Okay folks. I’ll write a couple of paragraphs without spoilers and I’ll let you know when I venture into that territory before whipping them out. I watched The Hobbit: DoS yesterday and it was excellent. It was a fun roller coaster ride, but it reminded me how lucky we are with how the Lord of the Rings trilogy turned out. Desolation of Smaug is indeed better than An Unexpected Journey, but nowhere near the level of quality of the Rings trilogy. This is to be expected because you could say the same thing about the books. The stakes are not high enough. Although there are major chess pieces being moved around all over by Gandalf and Sauron, it’s all just a bunch of wins or losses in battles. The great war has not yet begun because neither side realizes that the One Ring of power is a player. Once everyone realizes it exists in LoTR, it’s a huge “all or nothing” war to the finish. But as far as our primary characters in the Hobbit movies know, this is simply an adventure.
As I re-read my review, I see that I do an awful lot of complaining. I really did enjoy this movie. It was a lot of fun and has a special place in my heart because it’s a journey back to Middle Earth. But it seems the things that stick out in my head are things that I have issues with. I’ve tried not to compare it to LoTR, but it seems impossible to me. And therein lies most of the problems. The styles are so completely different in these films than in LoTR – especially in this one. The action starts right off from the get-go and keeps going until the last shot. There is no long sequences of lingering in Hobbiton or Rivendell. I like this approach, though it can feel sometimes exhausting. The camera swoops around like we are watching the action from a cyclone. Everything is so completely over the top. The only way that I can wrap this stylistic change around my head is to think of these movies as coming from the exaggerated narrative of Bilbo Baggins himself. We know from AUJ that he wrote this story and is telling it in his own manner. With that in mind, I kind of like the dramatic change in style, though it makes me grateful that we will always have LoTR. We continue to get very little drama and character development in DoS.
I’m sure you’ve seen Legolas from the trailers. One of the things Becky mentioned to me was how Legolas lacks the subtlety in his character this time around. Subtlety. That is what is missing from every single scene. Nothing is left open to interpretation. Every glance is in your face. Every action is spelled out by the character’s themselves, for fear that the audience may not be able to come to their own conclusions. As I watch this, I am reminded of my reaction to The Phantom Menace as I compared it to previous Star Wars films. Okay. I must apologize for that. Peter Jackson is still at least a competent storyteller (though that may be in part because he is following the source material provided by Tolkien). But let me give you an example of the action. Remember in the LoTR trilogy when Legolas would get one huge over the top moment in each film to be Errol Flynn on steroids? This time, he does that in EVERY ACTION SEQUENCE. Every time he and Tauriel are on screen, they are spinning and sliding like they are living in the Matrix. It’s really cool at first. But then it just gets old. Give us Christmas once a year and it is magical and fun and beautiful and fantastic. Give it to us every single day, and it becomes just like every other day in the year. Subtlety and restraint.
Now I’m going to get into some spoiler territory. If you think it’s okay because you’ve read the book, you are dead wrong. PJ ventures FAR off the path of the novel. Most of it I am okay with, but there are a couple of additions that made me quite angry.
The first thing we get in the movie is Beorn. Beorn is a cool guy. He is the last skin changer in the world and he can turn himself into a bear. In the book, Gandalf says “This guy is dangerous and we don’t want to anger him so I’m going to bring you guys in two at a time to watch carefully how he reacts.” In the film Gandalf says “I don’t know. He might help us. He might kill us. Everybody rush into his house all at once!!” And they do. They storm Beorn’s house, screaming all the while, and then lock him outside. What?! Once Beorn shows up in human form, we get about 5 minutes with this fantastic character before we are rushed out to the next set piece.
Gandalf leaves, and Bilbo and company head into Mirkwood. Mirkwood was done wonderfully. The spiders were lots of fun. And guess what? They talk! My 12 year old argued last week that if the spiders talk like they do in the book then this series is ruined for him. I understand where he is coming from. The Hobbit book is full of talking animals, but LoTR is not. He wants to see this filmic world follow the rules that it previously established. Well, the cool thing is that Bilbo really only hears their thoughts once he puts on the ring. It makes sense because these spiders are creatures of the shadow and are drawn to the darkness that Dol Guldur has brought to Mirkwood.
Speaking of Dol Guldur, from what I remember it’s all the way at the bottom of Mirkwood. And Mirkwood is huge, Dol Guldur is several hundred miles away. And yet, multiple characters make it there and back in no time at all. I guess the laws of time and space don’t apply to a world compose of CGI. And that’s another thing that bugged me a bit. The LoTR orcs looked fantastic with their make-up and prosthetics. Lurtz and Gothmog were especially creepy. Sometimes I would just want to pause the movie and marvel at them. Not so much in DoS. PJ keeps giving us orcs with CGI faces. Why? They don’t look cool. They just look like CGI faces!
I’ve read some reviews where people had problems with Gandalf using major powers in Dol Guldur. Gandalf isn’t supposed to match power with power. As an istari, he is forbidden. And yet here, he appears to pull out some pretty big guns. But I don’t really see it that way. He uses a spell to reveal a glamour, and what appears to be some sort of force shield/bubble. The force shield itself is more like pure light that is holding off pure dark. That’s reasonable to me. If he used that spell on any other creature, it wouldn’t do much but brighten it up or maybe scare it away like he did with the ringwraiths outside of Minas Tirith.
One of the things I enjoyed the most was PJ’s inclusion of a completely invented character, Tauriel. It’s Kate from Lost playing an elf. I liked her a lot. Every time she was on screen and not fighting, she brought great emotional depth to a film that lacked great emotional depth. She is actually in it a lot, and though Legolas is in it just as much, his role felt like nothing more than a cameo next to hers. However, once she shows up, PJ starts changing the story. She and Kili begin this crazy elf/dwarf love-at-first-sight storyline that I have major issues with. I’m most conflicted with this, because it doesn’t feel forced. It feels right. And yet, it’s an ELF and a DWARF! Maybe I just need to let it go and accept that times are changing.
Laketown was so much more fully realized than I had ever imagined. I loved it! But once again, PJ strays far from the source material. Bard’s black arrow isn’t an arrow at all, but a harpoon. Bilbo doesn’t save the day by revealing Smaug’s one weak spot. Bard reveals this info to Bilbo. Four of the dwarves stay behind in Laketown while the rest go on to Erebor Yeah, they’ve come all this way facing death defying odds at every turn but now that they have made it practically to the doorstep, they stop. Who cares about seeing their ancestors home? Laketown is so much prettier this time of year with their fish and fog and animosity towards dwarves. Bofur stays behind because he slept in. Kili hurt his leg. Fili won’t go without Kili. And Oin is just….um….old?
Kili, by the way, is dying from being shot in the leg with an arrow. And the only ones who can save the day is Tauriel and Legolas. Plus Laketown gets invaded by orcs, so the elves get to do some more Matrix style killing.
And here is the thing that hurts me the most. Tauriel saves Kili with a handful of Kingsfoil. Kingsfoil? Aye, it’s a weed. Yep. The same stuff that Aragorn used to save Frodo in Fellowship of the Ring. In Fellowship, Arwen came to him after Aragorn administered the poultice and she looked all glowy and beautiful. I always assumed that was because Frodo was close to darkness and was now approached by an elf of the light – Elrond’s daughter, Galadriel’s granddaughter. Arwen is from a race of elves that has seen the light of the original sun and moon in the Blessed Realm (aka elf heaven). But guess what? Kili sees Tauriel in the same mystical glowy fashion. Tauriel is a lowly Sylvan elf. Their claim to fame is that they live Mirkwood. Technically, Thranduil and his son, Legolas, have some Sindarin in them which is a mix of light and dark elves. But Tauriel should be strictly Silvan – otherwise known as dark elves who haven’t seen the light of the Blessed Realm. That leaves me to conclude that Kili was just high, and Frodo was experiencing the same effects. But that’s not the part that kills me. Athelas, also known as Kingsfoil, is a common weed that has NO medicinal properties unless administered BY THE HANDS OF A KING. This is why Aragorn was able to heal Frodo with it. In the book, it is one of the major ways that he uses to prove that he is the true king. This is why people never thought of it as anything more than just a weed. So in PJs world, it is all over the place, but NOBODY knows it’s healing properties even though ANYONE can use it to heal? THIS MAKES NO SENSE and it’s the number one thing that frustrates me with this movie. Seriously. This is as bad as Lucas’ midichlorians. PJ moved too much stuff around on this perfectly stable tower just to make it his own, and this is the block that makes his Jenga tower topple.
The final 30 minutes involve not just Bilbo, but the dwarves entering Erebor and confronting Smaug. They create this huge overly elaborate plan to kill the dragon once and for all. It turns the dwarves into Matrix fighters as well, as they practically fly through the halls, coming close to meeting their end dozens of times. Thorin boogie boards down a river of molten gold. Finally, the gather all the molten gold together and cover Smaug with it. I’m not sure what it was supposed to do. Burn him? Nice try doing that to a heat proof dragon. Drown him? Well, he’s got wings so he just flies right out. Maybe they expected it to be more quick drying and turn him into some sort of golden gargoyle. But he just shakes it off like a wet dog. This whole final 30 minute sequence was the most boring part for me. It was all CGI and it just kept going on and on and on. Jumping down stairs, flying on ropes, crashing through walls. Fire, fire, fire. It sounds exciting, but it almost had me nodding off like I was watching the podrace from Phantom Menace. Noisy. Dark, except for blinding flashes of fire. And constant moving without really comprehending what was going on. When the movie finally concludes, it ends so abruptly that I was almost shocked. Action! Action! Action! And then roll credits. No quiet moment reflecting on the adventure or character growth.
I’m going to be seeing this a second time next week with my kids and my father-in-law. Typically, a second review will tell me how I really feel. I’ll get to judge the movie on its own merit instead of my expectations. I enjoyed Iron Man 3 more on my second viewing. On the other hand, I hated Phantom Menace and X-Men 3 even worse. As I think about watching it a second time, I feel excited. So I couldn’t have disliked it too much. And maybe after seeing the extended version, I will enjoy it even more. I remember having HUGE problems with Two Towers until I saw the extended version. Until then, don’t take my word for it. Go see the movie. Becky said she loved every minute of it.
As I re-read my review, I see that I do an awful lot of complaining. I really did enjoy this movie. It was a lot of fun and has a special place in my heart because it’s a journey back to Middle Earth. But it seems the things that stick out in my head are things that I have issues with. I’ve tried not to compare it to LoTR, but it seems impossible to me. And therein lies most of the problems. The styles are so completely different in these films than in LoTR – especially in this one. The action starts right off from the get-go and keeps going until the last shot. There is no long sequences of lingering in Hobbiton or Rivendell. I like this approach, though it can feel sometimes exhausting. The camera swoops around like we are watching the action from a cyclone. Everything is so completely over the top. The only way that I can wrap this stylistic change around my head is to think of these movies as coming from the exaggerated narrative of Bilbo Baggins himself. We know from AUJ that he wrote this story and is telling it in his own manner. With that in mind, I kind of like the dramatic change in style, though it makes me grateful that we will always have LoTR. We continue to get very little drama and character development in DoS.
I’m sure you’ve seen Legolas from the trailers. One of the things Becky mentioned to me was how Legolas lacks the subtlety in his character this time around. Subtlety. That is what is missing from every single scene. Nothing is left open to interpretation. Every glance is in your face. Every action is spelled out by the character’s themselves, for fear that the audience may not be able to come to their own conclusions. As I watch this, I am reminded of my reaction to The Phantom Menace as I compared it to previous Star Wars films. Okay. I must apologize for that. Peter Jackson is still at least a competent storyteller (though that may be in part because he is following the source material provided by Tolkien). But let me give you an example of the action. Remember in the LoTR trilogy when Legolas would get one huge over the top moment in each film to be Errol Flynn on steroids? This time, he does that in EVERY ACTION SEQUENCE. Every time he and Tauriel are on screen, they are spinning and sliding like they are living in the Matrix. It’s really cool at first. But then it just gets old. Give us Christmas once a year and it is magical and fun and beautiful and fantastic. Give it to us every single day, and it becomes just like every other day in the year. Subtlety and restraint.
Now I’m going to get into some spoiler territory. If you think it’s okay because you’ve read the book, you are dead wrong. PJ ventures FAR off the path of the novel. Most of it I am okay with, but there are a couple of additions that made me quite angry.
The first thing we get in the movie is Beorn. Beorn is a cool guy. He is the last skin changer in the world and he can turn himself into a bear. In the book, Gandalf says “This guy is dangerous and we don’t want to anger him so I’m going to bring you guys in two at a time to watch carefully how he reacts.” In the film Gandalf says “I don’t know. He might help us. He might kill us. Everybody rush into his house all at once!!” And they do. They storm Beorn’s house, screaming all the while, and then lock him outside. What?! Once Beorn shows up in human form, we get about 5 minutes with this fantastic character before we are rushed out to the next set piece.
Gandalf leaves, and Bilbo and company head into Mirkwood. Mirkwood was done wonderfully. The spiders were lots of fun. And guess what? They talk! My 12 year old argued last week that if the spiders talk like they do in the book then this series is ruined for him. I understand where he is coming from. The Hobbit book is full of talking animals, but LoTR is not. He wants to see this filmic world follow the rules that it previously established. Well, the cool thing is that Bilbo really only hears their thoughts once he puts on the ring. It makes sense because these spiders are creatures of the shadow and are drawn to the darkness that Dol Guldur has brought to Mirkwood.
Speaking of Dol Guldur, from what I remember it’s all the way at the bottom of Mirkwood. And Mirkwood is huge, Dol Guldur is several hundred miles away. And yet, multiple characters make it there and back in no time at all. I guess the laws of time and space don’t apply to a world compose of CGI. And that’s another thing that bugged me a bit. The LoTR orcs looked fantastic with their make-up and prosthetics. Lurtz and Gothmog were especially creepy. Sometimes I would just want to pause the movie and marvel at them. Not so much in DoS. PJ keeps giving us orcs with CGI faces. Why? They don’t look cool. They just look like CGI faces!
I’ve read some reviews where people had problems with Gandalf using major powers in Dol Guldur. Gandalf isn’t supposed to match power with power. As an istari, he is forbidden. And yet here, he appears to pull out some pretty big guns. But I don’t really see it that way. He uses a spell to reveal a glamour, and what appears to be some sort of force shield/bubble. The force shield itself is more like pure light that is holding off pure dark. That’s reasonable to me. If he used that spell on any other creature, it wouldn’t do much but brighten it up or maybe scare it away like he did with the ringwraiths outside of Minas Tirith.
One of the things I enjoyed the most was PJ’s inclusion of a completely invented character, Tauriel. It’s Kate from Lost playing an elf. I liked her a lot. Every time she was on screen and not fighting, she brought great emotional depth to a film that lacked great emotional depth. She is actually in it a lot, and though Legolas is in it just as much, his role felt like nothing more than a cameo next to hers. However, once she shows up, PJ starts changing the story. She and Kili begin this crazy elf/dwarf love-at-first-sight storyline that I have major issues with. I’m most conflicted with this, because it doesn’t feel forced. It feels right. And yet, it’s an ELF and a DWARF! Maybe I just need to let it go and accept that times are changing.
Laketown was so much more fully realized than I had ever imagined. I loved it! But once again, PJ strays far from the source material. Bard’s black arrow isn’t an arrow at all, but a harpoon. Bilbo doesn’t save the day by revealing Smaug’s one weak spot. Bard reveals this info to Bilbo. Four of the dwarves stay behind in Laketown while the rest go on to Erebor Yeah, they’ve come all this way facing death defying odds at every turn but now that they have made it practically to the doorstep, they stop. Who cares about seeing their ancestors home? Laketown is so much prettier this time of year with their fish and fog and animosity towards dwarves. Bofur stays behind because he slept in. Kili hurt his leg. Fili won’t go without Kili. And Oin is just….um….old?
Kili, by the way, is dying from being shot in the leg with an arrow. And the only ones who can save the day is Tauriel and Legolas. Plus Laketown gets invaded by orcs, so the elves get to do some more Matrix style killing.
And here is the thing that hurts me the most. Tauriel saves Kili with a handful of Kingsfoil. Kingsfoil? Aye, it’s a weed. Yep. The same stuff that Aragorn used to save Frodo in Fellowship of the Ring. In Fellowship, Arwen came to him after Aragorn administered the poultice and she looked all glowy and beautiful. I always assumed that was because Frodo was close to darkness and was now approached by an elf of the light – Elrond’s daughter, Galadriel’s granddaughter. Arwen is from a race of elves that has seen the light of the original sun and moon in the Blessed Realm (aka elf heaven). But guess what? Kili sees Tauriel in the same mystical glowy fashion. Tauriel is a lowly Sylvan elf. Their claim to fame is that they live Mirkwood. Technically, Thranduil and his son, Legolas, have some Sindarin in them which is a mix of light and dark elves. But Tauriel should be strictly Silvan – otherwise known as dark elves who haven’t seen the light of the Blessed Realm. That leaves me to conclude that Kili was just high, and Frodo was experiencing the same effects. But that’s not the part that kills me. Athelas, also known as Kingsfoil, is a common weed that has NO medicinal properties unless administered BY THE HANDS OF A KING. This is why Aragorn was able to heal Frodo with it. In the book, it is one of the major ways that he uses to prove that he is the true king. This is why people never thought of it as anything more than just a weed. So in PJs world, it is all over the place, but NOBODY knows it’s healing properties even though ANYONE can use it to heal? THIS MAKES NO SENSE and it’s the number one thing that frustrates me with this movie. Seriously. This is as bad as Lucas’ midichlorians. PJ moved too much stuff around on this perfectly stable tower just to make it his own, and this is the block that makes his Jenga tower topple.
The final 30 minutes involve not just Bilbo, but the dwarves entering Erebor and confronting Smaug. They create this huge overly elaborate plan to kill the dragon once and for all. It turns the dwarves into Matrix fighters as well, as they practically fly through the halls, coming close to meeting their end dozens of times. Thorin boogie boards down a river of molten gold. Finally, the gather all the molten gold together and cover Smaug with it. I’m not sure what it was supposed to do. Burn him? Nice try doing that to a heat proof dragon. Drown him? Well, he’s got wings so he just flies right out. Maybe they expected it to be more quick drying and turn him into some sort of golden gargoyle. But he just shakes it off like a wet dog. This whole final 30 minute sequence was the most boring part for me. It was all CGI and it just kept going on and on and on. Jumping down stairs, flying on ropes, crashing through walls. Fire, fire, fire. It sounds exciting, but it almost had me nodding off like I was watching the podrace from Phantom Menace. Noisy. Dark, except for blinding flashes of fire. And constant moving without really comprehending what was going on. When the movie finally concludes, it ends so abruptly that I was almost shocked. Action! Action! Action! And then roll credits. No quiet moment reflecting on the adventure or character growth.
I’m going to be seeing this a second time next week with my kids and my father-in-law. Typically, a second review will tell me how I really feel. I’ll get to judge the movie on its own merit instead of my expectations. I enjoyed Iron Man 3 more on my second viewing. On the other hand, I hated Phantom Menace and X-Men 3 even worse. As I think about watching it a second time, I feel excited. So I couldn’t have disliked it too much. And maybe after seeing the extended version, I will enjoy it even more. I remember having HUGE problems with Two Towers until I saw the extended version. Until then, don’t take my word for it. Go see the movie. Becky said she loved every minute of it.
No comments:
Post a Comment