The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug

Written at the time of the film's release...

Maintaining Good Working Hobbits
or
A Dense Overlay of Smaug

The second of Peter Jackson's three "Hobbit" films, The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug is, predictably, more of the same. It's a three hour ramble, a complication and a darkening of the tone of the first film—as usually happens with the second of a trilogy, so that we, the audience, can climb out of our emotional valley in time for the resolution of conflicts in the third. Standard Operating Procedure. We are given a quick recap of the first film—going back in time to when Gandalf the Gray (Ian McKellan) first put the idea into the head of Thorin Oakenshield (Richard Armitage) and getting the dwarf crusade rolling. Once the summary is done (in brief: Gold, Mountain, Dragon, Dead King, Arkenstone, New King, No Elves Allowed), they skip over An Unexpected Journey and head back to the Gandalf, Bilbo and the dwarves on the path to Lonely Mountain (Sindarin Erebor), orcs still snapping at their behinds and making their way to the entrance of Mirkwood.

A quick visit to the skin-changer Beorn (Mikael Persbrandt), who usually appears in the form of a bear—not much is made of him, even though he got his own poster with Gandalf last time—and they get to Mirkwood (by pony), at which point Gandalf goes "walkabout"—he does this every movie and they probably split the story to accommodate a "Gandalf disappearance"—so the wee folk must enter the spooky forest alone, with a promise from the wizard that he'll meet them at "the Lookout."

"The Lookout"—he said he'd meet us; he should be easy to find...

Anyone familiar with the book knows that you don't find out where G.the G. goes until the last chapter, and that was after Tolkien had written "The Lord of the Rings" and got continuity-conscious. But, here, we do get to see where (hint: he went there LAST movie), and Jackson's The Lord of the Rings gets set up all good and proper (except Benedict Cumberbatch is voicing the character now—wonder if Jackson will Lucasize everything to make it all match up). The dwarves and hobbit are concerned with icky things and splendors that one would associate with a place called Mirkwood, and the ring that Bilbo snatched from Gollum is starting to exert its unholy influence turning the peaceful little guy into a berserker bad-ass. Travel packages with unruly companions and nasty accommodations with large pests and diffident natives will do that to anyone. But, Bilbo proves his worth on more than one occasion and eventually they do make it to the Halls of Lonely Mountain, a few shy of a full dwarve-deck and make their way to a meeting with the titular character that's been hoarding all the gold and keeping it for himself—the ultimate one percenter of Middle Earth.

Bilbo above the canopy of Mirkwood

Smaug is the dragon, living in the massive storage caves of the Mountain, and he spends his time, far from desolate, sleeping among the gold and treasures of the dwarves like a big scaled, fire-breathing Scrooge McDuck. When Bilbo's attempts to find the Arkenstone awaken him, there is quite an extensive cat-and-mouse game as the small hobbit scurries around the cumbersome dragon. Or I should say Cumberbatch, as the ubiquitous actor provides a nicely arch resonant voice to Smaug, which is accompanied by a lip-curling animation to enhance it. This is where the film shines, as the territory is new, the imagineering of the dragon is fresh, and the surprises are many. After the previous two hours, that's a bit refreshing.

For if there's a problem with Peter Jackson's version of The Hobbit, it's that, by now, we are so familiar with the way he does things that nothing much really resonates anymore. The heavily belabored ripostes by the actors seem a bit too predictable—when Bilbo changes his story to Gandalf that he found his courage in the goblin caves last movie (rather than The Ring), there's a close-up of Gandalf as he says what half the audience is expecting: "You'll need it." Really, that one and "You should be" are certain candidates for Screenwriting 101 "easy irony" along with "You just don't get it, do you?" and "They're standing behind me, aren't they?"  

And the action sequences, this time assistant-directed by actor Andy Serkis. go on and on, in ever-increasing silliness. If last movie set a more rollicking, silly tone than The Lord of the Rings (in part by the influence of Guillermo del Toro), now the joke's wearing a little thin. Extended fights between orcs and elves are no longer thrilling, they're a demonstration of every possible way you can kill something with an arrow.  An extended rush down a rapids in barrels is accompanied by additional orc-elf fighting, where the barrels are used for any other purpose besides transport, as every tree-limb and branch over-hanging is used as a foot-hold. Some of this criticism isn't fair, because if this had been the first film in a trilogy of Tolkien adaptations, the marvels of the film would send people off a CGI cliff in amazement. It mustt take at least forty-five minutes to tumble down it, though.

One should, however, point out that the "we've been down this glade before" problem didn't occur with Jackson's earlier Tolkien trilogy, where there was enough material to keep things seeming fresh each film, and Jackson and his screenwriters did enough juggling of the narrative to keep things seeming new from film to film. Their attempts here amount to trying to add a romantic element between the elf warrior Tauriel (Evangeline Lily) and the dwarf Kili (Aidan Turner), much to the consternation of Legolas (Orlando Bloom, back in action). And while it provides a reprieve from tumbling and shooting and other too-frantic sequences, it does take away from the basic focus on the titular Bilbo Baggins (Martin Freeman) whose story this is. Freeman's performance is, again, terrific, bringing all sorts of fretting elements to play, and making the transformation of his hobbit into a killer more than a little disturbing.

The vistas are staggeringly rendered, but some short-changing has been done with the characters in action sequences—Orlando Bloom seems to be the chief character robbed of some pixels, here and there, and the attempt to de-age him to a younger self doesn't really work (I've never seen it done convincingly, so far). The only real surprises come in snatches of casting with Lee Pace, disappearing into the role of the elf Thronduil, Lily's elven warrior, and Stephen Fry's Master of Laketown. Be on the lookout for some Laketown spies and you might even find Stephen Colbert for a brief second. Oh, and Jackson gets his own "Hitchcock moment" out of the way very quickly.

Oh. And SPOILER ALERT there's another movie coming, so this one ends at a rather inopportune time. You only have to wait another year.

"Conversation with Smaug" drawn by J.R.R. Tolkien

"Conversation with Smaug" drawn by WETA

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

Written at the time of the film's release.

Getting to Be a Hobbit With Me
or
There and Back Again...and Again...And A-GAIN.

Peter Jackson returns to Tolkien's Middle-Earth, the scene of his greatest triumphs as a film-maker. And it hasn't been easy for him. "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy took the film industry by storm, changing all sorts of accepted things, like "sittable" film length, production timetables (filming three films simultaneously), elaboration of production design, and whether a "fantasy" film can ever be taken seriously by the Oscar Academy for anything other than technical awards. In fact, when The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King won Best Picture a few years back, more than one gossip-monger (or as they're known, "industry press") suggested it was for the entire series of films, rather than for the merits of the final one. I believe that. So, pressure immediately started to bring Tolkien's "The Hobbit" to the screen in as much the same way as possible, with Jackson producing and Guillermo del Toro directing, a good choice, actually (and the film benefits from his bizarre creature designs).  

But, "The Hobbit"'s past caught up with it, and the several (animated) versions of it came into play over who owned the film rights, and so The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey has a complicated production titles sequence with Warner Brothers the (North American) distributor and New Line Cinema and M-G-M as the production facilities. M-G-M's financial troubles (now long forgotten in the wake of Skyfall's nearly billion dollar take) caused del Toro to drop out, leaving Jackson and his orc-army of New Zealanders to once again handle the short-duties for the assembled hobbitage.

And how is it?  Much as you'd expect. It's as if they'd never stopped production on the first series, and so sure of the continuity are they, that the moments immediately preceding the start of The Fellowship of the Ring are presented, as if it was the easiest thing in the world to do. The film's been getting lukewarm reviews, and I can't can't quite fathom why. Nothing's really different. The supporting cast is uniformly the same (there's no Viggo, but Frodo is briefly there, and Martin Freeman takes over the role of the younger Bilbo Baggins in a way that seems to suggest a more spry Ian Holm with much faster and more comedic reaction-sense), but the main criticism seems to be a more leisurely pace. This, I don't mind. Jackson has always regretted not showing more of Hobbiton, which might have given "The Lord of the Rings" more of a sense of "home," and as something worth fighting for—a theme played in spades in TH:AUJ.*

Seeing as so much of it is set in the Hobbit's land, and that the cast is dominated by a baker's dozen of knock-about dwarves (see below for a guide) that have a propensity for one-liners and malapropisms, the tone is considerably lighter and larkier (and dare I say "precious") than the Doom-laden "Rings" trilogy, and it is only once the band of adventurers get going that things change to the previous series' denatured color schemes, brooding skies, ugly thuggery and general bad-assery ensuing.** The pace may be slower, but the film is considerably richer for all of that, and with so many characters in this arc, it's rather a luxury to get to know them before they are threatened in all sorts of ghastly ways.

The other issue with this Tolkien adaptation is technological. Films, since the frame-rate has been standardized, have traditionally been projected at twenty four frames per second, the estimated time that an image is retained by the eye. Now that film is mostly passé, the video standard is 30 frames per second, but it's largely an arbitrary rate to match the traditional film experience. During the late 70's, special effects wizard Douglas Trumbull offered up something he called "Showscan" which was 70mm film projected at 60 frames per second, which produced a larger, sharper image with less "streaking" of movement, due to the higher frame rate. I saw one of these "Showscans" at the Vancouver World's Fair and the effect was like watching a richer, more beautiful version of videotape. It was still film, with its photo-chemical reaction to light, but far more relatable to a "life-image" than film.

TH:AUJ is photographed digitally, but at a frame rate of 48 frames per second (what is being called HFR, or "Higher Frame Rate"), twice that of standard film, and in 3-D (to make what Jackson calls a more "immersive" film experience). The effect, once one has adjusted to it, is quite magical. Jackson doesn't try to do the 3-D tricks that Ang Lee does in Life of Pi, but the faster frame rate does improve the effect of things moving close by in 3-D; there is no longer the "stutter" effect, if something is moving by in the "near-field" at any rate of speed, which is something of a relief. And given that Jackson employs even more helicopter shots over New Zealand terrain here than in the "Rings" trilogy (as well as parallel swooping "crane" shots during the many sequences underground), that's a big help. Where it has its drawbacks are in some scenes that make the CGI characters look like toys figures, some of the impressive building constructs look like play-sets, and a slight mismatch of CGI (particularly during flying scenes) melded with terrain.

Still, it is hard to quibble when the image is so sharp, Jackson's color sense is eye-popping, and he still manages to keep a shimmering image through murky 3-D glasses. It doesn't look like videotape (as so many reviewers seem to think), as the lighting is more graded and subtle, but the movement recalls a better videotape image, and even something moving fast still has a better chance of being registered by the naked, or glasses-hampered, eye. It also allows the telling detail in even the CGI-est of images, like the moistness in Gollum's eyes, or the deep crags under Gandalf's. It is oddly transporting, and given the care that everyone has put into it, it's a very rewarding experience.

Wilhelm Scream Alert: at 02:05 and 02:35

Ya can't tell a dwarf from a halfling without a program.

* Thauj...sounds like a character name.

** Speaking of which, things have now approached and gone past the "Indiana Jones" threshold for physical believability here.  There's one particularly Rube Goldbergian sequence fighting trolls in an underground mine that strains credulity—but then, we're talking about a movie with dwarves, trolls, elves, ancient wizards, fire-breathing dragons, giant spiders, animated cliff-sides, and orcs riding big dogs.  That's enough to throw any griping fan-boys off their dyspepsia.  "Dude, this movie troll-kinged the bridge..."

The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies

Saying Farewell to Old Hobbits
or
"...a Handful of Jewels"

Peter Jackson takes the last ship to the Undying Lands in the West, bidding farewell to the Shire for (probably) the last time (barring, of course, anyone wanting to buy the film rights to J.R.R.Tolkien's doodle pad*). The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies is the final part of Jackson's ambitious trilogy adaptation of Tolkien's first book—the prequel of sorts to his epic "The Lord of the Rings." Some slim connecting tissue is provided to bridge the two trilogies, but not much, which is surprising since, as the briefest of the six films—clocking in at 2 hours, 24 minutes—it still manages to burst at the seams with new material, expanded—even engorged—from the book's slim contents.

It may be the shortest, but it "feels" like the longest, which is a guarantee that something is wrong with the film; I've seen four and five-hour films that have flown by (and still have you asking at the end "Is it over?"), and I've seen 60 minute films that seemed to last an eternity. A person's body watching a film has its own personal gladiator asking itself "Are we not entertained?" If we are, the gladiator fights alone unnoticed; if not, we find ourselves checking our watches, even if we haven't worn one in ten years.

The Hobbit: TBOTFA ** has issues so large you could drive a were-worm through it (and don't ask). The relatively short length (including an aptly-named Closing Credit crawl) with all of its import seems to drag (as compared to the longer and relatively speedy Lord of the Rings films) due to the material needed to wrap up the character arcs of the various Middle-earth humanoids and establishing why the favtions (dwarves, elves, halflings and men as well as the wizards, wargs and goblins) are so danged distrustful of each other at the start of The Fellowship of the Rings.

The movie can be divided into three sections: the battle of Lake-town against the dragon Smaug (voiced by Benedict Cumberbatch), the temptation of Thorin Oakenshield (Richard Armitage) once he acquires the dwarf-mines of Gundabard (under the Lonely Mountain), and the long build-up and extended battle for control of those mines. Each one of these segments is interminable.

Let's talk about the battles: Jackson has always set up the scope of the things; with the advance of MASSIVE©*** software, he's luxuriated in showing Nuremberg rally numbers of warriors in neat, tidy rows giving the sense of scale—we can see from the Great Eagle-high perspective what the odds are at a glance. Then, once battle commences, it's a free-for-all with vignettes of battle with significant characters and notable moments of attack and destruction. Perhaps we (or we and Jackson) have become inured by large battles royale—they've certainly grown in scope from the days of Eisenstein and Welles. But being post-Matrix, it seems like Jackson (or second-unit director Andy Serkis) has decided to just have his warriors flailing and that proves more wearisome for the viewer than it does for the combatant—although there's no chance for a missed swing with these special effects fights, because the fights are green-screen solo efforts. There's no sense of weight and effort, merely hacking and slashing to empty air, the actor going through fast tai-chi exercises and the post-effects crew just throwing pixels at them in various shapes and sizes.

And when your stage is a green-screen backdrop and you're suspended by wires that no one will see due to post-production work, then such things are possible as running up the falling stones of a collapsing bridge, so there's no sense of risk as the physics are that of a roadrunner cartoon.

Apart from the simulated physical, it is nice to see so many participants we've become familiar with****—Ian McKellen and Christopher Lee, Hugo Weaving and Cate Blanchett (Stephen Fry is featured again, briefly, as Lake-town's mayor, and there's a new dwarf leader voiced distinctively by Billy Connolly). Cumberbatch does what he can with his brief vocal appearances, but Smaug is mostly visual here. Ian Holm makes an appearance as old Bilbo. Martin Freeman blends with him just as seamlessly, but, try as he might, his Bilbo is less heroic for his lack of being not heroic (as in the book) and mostly seems resigned—his change of character having occurred two years ago in the first film. Most of the drama goes to Evangeline Lilly as the elf warrior Tauriel and Aiden Turner as her dwarf paramour Kili, while Richard Armitage is stuck with having to sustain an attitude that goes far past its dramatic need so that you cease caring about the character's thick-headed obstinance caused by his greed.

It's not the actor's fault, as Oakenshield's greed is only out-matched by the producing studios (New Line Cinema, M-G-M, Wingnut Films) in its efforts to squeeze...one...more...movie out of the slim source.

And that is the main issue with The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies, and, for all that, this entire trilogy. The novel would have been better served being done in two, rather than the three films for reasons of pacing and character. But, movies, as with celebrity deaths, seem to have to come in three's, so, as with The Lord of the Rings (which was three books of approximately the same length, each), The Hobbit had to be stretched out to a trilogy. It was expected, I guess, and it was what the market would bare. But not the material. It is ironic that a movie that has as its theme the destructive power of acquisitiveness in Middle Earth is undone by its own version of it in Hollywood. It is a very real cautionary fable in Tinsel-town that when a scrappy new-comer is given too much power, too much money, and too much opportunity, that the ingenuity displayed in its absence goes away.  Peter Jackson is far from a newcomer, but these films (as with The Lovely Bones and his King Kong) don't have the same verve, the same narrative drive, or the ability to flesh out the material that he displayed in the first trilogy.

Here's hoping it comes back.  In the meantime, a lot of New Zealanders got work.

Dwarf-warrior transport in The Battle of the Five Armies:
first person to say "Ramming Speed!" has to watch all three movies in a row again.

* One gets the impression, we've already seen that, as well.

** TBOFTA sounds like some geographical landmark of Middle-Earth.

*** It actually stands for something—Multiple Agent Simulation System in Virtual Environment.

**** A nice touch: the song over the credits, usually assigned to an edgy rock-star, this time goes to Billy Boyd, who played Pippin in the "Rings" trilogy.