RE: The Hobbit (& The Lord of the Rings) thread
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I dare say I'm quite a big Tolkien fan
*cough* *cough again*. I've seen both An Unexpected Journey and The Desolation of Smaug when they premiered here (and I've watched An Unexpected Journey quite a few more time since) and while I haven't seen the original Lord of the Rings trilogy in the theaters I have seen the films quite a few times since. The Fellowship of the Ring is still one of my favourite movies and the Lord of the Rings trilogy is probably my favourite trilogy. I've of course read both The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings and I've been meaning to read The Silmarillion for ages now but I have so many books to read and so little time...
About the Hobbit films: they were pretty good. I know I'm generally in a minority here, but I honestly prefer An Unexpected Journey. Some of the action scenes were superfluous and a bit over-the-top, but the movie balanced it with a pretty nice (if somewhat underpopulated) White Council scene, a pretty nice (and in my opinion not too long) introduction and of course the amazing Riddle Scene. The second movie had all of the over-the-top action, but lacked a lot of anything else. I would've loved to have seen more of Thranduil's halls (in the book Bilbo spends over 2 weeks there, but in the film it felt like a day), Beorn's house, Mirkwood (what happened to all the Bombur stuff?) and the likes. It's odd to see so much of the book relinquished to the cutting room floor even though they had 3 whole moves to work with. I know a lot of people watch the movies for the action, but I sort of like the adventure, the pressure, the politics, the heroic speeches, the wise words, the magic of it all. I guess this is a minor gripe and the extended version will probably add a lot of the scenes I felt were missing. This is probably the version the average viewer will appreciate most and not necessarily the version for die-hards like myself..
There is one huge problem I have with the movies though, and his name is Bilbo. I don't really feel him growing as a character. Not only is the titular character pushed out of frame a lot so Jackson can add a bit more action, but he's too actionful to begin with. Bilbo facing Azog in the first movie was ridiculous, and where he normally found his burglary skills and courage after Mirkwood, he seems to be mr. action pretty much from the start. And when the movies sort of ignore Bilbo, they ignore the actual adventure as well in my opinion. The hobbits chapters in The Lord of the Rings sort of showed the actual adventure, the courage of unlikely heroes and all that good stuff, while the other chapters sort of showed us the actual war, what they were fighting for and why. Both are necessary, and both feel sort of pointless without the other.
Then there are some scenes in the 2 Hobbit movies I really didn't like. When your characters pretty much survive everything in the most unlikely situations it hurts suspension of disbelief. I accept the axioms of Middle-earth, but even within those these scenes seemed kind of stupid.
The stone giants battle barely featured in the books, showing some of the weird and magical world outside of the Shire without necessarily directly involving Bilbo and his companions (and some even interpret it simply as a metaphor for the thunder, so there's that). In the movies it felt like unnecessarily tacked-on action which came out of nowhere, had no relevance to much of anything (not even to Arda as a whole, which at least stuff like Bombadil would've had) and which seemed far too unlikely even if you except the occurrence of these things within Middle-earth. I mean, what are the odds that these giants which are apparently "legends" waking up right when the dwarves were crossing their relatively small legs? Three of them to boot...
The final confrontation with Azog felt out of place as well. I don't necessarily hate resurrecting Azog so he can act like Darth Vader, but the whole scene felt badly done and filled with so many tension-increasing events to the point of crossing some sort of threshold and simply becoming ridiculous. The whole cliff thing (I believe it was a field in the book) – especially holding on to the branches – felt stereotypical and unnecessary, and again, Bilbo facing Azog was cringe-worthy.
The battle in Erebor was just silly, and not even in the fun way. While I did like the visuals of Smaug staring into the face of Thrór and then being covered in molten gold, it again relied on far too many unlikely chance events and the whole sequence felt forced and oddly stereotypical. The introduction to An Unexpected Journey made Erebor seem like a vibrant and immense Dwarven kingdom, this scene made it feel like a big roller coaster.
I'm not sure why I don't dislike the escape from the Misty Mountains as much, I guess I consider Orcs more manageable and Gandalf being there sort of justifies some over-the-top antics. The barrel escape scene suffers from much of the same problems, but had humour and Legolas to make up for it, so there's that.
I also wasn't a fan of the Dol Goldur scenes, Middle-earth – contrary to popular belief – is actually quite magic-weak, but Gandalf seemed quite Harry-Potterish here. I think the image of Sauron in the eye of Sauron would've been far cooler without the stupid recursion, but that's apparently just me.
And finally, most of the Beorn stuff was quite badly done and horribly rushed, and it's not even poor Beorn's fault. The whole constantly-being-chased-by-orcs thing got in the way of what was quite a fun scene in the book (and the only actual mention of Radagast in The Hobbit). And keeping Beorn out of his own house just felt mean. I guess if you hadn’t read the books it could've been quite scary and surprising, but still. The sad thing is there are no hopes of recovering the introduction scene in the extended version, though having some more scenes in Beorn's house should be nice.
I did really like the conversation between Bilbo and Smaug, and Smaug in general was quite well done. I had my fears when it was announced that Cumberbatch would be voicing him, but they appeared to be unfounded. Lake Town was a lot of fun as well. If you need someone to play an out-of-touch aristocrat Stephen Fry is the go-to guy and he was of course marvellous. Bard was nicely done as well, I'm glad he wasn't just another Legolas and actually felt like a courageous father rather than just another destined-to-be-great action hero.
Okay, enough ranting for now. I do quite enjoy the movies and am looking forward to There and Back Again and of course the extended editions, but that does not mean they are beyond criticism. And congratulations for getting through this post, it turned out a bit long, didn't it?
