Age of Extinction

Am I crazy for liking this far more than the other 3? It's 90% due to Tucci, he's brilliant in this. Where the cringe-inducingly awful performances of Turturro and Tudyk and Malkovich failed, his succeeds and is actually quite funny.

Other than that, the main complaints are there this time around too. It's still totally incoherent in its action and has no sense of geography, as in it's rare that you know where characters in one spot are in relation to characters in another. There are still such long set pieces sometimes that the question 'hey, where is Prime during all of this, I haven't seen him in like 10 minutes' or 'wait, where the hell has Galvatron gone?' frequently come up. There's a bizarre story choice where Prime and the villain meet up for the first time and battle off screen/in the background, then they dump exposition at their second meeting instead as if the first never happened. I'm not even sure why the other 'knights' turned out to be dinobots or even why they were about 3 times the size of Prime, who is another Knight but then Prime has to fight one of them to convince the others that oh my god my brain's melting. And the film still has gaping plot holes. Seriously film, you have your humans trying to transport a heavy bag out of a city on the ground/on foot, with Prime telling them to get it out multiple times, and don't use either the flying dinosaur you have or Prime, who can turn on the foot rockets and can travel through space...

... which has to rank up there with Pacific Rim's super sword as another absurd 'what are you doing movie' moment.

So the more I meticulously go through these movies the more optimistic I become about a re-edit. There's a good film in here somewhere. Both parts so far have a reasonably solid core of good actors, set design and direction and it's really about pruning back on the bollocks to let these shine.

There are some things that simply can't be cut around without significant and jarring jumps, e.g. Thorin must be hurt when carried by the eagles, Kili has to be wounded and left behind in Laketown (with three other dwarves), Smaug must get covered in gold.

I'm hoping the extra 25 minutes or so for DoS will provide some useful stuff. Really hopeful for more Beorn especially as those scenes are a bit weak. I'm a bit amazed that they didn't follow the book for getting there and meeting him, as it's a unique scene that's quite amusing yet tense and also wonderfully mirrors their introduction to Bilbo. Instead we got another CHASED BY WARGS action scene.

'You killed Ted you medieval dickweed!' = instant win.

I appreciate the warning though, as I loved this movie when I was young(er) and it does seem to have potential to sour on adult viewing. I still listen to and love the soundtrack to Bogus Journey though, with God Gave Rock 'n' Roll to You.

I was quite deliberate with the phrasing, as the starting process isn't over and I won't really have started until extended editions for Smaug and Battle are out.

The greatest hurdle with any fanedit is that it's based purely on what's available. Which is why I don't really buy that it's a form of film criticism, as you don't have access to all of the shot material that the filmmaker had.

Well, what FIYH do is merely theoretical. A fan edit, which involves taking someone else's work and changing it, is a step beyond merely talking about it.

Not that I'm against fan edits, I'm already started on the Hobbit.

I saw the Secret Life of Walter Mitty and was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed it. I'm usually don't like the characters Ben Stiller plays, but he was great in this. Superbly shot film too and I was wonderfully surprised to learn at the end that he was the director.

I'm almost caught up on this show. I've been quite impressed with how often the show re-aligns with the books after its divergences (e.g. Ramsay and Theon). Also, the finality of Robb Stark Jnr at the Red Wedding poses an interesting question for those of us who have spent the last 10 years hoping that Jeyne Westerling was carrying his child.

Not to be a grouch or anything, but this is probably the least memorable of Tarantino's films for me. The only things I recall are Jackson's AK47 sell and DeNiro (?) turning around and shooting a nagging Bridget Fonda in a car park.

I should probably watch again and see if I'm more receptible to it as an adult.

At that link, someone has posted a great summation of what's wrong these films.

1. A bit of a copout but I think Ian McKellan's Gandalf is (still) superb. He has the gravitas of the wizard but balances it with vulnerability and old man kindness. The scene with him and Galadriel is surprisingly powerful (and very likely written by Fran Walsh).

2. Biggest mistake was going for a 9 hour trilogy, and I understand why he did it - way more Tolkien and how can that be a bad thing? 9 hours of LOTR was awesome and yet still not enough. However, so many of the problems stem from this decision. Without a core story in place of that duration, it has meant there has been far more room for additions from the writing team. But lest we forget, the weakest elements of LOTR were arguably the additions, especially the whole Aragon and Arwen thing in the third movie which makes no sense. Each movie needs to have its own arc, action sequences, big climax, and 'one-movie only' antagonists, whilst none of the protagonists can meet with any harm until the finale of the third movie. Hand in hand with these problems is that PJ and PB have really quite shlock sensibilities, they aren't nearly as good at writing Tolkien as they think. Thus we have this bizarre love triangle with a pretty boy dwarf, lots of crass humour, a lack of subtlety throughout, and a recycled Aragorn arc for Thorin. Further compounding these issues is PJ's film-making trajectory since LOTR, so we have the overly complicated cartoonish action of Tintin and the self-indulgence of King Kong.

3. Best scenes of either film were Riddles in the Dark and Inside Information. It was these scenes that made me perk up and I really enjoyed both. Whenever the films are doing actual Tolkien, they're good (except the utter waste of the Beorn scene).

Never mind - ultimately, I don't think you can argue that the guardians are ordinary when their abilities are unique among the galaxy, regardless of whether abilities in general are manifested by most inhabitants.

I stand corrected on the arrow, I didn't recall him whistling the entire time.

I think there's a difference between being a Superhero and a being with powers that are superhuman. The guardians all have abilities that are beyond your average human, with the one actual regular guy revealed to not be ordinary, and all the antagonists (with the exception of Thanos who just sits in a chair) have superpowers, whether it be a mind controlled super-arrow, superstrength and/or speed or the ability to fix oneself.

The most ordinary in this side of the galaxy are the Nova Corps, so their absence of any power (not just superpowers) comes across as especially bizarre. Like having Jedi without the Force.