More 'Beorn' In New Clips From THE HOBBIT: THE DESOLATION OF SMAUG Extended Edition

nice i saw the whole EE already :D

First of all, I already have this pre-ordered, and I'm excited to see it.

But you can't have a flash back within a flashback - and if by chance you do want to do that, you don't use stock footage from the first film to do it!

If the majority of new footage is cut aways, like the flashback to the burial of the Witch King, I'm not too thrilled.

Sigh. Jackson, you imaginative but cruel bastard.

@PsychoticSpaceRaccoon Remember: this is the same director who, in The Two Towers extended edition, showed us a flashback that Faramir was having about his brother giving a speech after re-taking the city of Osgiliath. Faramir remembers having a conversation with Boromir and their father Denethor...and then Boromir and Denothor leave and go into another room and have a completely separate conversation there while the camera follows them. How Faramir is remembering an event (because it is, after all, HIS flashback) that he wasn't actually present for is utterly beyond me haha.

@BNfilmz You're looking at it from a logical, real-world perspective though. My point had to do with the cinematic point of view. It's extremely poor directing and movie-making to show a flashback, through one character's perspective, and then suddenly show another event in that flashback that afore-mentioned character couldn't possibly have seen or witnessed himself. Cinematically, it makes no sense.

Obviously, Boromir could've told Faramir about that conversation off-screen (though I don't see what the point of that would be. Faramir already knows his father's extremely low opinion of him, and nothing else in that conversation concerned him)...but that doesn't explain the decision to show a flashback of one character remembering a past event, and then have the camera leave that character and focus on two entirely different characters altogether.

It's the same poor filmmaking as showing a flashback within a flashback, like in the clip above.

@SauronsBANE:

I think, you're forgetting the most important aspect of the phenomenon of flashback:

You say, that a flashback is seen "through one character's perspectiv", but actually that's almost never the case in flashback scenes. The camera is NOT the eyes of Faramir in that particular flashback scene. No, the camera is "watching" Faramir and the other characters from the outside.

You don't imagine, that Faramir is hovering somewhere up in the air, while Boromir makes his short speech to the soldiers, do you? So if you really want to be nitpicking, then Faramir couldn't have any memory of how Boromir was looking, when he made that speech, could he? Cause Boromir was up there, and Faramir was not. A bit later we see Faramir smiling and looking hurt (because of his father's words), and we also see Boromir's facial expression, when he has turned his back to Faramir and hugs Denethor. How could Faramir have any memory of exactly how Boromir's face looked at that particular moment?

It DOES make sense that Boromor told Faramir, what Denthor had said in the other room. Why? Because the three of them talked about the meeting in Rivendell; and Boromor would have to tell his beloved brother Faramir, that they wouldn't be fighting side by side for the next few weeks or months, because their father had decided, that HE should go to Rivendell and represent the people of Gondor. ... Besides that: Just before Denethor followed Boromir into that other room, Boromir had scolded him for his constant denigration of Faramir, so of course Boromir would have told Faramir of Denethor's reaction. When Denethor and Denethor are alone, they talk about the One Ring, and when Frodo, Sam and Gollum meets Faramir, he knows about the Ring and THE REASON for the meeting in Rivendell - which indicates that Boromir told him about the conversation he had with their father.

Flashbacks don't necessarily follow any rules. Just think about the flashback scene in beginning of 'The Desolation of Smaug'. Whose point of view is that scene seen from? Nobody's.

@BNfilmz I think we'll have to agree to disagree here.

But just to clear up my point, there ARE certain rules that these types of plot devices need to follow...but I think you might be taking my words a bit too literally. Of course, the camera isn't literally the eyes of Faramir during that flashback. Having the camera all the way at Boromir's level during that speech is just Jackson showing off his cinematic flair and getting the most dramatic camera shot possible. I'm perfectly okay with that, and I even expect that kind of stuff.

But the kind of stuff that makes no sense (again, cinematically) is showing Faramir in the present day, sitting and remembering some past events, fading out of that shot, and then showing us an entire flashback sequence that includes conversations that he never saw or heard (it's most definitely from his point of view, too. Why go through the trouble of fading out from Faramir if he wasn't meant to be the sole focus of that scene? Either Jackson should've found a better way to transition to the flashback, or he should've kept to the rules that he himself imposed in that situation and NOT showed us a conversation that Faramir wasn't there for).

So yes, most scenes in movies actually DO follow a particular character's perspective. That has nothing to do with a camera actually being the eyes and ears of a character...that's just taking things way too literally. And you can't expect the film editors to go out of their way to NOT show us a character's facial expressions when the point-of-view character wasn't able to see that. That's VERY nitpicky, and that's not what I'm saying here at all.

And just to respond to your last point...that flashback in Desolation of Smaug IS from a particular point of view. It's clearly from Thorin's, seeing how he was shown to be in the inn before Gandalf ever arrived. The extended clip above makes that even clearer because we are then shown Thorin remembering the battle at Moria...which, again, breaks another 'rule' of showing a flashback within a flashback.

But again, agree to disagree I suppose.