[Suzerain of Sheol]

Looking around at reviews, I am absolutely stupefied by the praise this movie is garnering. I truly do not understand it at all. Setting aside the entire heaping of offenses to the source material, I just cannot for the life of me understand how it is anything other than an immature puerile cliche-ridden pandering cynical cash-grab.

A lot of people are gushing over the visual effects and the costumes, props, etc... I agree, they were fantastic, but it is an absolute tragedy to waste such incredible talent on a script so unrepentantly, reprehensibly awful.

Why are there dwarves in the toilet, indeed. :|

I am just so sick of my feelings toward it being invalidated because I must be a fanatical purist ready to crucify anyone who dares change the slightest thing from the books... when my entire problem with the changes is how frustratingly idiotic they are. The plot holes, the inconsistencies with itself, the offensive jokes, making the villains into drooling imbeciles to justify the inane antics they've invented for the heroes...

The stock rebuttal is "Well, things have to get changed when you translate a book to a film."

Things like... having Gandalf teleport TWICE over the same mountains the dwarves just risked their lives trying to cross in the last movie?

Things like... Smaug falling for childish taunts and refusing to flash-burn the dwarves to ash on more occasions than I can possibly count?

Things like every fight bombarding us with the point that violent combat to the death is a wacky, fun, exhilarating form of entertainment? This. Is. Offensive.

These films are nothing but defilement, or as Christopher Tolkien puts it, "an evisceration of his father's legacy". They are insulting to watch -- this is what they think we want to see: turgid, meaningless action, forced anachronistic romance, and humor that wouldn't have been out of place in Your Highness.

Peter Jackson is calling everyone who watches this movie an idiot, and I am not okay with that.

And I guess that's what it comes down to for me. There are innumerable bad movies out there with horrible writing and stupid plot holes. There are a lot of books that have been mangled by cinematic adaptations.

It's the attitude. It's the intention behind the changes the made. It's the mind that decided to shove another soiled knife into the corpse of this franchise. It is nothing less than the soulless nihilistic prostitution of a work of art, and what it means for the future of fantasy in film, and it's the praise and luxury that they will win for doing so that hurts me so badly.

It is a disgrace.