how cartoonish it is. That's probably another topic though.
Sorry if that's how what I said came off, it's not what I meant.
How do I put this... the problem I'm trying to get at, is that PJ wants to have his cake and eat it too. He wanted The Hobbit to have that child-like wonder and be aimed at a younger audience. Hence why all the silly cartoon physics, and bad physical gags and the funny bad man with the weird eyebrows. But then at the same time, he's trying to directly tie this series into LOTR, so he's trying to bring in all these darker and more violent elements, but he keeps getting tripped up with the whole "younger audience thing" so he keeps pulling his punches.
So at the end of it what we have is this thing weird oblong thing that has a lot of the violence and darkness but all the edges are sanded off. There's lots of fighting, but everyone dies with one hit, there's a beheading or two... but no blood (I still don't know where you're getting this idea that every other orc is getting his head cut off, I remember one maaaaaybe two, but otherwise it's just a bunch of paper cut deaths), there's lots of dangerous situations but no actual danger.
So there's too much violence to really call it a movie suitable for younger audiences, but all the violence that is there is neutered so an adult audience isn't really going to enjoy it because it just feels fake and contrived. So at the end, it's not really a movie made for anyone, it's just bleh.
Hopefully that makes more sense and is closer to what I'm actually trying to say.
You know, BDA, we are closer than you think 
The beheadings, I remember 3 distinctly in AUJ, right off the top-Thror in the Moria battle rememberance, and two in Globin town.
I agree that PJ is trying to have his cake and eat it too. But, the source material is also a child's book, which makes me more forgiving of it than LOTR, which I take as a much more of an epic, good vs. evil, tale. One is far grander than the other in terms of scale and scope. I think that the Hobbit events can become more epic, but it still should be viewed from the original point of view, in my opinion.
As it is, I think PJ tried too hard to shoehorn in LOTR elements (Legolas, especially) without a clear way of not taking away from the Dwarves' story. I think that is my biggest problem with the Hobbit films.
