The Hobbit.

[Sinfonian]

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Why is Gandalf alive?

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My personal guess would be that it's somehow related to Gandalf's later revelation as the bearer of Narya, one of the Three Rings of the Elves. Perhaps he senses a link to a Ring of Power. Perhaps one of the Three Rings can only be surrendered willingly (as much as severe torture or brainwashing can lead to someone being willing). Maybe Gandalf doesn't have it with him, and Sauron wants to get the information from him. Given that Sauron had no connection to the Three, I'd think he'd covet such an opportunity to obtain one.

My personal thoughts about the movie (In short: I had mixed feelings, ending up mostly on the positive side). Ramblings ahoy!

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I liked the opening scene where they explained Gandalf and Thorin's plan to use a burglar. I felt like that plan was significantly better than the "spy and hope to spot a weakness in the nigh-invulnerable dragon without dying" plan of the book. Using the burglar feels like a plan that just might have a reasonable chance of success.

I hated the shoehorned-in scenes between Kili and Tauriel. There wasn't any need for that. It didn't add anything to the movie, and distracting from the interesting parts. The fact that this was likely the reason that almost a third of the dwarves didn't even go into Erebor compounds this flaw to me.

I wished for a little more of Bilbo sneaking around the elves and showing his competence of doing that, which would have established his skills as a burglar as he honed them.

I liked the design of Smaug and thought it worked pretty well. It wasn't the greatest thing I've ever seen in my life, but I liked it. The action scenes in Erebor were a little unnecessary, but did make me appreciate that the dwarves were themselves in danger, rather than just lucking out that Smaug chose to go after Lake-town after encountering Bilbo and got killed.

While I don't have a problem with the inclusion of Legolas into a place where he totally has good reason to be, I found that giving him three separate action scenes was excessive fanservice. Especially since he took the focus of the barrel scene off of where it should have been.

I appreciated that Jackson more closely tied the Ring to the One Ring we came to know in the Lord of the Rings. It was pretty incongruous in tghe books for Bilbo to spend weeks sneaking around wearing the Ring with seemingly not much in the way of ill effects, compared with the all-corrupting temptation it later became (I understand that this is in large part due to Tolkien decided to make it something it wasn't originally meant to be). That said, it was a little ham-handed.

I also liked that Gandalf is playing a larger game than just helping the dwarves reclaim Erebor for themselves. It made it feel more like part of a larger story.

I'm curious to see how Gandalf acquires Radagast's staff. I'd noticed it wasn't the same one from the LOTR movies, but didn't notice it was Radagast's until it was mentioned in the AUJ commentary. I assume that the Brown wizard isn't going to live to the end credits of movie 3.

The Dol Goldur stuff seemed okay, but it made no sense for Gandalf to just wander right into what he believes is a certain trap, even if he thinks its not necessarily Sauron himself there.

The end of the movie felt super abrupt and unsatisfying, as if they just had a cut between scenes in a longer movie that became 2 and 3.