Sometimes,
part-one movie-to-book adaptions are Harry
Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1
or Mockingjay: Part 1, and sometimes they’re An Unexpected Journey. I’ll see The
Battle of the Five Armies when it comes out, as a fan of Middle-earth,
Martin Freeman and many of the other actors, and the original Lord of the Rings films, and as such,
I’m rewatching parts one and two in preparation, but there’s no getting around
it. There is no earthly reason that The
Hobbit needed to be three movies, and there’s no godly reason each of those movies needed to push three hours. I could have maybe seen a pair of hour-and-forty-minutes-max movies, but I’m so
annoyed at this bloated, indulgent, tonally-haphazard mess we’ve been
given. Though I like Peter Jackson, and
I love his vision of Middle-earth, his out-of-control ego re: The
Hobbit has done the franchise an enormous disservice.
Let’s
start with what works, because it might otherwise get overlooked in the
diatribe to come. Martin Freeman was
absolutely born to play Bilbo. He has
such a knack for playing everymen dragged unwillingly into extraordinary
situations, and he’s pitch-perfect throughout the film. He shines especially in scenes that highlight
Bilbo’s quick thinking and talent for stalling.
The “riddles in the dark” scene naturally comes to mind – this
delectable thespian battle royale between him and Andy Serkis’s motion-captured
Gollum is easily the highlight of the movie.
The other actors are likewise terrific, giving their all to their
roles. In particular, you wouldn’t have
known Sir Ian McKellen had ever stopped
playing Gandalf. Beyond that,
Middle-earth looks as amazing as ever.
The loving detail paid to the costumes and sets, as well as the luscious
New Zealand landscape-porn, are a real treat.
Unfortunately,
none of these great elements are given a very worthwhile movie. It’s needlessly long, painfully slow. Scenes drag on far longer than they have any
reason to, stray world-building details are pointlessly transformed into
interminable action sequences, and the plot is stuffed with stray elements that
don’t have any business being in The
Hobbit. There’s this overbearing
drive to make it an epic like The Lord of
the Rings, so there are unrelated tangents foreshadowing the rise of Sauron
and the dark days of the trilogy. This
grimness and high drama jars with the actually story, a light adventure about
13 dwarves, a wizard, and a hobbit who discovers the world outside his door;
the movie careens confusedly between sober, buoyant, disturbing, and goofy, and
it doesn’t make sense as a whole.
Furthermore, all these disconcerting signs of a rising evil make the
good guys look for morons for recognizing the signs but then sitting on their
heels for sixty years before doing
anything about it.
And
this is a small note, but I still think it’s worth mentioning, because it’s
something that the original trilogy received so much praise for: a lot of the CGI is nothing to write home about.
The orcs are unconvincing, the goblins look downright cartoonish, and
while Gollum was a stunning achievement in The
Lord of the Rings, that was over a decade ago, and he still looks exactly
the same. CGI has come a long way since
then, and we’ve come to expect more, but it’s like they didn’t even bother
trying. Tsk, tsk.
Warnings
Battle
violence, a few bits of gross-out humor, and frightening sequences.
No comments:
Post a Comment