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drwexI went into this expecting to hate this movie at least as much as I hated the previous one. Why see it? Xmas, family movie, you get the idea. If you have any illusion this is a movie about The Hobbit book then you probably haven't seen either of the other movies. The basic story of The Hobbit has been blown up, inflated with lots of other things, etc. Think of this as fanfic; if you go in expecting a movie of the book you'll likely be annoyed, disappointed, or even angry.
The thing is, it's a got a rich universe out of which to mine stories; there's a reason Tolkien spawned two decades of imitators. This movie is also GOOD fanfic in places. Basically, I forgave Peter Jackson because of the elves. For those of you going "Wait, what? There are basically no elves in The Hobbit!" Yeah, I know.
Leave aside the entire Legolas-as-Spiderman schtick, which is just silly in places. Leave aside the awful cliche bit of "you think your enemy is dead but no he's just playing possum to get you" - that entire sequence could have been cut and the movie would have been stronger for it. What you have is a story of a bunch of dwarves with a mountain full of gold and a whole lot of people who want various bits or all of it. A classic trope of fanfic is to ask "What if" questions set in the target universe. What if Spock and Kirk were lovers? What if the Enterprise fell through a wormhole and encountered a Death Star? Etc. This movie is one giant set of "what if"s set in Tolkein's universe. And Jackson does best when he mines that universe for its elves.
Tolkein's elves are not just humans with pointy ears. They're people with a wholly different set of views and a way of looking at the world because they are effectively immortal. You get some of this in Lord of the Rings and a lot more in The Silmarillion, both of which get mined for this movie.
Thranduil (Lee Pace), who came off as little more than an imperious fop in the previous movie, really shines here. He shows us what elves make of honor, how caste-driven and hierarchical they can be, and how they are both willing to make alliances and yet aware of the impermanence of everyone else they interact with. His final instructions to Legolas show how elves think in terms of decades, planning for futures that might come to pass. The fact that he gets decent combat scenes on-screen and yet his most important fight happens without us seeing it is a disappointment.
Galadriel's big scene - blowing up the Ring Wraiths - is more or less straight out of LotR. In that story there's a moment where Frodo asks her why she doesn't use the Ring she wears, one of the three given to the Elves. He's clearly smitten with her beauty and argues that she'd be a fine ruler if she'd just wield the power. She responds by explaining how she'd not only be beautiful, but terrifying as well - she clearly understands that using the Ring has consequences. In this battle scene, Jackson has taken that notion and visualized it. Blanchett's beautiful appearance is twisted and distorted by the power she uses. To defeat her enemies, Galadriel must become more like them. Where Gandalf and Saruman are Maiar, essentially lesser angels who were born to use these sorts of powers, Galadriel is not and it shows. The fact that this entire sequence has jack-all nothing to do with The Hobbit doesn't matter. It's true to the mythology and it's a very good "What if..." Galadriel really did use her Ring?
Tauriel more or less steals the movie - which is just fine with me. Her face-off with Thranduil is fantastic. Her tragic love story is lifted in large part from ideas in the Silmarillion, and Evangeline Lilly completely sells it. She ought to get a Best Supporting for this performance as well as better billing - what idiot listed her below all the dwarves who get basically no dialog or important action? I flat-out bawled when she begged Thranduil to take her pain away - her interactions with Thranduil are the most Tolkein-esque things in this entire movie.
The other noteworthy performance is Richard Armitage as Thorin. His character goes through wild gyrations of emotion and he manages to portray a lot despite a limp script and some terrible action sequences that - as noted above - could have been dispensed with. In the final fight with Azog there's a moment where you can clearly see Thorin confronting his inevitable death and choosing how he's going to die. Armitage carries this off purely by facial expression and bodily action and you (the viewer) KNOW what he's going to do just before he does it. Really fine acting and props to the director for how that part is shot.
Conversely, I really did not like the mini-climax scene where Thorin is about to be consumed by his madness and realizes what's happening to him. I found it tortured and overdone, with too many mixed metaphors. The scene that follows, where he reappears before the Company in his plain adventuring garb, is far more powerful in large part due to how Armitage handles it.
OK, so there were these battle scenes. Lots of them, mostly boring. I thought the large creatures were well-done, but ridiculously flimsy. Something big enough to bash down a wall ought not to fall to a single arrow, no matter how well-placed. In gaming there's a term "bullet sponge" to describe mobs that seem to take forever to fall down despite many hits and I can understand wanting to avoid that, but this movie goes too far overboard in the other direction.
I absolutely refuse to touch on the utterly stupid idea that people in light or no armor are going to overmatch heavily armored troops. Why the dwarves sallied without any armor when they had the finest armor available is hair-pullingly dumb. But then again, so is most of the "plot" here so picking on just one bit seems too easy.
3/5 for being able to pull off a story that has almost nothing to do with its titular book and yet showed us something interesting.
The thing is, it's a got a rich universe out of which to mine stories; there's a reason Tolkien spawned two decades of imitators. This movie is also GOOD fanfic in places. Basically, I forgave Peter Jackson because of the elves. For those of you going "Wait, what? There are basically no elves in The Hobbit!" Yeah, I know.
Leave aside the entire Legolas-as-Spiderman schtick, which is just silly in places. Leave aside the awful cliche bit of "you think your enemy is dead but no he's just playing possum to get you" - that entire sequence could have been cut and the movie would have been stronger for it. What you have is a story of a bunch of dwarves with a mountain full of gold and a whole lot of people who want various bits or all of it. A classic trope of fanfic is to ask "What if" questions set in the target universe. What if Spock and Kirk were lovers? What if the Enterprise fell through a wormhole and encountered a Death Star? Etc. This movie is one giant set of "what if"s set in Tolkein's universe. And Jackson does best when he mines that universe for its elves.
Tolkein's elves are not just humans with pointy ears. They're people with a wholly different set of views and a way of looking at the world because they are effectively immortal. You get some of this in Lord of the Rings and a lot more in The Silmarillion, both of which get mined for this movie.
Thranduil (Lee Pace), who came off as little more than an imperious fop in the previous movie, really shines here. He shows us what elves make of honor, how caste-driven and hierarchical they can be, and how they are both willing to make alliances and yet aware of the impermanence of everyone else they interact with. His final instructions to Legolas show how elves think in terms of decades, planning for futures that might come to pass. The fact that he gets decent combat scenes on-screen and yet his most important fight happens without us seeing it is a disappointment.
Galadriel's big scene - blowing up the Ring Wraiths - is more or less straight out of LotR. In that story there's a moment where Frodo asks her why she doesn't use the Ring she wears, one of the three given to the Elves. He's clearly smitten with her beauty and argues that she'd be a fine ruler if she'd just wield the power. She responds by explaining how she'd not only be beautiful, but terrifying as well - she clearly understands that using the Ring has consequences. In this battle scene, Jackson has taken that notion and visualized it. Blanchett's beautiful appearance is twisted and distorted by the power she uses. To defeat her enemies, Galadriel must become more like them. Where Gandalf and Saruman are Maiar, essentially lesser angels who were born to use these sorts of powers, Galadriel is not and it shows. The fact that this entire sequence has jack-all nothing to do with The Hobbit doesn't matter. It's true to the mythology and it's a very good "What if..." Galadriel really did use her Ring?
Tauriel more or less steals the movie - which is just fine with me. Her face-off with Thranduil is fantastic. Her tragic love story is lifted in large part from ideas in the Silmarillion, and Evangeline Lilly completely sells it. She ought to get a Best Supporting for this performance as well as better billing - what idiot listed her below all the dwarves who get basically no dialog or important action? I flat-out bawled when she begged Thranduil to take her pain away - her interactions with Thranduil are the most Tolkein-esque things in this entire movie.
The other noteworthy performance is Richard Armitage as Thorin. His character goes through wild gyrations of emotion and he manages to portray a lot despite a limp script and some terrible action sequences that - as noted above - could have been dispensed with. In the final fight with Azog there's a moment where you can clearly see Thorin confronting his inevitable death and choosing how he's going to die. Armitage carries this off purely by facial expression and bodily action and you (the viewer) KNOW what he's going to do just before he does it. Really fine acting and props to the director for how that part is shot.
Conversely, I really did not like the mini-climax scene where Thorin is about to be consumed by his madness and realizes what's happening to him. I found it tortured and overdone, with too many mixed metaphors. The scene that follows, where he reappears before the Company in his plain adventuring garb, is far more powerful in large part due to how Armitage handles it.
OK, so there were these battle scenes. Lots of them, mostly boring. I thought the large creatures were well-done, but ridiculously flimsy. Something big enough to bash down a wall ought not to fall to a single arrow, no matter how well-placed. In gaming there's a term "bullet sponge" to describe mobs that seem to take forever to fall down despite many hits and I can understand wanting to avoid that, but this movie goes too far overboard in the other direction.
I absolutely refuse to touch on the utterly stupid idea that people in light or no armor are going to overmatch heavily armored troops. Why the dwarves sallied without any armor when they had the finest armor available is hair-pullingly dumb. But then again, so is most of the "plot" here so picking on just one bit seems too easy.
3/5 for being able to pull off a story that has almost nothing to do with its titular book and yet showed us something interesting.
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no subject
Date: 2014-12-29 08:55 pm (UTC)The Art & Design book calls this necessarily symbolic, and comes within a hair of adding "but dumb".
no subject
Date: 2014-12-29 09:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-12-29 09:46 pm (UTC)Someday, someone will actually make a movie adaptation of The Hobbit. Preferably one aimed at a younger audience.
As a movie, this was perfectly fine action-adventure fantasy movie. If GW is doing a Battle of the Five Armies wargame, their model-design house is wetting their pants at all the great stuff they get to sell us (Living Catapult Limbers! Bob the Living Battering Ram! Handi-Capable Fred! War Pig! War Moose! War Goats!).
But while not the worst adaptation of all time, it treats its protagonist as an onerous contractual obligation. It's like he showed up just enough to retain the rights to the movie title and that's it.
I think Peter Jackson can and should do the Simarillion (or long pieces of it the tale of Beren and Luthien seems like a good choice), but his aesthetic, great though it is, just wasn't suited to this adaptation.
later
Tom
no subject
Date: 2014-12-29 09:50 pm (UTC)I think Peter Jackson can and should do the Simarillion (or long pieces of it the tale of Beren and Luthien seems like a good choice), but his aesthetic, great though it is, just wasn't suited to this adaptation.
The Silmarillion is LONG and really boring in most places. There are a handful of fantastic stories in there, though.
no subject
Date: 2014-12-29 11:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-12-30 01:07 am (UTC)I still think Azog is an awful addition to all three movies and wish he had not existed at all. Also I think he is to orcs what the borg queen was to the previous concept of the borg. Orcs don't have one big central charismatic genius leader. Yuck.
However the main reason I'm commenting is to point out something your post seems unaware of, though it's ambiguous so maybe you were aware of it? Peter Jackson's concept was very explicitly to take pieces of the appendices, unfinished tales, and other writings, about what else was happening around Middle Earth at the time of the Hobbit, and include that stuff in the movie. Gandalf discovering Sauron at Dol Guldur and gathering his allies - including Galadriel - to kick Sauron out of there, is canon. The movie did alter it somewhat (for example, it's not canon that Gandalf got himself captured and the others rescued him), but Galadriel participating in that event, with her ring, comes from Tolkien, and did happen at the same time relative to the Hobbit story as it is portrayed to have happened in the movie.
no subject
Date: 2014-12-30 02:17 am (UTC)Yes, I'm aware that Jackson was drawing on other source material. Great. Stop calling it "The Hobbit" then. My beef is with the lack of connection between the fanfic and the titular book. Also, the decision to bloat up the story with the other stuff in the first place, bleah. I hated the second movie particularly for that.
no subject
Date: 2014-12-30 02:25 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-12-30 01:20 pm (UTC)And I admit, I was fascinated by Lee Pace's portrayal of Thranduil. Agreed that he came across as an imperious fop in the previous movie(s). He did an amazing job of showing both passion and detachment, all enrobed in a beautiful outer wrapping. And his reaction to Tauriel's question of 'why does it hurt so much?' was touchingly and achingly beautiful.
Would see the movie again, if for no other reason than to screengrab every other frame for portrait source-fodder.
no subject
Date: 2014-12-30 05:36 pm (UTC)For me the worst part of the ridiculously stupid battle tactics was jumping in front of one's own shield wall.
Also, I couldn't really tell Bolg apart from the other orcs, so I didn't understand why he was giving Kili and Tauriel so much trouble. I had no idea he was Azog's son or that he was the one leading the orcs from Gundabad until reading about it just now.
I love love love love loved the Galadriel scene.
Hm. Maybe I'll disagree about your key point. To me, this actually felt like a faithful expansion of the book. That is, it felt like the Hobbit, as I dimly remember it, with a few awesome parts added (like the Galadriel scene, and Legolas). While Bilbo is the title character, he's also something of a bystander for many of the events of the book.
Meanwhile, how much of The Hobbit is not any of the three Jackson films? Could someone take the three movies and re-cut them into one just-the-book movie?
no subject
Date: 2015-01-20 02:11 am (UTC)