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Prequel to Kiki's Delivery Service - The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies Fan Reaction · This Film is Lit

• 0:09
  Speaker A: On this week's prequel episode, we follow up on our battle of the Five Armies listener polls and preview Keke's delivery service. Hello, and welcome back to another prequel episode of. This film is lit August, where we talk about movies that are based on books. It's a prequel episode. We got a lot of feedback about the Hobbit to get to, so we'll jump straight in to our patron shoutouts.
• 0:37
  Speaker B: I put up with you because your father and mother were our finest patrons. That's why.
• 0:42
  Speaker A: No new patrons this week. But we do have our Academy Award winning patrons, and they are Nicole Goble. Eric Harperatin. I legit wondered if I might be a speed reader, but according to several online tests, it turns out no parenthetical. Nathan Vic vega Mathilde Steve from Arizona Int. Draft Teresa Schwartz ian from wine country Winchesters forever Kelly Napier Grey Hightower gratch. Just gratch. Shelby's torn between promoting arctic fox copywriting and telling you to read Ocean's echo and watch Deadpool and Wolverine. That darn skag v. Frank and Alina Starkov. Thank you all for your continued support at that $15 level. Incredibly gracious. We're incredibly grateful. I don't know what I'm saying. And we appreciate it a lot. Katie. Let's see what the people had to say about the Hobbit. The battle of the Five Armies.
• 1:41
  Speaker B: Yeah, well, you know, that's just like your opinion, Mandy. On Patreon, we had two votes for the book, two for the movie, and one listener who couldn't decide. Our first comment was from Shelby, who said, I mentioned in part two that I had thoughts on what happens in the Hobbit, right where desolation of Smaug ends. So I'm gonna start there. When the first movie came out, I'd seen the Lord of the Rings movies, but I'd never read any of the books. I saw the first hobbit, and I had a great time, so I decided to catch up on the book to see what happens next. I'm only putting that out there because maybe the movie affected my expectations for where the book was going. I don't think it did. The difference in tone was pretty clear, and I really enjoyed the book as its own thing. As I watched these chuckleheads journey to the mountain, the question always in the back of my mind was, how are they going to deal with the dragon? I must know. Over time, I started putting the pieces together. Tolkien had done a masterful job of dropping hints, and when I realized where they led, I was hyped I could not believe I hadn't been spoiled for what happened in the Hobbit. I knew this book was beloved and that Tolkien was supposed to be brilliant, but now I could really appreciate it for myself. This was such a smart update on Dragon Slayer stories. I was so happy to be reading it. I couldn't wait to see how the showdown played out between Bilbo and his friends versus Smaug. And then Smaug fucked off to Laketown and within a paragraph a wild NPC appeared and shot him dead and it was over. I didn't even care that I was like 80% through the book. I stopped reading. I don't rage quit books very often, but I don't get rickrolled by books very often either. The line about Smaug's bones in the lake was cool though.
• 3:27
  Speaker A: I mean, that's interesting. I remember being disappointed with the way the smog storyline ended in the book when I first read it, but not that disappointing I guess. I'll say. I remember being a little like oh I guess that's that. It resolved a little anticlimactically for me, but not in a way that like made me stop reading.
• 3:49
  Speaker B: I'm gonna admit this has genuinely never bothered me. It honestly like never occurred to me to be bothered by this. Not really sure why. Intellectually I get it, but I don't know, it just doesn't bother me. Shelby went on to say I guess the silver lining here is that if Tolkien didn't want the ending he set up, that means it's mine now. So there's that. Its kind of funny looking back, but I was so mad I watched the last two movies before I ever went back and finished the book. As to why I picked the movie last time. I like when characters make plans to deal with their problems. I dont need the plans to succeed, I just want the writers to show me that the characters are active participants in their own stories unless they have a reason not to be. At the end of movie two, the dwarves made a plan and tried it. Still not the one I was waiting for in the book, but they try something. To me that's way better than them doing nothing at all. It helps in the movie that Bard is a character we've set up and care about before he ever kills the dragon. The movies are doing everything they can so at least I'm not sitting in the stands like quit playing and get the fuck back up Smaug. I really liked how Bard's kid is part of the makeshift bow too, as for part three. I'm giving it to the movie because I'm still petty and the scenes of characters trying to get through to Thorin hurt me. I'm gonna credit that to the performances. It was probably fun to play.
• 5:18
  Speaker A: I do think that's all the best stuff in the movie.
• 5:20
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 5:20
  Speaker A: Like the stuff with Thorne and specifically with Bilbo but also the other characters like Balin and stuff. Talking to him is the stuff that works the best.
• 5:28
  Speaker B: Yeah. And I don't know if we talked about it specifically because it does get kind of splintered by the way that the movies are split up. But I do think that given the fact that it is Bard who kills Smaug that setting him up as more of an actual character. Yes, that's the right choice.
• 5:48
  Speaker A: Yeah. No, I like expanding Bard the way they did in the movies. I think we mentioned that. But, yeah, I enjoyed him having a larger role.
• 5:55
  Speaker B: Shelby went on to say other thoughts. Bilbo speaking up about giving Bard and Thranduil the Arkenstone makes way more sense in the movie. In the book, he does it unprompted even knowing how everyone will react. But in the movie, Thorin declares it's a fake which forces Bilbo to say something if he wants his plan to work.
• 6:13
  Speaker A: I don't think that saying. I mean, I think that it does prompt it in the movie. I don't think it needed. To me, him volunteering that information unprompted is totally within his character.
• 6:25
  Speaker B: Yeah, I would agree with that.
• 6:26
  Speaker A: To me, there doesn't need to be an exclamation for why Bilbo decides to be like, yeah, I stole it and gave it to him because that's just too Bilbo. That's why he goes back, is he feels indebted to them. But he's also a very honest person. Like part of his thing he does. You know, he's. That's.
• 6:42
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 6:42
  Speaker A: The Hobbits in general, their whole thing is that Tolkien made them incredible. Like paragons of virtue essentially, for the most part other than the. Other than the Sackville backinses. But. And so I. That just felt totally in line with his character in the book to me, that he would tell them because he doesn't expect. When you say he.
• 7:01
  Speaker B: Yeah. Because they're. I mean, hobbits are not just paragons of virtue but they have kind of such an outlook that they expect other people, I think, to react the same way that they will.
• 7:12
  Speaker A: I think he knew that Thorne would be upset but I don't think he expected Thorin to like try to throw him off the wall. Right?
• 7:19
  Speaker B: Because Bilbo would never do that. So why would Thorin? Yeah, I think the filmmakers hit a snag due to the nature of what the ring is in the book versus the movie. I totally agree with that. In movie two, there's the part where Bilbo loses the ring and goes apeshit on the baby spider. Its great foreshadowing. But now we have a problem. I can see how Bilbo would look at that and go, okay I lost the ring and it didnt go well, but now I have it back and im fine. It makes sense that he would think the Arkenstone works the same way. By that logic he should just give it to Thorin. But we need him not to do that. So we have Smaug tell Bilbo what the stone will do to Thorin. But hey, maybe Smauglide Thorins clearly not well. So he double checks with Balin first before going through with his plan to turn the stone over to Bard and Thranduil.
• 8:09
  Speaker A: The moment where Bilbo loses the ring in the second movie. And then you say here he would look at that and go, okay, I lost the ring and it didn't go well. But now I have it back and I'm fine. And so that creates a problem for him not just giving Thorin the Arkenstone. I don't know that that's necessarily the case. I didn't see that. Because to me, he knows the power that an item like that can have over you. And so the fact that he seems fine when he gets the ring back, I don't. Hmm. I don't necessarily interpret that as right. I didn't view that as him like that. That would make him be like, oh, well, as long as Thorin gets the arkenstone, he'd be fine. I don't know.
• 9:00
  Speaker B: It's interesting. And I have other thoughts on drawing parallels between the ring and the Arkenstone because I think it totally makes sense. But I'm also not 100% confident that that is present within the text of the film as much as maybe I think it is. Do you know what I'm saying? Say that again. Sorry. Making a parallel between the ring and the Arkenstone I think makes perfect sense because they serve like kind of similar functions for these two different characters.
• 9:35
  Speaker A: I will say this. It's not a thing in my head watching the movies or reading the book that I remotely like connected.
• 9:41
  Speaker B: But that's why I have personal doubts as to whether it's actually in the text or if it's more something that I'm imposing on the text, I would say.
• 9:54
  Speaker A: I don't know. Yeah. Cause like I said to me, that's not. I don't. Like. I never really thought of them. I don't know. My brain did not make that connection of them as having, like, operate as being similar items in the way they hold. Like, obviously they are.
• 10:09
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 10:09
  Speaker A: Like, in certain ways. But I did not connect Bilbo's sort of relationship with the ring to Thorin's relationship with the Arkenstone.
• 10:19
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 10:19
  Speaker A: Because especially in the book, which I guess can maybe part of what Shelby's getting at here.
• 10:25
  Speaker B: Right. Because the. The ring is treated very differently in the book. Yeah.
• 10:29
  Speaker A: It does not seem to happen.
• 10:30
  Speaker B: When Tolkien wrote it, he had not decided. Decided it was the one ring of pure evil yet.
• 10:34
  Speaker A: Yeah. And we don't even know for sure if he had. I guess we can assume that he imagined that it would corrupt in some capacity because it seems like Gollum is obsessed with it in a way that is. But you also could, I think, argue that maybe the plan initially was just that Gollum is that way and about the ring, but that it's not so much the ring that I don't know. It's hard to know without knowing what we know later. It's hard to know what.
• 11:03
  Speaker B: Like, Gollum just has an obsessive personality.
• 11:06
  Speaker A: That's what I mean. Like, you could argue just based on the Hobbit, the first book, just that book. Because I don't think we see the way the ring affect anybody else in any way. Like, emotionally, really. Like, Bilbo never. Does he like that I'm in the book? Obviously, in the movie he does, but.
• 11:23
  Speaker B: I don't think so. No.
• 11:24
  Speaker A: And so I don't. I'm not sure if it. Yeah, if it, like, if at that point, the ring was supposed to be, like, this corrupting influence yet. And if. Or if that was a lit. I don't know. That's interesting because obviously the movie.
• 11:41
  Speaker B: Right. Well, the movie has to treat it like that because that's canon and Lord of the Rings.
• 11:46
  Speaker A: Yeah. I don't know. I have to think on that. I don't have a good response or answer or anything insightful to add right now.
• 11:53
  Speaker B: I think, like, part of the way that the reason that I kind of struggle with not being sure if the parallels between those two items are something that the film wants me to pick up on or if it's something that I'm kind of thinking of in my head is because the ring doesn't, like, come up a ton in this third movie.
• 12:13
  Speaker A: No, he puts it on, like.
• 12:14
  Speaker B: He puts it on, like one. Like, close to the end, but.
• 12:17
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 12:18
  Speaker B: And then obviously him and Gandalf have, like, a little teehee conversation about it at the end.
• 12:23
  Speaker A: But that was added.
• 12:24
  Speaker B: But other than that was also added really come up in this movie.
• 12:27
  Speaker A: Yeah. And that discussion about the ring we know was added, like, later, like, after the fact. That wasn't the initial discussion. Whatever. Maybe it was still about the ring in some capacity, but they. That most of that conversation was added after the fact. So, yeah, I don't know.
• 12:40
  Speaker B: Shelby went on to say you mentioned some parts of the Hobbit inspiring the beginning of fellowship. I'm pretty sure the Arkenstone was Tolkien's early version of the one.
• 12:49
  Speaker A: And, see, that would make sense if maybe he liked the way the Arkenstone corrupted Thorin and, like, that plot element.
• 12:58
  Speaker B: And then, like, later on.
• 13:00
  Speaker A: Later on decided to give that to the ring as well, to give it that kind of corrupting influence. Because again, I don't think in this book that it's ever really. Again, you can infer that from the way Gollum acts that maybe the ring has done something to him. And we know in the later ones that that is the case.
• 13:16
  Speaker B: Yes.
• 13:17
  Speaker A: But in this one, in just this book, he could just be a shitty guy who found a ring. You know what I mean? Like, he could just be an obsessive psychopath who found a ring and just covets it. You know what I mean? Like, it might not be the ring that made him that way just in this book on its own.
• 13:33
  Speaker B: No. And it is. I do think it's really interesting the way that all of these different kind of versions of this media plays off of each other and especially with the way that, like, the history of the way that the books were written versus the way that the movies were made. Because it was really. It was not possible for either of us to go into this endeavor without that awareness of the Lord of the Rings.
• 14:05
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 14:06
  Speaker B: Right. So, you know, it does bring up that question of, like, is this actually in the text or is this something that we're inferring because we know the broader context?
• 14:17
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 14:18
  Speaker B: The second movie did a pretty good job making me believe Tarriel would go after Kili to save him from poison. But that wasn't enough to carry their whole relationship for the rest of the franchise, for fuck's sake.
• 14:29
  Speaker A: Yeah, it would go.
• 14:30
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 14:30
  Speaker A: Like I said, I thought their relationship was okay in that movie and then just didn't. Did nothing for me in this one.
• 14:36
  Speaker B: Loved Galadriel smiting that orc.
• 14:38
  Speaker A: Very fun.
• 14:39
  Speaker B: Why wouldn't the orcs send the dune worms to destroy their enemy's army? Surely there wouldn't be much left to fight after that.
• 14:47
  Speaker A: I.
• 14:48
  Speaker B: It's not convenient for the plot.
• 14:50
  Speaker A: For the plot? Yeah, I. Yeah, I don't know, like, that one. I'm not. I'm not that, you know, that kind of thing. I'm like, whatever. Like, I get. I get it. And, like, I would agree, but that's, you know, we're getting into territory of, like, why didn't they just take fly on the eagles, the ring to mount Doom? Like, you know, I. Because then there wouldn't be a movie, I guess. I don't know, like, points stands, you know? And I, like I said, it can be fun to do that kind of nitpicking sometime. I do it myself sometimes. I. But it is lots of times, I'm sure. But I don't know. Sometimes I'd just be like, eh, whatever. And in this instance, I just didn't. The worms themselves. I just was kind of indifferent to them. And, like, I don't know.
• 15:30
  Speaker B: Both Thorin and Kili get a scene where they give a treasured heirloom to their special someone. Does that move run in the family or were the writers burnt out and scrambling? I just think it's very interesting is all. One of these scenes was much better than the other.
• 15:47
  Speaker A: What did Thorin give?
• 15:50
  Speaker B: Was that the scene with the mithril?
• 15:53
  Speaker A: I guess, yeah. I think it's also in Lord of the Rings specifically, there is a. Items have a very.
• 16:04
  Speaker B: Yes, items hold a lot of value.
• 16:05
  Speaker A: Hold a lot of value and a lot of power. So the idea of giving an item to a person as a gift is something that within the universe is like a. Yeah. Kind of a hallmark of the. An earmark of the universe. So, you know, and in our world, to be fair, like, obviously people give gifts to people they love pretty regularly. So it's like a. Yeah.
• 16:26
  Speaker B: Whole industry is built on it.
• 16:27
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 16:30
  Speaker B: Shelby's last note here was, I just wanted to thank you for the summer series. It was fun to revisit all my thoughts on the Hobbit.
• 16:36
  Speaker A: Fantastic. Well, thank you for coming along and for commenting.
• 16:43
  Speaker B: Our next comment was from Nathan, who said, I gotta say, I'm surprised by your take on this one. I'm not. Nope. I've been much less fond of the movies to this point. But for me. This one easily goes to the film.
• 16:59
  Speaker A: That's fascinating to me.
• 17:01
  Speaker B: I think this mostly has to do with my dislike of the end of the Hobbit.
• 17:05
  Speaker A: Okay.
• 17:06
  Speaker B: Well, then, I mean, yeah, it really feels like Tolkien just got tired of writing a story about a dragon. As Shelby says, that ending for Smaug is some b's that doesn't fit the build of the rest of the book. I guess Tolkien wanted to transition to focus on Thorin being affected by his lust for the Arkenstone. But it's so abrupt. It honestly feels like a whole new book that has to be crammed into 40 pages.
• 17:30
  Speaker A: I don't necessarily disagree with that. And like I said, that was definitely something I felt as a kid when I've read this, like, the first time, I remember being, like, what? The dragon is? Like, dead. Like, almost off camera, basically. Like. But I don't know. It did not. I mean, we did say specifically in. The. Both of us said in the episode that this final part of the book was our least favorite part of the book but it still worked way better than the movie for me, just because the movie.
• 17:58
  Speaker B: No, it was interesting to me to see, like, multiple people say this because, like, genuinely. And again, I understand this. Like, I understand the point being made. I don't even disagree with the point being made. Just literally, like, never occurred to me to be upset by that.
• 18:14
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 18:15
  Speaker B: And I think part of that might be because my introduction to the Hobbit was the animated movie. And if I'm remembering correctly, I think that, like, the battle is, like, very, very short. Like, the battle of the five armies. So, like, we'll find out when we watch. So I'm thinking, like, maybe it just didn't occur to me to find it anti climactic because it was so close to the end. Yeah, but, yeah, no, I guess that could be. But I also think, well, they're talking.
• 18:42
  Speaker A: About Smaug, not the battles. Okay. You said the battle. You meant the battle with Smaug.
• 18:46
  Speaker B: No, the battle of the five Armies, if I'm remembering right, is a very, very short, condensed version of it in the animated one. So I'm wondering if when I was watching it as a kid it didn't occur to me that that's, like an anticlimactic end for the dragon.
• 19:06
  Speaker A: Okay. But the battle of the five armies is not the end of the dragon.
• 19:12
  Speaker B: No, I'm not saying it is.
• 19:14
  Speaker A: I'm confused what you're saying then. So I'm sorry. I'm sorry.
• 19:16
  Speaker B: I'm saying that maybe I didn't clock that there was, like, so much stuff happening after the dragon. I see what you're saying is that.
• 19:24
  Speaker A: Because in the mo. Okay, okay. I see what you're saying to where the dragon dying felt more climactic in that movie because there isn't an entire battle. There isn't this big drawn out battle afterwards that makes the drag. Is that what you're getting?
• 19:38
  Speaker B: Yeah, that's what I'm getting at. Okay.
• 19:40
  Speaker A: I saw that I was having trouble.
• 19:41
  Speaker B: This is also, though, this is based on my memory of it. I have not seen it for years and years. So I might be wrong, but I also think that within the book, arguably smaug being killed by bard and not, like, Bilbo and the dwarves is in line with the dwarves not being able to do anything for themselves.
• 20:06
  Speaker A: Absolutely. I think that makes sense. I don't have any issue, and I don't. I would. I would imagine maybe Shelby and Nathan might agree with the fact that it's not so much that maybe a different person unless they set up differently and I missed or misremembering, but that it's a different person. But just that in the book, it's so, like, quick. Like, it's just like he just flies away and then, like, we get, like, it's like a page and a half from him getting to Laketown and then Bard killing him. And again, also the fact that Bard is a character we have never met until that point, I think that maybe is what. But I don't. That being said, I still don't think that. I think your point still stands that that's still within the keeping of the book as a whole because, you know, like, the eagles just kind of swoop out of nowhere. It's like, surprise, you know, like, that is just a thing. Like, the deus ex machina within the Hobbit is legion. Yes. It happens pretty regularly, and it's kind of just the nature of the story in the way that, yeah, they bumble around and don't.
• 21:11
  Speaker B: Yeah, they kind of bumble around and then, you know, Gandalf pops out of nowhere or the eagles appear or bard shows up and kills the dragon.
• 21:21
  Speaker A: No, that's fair. Yeah. Yeah. I still think I do understand what they're saying in a sense that I think ultimately it is maybe slightly less satisfying because of that.
• 21:34
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 21:35
  Speaker A: Not that it's not within fitting.
• 21:36
  Speaker B: I'm not saying that it's not.
• 21:37
  Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah.
• 21:40
  Speaker B: I'm just having a little argument mostly with myself. Nathan went on to say with the choice to skip a large part of the battle and instead include Bobo's whole trip home. It really feels like the book skipped. Skipped a few fitting and interesting endings to meander about and do nothing. The movie does what I think is an admirable job of finding a compelling end to the story. The Thorin mission to take out Azog, which provided a solid goal to root for, and we actually get to see it through. I also thought the battle did a really good job of capturing the ebb and flow of the good guys hopes. There was a sense of hopelessness created by the clearly superior numbers of the orcs, but there were enough energy generating moments that allowed me to feel like there was still a chance. I include among these the elves jumping over the shield wall. It made me think, fuck yeah, the elves are here. In a way that just firing arrows wouldn't have. It was so cool that I never even considered that it probably was a bad battle strategy.
• 22:41
  Speaker A: And that's fine. Like I said, we talked about in the episode, like, you know, sometimes roll cool. Like, it's fine. You can do that. We were just joking about it, how silly it was. But, yeah, there's plenty of things like that in movies that I'm like, I don't care. It's cool. I don't care if it really makes sense.
• 22:56
  Speaker B: And I think the thing, and we talked about this in the episode, but kind of the thing that then makes moments like that feel a little bit, at least for me, like, okay, instead of really cool is that there are too many of those moments in this movie.
• 23:12
  Speaker A: Yeah, I do agree, though, kind of generally, and I talked about it, like, there were a lot of stuff in the battle that I liked, and I thought the ebb and the flow and the way the different platoon, whatever the word, like, the groups moved around and the ebb and flow of the battle, I thought, kind of worked overall. I didn't think the battle itself was bad. Badly done. I just thought it was too long. Yeah. And too messy. And we did, like, the thorn going and confronting exog. Like, we talked about how we thought that was a good. Including that made a lot of sense. It's just, yeah, it was too long and too full of nonsense that it just became boring in a way that I have never had that experience with. The Battle of Helm's deep or the battle of Pellinore fields or whatever, even battle of Pellanorn fields is very long, and there's lots of back and forth and different things happening, but it never felt nearly as grating as this battle did. Where I just. And again, I think a big part of that is there's just so much of the over the top nonsense in this one whereas there's a lot of really interesting, like, interspersed in the battle of Pelennor Fields, there's a lot of really compelling character moments. And this one, in my opinion, lacks those really compelling character moments. There's a few of them, like Thorin dying, but that's about it. Other than that, there isn't really much in the way of super compelling character moments because I just don't care about these characters. I think if the series as a whole had done a much better job of writing these characters in a way where I really liked them or cared about them or their relationships, I think the battle, even with the over the top stuff, I still could have liked it more than I did. But ultimately, when we're not having any moments where I care about the people that are fighting in it, it just becomes noise, kind of.
• 25:14
  Speaker B: Yeah, I agree. Nathan's last comment here was I thought the final scene with Thorin and Bilbo was heartbreakingly romantic. I didn't really get the ship vibe from them to this point, but that scene made me think Bilbo had always been in love with Thorinous. It was by far more moving than their kind of stilted goodbye from the book. I thought this movie had more emotional heart and inspiring moments than the previous films and far more than the mess that is the end of the book.
• 25:41
  Speaker A: I don't agree with that.
• 25:43
  Speaker B: But they agree to disagree, I guess.
• 25:46
  Speaker A: Yeah. I don't know. The thing is that I don't entirely disagree. I think some of the best moments in this movie were the best moments in the series. Like, I think this movie had some of the best moments in the series. I just think it also had way too much of the worst stuff in the series.
• 26:05
  Speaker B: I think that's the thing for me because, you know, like, I did think that the stuff between Bilbo and Thorin was some of the best stuff in the book. And, like, you know, Thorin's downward spiral and people trying to reach him and all of that stuff I thought was really good for me. It just does not come even close to outweighing the rest of the chaos and the cacophony.
• 26:30
  Speaker A: Yeah. And just spending on the amount of time we spend, like, with characters that, again, I can't stress enough, I just don't care about. Because they didn't have enough time to be developed or for whatever reason or the development they were given. Just didn't really work that well or whatever. And so yeah, yeah, too much of it just fell flat for me.
• 26:51
  Speaker B: Our next comment is from Steve from Arizona. And Steve said, I don't think there would have been any other choice besides the book. This was legitimately one of the few times I was not looking forward to the film of a property I enjoyed. I'm not a huge fantasy fan, but it is a fun genre I will watch on occasion. In fact, my favorite episodes of good bad or bad bad seem to center around bad fantasy films like vikingdom and Ember days.
• 27:19
  Speaker A: Anyway, it's probably because I get the most. Those are my episodes where I get the most riled up because I like those the most.
• 27:29
  Speaker B: I also like the episodes where you get riled up. Anyway, this bloated, oftentimes sad trilogy is just cynical exploitation.
• 27:39
  Speaker A: See, I don't agree with that. I don't. See, again, I don't like this movie, but I don't think it's cynical exploitation. I think it's. I think it's just a bunch of poor decisions in an attempt to make something good that didn't and because of. And maybe cynical, depending. I'll let you continue. I'll let you finish. But you know, like, I guess if the idea is that like the studio forcing them to like or whatever happened to force these movies to go into production on the shortened timeline without giving Peter Jackson the time and the production the time needed to do all the work ahead of time, if that was like a cynical decision by the studio, then I agree. But the people actually making the movies, I do not think this was a cynical exploitation of the. They were trying their best and they wanted to make good movies. And it was very clearly Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh and every single person who works on these movies was heart was very much in it. I don't get the vibe from these movies that they are like cashing a check or. You know what I mean?
• 28:42
  Speaker B: No, I agree with you. If anything, it is the rushed production schedule which, like you said, I'm sure was a studio thing and not a Peter Jackson, I would imagine. I can't imagine that's a Peter Jackson thing. That would be the thing that made it feel like a cash grab.
• 28:59
  Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. Which again, if you want to blame studio execs, I will never stop you. But I just, you know, there's a messiness here that sounds like it's going more after the actual filmmakers and not just Peter Jackson, but, you know, everybody involved. And I just, I don't buy that.
• 29:19
  Speaker B: Okay. All right. Cynical exploitation, a gutless, oftentimes heartless take on a classic. I understand the backdrop of the film being rushed and hustled together, but it is still a disappointment. The Battle of the five Armies was the worst of this feeling, as the battle scenes just felt like a PlayStation three rendered mess in some parts. I won't lie, I did like the fan service. Seeing mean Legolas was actually kind of a treat due to the fact that I had become somewhat bored with Orlando Bloom and his acting choices as overly sweet, nice guys.
• 29:54
  Speaker A: I'm trying to think. I mean, obviously, Will Turner.
• 29:57
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 29:58
  Speaker A: And then Paris, I guess, in Troy.
• 30:00
  Speaker B: Is pretty much never saw that movie.
• 30:03
  Speaker A: I think he plays Paris. Right like that. He's.
• 30:05
  Speaker B: He did not comment on his.
• 30:08
  Speaker A: I think he plays Paris. I can't remember. He plays like a naive, like the one. The naive dumb.
• 30:13
  Speaker B: So he plays will Turner?
• 30:14
  Speaker A: Yeah, from my memory. I haven't seen it in a long time. Trying to think of other big Orlando bloom roles, like in movies.
• 30:25
  Speaker B: When you've been Legolas and Will Turner, you don't really need.
• 30:29
  Speaker A: That's what I mean. It's like, it's. It's like pirates and I. Yeah. And in Lord of the Rings, he's not like a nice guy. He's still like a smarmy kind of a jerk. He's not mean like he is in this one, but he's kind of like a cool guy. Cooler than all of this. You know what I mean? He's not like Will Turner.
• 30:49
  Speaker B: He's.
• 30:50
  Speaker A: Yeah, he's not. I wouldn't describe him as an overly sweet, nice guy in Lord of the Rings. So I was just trying to think. I wonder what the roles specifically that Steve is thinking of here. Because the only other thing I can think of him in, and I know he's been in lots of other stuff, but the other thing I'm thinking of him in is the tv show we watched, carnival row, where he is not an overly sweet, nice guy at all in that.
• 31:09
  Speaker B: So, I mean, he is like the hero.
• 31:12
  Speaker A: He's the hero and he's a good guy, but he's not like, he's not a sweet guy. He's like a hard edged, like, cop who drinks too much. Like, you know, he's not. I wouldn't call him an overly sweet, nice guy in that.
• 31:27
  Speaker B: Steve went on to say it was nice to see some edge in him. Maybe you would like Carnival row, Steve.
• 31:33
  Speaker A: Yeah. Check out Carnival row. Just don't watch the season.
• 31:34
  Speaker B: Don't watch. Don't watch the first season it was only.
• 31:38
  Speaker A: It was two seasons it got ruined by Covid, I think is part of it.
• 31:41
  Speaker B: The first season was good and the second season was so we literally sat.
• 31:46
  Speaker A: There speechless on the couch after the final episode ended. It's the up there with game of Thrones is the most disappointing ending of a show that I've experienced because, yeah, the first season I thought was fantastic, the first season was great and the second season was okay for most of it.
• 32:06
  Speaker B: Like, at least to a point it was okay.
• 32:08
  Speaker A: It wasn't as good, but it was like, sure, yeah, but the last like episode or two and the way they end that show is insane, especially in a. In a post 2020 world, like, it is. The politics of that show and where it ends are astounding that it got made the way it did, in my opinion. But it's actually kind of fun to watch for that. It's just like who made this and why? But very good show for the first season. It's a lot of fun.
• 32:41
  Speaker B: Some of the info about the machinations of the films altered my feelings as well. One shouldn't let the political alter your feelings on a silly fantasy series, but what the New Zealand government did to their movie guilds by cutting pay and benefits just to get the slop on the screen is also disappointing. The care and work put into the original series is obviously lacking, regardless of the lack of time used to put this film series together.
• 33:08
  Speaker A: I don't know if those two things jive. I don't think the care and work. I think the care and work wasn't put into this series. But you can't say regardless of the lack of time that they had, I think it's because of the lack of time. I would agree with that. Know, to me those things are. I truly doesn't feel to me like they just phoned it in because they didn't care. I think the issues were because they didn't have time, is what it seems like, is what it feels like to me.
• 33:34
  Speaker B: But the Hobbit is just a lot of mixed feelings. It's like watching my mortal enemy drive off a cliff in my dream car. Like a 1969 challenger or a 1970 GTO or an original Cooper Mini truck.
• 33:49
  Speaker A: There you go, three dream cars.
• 33:50
  Speaker B: I don't know what any of those cars are.
• 33:52
  Speaker A: I mean, I know what a challenger and a GT. I mean, I don't know what a Cooper Mini truck is. I assume the Mini Cooper, they made a truck at some point, but I don't know. But yeah, the other two are yeah, I've heard of. I'm not a car guy.
• 34:06
  Speaker B: Nor am I.
• 34:06
  Speaker A: They're all pintos to me, baby.
• 34:10
  Speaker B: Anyway, thank you for the series, as always. I guess this means the maze runner is next year's choice.
• 34:15
  Speaker A: Spoilers. Jesus. I don't know. We haven't.
• 34:18
  Speaker B: Yeah, we haven't talked about it.
• 34:20
  Speaker A: It's one of the ones on the list.
• 34:21
  Speaker B: But we have not decided at this point. There aren't any, like, clear front runners left on the list. So we're kind of just like, we'll.
• 34:28
  Speaker A: Just figure it out. We'll figure it out.
• 34:30
  Speaker B: Our last comment on Patreon was from Dylan Eldred, a new patron. And Dylan said, I have been listening to you guys for a long time, but became a patron just for this series.
• 34:43
  Speaker A: Sweet.
• 34:43
  Speaker B: I been listening on and off since episode one when it was announced on good bad or bad bad in advance. I'm not a great writer, so apologies if my stuff is a little rambling and incomprehensible. Our stuff is also often rambling and incomprehensible.
• 34:58
  Speaker A: It takes a lot of work to make it not that. And it still ends up a lot that.
• 35:02
  Speaker B: So the Hobbit was a book that I was taught to read with my dad. Would read a chapter and then I would read one, etcetera. At the same time. The Lord of the Rings movies were a central part of my childhood. Being born in 2000, they are some of the first pieces of media I remember consuming. Basically, I'm saying that I am nostalgia blinded any way I look at this, so take my opinions with that in mind. Anyways, onto the movie and primarily the series as a whole. For this movie, it's definitely the weakest of the three. I think the first movie is far and away the best. As for me, these movies are at their best when they are trying to be more fairytale like and hearted. The sequence in Bag End is a lot of fun and the same goes for when Bobo returns to find his house and belongings getting auctioned off. I think they could have maybe leaned into some unreliable narrator stuff since the framing device. Is Bilbo writing about his adventure as he remembers it.
• 35:59
  Speaker A: It's true. They could have had Bilbo be the narrator.
• 36:02
  Speaker B: They could have.
• 36:02
  Speaker A: Retrospect, now that we. Now that I think about it, he could have been the narrator. Yeah, because that. And they could have got Ian Holm to do it. Why did they not do that? Yeah, that's wild. Seems very obvious now in retrospect, upon thinking about it. Well, I think the thing is that narration. Voiceover like that is often seen as hack. So like, they probably were like, nah, we don't need it. And like, you don't need it. But I think they could for this. It would have worked because of.
• 36:28
  Speaker B: I think they could have made it.
• 36:29
  Speaker A: Especially because of the. The tone of the writing in the book. I think it would have fit really well.
• 36:35
  Speaker B: That would help explain the more silly and comical tone of these films, since Bilbo is remembering through 60 year old nostalgia goggles. The ending of this film was actually very sweet. The end where Bilbo closes the book and holds the ring in his hand I found to be both ominous and heartwarming, especially since it would be the last we saw of Ian Holm as this character before he died. The same goes for Christopher Lee, who gets to go out with the excellent line leave Sauron to me. We also get the amazing song by Billy Boyd over the credits as well. It helps to send the film off on a positive note. The casting in these films is excellent. Martin Freeman is perfectly cast as young Bilbo, and most of the dwarves have a lot of charisma, even if they don't get much to do. Balin and Dwalin. Dwalin, played by the ever awesome Graham McTavish, stand out in particular to me.
• 37:29
  Speaker A: Graham McTavish is the guy who I mentioned, and they are the two of the better ones because they get the most time in the movies. I love Ballin a lot, but Dwalin, Graham McTavish, that's the guy I talked about from the witcher who plays the spy master guy. I can't remember his name, but the bald spy master, he's in the second 3rd show.
• 37:46
  Speaker B: The guy who I got mixed up with. The other bald guy.
• 37:48
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 37:49
  Speaker B: Could never tell those two bald guys apart. Yes, and the extended cut. I would add Beaufort to that list as well. He gets some good extra content, including another song in Rivendell. And he has two great conversations with Bilbo when he tries to leave in the first movie before they get captured by goblins, and then again in the third movie when Bobo sneaks out from Erebor. This movie does include my favorite so bad. It's good moment where Bard uses his son as a rest for the bolt on his makeshift ballista. Ballista.
• 38:19
  Speaker A: Ballista.
• 38:20
  Speaker B: Ballista.
• 38:21
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 38:21
  Speaker B: If that bowstring was strong enough to pierce a dragon to his heart, then that string would have blown his son's head clear off.
• 38:28
  Speaker A: Yeah, you know.
• 38:29
  Speaker B: Fair enough.
• 38:30
  Speaker A: Well, I think now. Well, I think where his son is standing it would have been fine because I think the string would have hit the wooden. The wood thing he sticks the pieces of the bow into. I think the kid is standing beyond that. So that the bowstring would have not made it to the child.
• 38:51
  Speaker B: I would have to look at.
• 38:52
  Speaker A: It would have to be because, yes, he would have got hit with the bowstring and decapitated him. But it's still silly.
• 38:59
  Speaker B: But, yeah, overall, these movies are not nearly as bad as I remember them being when they came out. But they are definitely way too long and bloated with a couple great moments spread throughout. The extended cuts ironically help with this long run time by giving more time to important scenes with character development and plot to help balance out the action. For example, in the theatrical cut, I didn't realize that Biffer had a piece. Neither did we had a broken piece of an orc axe in his head and only spoke Dwarvish. You mentioned the scene where the axe gets pulled out of his head in the third movie as coming out of nowhere. But this was established in the extended cut in the first movie.
• 39:39
  Speaker A: So after we. While I was editing the third or the last episode, I would look to that up to see what was going on there. And I saw that it was biffer and that he had been established have had that axe in his head in a deleted scene in the first movie, which we didn't watch the extended edition of the first or the second one.
• 39:55
  Speaker B: Well, we couldn't have either.
• 39:57
  Speaker A: Yes, the first one, the extended edition, was not available on Max. We would have had to. We might have been able to, like, buy it or rent it somewhere, but. But it was not available on Max. But. So anyway, so that we didn't see that. So we didn't get that. I also don't think I ever noticed that he didn't talk. Which is another thing people said, is that he doesn't talk because of the axe. And that's why when he does talk in that moment, it's like a. A moment because he hasn't talked the whole series. But now that the axe is out of his head, he can talk. I did not realize he had no.
• 40:26
  Speaker B: But there's so. It's impossible to keep so many. There's too many. By the end of the extended cuts, I was able to at least distinguish all the dwarves and identify each one by name. I think that a fan edit could recut these films into two solid entries, though that would be a ton of work.
• 40:43
  Speaker A: We do have a note about that later.
• 40:44
  Speaker B: Yes.
• 40:44
  Speaker A: So we'll get to that or a comment from a listener.
• 40:47
  Speaker B: However, if fans could put in the effort to recut a terrible movie like Highlander two to radically change the plot, they can recut these decent movies too.
• 40:55
  Speaker A: I would think that is very doable.
• 40:58
  Speaker B: I bet somebody did it for the Star wars prequels, right?
• 41:01
  Speaker A: Yeah, and other. Lots of movies have done that, and I think I absolutely could see it being done for this series.
• 41:07
  Speaker B: A couple side notes from Dylan. You mentioned you didn't know who Richard Armitage was. I know him best as the voice of Trevor Belmont in the great Netflix Castlevania series.
• 41:18
  Speaker A: Yeah, I haven't watched the series I've seen.
• 41:20
  Speaker B: That's kind of one that I, like keep meaning to say, like, we should watch. It's like vampires.
• 41:25
  Speaker A: Yeah, it's based on a video game. Castlevania is an old video game that, like. Yeah, it's like vampires and stuff, but. Yeah, yeah, but it's. It looks cool. The art of the. I've seen, like, the trailer and images from. It does look cool. So, yeah, we might have to check it out.
• 41:41
  Speaker B: He was also, oh, speaking of the prequels, one of the naboo soldiers in the Phantom menace, he can be seen behind Padme when she reveals herself to be the queen. So he would have been fairly young. Fairly young there, right?
• 41:56
  Speaker A: 99 ish, and he's not like old. Yeah, he's probably like in his forties, maybe, or something like that in these. So, yeah, he would have been in his twenties.
• 42:05
  Speaker B: You mentioned not knowing what happened to the dwarf rings of power. And from the top of my head, I believe that most got destroyed, eaten by dragons or stolen by goblins. And Thrain had the last one when he got captured by Azog. We see this in the extended cut of the second movie when he wears it into battle, and then it shows his ring finger has been cut off when he's a prisoner of Azog. So Sauron took that one. I didn't verify. That's just what I remember from my casual knowledge.
• 42:36
  Speaker A: Fair enough.
• 42:37
  Speaker B: If you want a fun take on the Tolkien universe, I'd recommend Shadow of Mordor and Shadow of war. Theyre not canon and have a lot of fun with the lore. In addition to being good games in Shadow of War, you work with the Elf Eltariel, Eltarial, who is Galadriel's personal agent against Sauron, and just a better version of what the filmmakers were trying to do with Tariel. You also get the backstory of a lot of the dazgul, including Isildur, Helm, Hammerhand, and a pair of twin sisters who took the rings from two nazgul and became corrupted themselves. You even get to see Shelob in her non spider form as a hot witch. If that's your thing. It's not. Not our thing. Even if you don't play the games, you can find the cutscenes on YouTube. It's worth a watch. Basically, what I'm saying is if you want some good expansion to the lore of Lord of the Rings, don't look at these movies as it's all very superficial.
• 43:37
  Speaker A: So I actually have played Shadow of Mordor. The first one. I think that's the first one. I don't think I've played Shadow of War, but I played Shadow of mortar. I think I beat it. I would have to go back. It was years ago when it came out, and I liked it a lot. I enjoyed it. I think I still have. I might have both of them. I think I might have bought Shadow of war when it was on sale for like $5 and just never played it. But I may have to revisit them because there are a lot of fun. And I do remember thinking the story was pretty interesting because you play, like, in the first one, you play a guy who dies and becomes a wraith. You become like. I can't remember the specifics, but I, like, you get killed and then you get resurrected by, like, an elf spirit or something. I can't remember. It's interesting. And like I said, I like the games a lot. And yes, there is a. I remember seeing the hot. I don't think I played the second one, but I remember hot Shelob. I remember maybe I just saw it, like on the Internet or something.
• 44:29
  Speaker B: Sexy Shelob.
• 44:29
  Speaker A: But I remember sexy Shelob.
• 44:34
  Speaker B: And Dylan's final note here was. This was some good timing for this review as Rings of Power season two is coming out soon. Didn't even do that on purpose. I'm looking forward to it since I enjoyed season one a lot and want to see more of what they will do.
• 44:48
  Speaker A: And we mentioned that I liked season one. I didn't love it, but I liked it. Katie was less fond of it, but.
• 44:54
  Speaker B: I didn't dislike it. It just didn't really do anything for me.
• 44:59
  Speaker A: I'm not too far off from that. I thought it was. It's not nearly as bad as everybody. I say everybody is that.
• 45:05
  Speaker B: A lot of idiots, a lot of loud people.
• 45:07
  Speaker A: A lot of loud people claim it to be. But I also didn't think it was, like, great or anything. I just thought it was like, it was fun. Like, I enjoyed it. I'll definitely. We're gonna watch season two because I liked it enough to want to see what they do, like, in the next season. But I wasn't like. I'm not like, oh, my God. Like, you know, super amped for season two. It'll be a thing we watch.
• 45:27
  Speaker B: All right. Over on Facebook, we had six votes for the book and zero for the movie. Lassa said hi again. Happy to provide some more information. Most of the extended material is more battle stuff. For example, the entire carriage ride sequence is not in the theatrical version because they couldn't finish the effects in time. Instead, they immediately jump on goats to go to Raven Hill.
• 45:54
  Speaker A: I didn't remember that, so that makes sense, I guess. But I didn't remember much of this movie.
• 45:59
  Speaker B: But the goats get no introduction at all. In the theatrical cut, the entire part where the dwarves attack the elves is missing. No cavalry charge, no giant arrows. You don't even see them in the background. Nothing. The army is about to attack. And that is when the worms show up.
• 46:14
  Speaker A: Okay, so the worms are in the theatrical.
• 46:16
  Speaker B: Yeah, I guess so. So when Thorin suddenly jumps on that goat as he talks to Dane that's the first time we ever see such an animal, which makes things really confusing. Some really important stuff got cut for the theatrical version. As I said, like, the entire funeral scene, for example we don't get to see what happens to the Arkenstone or who becomes king under the mountain. Alfred's death, where he gets launched into the troll's mouth is also not there. So the last we see of him is him escaping with the gold. Not very satisfying.
• 46:49
  Speaker A: I like the other scene.
• 46:50
  Speaker B: I see. And I know if we had watched the theatrical version, I would have been mad about that.
• 46:55
  Speaker A: Yeah, I would have been mad either way. So there really was no good.
• 46:58
  Speaker B: No good solution.
• 46:59
  Speaker A: I didn't like how it ended in the extended cut but I also would have been like, what? He just disappeared? What happened? Yeah.
• 47:05
  Speaker B: The scene at the lakeshores is actually in the theatrical version. But I don't know why it looks so bright. Maybe because this is one of the few actual outdoor location shots in the film and the large water surface reflects the daylight so strongly.
• 47:20
  Speaker A: Yeah. I don't know. There are ways. It's not the water, I don't think. But. But anyways, I'm not sure. To me, it almost seems like, to me, what it looks like is they shot it without a lot of the light shaping implements that you would use. On a professional film shoot for that kind of scene, like, generally when you shoot those kind of things, there would be big frames with different muslin and stuff that you use to shape and diffuse the light and stuff like that. And to me, it looks like they literally just shot it.
• 47:58
  Speaker B: Like, they just, like, completely naturally.
• 48:00
  Speaker A: Literally just pointed the camera and shot it. It's kind of what it feels like and looks like to me. Cause I've done that a lot and I know what that looks like. Whereas in movies, the reason it always looks. You know, there's the reason that movies look the way they do versus the way, you know, like a cheap commercial you see on local television looks is because it's all lighting and it's all the way that light is. And the cameras, obviously. But so much of it is the way you're playing with the light and. Yeah. Diffusing it and redirecting it and doing all these different things to soften it and change it in ways that make it more appealing and more visually. Yeah, more visually appealing. And to me, that scene felt almost like they just kind of, like, set up a camera and filmed a bunch of people standing on the beach. Which sometimes you do that for really wide shots. But these were the close ups, which is when you can notice, like, a lot of times in wides, they will shoot it kind of more naturally natural.
• 48:55
  Speaker B: But, yeah, all the really bloody scenes are added, which got the extended edition its r rating. My main criticism about the whole battle stuff, aside from the often video game like look is that they missed a color coding opportunity. The dwarves and the orcs are both dressed in gray armor. Giving the dwarves blue or red colors would have helped immensely in terms of orientation.
• 49:17
  Speaker A: That's true.
• 49:18
  Speaker B: Yeah. About Bifur and the axe in his head. This is actually part of his whole character design. To make him distinct. The filmmakers gave him this kind of battle wound with the hatchet in his forehead. This is actually. This is based on actual medicinal facts. There are people who are able to live with some sort of splinter or something similar being stuck in their head. At least it's not as nonsensical as Robert Carlisle's villain in the world is not enough.
• 49:45
  Speaker A: That's the guy with the diamonds in his face. I think Robert Carlisle is. I believe that's the guy from black sails. The main guy, the captain, what's his name. Yeah, that was a mistake. I was thinking of Toby Stevens, who plays Captain Flint in black Sails. He plays a villain in a different Bond movie in die another day. Yes, he's in die another day. Robert Carlisle is the villainous in once upon a time. He plays Rumpelstiltskin. That's what I was confused about. I knew the name sounded familiar.
• 50:24
  Speaker B: Oh, I got Rumpelstiltskin.
• 50:26
  Speaker A: Yeah, that was Katie sitting on the couch.
• 50:29
  Speaker B: All magic comes with a price.
• 50:32
  Speaker A: I'm pretty sure that's him. I think he plays that villain in that Bond movie. But at some point, a bomb went off and a bunch of diamonds got blown into his face and they can't remove him for some reason. So they're all stuck in his face.
• 50:44
  Speaker B: The extended edition of the first Hobbit movie even has a quick little scene where Bilbo addresses the axe. But for the rest of the movies, it's just sort of a fun sort of background detail. I mean, it's a background detail that neither of us.
• 50:58
  Speaker A: I say we did not notice it without because we didn't see that extended scene.
• 51:01
  Speaker B: So I think the payoff with them pulling it out is rather funny. But it could have been set up better. Certainly.
• 51:07
  Speaker A: I think it works okay. If you have any idea what.
• 51:10
  Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, if we had had any idea about that, we probably would have felt at least a little different.
• 51:15
  Speaker A: We've probably been like, okay. Like, still feels like kind of a clumsily edited scene, but, like, it's at least, like, I get what's going on here. Like, but as it was, which, again, is somewhat. Is definitely at least somewhat on us because we watched the regular versions of the first two movies and the extended version of the third movie. So, like, you know, that was gonna happen. But, yeah, I would say I don't know if it needed to be set up better if. Because it wasn't in the theatrical cut and the stuff setting it up wasn't in the theatrical cuts and the stuff setting it up. And, you know, I think it may have been set up fine in the extended versions. We just didn't watch the extended versions.
• 51:55
  Speaker B: Speaking of dwarves, the dwarven rings get some brief mention in the fellowship of the Ring book. Three of them are actually in Sauron's possession and the rest got destroyed by dragons. There might be more to that, but that's all I personally know. In the extended edition of Desolation of Smaug, they add this whole new subplot of Azog cutting off Thrain's finger in the flashback at the beginning. And Gandalf finds him in Dol Guldur later on where he eventually gets killed by Sauron. So in the Hobbit movies, he got one of those Dwarven rings fairly recently.
• 52:27
  Speaker A: That was we actually read. When we read the synopsis from wikipedia for the second movie, it mentions that. And we said that must have been in the extended edition, the stuff with Thrain at Dhol Guldor.
• 52:40
  Speaker B: One more piece of lore. The lonely Mountain doesn't really get mentioned in the Lord of the Rings books, but there is a small nod to it by Legolas in the return of the King film, where he says that the dwarves are currently fighting their own battles. There is actually a big part of the war over middle earth we never get to see. While the whole Gondor stuff, etcetera is going on, other battles are being fought in different parts of the world, including the north and Ereborden.
• 53:05
  Speaker A: I mean, yeah, I buy that, but we don't see it. So I don't remember what Legolas says the dwarves are currently fighting. Oh, I don't. I don't remember that at all.
• 53:16
  Speaker B: From.
• 53:17
  Speaker A: It's been a long time since.
• 53:18
  Speaker B: It's been a minute.
• 53:19
  Speaker A: It's been since we did him on the show, which was four years ago.
• 53:23
  Speaker B: Five years ago now. The case of Dane and his look is kind of weird. They have a whole section about his character and casting in the making of, and even have Billy Connelly in the makeup and sitting on a mechanical rig doing his line. But somewhere in the process they must have decided to go another way and entirely animate him. But why they did that doesn't get mentioned at all.
• 53:45
  Speaker A: Interesting.
• 53:46
  Speaker B: My guess is that part of the reason might be his Parkinson's diagnosis, which I totally empathize with. In the interviews, they vaguely touch on reworking his facial design during the process of filming, but they seem to dance around the actual CGI part of it all. I think his design and voice work is really fun, but he looks like a character from Robert Zemeckis Beowulf. At times.
• 54:09
  Speaker A: Yeah. I had no issue with the character or the design. I thought that all worked fine. It's just. Yeah, exactly what you said. He looks like a beowulf like that. Did you see Beowulf from similar to, like, Polar Express? A little bit like that style of. Yeah, that. Like, hyper realistic. Like, should we do Beowulf? We honestly could. I remember seeing that in theaters and not liking it, but I don't remember.
• 54:33
  Speaker B: I've never read Beowulf all the way through. I've only read parts of it. A couple fun facts from last year.
• 54:41
  Speaker A: There might be enough adaptations of that that we could do a bracket, I don't know, but it might be one of those ones that has.
• 54:48
  Speaker B: Yeah, maybe.
• 54:48
  Speaker A: I can't, maybe not. There might only be a few.
• 54:50
  Speaker B: Think of any other other adaptations. Off the top of my head, I.
• 54:53
  Speaker A: Imagine there are some older ones. It just seems strikes me as the kind of story that would have over since movies were invented has probably been made because it's completely public. You know what I mean? Like, you can just make it bael wolf. Yeah, that's what I mean. So you can just make it. So like, it wouldn't surprise me if there's like a dozen or half a dozen of those out there. I don't know.
• 55:15
  Speaker B: We'll look into it. A couple fun facts. The pig Dane is riding is modeled after a real pig they had on set that has a small scene in desolation of Smaug where it is chilling in some lake town stables. Peter Jackson basically adopted it later on.
• 55:31
  Speaker A: Nice.
• 55:32
  Speaker B: The drawn pose of Bilbo in the end credits where he's happily holding the acorn is actually taken from an on set photo where Martin Freeman is holding up a Bilbo Lego minifigure.
• 55:42
  Speaker A: I read that in the InDB trivia facts, but I didn't really understood what it meant at the time, so I didn't include it in my prequel notes. Cause I was like, I don't really know what they're talking about.
• 55:52
  Speaker B: Orlando Bloom's mom has a small extra part. She can be seen at the beginning of the movie as a concerned woman exiting a house in Laketown. I love that. I hope the credits listed her as concerned woman.
• 56:07
  Speaker A: Yes.
• 56:08
  Speaker B: Brian said that the picture of Bilbo's mother reminded him of Winona Ryder. She actually is supposed to resemble co writer Fran Walsh. Fittingly, the picture of Bobo's father looks like her husband Peter Jackson, but without the beard.
• 56:22
  Speaker A: That makes sense. That totally makes sense. And I went and looked at photos of Fran Walsh because I had until this point. And yeah, no, it looks like her, but she also kind of looks like an older Winona writer, so fair enough.
• 56:34
  Speaker B: I also want to highlight one lion of thranduils, which I don't think is in the book. I can see, you know, nothing of wizards. They are like winter thunder on a wild wind, rolling in from a distance, breaking hard in alarm. But sometimes a storm is just a storm. That line is in keeping nicely with the writing of Tolkien, and I like it a lot.
• 56:53
  Speaker A: It is a good line. I don't remember. I don't think it's in this book. It may be somewhere.
• 56:57
  Speaker B: I don't think it was in the.
• 56:58
  Speaker A: Book, but I also liked that line. I noticed that I didn't make a note of it, but I recalled that line from the movie and thought it was good.
• 57:07
  Speaker B: My brother and I did audio commentaries for the first two movies on my podcast and we still need to do this one. That will be the time I will tell him my personal proposition which could have made this film better. When Keeley asks Tariel to come with him to the mountain, she should have taken the invitation. You could change their story if they had spent time together there getting to know each other better, the dwarves learning to trust her. That would have made the dynamic standoff between Thorin's dwarves, Bard and Thranduil. Also really interesting. Just an idea of mine, but certainly better than what we got, if I may humbly say so.
• 57:41
  Speaker A: I actually think that could have been really interesting. I think that could have been compelling if that had happened. I like the potential idea of that.
• 57:48
  Speaker B: Overall, I think this movie provides some nice epic moments, but not enough emotional depth to make it truly special. It is by far the weakest of the three Hobbit movies, but still has moments of greatness in it which make it worthwhile. You are right that over the top action beats can be fun, but if there but if there were only a handful of them, what they have Legolas do here is beyond ridiculous. While I can excuse some other moments, I also think that they wasted the Mithril armor Bilbo gets. I know it saves Frodo later on, but they could have used it here to create a similar effect. And just looking at this movie on its own, there's no point in introducing an unpierceable piece of armor for our supposed main character and then not doing anything with it. That is a fair point.
• 58:34
  Speaker A: That is fair.
• 58:35
  Speaker B: But the book also doesn't do anything. Yeah, that's true.
• 58:37
  Speaker A: I mean, the book gives him the mythril and then he also never gets stabbed or anything like that.
• 58:42
  Speaker B: He's also knocked out for much more of the battle in the book.
• 58:45
  Speaker A: Yeah, they definitely could have in the film.
• 58:49
  Speaker B: The end credits song made me really emotional though. Boy, that was a long one. Thanks again for your wonderful detail. Thanks again for your wonderfully detailed and fun conversation. I had a blast listening to you and I will continue to for future episodes. All the best from Germany.
• 59:07
  Speaker A: Thank you so much. That was a fantastic comment. Really appreciate it.
• 59:11
  Speaker B: Other comment on Facebook was from Charlene who said I'm a bit behind so I just watched all three movies this past week. I am glad I finally saw them, but in my opinion they really dont do enough to justify their existence, especially as a trilogy. I understand the desire to make it feel on par with Lord of the Rings despite the book having a vastly different feel. I just think a two parter would have worked better and still allowed for plenty of epicness and get rid of the love story entirely. Triangle or not, its unnecessary. You could still add Tauriel as a character for some female representation and a challenge to thranduils isolationism without forcing her into this star crossed lovers thing. Even if it had played out in a more satisfying way, I'd still be annoyed with it.
• 59:59
  Speaker A: I wouldn't have minded. I think totally could have done. I think adding her without a romance would have been fine. I don't hate the idea of the romance, but they did it poorly.
• 1:00:08
  Speaker B: So yeah, well it becomes really glaringly sticks out when they do it as poorly as they did, especially as poorly.
• 1:00:16
  Speaker A: As they did in this. And then just the way she just becomes nothing at the end of this movie. Just like gets knocked out and just kind of lays there and lets Legolas do it. It's just like her character gets completely nothing in this movie. It's ridiculous that they even added her considering how her story finishes in this one.
• 1:00:33
  Speaker B: It's like okay, on Twitter we had three votes for the book and zero for the movie. Brian Soilo said it was always the book. The fan edits of these movies that get it down to 4.5 hours of total runtime are the way to watch Bilbo edition kicks ass.
• 1:00:52
  Speaker A: So that was the comment I was talking about. There must be something called the Bilbo edition.
• 1:00:55
  Speaker B: Yeah, I guess so.
• 1:00:56
  Speaker A: Out there. I would be interested. I'm not gonna watch it because it's four and a half hours, but I would be interested to see what that.
• 1:01:01
  Speaker B: How that edit maybe a couple years removed from this series when we run.
• 1:01:06
  Speaker A: Out of summer series and we gotta.
• 1:01:08
  Speaker B: Revisit it, get back and watch the Bilbo edition.
• 1:01:10
  Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:01:11
  Speaker B: We had five votes for the book and two for the movie on instagram, as well as four votes for the book and zero for the movie on threads. And then on goodreads we had one vote for the book, zero for the movie. And Miko said, I remember going to see this movie mostly due to the sunk cost fallacy. And it taught me that simply not finishing something is fine as I felt I could have spent the time better by just staying home. You could end that comment there, Miko, and it would be perfect.
• 1:01:45
  Speaker A: Spot on.
• 1:01:46
  Speaker B: That said this movie too, was better than I remembered. Just a hair, though.
• 1:01:51
  Speaker A: Just a hair.
• 1:01:51
  Speaker B: Just a hair.
• 1:01:52
  Speaker A: I will say, I guess I agree that it is a little better, but not much. This was more in line of how I remembered the whole series.
• 1:02:00
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 1:02:01
  Speaker A: And I think it is what I said in one of the prequels or whatever that it was, that this is the movie that people remember and associate.
• 1:02:09
  Speaker B: The whole series as soured, mediocre. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Just a hair, though. And I suspect that it only felt better because I could take breaks, scroll on my phone and eat while watching from my couch. The Laketown battle felt like a pre title action sequence. Smaug was the big bad and now he's dead not ten minutes into the movie.
• 1:02:31
  Speaker A: It is a pre title action sequence, isn't it? Is it not? Doesn't. That I can't.
• 1:02:35
  Speaker B: I just.
• 1:02:35
  Speaker A: I'm pretty sure the title rolls at least in the extended. In the extended edition, I'm pretty sure the title rolls after Smaug dies.
• 1:02:43
  Speaker B: I mean, that makes sense. I just don't remember for sure.
• 1:02:46
  Speaker A: I'm pretty sure we swoop back to.
• 1:02:49
  Speaker B: Erebor and then we get that and.
• 1:02:51
  Speaker A: Then the title comes up over the gate or whatever. Like, see, looking at the mountain. I think I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure it is essentially, literally a pre title action scene.
• 1:03:02
  Speaker B: I can still remember the collective deflated o when that happened in the theater. It's not so much the fault of the easy path, but the fact that it happens in the beginning of the movie that made it feel so unearned, especially after a year of waiting. And, you know, I do think that. That, you know, the book aside and how it's handled in the book notwithstanding, but I do think that as effective as I found the end of desolation of Smaug and how interesting I found that I do think that severing it right there does a disservice to this particular, like, to this movie and to the Smaug plotline as well. The pacing timeline is really wonky. When the Laketown dwarves reunite with Bilbo, he says Thorin has been with the gold for days, but the movie is cut like it's the day after the smaug fight. The acorn Bilbo shows to Thorin feels like a nice double subversion. I immediately thought that Bilbo wasn't holding the Arkenstone, but the ring when Thorin questions him, but when he reveals the acorn, it really did surprise me.
• 1:04:09
  Speaker A: That got me too, because I also thought the same thing. That he was gonna show him the ring.
• 1:04:13
  Speaker B: Sure, it wasn't set up, but it really shows that even with two powerful artifacts in his pockets Bilbo is still very hobbity, as you put it. Every time we see Alfred, I just wish the lake towners had hung him. I hate his inclusion so much in the theatrical version he just disappears from the movie with his bra full of gold. I literally rewind it a bit when Feely was killed to check who he was even though his name was said not a minute prior. It was also the point where I realized that that dwarf was Kili's brother. If the names rhyme, they're brothers. They're their relatives. Or at least the dwarves are just so interchangeable.
• 1:04:56
  Speaker A: I agree.
• 1:04:57
  Speaker B: Speaking of forgettable dwarves the fact that you both Miss Piffer walking around with an axe embedded in his skull for two and a half movies is hilarious.
• 1:05:08
  Speaker A: You say that? I don't really don't remember him having a skull and axe in his head at all. I took copious notes on these movies.
• 1:05:17
  Speaker B: Combined with the fact that he doesn't speak until that scene, the joke, if you can call it that, should be obvious. Wait, he's not brain damaged?
• 1:05:27
  Speaker A: See, but again, I didn't real. None of the dwarves speak. Like, half the dwarves don't say shit like that.
• 1:05:32
  Speaker B: I don't know how we could possibly clock that. This one singular dwarf never spoke when most of them have maybe a line.
• 1:05:39
  Speaker A: At most.
• 1:05:40
  Speaker B: At most.
• 1:05:41
  Speaker A: Yeah. Like I said, unless you're Balin Keeley or Dwalin or Thorin, obviously. But, like, those are the only ones that ever say, like, anything bumber. Like, never has a line, does he?
• 1:05:53
  Speaker B: I think he shouts things sometimes.
• 1:05:55
  Speaker A: Occasionally. But he mostly just bumbles around.
• 1:05:57
  Speaker B: Yeah, we don't ever, like, sit and have a conversation with him.
• 1:06:01
  Speaker A: So many of them, I feel, like, don't have lines, but I don't. Yeah, or have, like, one. One off line. And I. Yeah, I. Again, that may be an issue. More so of the theatrical versus all.
• 1:06:13
  Speaker B: In all, excessive fight scenes without emotional stakes make this an easy win for the book. I agree. And our winner this week, probably to no one's shock, was the book with 21 votes to the movie's four. Plus our one listener who couldn't decide.
• 1:06:32
  Speaker A: There you go.
• 1:06:33
  Speaker B: Our brave, undecided listener.
• 1:06:35
  Speaker A: All right, thank you all for all of your amazing feedback and comments. We love getting to hear that and respond to it and have that back and forth. It's a ton of fun. Katie, no learning things segment this week. But we do because we had so much feedback for the battle of the five armies. So now we're just going to go straight into our preview of Kiki's delivery service. The book. If things don't work out, you can always come home and come back a failure. Look at this city.
• 1:07:11
  Speaker B: My name's Kiki and I'm a witch.
• 1:07:13
  Speaker A: Do you think you can deliver this by tonight? What a cool witch.
• 1:07:19
  Speaker B: Okay, right off the top, I did my best to try to find pronunciations for names. I am going to do my best. I apologize if I get these wrong. I don't know any Japanese, but I really, I did my best to try to find pronunciations. KK's delivery service this is a 1985 children's fantasy novel written by japanese author Aiko Kodono. It was illustrated by Akiko Hayashi. In the books forward, Kodono says that the idea for the story was inspired by a drawing that her daughter did of a witch flying through the air while listening to a radio. She also said that Kiki is twelve years old in the book because that's the age her daughter was at the time. She stated, kiki is a witch, but she's also a perfectly ordinary girl. She has the same worries, disappointments and joys as anyone else. So I knew readers around her age would relate to her. The japanese title of the book, Majono Takubin, translates to witches express home delivery. Non japanese versions of the book were not published until 2003, which I thought was interesting. That's a good long time removed from when this was published and from the movie.
• 1:08:42
  Speaker A: Well, and we'll talk about, I'll talk about the movie. Get to that here in a second.
• 1:08:46
  Speaker B: But not until 2003. And at that time the book became available in English, Italian, Korean, and Chinese. Wikipedia says that Kiki's delivery service won several awards in Japan, and then it listed some things under the header, awards and nominations, but did not specify what it won and what it was just nominated for. So the things that Wikipedia listed were the 23rd nominations award for juvenile literature, the 34th Shoga Kuchin Award for Children's Literature, Hans Christian Andersen Award in 2018, and it holds a place on the international board on Books for Young People Honor list. In 1986, Kadono followed the success of Kiki's delivery service with nine additional books in the same series. And they actually follow Kiki into her thirties like she, unlike a lot of children's book protagonists. Yeah, she ages throughout the series, which I thought was really interesting. We are only reading the first book, but it was the only book out at the time. So I feel confident saying, that's all the movie's based on.
• 1:10:02
  Speaker A: And from what I've read, it's loosely, so we'll get there. So I say loosely. Maybe not loosely, but. But we'll get to it. Sorry.
• 1:10:11
  Speaker B: Aside from the 1989 film that we'll be covering, the novel was also adapted as a musical three separate times. In 1993, in 2016, and in 2017. And it was also adapted as a japanese live action film in 2014. Hmm.
• 1:10:29
  Speaker A: Cool. All right, time now to learn a little bit about Kiki's delivery service. The film.
• 1:10:35
  Speaker B: I think something's wrong with me. I meet a lot of people, and at first everything seems to be going okay.
• 1:10:42
  Speaker A: Hey.
• 1:10:43
  Speaker B: But then I start feeling like such an outsider.
• 1:10:46
  Speaker A: Frankly, I think this is a major insult. We fly with our spirit.
• 1:10:51
  Speaker B: That same spirit is what makes me paint and makes your friend bake. But we each need to find our own inspiration. Kiki.
• 1:11:03
  Speaker A: Kiki's Delivery Service is a 1989 film written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki, known for Spirited Away, howl's Moving Castle, Princess Mononoke, my Neighbor, Totoro, the Boy and the Heron, and many others. The 2010 Disney English version, which is the one we will be watching, I believe. I assume there are actually two Disney versions. A 98 version and a 2010 version, and a 1990 streamlined pictures version. Those are all english versions of this film. The first one was 1990, made by streamlined pictures or translated by streamlined pictures with, like, random voice actors you've never heard of. Then there was a Disney version in 1998, which. That's the one that we're gonna. That I'm gonna list the cast for here in a second. And then they did a re release of it in 2010, where they tweaked some of the translations and dialogue and stuff to, more accurately, because a lot of people did not like the 98 versions translation, and so they tweaked it and released a new version in 2010. And so I am assuming if we go watch this on Disney, that the version on there is the 2010 Disney version. Probably. I would imagine. I would have to guess so. The 2010 Disney version English version stars Kirsten Dunstan, Phil Hartman, Tress MacNeil, Janine Garofalo, Matthew Lawrence, John Hostetter, Pamela Adlin, Edie McClurg, and Debbie Reynolds, among others. It has a 98% on Rotten Tomatoes, an 85 out of 100 on Metacritic, and a 7.8 out of ten on IMDb. It won quite a few awards in Japan, but the ones that are specifically mentioned on IMDb is that it won the special award and the most popular award at the 1990 awards of the Japanese Academy, which, based on that, that name makes me assume it's their version of the Academy Awards.
• 1:13:00
  Speaker B: Right. I have the special award.
• 1:13:02
  Speaker A: Yes, whatever the special award is. And they have, like, a most popular film award, which is, like, way ahead of the Academy Awards, which I think kind of had now a similar category. Maybe I'm wrong, maybe not. But yeah, they have a most popular award, like, basically giving an award for movies that were, you know, that everybody loved but weren't necessarily, like, Oscar darlings.
• 1:13:25
  Speaker B: Right.
• 1:13:27
  Speaker A: The film made $41.8 million against a budget of $7 million. So the rights for the film were purchased in 1987 by group Fudosha, with the plans for either Miyazaki or Isao Takahata to direct. But both of them at the time were busy working on other films. Miyazaki was working on my neighbor Totoro, and Takahata was working on Grave of the Fireflies, which. That is the movie he's most known for. Very famous. This, well, like, critically acclaimed film. I have not seen it, but I've heard it's one of the most devastatingly sad movies ever made. Miyazaki did join the. At that time, though, Miyazaki did join the project as a producer. So after my neighbor Totoro production finished, animators from that team were pulled onto Kiki's delivery service, specifically including the character designer Ketsuya Kondo, whose most known work is the character design for this film. The character designs for this film. So eventually, Miyazaki chose Sunao Karabuchi to direct. Karabuchi had worked with Miyazaki on a tv series that they produced for italian television or an italian japanese animated tv series called Sherlock Hound fun. And Kiki's delivery service would have been his directorial debut. But we'll get to why it would have been and why it wasn't his directorial debut. The studio then brought on Nobatuki Ishiki to write the script, but Miyazaki did not like his draft of the script because he thought it was too dry and too different from what his own vision for the film was. So he then took, Miyazaki took his staff to Sweden to get inspiration for the setting of the film, because the film is set in a norwegian town.
• 1:15:18
  Speaker B: Or whatever you have seaside town in.
• 1:15:19
  Speaker A: Norway, or, I say Norwegian, a scandinavian town. And so they went to Sweden specifically, like Stockholm, handful of other small cities. And then when they got back to Japan, Miyazaki really dug into working on the film. And sounds like from the Wikipedia article kind of article that it kind of became his obsession. His new ideas for the movie included a lot of changes from the book, and supposedly author Kadono was not very happy about this, and this almost derailed the film and it almost didn't get made because she was not happy with all the changes that Miyazaki was planning. So Miyazaki and another producer from Studio Ghibli visited the author's home and then brought her to the studio to give her a tour. Apparently this worked and she let the film continue. So they were able to soothe her concerns and she let them go on with making the film. So Miyazaki then finished his new draft of the screenplay in 1988, and upon presenting it to the studio, announced that he had also decided to direct the film because he had become so involved in the project. He was like, no, I'm just going to do it myself. So you mentioned the title of what was your, let me see if I can find the japanese title, majo no Takibin. The word takibin actually means home fast mail. This is the direct translation. Basically, it's actually a specific trademark of a company called Yamato Transport. But it sounds like it has since kind of become synonymous with home delivery, like quick home mail in the same way as like Kleenex or Band Aid has become like, you know, ubiquitous with those things. It sounds like Takya bin is like the word they use for that, even though it is like a trademark of this specific company. And apparently the company was not initially psyched about the movie using their trademark because Cardano, when she wrote the book, had used that without permission of the company.
• 1:17:21
  Speaker B: So I added a note here under your note, because when I was looking up information about the book, it said like the opposite thing really on the books Wikipedia page. So the books Wikipedia page says the company not only approved the use of the trademark, though its permission was not required under japanese trademark laws, but also enthusiastically sponsored the anime film version of the book as the company uses a stylized depiction of a black cat carrying her kitten as its corporate logo.
• 1:17:51
  Speaker A: So I did read that ultimately they were very amped about the movie, but that initially they were weary. This is what they said on Wikipedia, that initially they were like, she didn't get. That's interesting. I didn't see that anywhere, but I did. Those two stories, those two different versions do converge in the sense that ultimately the company was perfectly happy with the film using their trademark. So just a handful of IMDb trivia facts here before we get, I think, two before we get to some reviews. Originally, as mentioned earlier, people did not like the English Disney version of this film because they thought people were fans of the original japanese version and they thought that Disney's dub did not have, was not a good translation. So they released, Disney re released a second version of their english dub in 2010. And this version went back and removed several ad libbed lines from american sound effects and added soundtracks and several comedic lines by Phil Hartman. Wait, hold on. That can't be right. I literally just copy pasted this in my md.
• 1:19:01
  Speaker B: I'm thinking what? Maybe got moved? No, I'm thinking they removed several ad libbed lines from american sound effects and added soundtracks and several comedic lines added by Phil Hartman. So they removed all of that stuff.
• 1:19:17
  Speaker A: Yeah, but ad libbed lines from american sound effects doesn't make sense.
• 1:19:21
  Speaker B: I agree.
• 1:19:22
  Speaker A: So I don't. That was why I was like, that doesn't make sense.
• 1:19:26
  Speaker B: So I'm trying to think.
• 1:19:28
  Speaker A: I think the idea that could be here is that they removed several additional sound effects that shouldn't have been in the film, as well as some music cues. And they removed some specific comedic lines by Phil Hartman. I think you're right that those were all things that the 1998 Disney version had added, that the 2010 version then went back and removed. But this is written, maybe translated from japanese or something like that, I don't know. But supposedly this 2010 revised dub is widely considered to be more faithful, interesting than the 1998 version.
• 1:20:02
  Speaker B: Trying to think of how old I would have been the first time I watched this movie. And what the first.
• 1:20:08
  Speaker A: Which version you would have seen if.
• 1:20:09
  Speaker B: It would have been like the 1990 like. Or the 1990 like, original original dub or if it would have been the 98.
• 1:20:17
  Speaker A: Well, so the 1991, I didn't include this. You basically can't find it anymore. Not that you couldn't have seen it back then, but it's not stream like it's. It's almost lost media. I believe they said it. The 1990 version, you can get it as part of some certain like box vhs or dvd sets or something like that. But other than that, it's like not anywhere.
• 1:20:37
  Speaker B: Yeah, I'm trying to. I guess it probably would have been the 98 version that I saw because I remember we used to rent this from the little rental, movie rental place at schnucks at a local grocery store that we have here.
• 1:20:56
  Speaker A: Kind of St. Louis adjacent.
• 1:20:58
  Speaker B: Yeah, it's kind of St. Louis area ish grocery store. But when, when we were growing up, they used to have a little room at the front yeah, that was like a video rental place. Oh yeah, I loved the video rental store.
• 1:21:10
  Speaker A: Dear bro, they all had a lot of grocery stores had. That was where I would sit the whole time when my mom was shopping. I would go sit in the movies.
• 1:21:18
  Speaker B: We lost. But I remember getting this movie several times from that rental place and I think that probably would have been the 98 version. Anyway.
• 1:21:28
  Speaker A: Anyways, my other random fun fact that I had to include because I thought it was very funny. According to IMDb, exactly 462 colors were used in the making of this film. So there's 462 different colors in the animation.
• 1:21:41
  Speaker B: It's a lot of colors.
• 1:21:42
  Speaker A: Yeah. So some initial reviews and reception for Kiki's delivery service at the time of its release were positive. Mark Schilling for the Japan Times gave it a positive review praising the realism of Kiki's character. Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa also appreciated the film and praised it received similar acclaim in America once it was released, like we said, in 1990. Although again in 1998. On September 12, 1998, it was the first video released to be reviewed as a normal film on Siskel and Ebert, rather than on their video pic of the week section, whatever that means. I don't know. Again, I just copy pasted this from Wikipedia. Siskel of the Chicago Tribune and Ebert. Okay, Siskel and Ebert both gave it two thumbs up. So retrospective reviews, these are reviews. Contemporary, you know. Reviews published later are also positive on the film. Writing for IGN, Andy Patricio praised the film for its simple but meaningful story, as well as the voice acting of the english dub and Vox's Allegra Frank felt that the film presented its message well. It's also ranked pretty highly in various publications. Entertainment Weekly rated it as video of the year in the 1998, and in the same year, Ebert went on to rank it as one of the best animated films released in the US. The film also ranked number twelve on Wizards Anime's magazine's list of the top 50 animes released in North America. Widely critically acclaimed. As always, you can do us a giant favor by hanging over to Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Goodreads, threads, any of those places interact. We'd love to hear from you and see what you have to say about all this stuff. You can drop us a nice little five star rating us a nice little review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, wherever you're watching and enjoying our show, and you can support us on patreon@patreon.com. thisfilmaslit and get access to bonus content we will be putting out very soon. Our bonus episode on the animated the Hobbit. So look out for that at the $5 patron level. Katie, where can people watch Kiki's delivery service?
• 1:23:47
  Speaker B: Well, as always, you can check with your local library or a local video rental store. Probably not one at the front of a grocery store.
• 1:23:55
  Speaker A: But unless you live in somewhere really remote, I bet some really remote places, like in Montana, maybe still have those.
• 1:24:01
  Speaker B: But if you still have one, you could check with them. Otherwise, you can stream this with a subscription to HBO. Max. Okay, I know you mentioned Disney plus a minute ago. I just checked on the app, and it's not streaming on Disney.
• 1:24:12
  Speaker A: Really? I thought they had all of studio Ghibli stuff.
• 1:24:15
  Speaker B: I am positive that the last time I watched this, which was only, like, a year or two ago, I streamed it through Disney, so it must have gotten taken down.
• 1:24:24
  Speaker A: Interesting. Yeah.
• 1:24:24
  Speaker B: Cause I thought fairly recently Disney had.
• 1:24:26
  Speaker A: All the studio Ghibli stuff.
• 1:24:27
  Speaker B: I thought they did too.
• 1:24:28
  Speaker A: Okay. Yeah.
• 1:24:29
  Speaker B: But apparently not. Otherwise, you can rent this for around $4 from Apple TV, Amazon, or Fandango at home. And also, this might not necessarily help you with this specifically right now, but you could check with your local movie theater, because our movie theater is doing a studio Ghibli series, like, through October.
• 1:24:51
  Speaker A: Are they doing Kiki's delivery service?
• 1:24:53
  Speaker B: I think so, but I think it's, like, not until October.
• 1:24:57
  Speaker A: I mean, also, we wouldn't, because we have to take notes, and that's hard.
• 1:24:59
  Speaker B: To do anything that's hard to do in a theater. But if you have a hankering to see one of these films, as a.
• 1:25:06
  Speaker A: Listener, you don't have to take notes. You just gotta watch the movie.
• 1:25:10
  Speaker B: But we went to see Twisters the other day.
• 1:25:14
  Speaker A: Yes, we did.
• 1:25:15
  Speaker B: And they had a sign up advertising that they were showing a bunch of studio Ghibli movies.
• 1:25:23
  Speaker A: Five second review of Twisters. Meh. It's mediocre.
• 1:25:28
  Speaker B: I thought it was pretty dumb.
• 1:25:29
  Speaker A: It's very dumb. Oh, it's very dumb. But it's kind of fun at times. But it's not as fun as I was hoping. It was pretty mid, as the kids say, so I really expected to like it. And I was like, it's not that good, so it's not bad. It's just not very good.
• 1:25:46
  Speaker B: I did eat a bunch of popcorn.
• 1:25:48
  Speaker A: Yeah. You know, it's hard to go wrong in a movie theater. So that's gonna do it. Can't wait to talk about Kiki's delivery service. I've joked about it before, but it's my favorite. It's the one studio Ghibli movie I've seen that I've liked, and that's not entirely true. Hall's moving castle was fine. I just. I'm not a fan of spirited away.
• 1:26:05
  Speaker B: Is this the one that you fully understand?
• 1:26:07
  Speaker A: The one I fully. Yes, it's the one I fully get and fully can get behind because I feel like I get what it's doing and I'm on board and I enjoyed it and thought it was a delightful film. And yeah, I'm excited to rewatch it because I've only seen it once. We watched it years ago.
• 1:26:24
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 1:26:25
  Speaker A: Maybe even before the podcast.
• 1:26:26
  Speaker B: Probably before the podcast, because I think that was at the apartment.
• 1:26:30
  Speaker A: Yeah. So it would have been over seven years ago or whatever. So, yeah, very excited to revisit it and see what I think this time. But again, I really liked it the first time. So that'll be in one week's time. We're watching and talking about Keke's delivery service. Until that time, guys, gals, non binary pals, and everybody else, keep reading books, keep watching movies, and keep being awesome.