I'm known to laugh at scenes in movies that are so cliched or contrived that it becomes ridiculous. I sometimes worry that I'm ruining the experience for other movie goers. I just saw the latest Hobbit movie and laughed hysterically at the scene where the orcs battle the dwarves while riding down the river in barrels. Eventually everyone in the theater caught on and started laughing too. Was it supposed to be funny or did the audience perceive it the same way I did?
-
3It was supposed to be funny, the music was happy (not dramatic or "epic" at all), which is a good indication imo. However, if you laughed before the dwarves where past the "gate" you laughed too early imo :P– invalid_idCommented Jan 24, 2014 at 6:41
-
1It was supposed to be funny, but rather for the slpastick style fighting, not because it was overly cliché or contrived (not saying that it wasn't). So if you laughed because of that, then you laughed for the wrong reason (from the filmmakers' point of view, of course). ;-)– Napoleon WilsonCommented Jan 24, 2014 at 10:04
-
I started laughing when the first Orc was hit with an arrow. That was before they went past the gate.– user148298Commented Jan 25, 2014 at 17:54
-
@NapoleonWilson, yeah, it was hard to tell. I was almost kicked out of a movie theatre because I laughed hysterically during the "it's too spicy" scene in To Wong Foo. It just was way too contrived and cliched: metacafe.com/watch/an-zcMz24YuuhuJY/…– user148298Commented Jan 25, 2014 at 18:00
Add a comment
|
1 Answer
Indeed yes. It supposed to be funny.
For those who also read the book knows that movies, especially the second movie according to the first one, are quite different then the books.
Making 3 movies from a book with ~350 pages is hard. Making each movie 3 hours long is harder. So the director Peter Jackson choose to fill each movie some action and many funny scenes. If you go back to the scenes where they are taken captive by the goblins in the caves, there are quite good action scene. Even you may thought if they had tried a bit harder, they would cleaned the goblins and capture the whole caves!
Barrel scene is similar to the caves except one is full of action and adrenalin while the other one is full of laughter.
The reason behind this funny or action scenes is, in my opinion, total movie time is too long according to the base book script. We are talking about a book with ~350 pages turns into movie of ~10 hours. Even hearing that makes the book fans and movie enthusiasts think about the content of the movies. Using that kind of scenes a lot, Jackson guarantees the viewer will have good time and will not get bored, or have disappointment for the big differences between the movies and the book. Filling that time is with such scenes makes the movie fans satisfied.
-
1The movie also reflects the tone of the book. Unlike the Lord of the Ring trilogy, The Hobbit was a children's book (though one often enjoyed by adults). The tone of the whole book was friendly and lighthearted, especially as first written. Even Gollum was friendly towards Bilbo (Tolkien revised this part of The Hobbit after the Lord of the Rings). The part you ask about is very different in the book, but the book itself has this almost slapstick humor (e.g., the invention of golf, the songs, ...). So I think some of the humor is an attempt to reflect the tone of the original work. Commented Jul 28, 2014 at 12:17