Salt Lake Comic Con Day 3

 My last day at the Salt Lake Comic Con started off amazingly.

Video Games Live!

I've literally waited years to experience this concert, and the wait was well worth it.  This show was beyond everything I imagined, and being there live is beyond what I can explain.

Lights, video, interaction, etc.

Usually when you attend the Symphony there's decorum.  Rules.  Etiquette.  There are only certain places you're allowed to applaud, after all.  Don't be the weirdo who claps in the middle of a movement.

But with Video Games Live you're allowed to clap and cheer whenever you feel moved, and there was A LOT of clapping and cheering going on, especially during favorite games.

I cried through the whole of it!!  Especially during the Kingdom Hearts.

I started crying before the concert began.  (I'm not joking.  A couple tears went down my face.)

And the Skyrim segment was so well done.  I couldn't help but think of my Dad, who would have LOVED this concert!!!!!, but decided back in May not to get a ticket.  He was addicted to Skyrim for the LONGEST time.  The game that will not end . . . heh.  But seriously, I'm dragging my Dad to this concert next year.

The Snow College choir sang, and at first my family laughed (sorry, we did) when we heard that they were singing, but they were Incredible.  Awesome bass section.  In an area surrounded by so many Universities (U of U, BYU, UVU) within 40 mile, Snow College is a 2 year college in Ephraim Utah, out in the middle of no where, about 122 miles from SLC.

The choir was Phenomenal.

And the soloist was amazing, too.

Honestly, I wish more people were aware of how amazing Game Music is.

 At the Evermore section.  Heh, I look more happy then scared.

 Steven with Heather Theurer, the amazing Fantasy artist, who has also painted some amazing Disney portraits.  They're worth checking out on her site.  Apparently the Merida painting was amazing in person, unfortunately it was sold out before I had a chance to see it.  I would love to own the Lilo and Stitch painting.  So cute.

 Brandon Sanderson!

He's an Incredible Fantasy writer.

(I recommend Elantris and Warbreaker, though I hear Mistborn is amazing, I just haven't read it yet . . . ).  He's an expert at creating unique magic systems.

I first found out about Brandon before he was even published.  While working on his masters at BYU, he was rooming with a few guys a couple blocks from where I live.  He didn't attend the YSA (Young Single Adult) ward I was going to, but his roommates did, and when some of his friends in the ward found out how much I love fantasy, they told me about Brandon.  So when Elantris was published, I went to the BYU library and found out every copy of the book was checked out, except his master thesis copy of Elantris, so I checked that out.  Didn't get all the little pictures, but it was really interesting.

And FYI, when he talks about a local church group service auction, in which cans of food were used as auction payment, during the annotations of Warbreaker, I was there.  (It was super surreal reading an event in a book I was actually present for.  Brandon put up as auction the opportunity to have a character in one of his books named after you.  That would have been fun :0)

 Disney Cosplayers right outside the Disney Store.  They totally went inside after this picture was taken.

A video to remind you what 2015 is supposed to look like, in case you forgot.

 The Batmobile!

 Kids shooting at Storm Troopers :0)

It's a great way to pass the afternoon.

 I geeked out over this recreation of Bilbo's Contract from the Hobbit.

 Beware the Orcs.

 More LEGO's, just for fun.

Comic Con was fun.  I wish I made it to more panels.  And I hope the Con works on it's efficiency next year when it comes to managing all the people and the registration line.  Far from perfect, but a good time.

The Hobbit: The Desolation Of Smaug, Movie Review

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

I was so mad, So Mad, after watching the first Hobbit movie last year, entitled "The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey," that I fumed for awhile. Even then I still gave the movie 3.5 stars out of 5, regardless of my lukewarm, scathing review.  I must have been in the Christmas Spirit or something.  But as time went on I got more mad, more furious, and more disappointed.  I was tempted to go back to my original review and lower the rating, but my disheartened spirit led me to inactive listlessness . . . until today, after viewing the second Hobbit movie, The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, and decided the second is better then the first, but still not as great as the Lord of the Rings adaptations.

The Desolation of Smaug is still-too-long at 2 hr. 40 minutes.  And the smorgasbord of Lord of the Rings bridging, The Silmarillion, changed bits of The Hobbit, and Peter Jackson's imagination running amok remains, only this time it's more enjoyable.

Maybe the Tolkien purist in me is showing, but I still wish Peter Jackson did a faithful retailing of the book.  Those scenes I remembered from my childhood displayed in full glory on screen.  Like the barrel scene, when the dwarfs and Bilbo escape, is still vivid in my mind.  Even that was changed from the book to add excitement and nerve.

How can one simple book be turned into three movies?  By fill and fluff.  But unlike the first movie, I didn't mind the fill and fluff in this second installment as much.  Peter Jackson actually created a whole new character that never, ever existed in Tolkien's work.  The wood-elf Tauriel, play by Evangeline Lilly.  Is it sad to admit that my favorite character in the movie wasn't a Tolkien creation, but was a Peter Jackson addition?  I quickly grew to like her character, who appears alongside Legalos (a Rings trilogy only character, brought into The Hobbit by Jackson), portrayed again by Orlando Bloom.

Still, I don't think I'll be completely at ease until The Hobbit is finally finished, then all the fluff and fill will be easier to stomach.  I do like how this movie is setting up the Lord of the Rings, you see the connect better this time around, but this movie ends on a bit of a cliff hanger.  A jarring, In Your Face cliffhanger. I hate it.  It's unnecessary.

And the CGI/Composting is still super weak.  Annoyingly weak.

When all is said and done, I wish a collectors blu-ray would become available, a movie-cut consisting of scenes that Only existed in the books.  That would be nice.

Until then, we've still got a bit of story to look forward to next year, including the Battle of Five Armies.

Overall these three Hobbit movies are not a retailing of the book, but a prelude to The Lord of the Rings.

MPAA: PG-13 for extended sequences of intense fantasy action violence, and frightening images.

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, Movie Review

"In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.  Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort." ~ The Hobbit, J.R.R. Tolkien

Review: 2.75 Stars out of 5 Stars

The Hobbit, written by J.R.R. Tolkien, came out in 1937, the idea springing from the simple phrase, "In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit," which he wrote on the back of an exam he was grading.  Tolkien was a philologist, an expert of languages;  he began inventing languages in his youth, but these languages expanded and grew, and there came a point when he realized that the only way these languages could continue to grow was if they belonged somewhere, someplace.  Where these languages eventually belonged was Middle-Earth.  Tolkien spun tales and poems, epic stories that filled out a broad Universe beyond The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings . . . and because of that, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, begins to lose itself, getting swallowed up by Peter Jackson and the grand scope that is Middle-Earth.

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey is no longer a retailing of a children's classic, but a bridging of The Lord of the Rings movies and The Silmarillion, with additional tidbits added by Jackson himself: A melting pot, a smorgasbord, a movie greatly in need of editing.

The Hobbit should simply be that, "The Hobbit," as told to his children the way Tolkien first imagined.  

It was nice seeing different aspects of Middle-Earth fleshed out.  The design of the Dwarf kingdom was brilliant with interesting details, showing art deco influences.  All the design given to the dwarfs and their world would make a great concept art book.  Finally seeing Gollums cave, and the events therein, is a childhood dream come true.

But if each book in The Lord of the Rings series could brilliantly get their own movie, why then must The Hobbit get three?  Honestly the entire book could have gotten its own, singular movie, with sharp editing and more concise storytelling.  There's an art to adapting a book to the screen, but even then we're not getting a literal retailing of The Hobbit.  For instance, there is a Wizard known as Radagast the Brown who is only mentioned in The Hobbit, but plays a role in The Lord of the Rings and The Unfinished Tales.  Jackson completely removed Radagast from The Lord of the Rings, and made him a main character in The Hobbit trilogy, though he was never meant to be.  Oh, and the bunny sled, that's a Jackson creation.  Radagast's character brings plot points and events into The Hobbit that was meant for a later time, thus helping to inflate The Hobbit into three movies instead of the necessary, though less money-grossing, single film.  

A huge bright spot to this retailing of The Hobbit is the casting of Martin Freeman as Bilbo Baggins.  He's fantastic in the role, and a joy to watch.

In the end The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey left me lamenting, wishing Jackson could simply tell the story without filling it out.  How is there going to be two more movies?  If he wished to create a prequel to The Lord of the Rings, he should have done a singular movie instead of dragging The Hobbit into it.  With all the extensive material Tolkien created to better flesh out his world, an interesting movie could have simply been spun, and Tolkien's works could have remained intact.   

MPAA: PG-13 for extended sequences for intense fantasy action violence, and frightening images.  Though The Hobbit is written for kids, the movie isn't created for children in mind.  If you have young children, you may wish to view the movie first and decide if the material is suitable.

(As a note, I know there is a lot of buzz about the 48 frames per second, aka high frame rate.  I choose to view the movie in 2D at 24 frames per second.  At some point I do want to view the film at 48 fps to form my own opinion, but I'm already a little biased.  I hate walking into Costco, seeing all the flat screens set to high frame rates.  It always annoys me!  So I'm pretty sure I won't like the higher frame rate.  I'll reserve judgement.)