I randomly thought of the Hobbit movies and I remembered Alfrid and just winced. I cannot believe Peter Jackson and co. decided to dedicate that much screentime to this absolutely wretched OC. Were we supposed to find his cowardly antics funny? I don’t get it
In the theatrical cut he just exits the movie trying to escape a siege dressed as a lady with a bunch of loot stuffed in his bra. In the extended cut he hides in a catapult, still in drag, and accidentally gets launched into the mouth of a hideous CGI troll thing which kills both of them. The scene is so bad it doesn’t even work as a cathartic comeuppance. Entirely worthless character in a horrid trilogy of movies
i dont even remember this character, granted i havent watched the hobbit movies since they came out so most of it has been memory holed
He’s introduced in the second movie as the Mayor of Laketown’s (Stephen Fry) greedy, cowardly servant/assistant. In the beginning of the third movie, the Mayor and Alfrid are trying to escape the town via boat filled with gold as Smaug is setting fire to it, but when Smaug is killed he falls on the boat and kills the Mayor, however Alfrid regrettably survives.
Throughout the rest of the movie, he is bossed around by Bard who tries to get him to help evacuate the citizens of Laketown while he gripes and moans and instead keeps looting. He’s such an annoying and unlikable character it’s baffling how the movie keeps giving him screentime. Its made worse by the fact that both him and the Mayor are wholly original and unnecessary Peter Jackson creations.
He’s supposed to be the Grima Wormtongue equivalent of the Hobbit movies but they just upped the sniveling 100-fold and tried to make him funny
The hobbit movies were irredeemably bad. Like if they had stopped with the first one it would have been ‘meh.’ A kind if sad last stop on the lotr train. The second and third movies were such massive turds their terrible terribleness reverberates through time and actually makes the original trilogy worse. Like it changes the memories in my head for the worse they were so bad.
The m4 fanedit honestly redeemed the movies for me. It basically cuts the trilogy down to a 4 hour movie thats true to the book and mostly just follows Bilbo.
There’s some good stuff in there which makes it worse, since it shows they could have done something good if they weren’t forced to shit out 3 overlong movies with much less prep than what they had for LOTR.
Martin Freeman’s performance as Bilbo, the Gollum scene or the Smaug scene were all great
It’s what happens when they decide to stretch two pages into two hours
I swear he got more screentime than Bilbo Baggins, i.e., The Hobbit
Having never seen it, I assume this is a shit post, and it’s a funny one.
