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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."
I disliked hobbit movies before it was cool.
I'm not going to see Age of Ultron either.
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.
It's like Lynyrd Skynyrd's Free Bird, there's a really good five and a half minute song in there somewhere.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
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
watch it with friends between Christmas and the New Year.
It won't take quite that long.
You'll get used to it, it's just cultural bias. HFR movies and other content viewed on HDTVs that do motion interpolation look like soap operas because for a long time, soap operas were shot with video cameras with a higher framerate, whereas any serious production was shot on film stock (and most such productions are still shot at 24fps). The result is the "soap opera effect", in that we still associate the technically superior framerate with cheap-ass productions.
With that said, the CGI was pretty pad in "the Hobbit" at times, and some scenes got padded to incredible length ("when is that barrel riding scene going to end?!"). One movie wouldn't have done justice to the story, but 3 was too much.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
It doesn't by definition. But I fail to see how 24 fps is aesthetically better. Some movies work better in black & white, but only some. (Reminds me of a scene with an aspiring cinematographer sitting in a bar, fawning over some "artsy" B&W movie playing on the TV... until the barman whacks the old set on the side, and the screen snaps back to color). Likewise, some movies might be better at 24fps, but I suspect the "soap opera effect"will be gone with a generation or two, and the next generations will prefer the higher framerate once 24 fps is associated with "old people movies".
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
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".
There's only about 190 pages. It's actually quicker for the average reader to read the whole of the hobbit than to watch all 3 films.
Just some numbers. The average person reads at between 250 and 300 words per minute. Let's call it 275.
Hobbit is 95,356 words long. That's 347 minutes of reading.
The first two Hobbit movies combined are 330 minutes long.
So basically an average reader will plow through the book in the time it takes to watch two of the movies plus some trailers before the third. Forget the extra 144 minutes of the actual movie!
"Oh no... he found the