Half in the Bag Episode 63: The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug

half in the bag the devil is my hairdo hello boys and girls let me tell you a tale and please don't hit stop it's about two frauds and their VCR repair shop fixing VCRs is what they did all day and the names of these fellows were Mike and Jay horrible awful people some might say but they are about to learn the magic of Christmas this day Jesus Christ why is it so [ __ ] complicated okay thank you Oh Janice Christ ooh anal bead disasters in you a step-by-step guide to avoid going to the doctor when you know what happens mmm jeez what an embarrassing tape to pull out you think that's embarrassing I once owned a resale boutique oh my god oh I think there's something wrong with your shower we don't have a shower back there mr. Plunkett oh no that's a septic tank huh oh this coffee tastes terrible we don't have a coffee maker either that's also the septic tank huh Mike we've got to do something about mr. Plunkett he's becoming a real nuisance mm yeah the nice if we could kick his old ass out on the street yeah [ __ ] this loser hmm wait a minute I've got it oh oh oh krei a little boy what do you want for christmas um Lego Batman with ring I'm just doing pants Mike I'm certainly not opposed to making money but we're only charging a dollar we're not gonna make any real money doing this the mall Santas charge 10 ah therein lies the genius of my plan Jay while each child sits there unsuspectingly it leaves them vulnerable to this um take a bath photos back the ball okay oh that's brilliant yes exactly kids loose [ __ ] all the time and no one's gonna ask what happened to your wallet perfect and we're now three dollars richer would you like cars a car not like a toy one but like an actual car that drives oh it's just changed Hey change is money - I can I can get you a fake license I know a guy oh that's a princess cran we'll give me that Wow we've made like 50 bucks each yeah the only way to make crazy money like this is to work a half a shift at Taco Bell and we get to steal from children yeah this is great ah you know what Jay we've been working pretty hard I think it's time for a break yeah you want to sit down and talk about the desolation of smaug and of course I would allow of that truly the tales and songs fall utterly short of your enormity o Smaug the stupendous we are the dwarves of Erebor we have come to reclaim our homeland the hobbit the desolation of the Smaug is the second part of a new trilogy of middle-earth films from the original Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson in this film a dwarf named Thorin has to retrieve the ark stone from an evil fire-breathing dragon named Smaug another dwarf named Kili is falling for an elf named Kate from lost but the archer elf Legolas also has feelings for Kate from lost meanwhile Gandalf must separate from the pack of dwarfs to figure out the mystery of the necromancer there's also a hobbit in there somewhere who mostly just stands around and watches things happen Mike what did you think of the hobbit the desolation of Smaug The Hobbit part two of three of two trilogies I have to figure out where I was in the timeline of things a hobbit part two the desolation of Smaug I enjoyed a lot of elements of it a lot of it felt overcrowded and confusing and padded and a little too much happening for my tiny pea-sized brain to comprehend but you know I would have to say I liked it overall but there's a lot to discuss well that's ours in there that's the key to making a movie feel epic is just to have lots of things happening yeah and this movie does that uh maybe it's a case of lowered expectations because of the last movie there's lots of things I liked in the last movie but there was also lots of things that I found horribly disappointing as a fan of the original Lord of the Rings movies but I liked this one quite a bit a lot more than the last one the last one felt like sort of a hodgepodge of ideas sort of a Frankenstein's monster of different Tolkien writings it wasn't just an adaptation of The Hobbit and this one it did have a lot of subplots that had a lot of characters it had a lot of things going on but it felt more cohesive than that one did you can't focus at all for the visuals and the direction and all of the creativity I love I love the ore books they're so cool-looking yeah I wish there was more there's still some like guys and costumes in this but like the main the would they come like the white work or whatever he's CG and he has like a henchman that's CG and they look good like the effects are pretty seamless but I'd prefer a guy in a dumb rubber costume yeah I have to say this was the first Peter Jackson Lord of the Rings esque movie where kind of the first half felt like it was starting to look cheap which is a big statement because his movies always look great yeah and where some of the visual effects were starting I kind of like you know and then it's like that cuts to it like a set that's a set before it was like everything blended so beautifully and perfectly where it went from one landscape to a set and you didn't really notice and this one's like oh that's a set but then the ending really makes up for it I think they're they saved other money for the ending hmm and then I think that's the case with Peter Jackson where it's like he tries to do so much but he has the limitations of time like we have to release this movie in [ __ ] December finish it doesn't some of the effects get rushed all of his movies have one or two at least one or two instances of really shitty looking effects I read a book a long time ago called The Hobbit and [ __ ] if I remember what happened in it hobo bag and um and there was a thing called Gollum and he wants his ring I don't even remember the dragon in the book don't forgot about Somali I know we watch the cartoon we want Frank and bass cartoon yes here and I was like oh okay I kind of remember this and then it's like in this there's all this other stuff going on and they added new characters and it's like does this movie have to be two hours and 48 minutes long like yeah by the time we get to smug I'm I'm I'm I'm in a coma I'm processing sensory processing of the human brain is being tested with movies nowadays said two hour and 40 minute mark I was like oh god is that guy going to try to shoot the arrow at the Dragons still yeah that still gonna happen we've been watching this movie for eight hours yeah and we really could have you know cut out a lot of other stuff the stuff I found the most interesting I actually liked the little little love triangle plot gasps really yeah I was watching it when that happened when they started introducing that because I know Kate from lost is not a character that's a completely made-up character for the movies and they established that there's gonna be some sort of like love triangle and it's like really are we gonna do this now but you know what's so much [ __ ] going on get that out of here well that's the thing though that had emotion emotional connection for me I I don't care about getting the arc stone like in the Lord of the Rings trilogy there's this like just like ever-present looming threat of the eye in this big yeah you feel this this tension happening and they kind of add that in this with Gandalf running around this so evil is coming and right they're saying things like that and in this like I am NOT invested in the what's his name with Oakenshield hill Thorin Oakenshield plot I'm not really that invested in it Bilbo Baggins is underused in this movie I like him in these movies where she was the main character in the movies called The Hobbit yeah he's a really good actor he is he's really good like all the subtleties and his performance are really good and and I wish they used him more that I think in the cartoon version and probably The Hobbit too as we discussed before the the Great Smog the Great Dragon is killed by some guy just some guy shows up in town Town Lake it's not Bilbo it's not any of the doors junior or Tolkien's was like he didn't he didn't care about like Hollywood build ups and plots he's just like Alice some guy killed a dragon what an [ __ ] it's like no no no it has to be epic conclusion it has to be a Bilbo hanging on the Dragons neck with the black arrow go turn to done you know it has to have him he's just like whatever so then and they take that guy and we could be all wrong about this it's probably in compendiums and anthologies somewhere else a shop they take that guy his name some guy in this movie they give him his bard his name is the bard a bard it's Shakespeare William Shakespeare shows up in this movie No so then he he helps the dwarves I don't remember them being in a fish barrels like it's being snuck into the town and I like about him they may and my memory is very vague but there's a plot with him and he's got a family and he's he's the descendent of the guy who tried to shoot the dragon at some point which is kind of Hollywood ish and it's but on something it's something and but there's like all those plot lines are intersecting and the dwarves are fun and but I'm just kind of like bored I like I like Gandalf when he does his little adventures and he's doing the stuff and that's those are nice little touches but then the rest of it's like like slugging through confusion trying to trying to put all the pieces together as they're happening yeah yeah it's not like it's the movies incoherent it's just a lot to keep track of mmm lots of characters and a lot of them are sort of underutilized under written like I couldn't tell you the names of half of those dwarves knows the fat one there's the the tough one yeah and then there's the other one this is dopey sleepy eenie meenie miney and Moe whatever Achille and until II well I think one of our biggest problems both of us with the last movie was the the overdone 45-minute action sequences that went on and on and got completely ridiculous and this movie scales that back a little bit there's lots of expository scenes in this movie there's lots of character scenes in this movie but there is some big action scenes and one of them that we were right on the money about was the barrel sequence remind us of how the barrel sequence originally was done oh they they hide in little barrels so they can get out of the city they go down the river and they escape and that's the scene there were no there was no subplot about works trying to yeah there's not orcs trying to kill him there's not the the elves trying to stop them leaving and but this one it's like they get in the barrel say I should say I actually found the sequence a lot more fun than I was expecting I enjoyed because I was waiting for it to happen and I was waiting to be bored by it but it was it was goofy it was weird it was kind of dumb but there was some creativity going on yeah Peter Jackson reintroduced something that was in on the Lord of the Rings movies that I loved a lot which is tons and tons of decapitations but yeah they get little barrels and they go and it's kind of fun because they get to the edge of the elf city and the elves close the gates so they can't get out and they have to turn the lever to get out but then it just keeps going and they're going down waterfalls and they're jumping in and out of barrels and there's yeah elves Scouten arrows and it's just complete nonsense yeah it becomes a little cartoony but Legolas can now do anything yes he's like Spider Man him in the Kate from lost both I guess yeah they're both so good at what they're doing it almost to the point of cartoon enos but yeah there was on part with one of the dwarves getting the barrel jumps out of the thing and it rolls along and it's and I actually liked that sequence a lot yeah there's lots a little fun touches in it that could have kept my interests despite how silly it was in the fact that it didn't advance anything in the movie there is no King under the mountain nor will there ever be it will not end here with every victory this evil will grow Douglas has grown very fond of not give him hope where there is nothing so for a movie called The Hobbit the character of The Hobbit uh is barely in it for most of the movie movie was called The Hobbit it was called the hobbit the desolation of smaug oh my god I thought we were watching last vegas uh I'm okay with the lack of Hobbit Ness in this he was he was on a mission to do his thing he had he had a couple nice scenes in it III I liked the universe I like the the mythology and all the the grand grandness of everything Swisher was a little less overstuffed with things happening yeah mainly mainly subplots because yeah it's this big grand universe there's lots of characters there's lots of villages and you know there's dwarves and elves and all that stuff and it all feels really lived in yeah but yeah a little more focused storytelling wise would be would be helpful yeah cuz when it does get back to the Hobbit like it's kind of like the first movie the the best sequence in that movie was the extended scene between Bilbo and Gollum yeah and in this movie the best sequence is the sequence between Bilbo and Smaug yes it's it's it's probably too long because Peter Jackson loves all this stuff but it's really good it's really well acted from both uh Morgan Freeman and Smaug but I think the original Lord of the Rings trilogy the the Frodo adventures I think that had a good like we're seeing this world through the eyes of a hobbit it starts off in the Shire and then yeah go on our adventure and there it's focused on them and this it's like yes he's in it but there's all these other big things happening and there's less material to make these big movies out of the Lord of the Rings books obviously are huge Hobbit is not so much so it's putting patchwork in everywhere and I think that's where it just starts to become a little little messy yeah I think it's less messy than the first movie though this one it felt like things were connecting in a way that the first one didn't it was like oh here we're adapting The Hobbit and then we're off on some other thing and then we go back to the but this one if it feels like it's it's all going to connects I think it's good that Peter Jackson loves this universe and and wants to make these big big movies because there are a lot of people out there that love them they love all the detail they love that he grabbed this from this source and put it in there and made it work and and that is great I would love Star Trek movies to be like that so you know it's just it's a matter of taste but when you're playing it for just you know Joe Schmo in the audience some things you got to pull out and tighten up and act a little more connections with I you know these movies will be around forever and Lord of the Rings fans can sit there and dissect them and it kind of felt like we're watching the director's cut like the ad for our long extended edition which there will be for this one I want to see a Bilbo Baggins go on a little adventure and thence them go on a barrel run and then get some works come and then he Opie's got to confront the dragon now I'm like oh this is the right to point hit the points right and and nine get it in under 90 minutes I'd be very very curious to see when the third movie comes out someone to make a fan edit that turns them into just an adaptation of The Hobbit and it's like two hours long at most I would love to see that and it's entirely possible I guess it's the exact opposite reaction I head to the Lord of the Rings movies where when I heard about the extended cuts like when that was first coming out I was like oh I want to see more of this mm-hmm but these The Hobbit movies I want to see less of them you middle-earth is back at Denny's with the build-your-own Hobbit slam 20 delicious options like sweet potato pecan pancakes hearty breakfast sausage an unaccredited a meal to satisfy the hunger of hobbits see the hobbit the desolation of smaug well just like the original Lord of the Rings trilogy in this new Hobbit trilogy the best performance comes from a completely CGI character mm-hmm McCallum in the original movies and now smug in this one yes let's talk about smooth smooth I missed the golem I would have been nice to see him appear in this they've been a cameo which they didn't even feel the need to do I think that restraint is good yeah restraint yeah um oh I guess we should say spoilers because we'll probably talk about how this film ends okay yeah so Smaug is good in the movie we're gonna get into spoilers about the ending and smug skip to this time code to avoid there's a double-edged sword with this Smaug character because you're like that's it that's the worst creature in middle-earth the one to be most terrified of and it's it's built up so much and he gets there and it's like oh there it is you know you see his eye and your and the dragons are super smart too a lot of people don't know that um they're highly intelligent and you're scared you know and then their exchanges and the things that happen it's very well done it's very tense and you're really interested other than a lot of the other sequences in the film where like I'm just my eyes are blurring because everyone's going for sure but the Smaug scenes done very well and then it goes on all too long and then the the the grandness of Smaug starts to diminish a little when wacky hijinx trick him they're dancing on his on his mouth and and then it just becomes another big dumb action sequence instead of restraint yeah because you mentioned restraint you know Smaug looks good he's got a lot of weight to his movements and you can tell that the the scenes between him and Bilbo where they're just talking are probably the closest direct adaptations from the original because it's like the dialogue and stuff it all kind of has a different sound and feel to it than the rest of the movie similar to the Gollum scene in the first topic movie yeah it's like you made this movie because you wanted to do this scene like this is something you'd loved from the books and that's very obvious but yeah then the other the other little Dwarfs show up but they'll start fighting smog and they're going down caverns on ropes or on chains or whatever and there's like a pulley system and and yeah that's where it becomes like okay the same scene happened in the previous film in the goblin Kingdom right it was very similar yeah where there are slight forms and going around and it's like this isn't what's interesting what's interesting is the the the dynamic going on between the two characters and then sort of like Bilbo trying to outwit him yeah I would have been very happy with that kind of scene and then small threaten makes threats and then decides to leave and go attack the town and that's all we needed but they had to give all the drawer of something to do and it kind of became it reminded me of Attack of the Clones your belt scene yeah where it's like um although I know this dragons going out and gonna attack the town I know that's what's eventually going to happen so all this other stuff becomes superfluous and pointless well I think the reason they added all that stuff is because without it this movie would feel even more anticlimactic yeah um which is something we should point out like I know this is the second part of a trilogy but it's still you know it's not gonna be the conclusion to a whole story but it still felt like I know it's in the theater like everyone's like oh I guess it's over you know it really felt more anti-climactic than any there's there has to be some sort of satisfying conclusion as its own movie but still make you interested in seeing the next one yeah and this one was like oh they try to thing they thought they killed the dragon they didn't and now I guess the movies done okay let's let's set the record straight here okay these movies are great yes they're ambitious they're well-made they're good yeah I don't want to give the wrong impression um but you and I are were translating and were interpreters for movie-going audiences well there are two two audiences for this movie there's there's Joe audience member and Lord of the Rings fans yes and Peter Jackson is Lord of the Rings fan he's a filmmaker and a storyteller but at the same time he can over indulge in all this wizardry nonsense it's a is there such a thing as too much good thing yes well speaking of general audiences I was thinking about this while watching the movie do you remember a high frame rate do you remember 48 frames per second when that was gonna be a thing I do I I do remember this I was thinking that in terms of general audiences because there's the people that just go to watch a movie they might say oh the movie starts at this time and then they get there and they say oh it's in 3d it's in 48 frames okay whatever they put on their glasses and they just watch the movie and they have no understanding of the fact that something is different or weird about it yeah it's the same people that have HD TVs and have that like motion smooth thing on it and they don't even notice it like because they're just watching things and they don't they don't look at it that way people that early in the film apparently did not like the high frame rate I got a lot of controversy when it first came out and now no one talks about it at all well that's the thing with this movie we had three different options hmm we had 2d 3d and 3d high frame rate that's still that's a thing and I guess that's a Peter Jackson thing he wants to do yeah but we saw it in wonderfully dark theater very big screen 2d presentation looked great sounded great that's completely happy yes with that I did not dim the picture with damn 3d glasses and we did not have to see the dwarf TV show so III don't get it and you're right um general audiences probably they understand what 3d is right I would guess one out of a million understands what high frame rate is yeah and and and would even notice it and that's the sad part is is that why why push it if people don't notice it well that Tizen was something that during the barrel sequence in this movie there's a couple shots it was very weird that looks like they were shot on like a GoPro or something it was supposed to be like the barrels point of view yeah I guess and it was looked like like cheap pixelated video yeah and it was just a couple quick shots and I even looked over it I was like what was that both noticed it it was really weird and that's something I don't think a general audience would even notice they would just see the the water crashing into the rocks and stuff but that was like why is that in there for one second yeah unless it's like we can't strap a red camera to a barrel let's strap this lesser and HD camera okay no same yeah when it's blown up to that size and that might have been the case I have no idea but I mean I'm all I'm all for experimentation in these mainstream movies it's why I like crank to it looks like it yeah like a cheap skateboard video from the 90s um cry crank too you could shoot your action scenes with a GoPro cam exactly but Nabeel orderings epic like why are we watching GoPro footage you have no right to into that mountain we've been blind in our blindness so Mike would you recommend the hobbit the desolation of ah yeah I would come with an empty bladder these movies are big and epic and they're worth your price of admission and there's lots of little moments in them not overly nerdy not overly technical there's a motion there's action then there is a big dragon at the end that's worth worth sitting through the whole movie get to sure I would also recommend it did you definitely get your money's worth when you go to see a movie like this but it does feel like you you've eaten a little too much cake where it's like oh that cake was good but I probably should not have eaten the entire thing because now I'm gonna vomit all over myself and others and potentially others strip into the light well we've talked about The Hobbit I guess we should get back to dealing with these brats ya know oh here comes the next one now alright so what do you want PlayStation Xbox a new bike one of those Wiis wanna you want a 60-inch Plasma screen TV for your bedroom or something what what I don't want anything like that so like cash then you want a a gift card to Starbucks no I just hope my daddy to find a job what is the word for over a year takes some really sad oh I don't know what ifs Anakin can do anything for you I oh it's terrible arms higher it was then Mike and Jay were confirmed for gay inside they knew that Christmas wasn't about stealing it was about giving love and a heart full of feeling in fact the truth is I must say that their hearts did grow three times bigger that day I'm sorry mr. Baumann you now have a condition called cardiomegaly or enlarged heart syndrome you'll have to take these medications every day for the rest of your life or you'll die what this is [ __ ] why do I get the enlarged heart and he's just fine actually it was a good thing that Mike was admitted today he was near death with shrunken heart syndrome but learning the magical joy of Christmas giving turned his heart back into the perfect normal-sized Mike you're going to be okay Wow so you mean stealing from children and then pretending to care saved my life Christmas is magic oh I forgot there's some more medication you need to take

Channel: RedLetterMedia

Views: 1,015,757

Keywords: redlettermedia, red, letter, media, half in the bag, mike stoklasa, jay bauman, rich evans, plinkett, hobbit, desolation of smaug, peter jackson

Id: QdHAi_GWSAc

Length: 29min 29sec (1769 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 23 2013