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Ars: Final Hobbit Movie Is 'Soulless End' To 'Flawed' Trilogy
An anonymous reader writes: The final chapter to Peter Jackson's series of films based on The Hobbit debuted last week, and the reviews haven't been kind. Ars Technica just posted theirs, and it highlights all the problems with Battle of the Five Armies, a two-hour and twenty-four minute film based on only 72 pages of the book. Quoting: "The battles in Battle of the Five Armies are deadly boring, bereft of suspense, excessively padded, and predictable to the point of being contemptuous of the audience. Suspense is attempted mostly by a series of last-minute saves and switches. ... There are other problems. Everyone in this movie takes themselves way too seriously, which makes them even harder to sympathize with. Peter Jackson leans way too hard on voice modulation to make characters seem menacing or powerful. The movie's tone is still way out of step with the book's tone. ... There's one big thing that doomed these movies from the outset — the fiscally smart but artistically bankrupt decision to make a single, shortish children's novel into three feature-length prequel films." Other review titles: "Peter Jackson Must Be Stopped," "The Phantom Menace of Middle Earth," and "Lots of Fighting, Not Much Hobbit."
part 1 was pretty bad and part 2 even worse. i feel pretty ashamed for having paid money for those two - and having encouraged bad, soulless, moneygrabbing filmmaking by that. sorry.
I hate the way my friends' HDTVs make movies look like soap operas. I hated the last Hobbit which I saw in HFR/HD and the "look" completely ruined the film for me. The lighting used stood out like a sore thumb from the live action characters vs. the CG, the movement of the CG itself was horrible in many scenes.
And this film was no different. Ugh.
If you were me, you'd be good lookin'. - six string samurai
It was dry, but not BAD like Phantom Menace. Phantom Menace was horrendous on numerous levels and, if taken seriously, reduces the quality of the previous movies. This LOTR prequel finally was dry, unless you have some reason to be emotionally invested in the characters because of the book. But it was not a BAD movie, it was not poorly acted, it was not poorly written, and while it could have done with more meaning when it came to the acton (and I personally hate action) every last bit of the film-shooting and editing was done as spectacularly as can be done in a film.
This was not a BAD movie; it just wasn't the movie it could have been. And honestly, you'll never please the fan-boys anyway.
Dear Peter Jackson,
You and I have journeyed far together. You brought Frodo's task to destroy the One Ring to life a mere decade ago, and with such verve and respect that myself and the world over could not turn a blind eye and fail to hail such an inspiring, thrilling, and (mostly) faithful adaptation. In those days it was clear your appreciation and understanding of Tolkien's most beloved work was paramount, and although some liberties were taken to accommodate the film medium, those liberties could be mostly forgiven in the wake of such illuminating entertainment.
Today is a far different day, and the lens I view your Middle Earth through now is not the same as when all was good and new. Time appears to have jaded your approach to the wonders of Middle Earth.
While some berated An Unexpected Journey for being slow, plodding, and somewhat uneventful, it still held much of the magic of yesteryear. Many great moments were found, and liberties, though present, were for the most part welcomed. Perhaps some moments in this first leg of the journey were a portent of what was to come, with Dwarves and Hobbit alike being immune to falling rocks, and Goblin Kings being so inept and vulnerable to attack by an aging wizard that one slice of a sword offers a silly comedic moment and death with little true peril. I held out hope here, however, as Thorin truly suffers in the mouth of Azog's Albino Warg.
Desolation of Smaug, in its extended cut, also held moments of magic, though it fell victim to much of the same shortcomings, peril-wise, as An Unexpected Journey. While there were some true moments of dread, found in Mirkwood and Smaug's Lair, there were moments of silly nonsense, particularly in the Forge of Erebor with an ineffectual dragon, but also with liberties taken by unnecessary fabricated characters such as Tauriel, cheapening elvish magic and Arwen's importance in the Lord of the Rings trilogy. I still held out hope, even in this, because in the extended cut you brought us a better sense of pacing, more interactions with actual book characters such as Beorn and Thrain, and I couldn't help but hope you would do the rest of the book justice with proper emotional heft to go along with the bloody conflict that was soon to shake Middle Earth after its long peace.
After such a long journey, traveling through mountain, forest, valley, river, lake, and town, there were but some small matters to wrap up. A dragon threatened a town on the water. Armies of all manner awaited the opportunity to strike at Erebor should the threat of the dragon be eliminated. The characters we have traveled with required proper sendoff and emotional moments.
Certainly, the dragon threatens Laketown, burning and pillaging at whim. However, the witty, sadistic dragon I had hoped for instead functioned more as a flamethrower than a character. To this end, could Smaug not have tormented the denizens of Laketown a bit before reducing it to cinders and ash? A simple "Flee, flee for your lives! I will find you no matter where you hide and devour you as sheep." would have been very effective.
Certainly, the hero destroys the dragon, though in perhaps the most ridiculous way possible and within just a few moments. Smaug is further cheapened as a complete imbecile, ignoring the fact that the one weapon that CAN pierce his hide is pointed at him (and don't say he doesn't know what it is, because he had many of them fired at him the last time men had strength).
Certainly, Dol Goldur falls, but why does Galadriel appear so weak at particular moments throughout? It feels rather convenient that she falls to the ground weakened while the men (including the aged Saruman) fight it out amongst the Nazgul. While she may cast out Sauron from Dol Goldur, her appearance here felt very highly inconsistent, cycling between frail elf maiden and "beautiful and terrible as the dawn" elf queen.
A few more scenes before Kili and co. arrive from Laketown's ruins would have been nice, showing Thorin beginning the descent into
That is the truth.
I read The Hobbit when I was about 8-9, and LOTR when I was about 12-13.
It is one of the things that got me into reading for sure.
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
The all-to-common formula
I'm usually not the grammar/spelling nazi type, but I'm REALLY getting tired of people not knowing the difference between to and too.
WTF?!?
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
But Phantom Menace bad? Nowhere close.
Given that a large portion of what he did was turn the children's stories into epic battle sequences, I'm not sure that those elements "jive" with the gritty action as "were turned into gritty action". Every instance where the party fled or used intelligence to escape overwhelming odds, Jackson simply turned them into superheroes who blasted their way out.
A particularly pungent example would be the escape from the wood elves' fortress; in the book, this was when Bilbo finally became a fully trusted, contributing member of the group as he used stealth to sneak the dwarves out in barrels. In the film, the dwarves conduct a battle from barrels they ride like boats. The central lesson that there is something to be learned from the meekest among us is completely overtaken by the desire to have yet another CGI battle-fest.
"Because Science" is one step from "Because old book". Try "Because of my experiment testing my falsifiable assertion".
Rabid fans of the movies, vs "Peter Jackson is satan incarnate and must be stopped". The latter is left over from print-fan memes during the original run of LotR, who would hate the movie no matter what he did, not because it's a movie, but because it's not the book. Print fans come in all shapes and sizes, and have all sorts of justifications for their views. I find it interesting that, back in the day, of the print fans that believed Lord of the Rings should be made into a movie, it was generally believed that only a 20 hour miniseries would be enough, in order to capture every scene and every song and poem, and the elves should be CGI because people weren't beautiful enough, and today we have print fans that are saying that three movies was too long. What the hell make up your mind.
Then there are the print fans who would be absolutely against any film, generally justified as "it substitutes Jackson's imagery for the reader's own" or somesuch, and from there leads to a place of madness, where calendars, posters and even cover art are forbidden, and the only way to read the stories should be on loose leaf paper from Tolkien's own typewriter.
I digress. Anyway, for those who need a more faithful light hearted Hobbit, there's still the Rankin-Bass film from 1977. They even set some of Tolkien's poems to whiney music sung by people with terrible singing voices, so, like, cool. It made me want to gouge my eyeballs out and use them to plug my ears, but your mileage may vary.
As to whether any or all of the Hobbit films are the best films ever or a travesty that requires that the director be tarred and feathered and ridden out on a Grond, the actual truth is somewhere in the middle. Yes, three movies were probably excessive. No, one movie would not have done it. This is because it's not a matter of just telling the story in The Hobbit's measly 300 pages, but also giving the backstory that was in the appendicies to LotR (to which Jackson had the rights) and maybe approaching what might be a full telling of The Quest of Erebor, the story Tolkien later started to write, essentially re-writing The Hobbit to better fit into the tone and pagentry of Lord of the Rings. (Published posthumously by his son Christopher in Unfinished Tales.) Unfortunately, Jackson did not have access to Tolkien's writings other than what was in the appendicies and The Hobbit, and Christopher Tolkien absolutely refused Jackson the rights to Tolkien's other notes. So in order to make it fit with Lord of the Rings, Jackson had to make some of it up in order to not be sued by the Tolkien estate.
So, did he make stuff up that Tolkien didn't write? Of course he did. Did he make up *too much* stuff? Maybe. Did he put in too much filler? Yeah, probably. Should he have kept it to one movie and only filmed what was in The Hobbit? Absolutely not. There is more story there, (Specifically, why Gandalf felt Erebor was so important to the coming war) and Jackson told as much of it as he was allowed to. Three films *was* excessive, but to say it shouldn't be filmed because it wasn't in The Hobbit is to show ignorance about all the backstory and detail surrounding the Quest of Erebor that wasn't in what was essentially a children's book. And besides, The Hobbit was already filmed, in 1977. (I didn't like it much. It made my teeth hurt.)
Footnote, after all these years, having read the novels multiple times, once to my daughter before the films first came out, I just recently had an in-story epiphany. It always seemed curious and whimsical that Gandalf was so adamant about Bilbo being included in the quest. But think -- that simple decision set in motion a chain of events that after many years leads to the destruction of the One Ring -- something that probably could not have happened otherwise. How did Gandalf know?
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
The first one had its moments, but the second was jaw droppingly dull, and worst of all Jackson mutilated the escape from the Elf king's tunnels. They took the barrel rider scene and turned it into a video game.
I have no desire to sit through the third.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
So from his point of view, the movies have been a bit of a disaster. He'd been hoping for something he could take classes along to. Instead, the movies, are dark, brooding, serious, dark and extremely violent in places. They're absolutely not suitable for the age range the book is pitched at and, in any case, they miss the fundamental quality of what makes the book so great. It's not a disaster for him - the book is still there and always will be there. But his view was that it was a missed opportunity to give the "best children's book ever written" a proper adaptation.
It wouldn't work. And I'm not saying that to be cruel, but a major part of the viewing audience would have seen LotR first and quite frankly hate the Hobbit done according to the book. And all that negativity would surely rub off on the movie, even if it was perfectly suited for boys age 12. Most people wanted LotR: The prequel and that's what they got. I'll go out on a limb here and say they actually made it a decent character drama with Thorin Oakenshield losing himself and finding himself again. Bilbo torn between loyalty to his party and doing what he thought was right. And it did a fair job to explain why everybody hates each other so much, dwarves and elvens and men.
I didn't care much for the romantic angle, but I guess it kept the girlfriend factor up. It was a bit long-winded, it was one movie stretched into three. The big action scenes are good, the small fight scenes about as painful as LotR. Remember Legolas' skateboarding and the counting contest with Gimli? Yeah, about the same. And don't forget the armies actually do clash in the book as well, Bilbo just isn't a big part of it. I guess they could have made it his story, but again that's not what most people wanted. They know how that story ends, with him returning to the Shire with the Ring so there's no excitement there they want the story of Middle Earth. Maybe it could have been done different if the Hobbit had been first, but not now.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
The stories that age of ultron is based on are super hero comic books, so I go to the marvel movies expecting comic book over the top deus ex machina and soap opera love stories. With the Hobbit, I expect a low-key adventure with short periods of action, both serving as a pretext to just artistically show a world (Middle Earth). I expect a barrel-riding scene that exemplifies the resourcefulness of Bilbo and rewards him with what he desires: relaxation. I don't expect an action-packed run for dear life where serendipity is the hero. I also don't expect Legolas, since he isn't even mentioned in the Hobbit. As a friend said to me "if Legolas did half of the things he did in the movie version of the Battle of Five Armies, all of Middle Earth would have suggested he walk into Mordor with a retinue of quiver carrying hirelings and clean the place out before Sauron even reformed.
And Smaug. Instead of mistaking Bilbo's riddle to mean Bilbo is a Lake-Man and leaving immediately to destroy Lake-Town, Smaug fruitlessly fights the dwarves then just decides to leave for no apparent reason. WTF?
And Gandalf *knows* that the Necromancer is Sauron, then does nothing about it for decades and forgets until Bilbo's 111th Birthday Party. W. T. F.
It's actually a tragedy and missed opportunity, that Jackson has so little talent as a director, and so little discipline in telling a story.
I was appalled by how little he regarded the audience - and proportionally insulted his actors - in "Desolation". Huge musical cues 'instructing' the audience of the drama or character development that was supposed to be on screen, at all times. This seems to be because he cannot elicit real performances from his actors.
I might muse that this is because to Jackson, they are not actors - but merely the armatures on which he templates his green-screen composited glory... But to assume that this is the root of his deficiency, rather than another symptom of of his artlessness, would be to succumb to curmudgeonly urges.
The lesson to be taken away is that Jackson should be designing games, not ruining popular cinema.
It appears that - despite the contempt it provoked in my teenaged self - Rankin and Bass actually produced the best ever adaptation of Tolkien, with the greatest respect and truth towards the source text in feel and substance. Perhaps, when we have destroyed the concept of copyright as a tool of corporate greed, another - more thoughtful - filmmaker might use this as a point of departure for a loving and well-crafted "Hobbit".
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Whatever self-important drugs you're on, I'd like some please. Jackson had already shown quite a lot of restraint and faithfulness in his acclaimed LotR adaptation, and it's painfully clear that he has plenty of directorial talent. Crucifying him over the Hobbit, of all things, is just as inane as all the claims you're making. If you want the source text, then read the source text. Adaptations are not about being utterly true to the source,they are about ADAPTING it to another medium. And he was adapting a silly children's book about hobbits and wizards and dragons, not exactly the highest of literature or most intellectually dense or easy-to-adapt of Tolkien's works. Clearly you wanted something else, that's fine; a lot of us did (a lot of wanted something else from the Rankin-Bass version as well). But attacking Peter Jackson for this, like he smeared BBQ sauce on the Sacred Parchment, is even less noble than what you claim he's done here.
This is very true, but one difference is that the battles took up more "screen time" in the films. Tolkien's battles were epic but abstract. Jackson's aimed to humanize the characters but the outlandish stunts contradicted that.
It worked better for LOTR than Hobbit.
I've seen the first two so far and they didn't convince me for the 3rd. I'll probably go because my GF wants to.
The problem is that The Hobbit is an entirely different book compared to LOTR. It's a childrens book, a soft introduction to Middle Earth, not an epic fantasy tale. It should've been dealt with in a different way, not as a "we made a shitload of money, so let's make more LOTR movies" prequel. It basically fell into the same trap as the Star Wars prequels - the attempt to replicate a success by doing more of the same, completely missing the idea that maybe the first was a success exactly because it was not more of the same, but stood out from what else was on offer at the time.
And omg were they filled with crap that had nothing to do with story or book and was only added to complete some Hollywood recipe.
They should've made it one move, for a younger audience, made by a different director, without trying to make it a prequel and "foreshadowing" everything we've already seen.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
I disagree. Tom Bombadil was rightly cut as it served no practical purpose. I do agree that the second movie was kind of weirdly constructed, and in the last movie the ending seemed to drag on forever and ever. But the ending also drags on forever in the actual book so I cannot fault Jackson for that.
I think the LotR movies were well done. But he just did not have the material to turn the Hobbit from one book to three movies. That was an insane thing to do. He just watered down the plot too much and then had to change the story in stupid was to drag it on more.
If there is ONE book which I think could be done in two or three movies its Dune. The Hobbit? Not really.