The Hobbit, the Desolation of Smaug

[shapinglight]

No one much is about, but I went to see this last night, so some brief thoughts behind cut.

For those of you who loved it, btw, I didn't. Just in case you don't want your squee spoiled.

Spoilers



Weird. Last year, most of my flist seemed agreed that the first Hobbit movie was bad, whereas when I went to see it, I enjoyed it a lot. Okay, the story was padded out from the book, but the padding was all stuff that was going on elsewhere at the time of the story (for which see the chronology in the LotR appendices). It was a shock to me, therefore, to watch the extended version of the first movie on DVD the other week, and encounter some of the original material stuck in the film, mostly (IMO) for no reason. I didn't see that most of it was necessary, and some of it I found quite cringeworthy.

Well, there are large chunks of original material in the second movie, (which had much better reviews, so I was expecting to like more, not less) pretty much all of which I disliked and thought unnecessary. The only chunk of such material I did like was the extended fight between the dwarves and Smaug inside the Lonely Mountain. I could see the reason for it (Thorin needed some payback, plus it was more dramatic). Even so, that came so late in the film that I'd had enough by then and when they faded to black, all I could think was, "Oh, thank f**k!"

As for the stuff I didn't like - it pretty much all revolved around Legolas and this bloody Mrs Perfect Mary Sue elf woman. Okay, I get that there's a gender imbalance in the story (to put it mildly), but, IMO, that is not redressed by inventing one uber-awesome female character, who is good at everything (beautiful, clever, can go all glow-y when required, and such an ace elf warrior that she's captain of the king's guard, etc, etc) and having random people be in love with her. Therefore, I hated the (not in the book) Fili has to be left in Laketown just so Mrs Perfect can do her elf-y mojo on him sub-plot. Nor did I like the random orc fights breaking out all over the place, or the way the barrel ride down the river looked like a computer game. Or the surfeit of Legolas (and is it just me, or is Orlando Bloom looking sort of...chubby?).

Annoying Mrs Perfect and too much Legolas apart, though, the elves didn't annoy me nearly as much as usual in this film - mainly because King Thranduil was a complete git, and quite camp. Since elves are usually not allowed to be much less than perfect I appreciated that no end. He was great. More of him, please, plus a back story for that elk he rides around on. IMO Thranduil's such a git the elk probably only tolerates him because he's holding its children hostage.

The extra Gandalf stuff I didn't mind. That was in the chronology. And I don't really mind the stuff that was changed in Laketown (great set, I thought, loved all the ice on the lake), except for Bard's children, who looked like they'd escaped from a Heidi film. I'd like them to have been scruffier.

So anyway, I feel they rushed over stuff I'd like to have seen a bit more of (the journey through Mirkwood, for instance), in order to ram Mrs Perfect Elf Lady down our throats, and that made me grumpy. Not to mention, all the original dialogue written for the scenes she was in was teeth-grittingly bad.

I honestly can't imagine how this film could be padded out even more than it was. Surely there can't be a director's cut, can there?

Anyway, nice dragon, shame about the Mary Sue.

Comments

[gillo]

At last, somebody who feels much the same as I do about the film. I actually prefer the first instalment. The elf-girl annoyed me, especially the flirtation with Kili. Aidan Turner is extremely pretty, but he's a dwarf in this and it makes no sort of sense. My guess is that she will die alongside Kili in the battle and this will explain why Legolas is so anti-dwarf when he meets Gimli.

I also agree about the limited Mirkwood - it could have been a lot more spooky. The barrel ride annoyed me - Bilbo put the lids on the barrels because without them they would have sunk. Instead, they all went merrily bobbing their way along as if they were on a ride in a theme park.

I didn't much like the dwarves fighting Smaug inside the mountain - it didn't make sense to me that anyone would think molten gold could kill a dragon with fire in its belly - and it's not in any way in the book. I did like Cumberbatch's voice as the dragon, though.

Stephen Fry was deliciously sleazy, however. And his sidekick reminded me of Wormtongue rather nicely. WTF about splitting the dwarves and leaving some behind, though. So very far from being in the book.

My companions all enjoyed it and declared it to be better than the first film, so it's reassuring to know I am not alone!

[shapinglight]

I actually prefer the first instalment.

Oh God, yes, by a mile! Also, I think your guess about what'll happen to Tauriel/Kili/Legolas is spot-on. Tauriel will be fridged. Of course she will. It astonishes me how unaware these film makers seem to be - first invent a cliched SFC, who is the only female character in the film, then fridge her.

I liked the dwarf/dragon fight, but I agree it's difficult to see how they could have thought pouring molten gold on Smaug would kill him. Not to mention why he then decided to head for Laketown instead of finishing off the dwarves.

My companions all enjoyed it and declared it to be better than the first film, so it's reassuring to know I am not alone!

S appreciated the inclusion of a female character, but then he isn't aware of the whole SFC thing. Well, he wasn't until now when I told him.

[tx-cronopio.livejournal.com]

I really do think that Peter Jackson has a big problem. To wit, he's become too powerful for anyone to say "dude, rein it in."

Engineer and I agreed last night that if the twins have already seen part 2, which I bet they have, that we'd just wait till the DVD comes out. BECAUSE ONE HUNDRED AND SIXTY ONE MINUTES, not counting the previews.

[shapinglight]

I really do think that Peter Jackson has a big problem. To wit, he's become too powerful for anyone to say "dude, rein it in."

Yep. Same as JK Rowling. Those books so badly needed cutting, but she was too powerful to be told.

Yeah, it's a very long film. I was so stiff at the end when I tried to get up. :(

[fenchurche.livejournal.com]

I think part of the problem with the way Legolas looked is that his face was largely CGI. Have you seen Orlando Bloom lately? Still good looking, but definitely starting to veer to the craggy side of things... they had to do a lot of computer work to make him look younger and it made his face look odd.

[shapinglight]

I haven't, but yes, now you mention it it was obvious he'd been heavily CGI'd. The effect was very weird.

[flake-sake.livejournal.com]

I didn't see it because I loathed the first movie so much. I mean there was about an hour of really good movie in there, but all the additional stuff made me cringe and the second one looks even worse.

I will wait until someone makes a special shortened edition of all three movies that contains only book material.

I can take messing with books by now, but messing with Tolkien? Just no.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Yes, this is precisely why I've decided to skip it. The Hobbit was amongst my favorite books as a kid. I adored the Ralph Bakshi animated film and acted in a play adapted from it. Both the animated film and the play were no more than two hours. Peter Jackson falls into that category of film makers who desperately require editors or at least someone slapping their hands & declaring that LESS is more.

[shapinglight]

I thought the first movie was okay. The extra stuff was mostly from the chronology (though I could have done without the Disneyfication of Radegast) so I was able to cope with its inclusion.

I wish I'd stuck with the cinematic version when I bought the DVD, though.

[singedbylife.livejournal.com]

I agree.

I saw the Desolation last week and on the plane home yesterday I saw An Unexpected Journey. I know wrong succession. anyway, i d preferred AUJ. Thought the story was richer.

And yes, Orlando looks a bit chubby in Desol. I liked Bard, and the Dragon + Stephen Fry. Tranduil not so much. And that's about it.

[shapinglight]

Heh! Thranduil was probably my favourite thing in the film - that and the Bilbo/Smaug stuff.

I get very antsy about fictional races of people who are supposed to be 'better' than others, which is why I don't like the elves in LotR. So I really appreciated one of them being a bit of a git.

[singedbylife.livejournal.com]

Ha ha, love that angle. Makes me appreciate him more as well

[shapinglight]

:)

[ningloreth.livejournal.com]

It's a pity you didn't enjoy it. Of course, I loved it!

I didn't mind the changes from the book -- I write Tolkien fanfic, so I really can't complain when PJ does it too! -- and I didn't find the film too long at all. One benefit of the changes, I think, is that you never quite know what's going to happen next.

I loved all of Legolas' moves, especially the standing on the dwarves' heads business, and the final fight, when he really looked knackered (and annoyed that they'd made his pretty nose bleed). Orlando isn't actually chubby, btw, he's very lean, but he's lost the puppy fat he had when he made LOTR, which gave Legolas that smooth, ageless, porcelain doll look, and they've tried to put it back with CGI 8-/

I loved all of Bilbo's scenes and I thought Smaug was perfect, both visually and vocally, but I could have done with a lot more of the dwarves.

I agree that Kili/Tauriel didn't quite work. I don't have any problem with the idea of a romance (at least on his part), but I did feel that I could have written better dialogue myself (!) and I was really surprised how little chemistry the two actors seemed to have.

I didn't particularly like Thranduil, but I think that's because I find him a bit of a placeholder in the book, so to write him I've had to construct what amounts to an Original Character, and my!Thranduil (though also a complete git) is nothing like Lee Pace!Thranduil...

Sorry, I've been rambling!

[shapinglight]

I'm glad you enjoyed it. I'm sure I would have liked it more if I were a Legolas fan, but I'm afraid I'm not. Never have been. I appreciate that his rather odd appearance was down to CGI, though. It did make his face look sort of flat and strange.

I loved all of Bilbo's scenes and I thought Smaug was perfect, both visually and vocally, but I could have done with a lot more of the dwarves.

Agreed, on both counts.

As for romance, while I don't have a problem with it as such, I do have a problem with Tauriel being such a terrible Mary Sue, though. I got to cringing every time she appeared on screen. And I'm sure you, I, or many fanfic writers I know could have written better dialogue. It was dreadful. :(

Don't worry about rambling, btw. It's nice to talk. Have a lovely Christmas.

[ningloreth.livejournal.com]

Have a lovely Christmas</>

You too!

[mrs-underhill.livejournal.com]

Looks like we mirror each other in our reaction to "Hobbit" movies, mine just more intense. :)

I really didn't like the second movie, starting from the scene in Bree with Gandalf, which totally contradicted the first movie (and the books of course, but at this point who cares about the books). It was a lot of pointless action focusing on characters I didn't care that much, especially on Mary Sure and Legolas which looked like android version of himself, it was creepy.

Bard, Bilbo, Balin were great, Smaug too, except for the stupid action sequence in the end, and I actually do hope for an extended version DVD. This movie lacked character moments, I hope they will be added in there, and I can skip action sequences.

I loved the first movie because it was more like a TV show about characters I got to love, with some action which could be skipped or wasn't so pointless. The more situation comedy in Bag End - the better, the more soulful talks about home - the better, and there was plenty of that in the first movie.

Second movie was a huge disappointment because they dropped all the character interactions for rubbish. And I got really invested in those characters...

[shapinglight]

I agree with you 100%. For such a long movie, there was precious little character stuff, the best of it being at the end, with Bilbo and the dwarves inside Erebor, and Bilbo and Smaug. The first movie was a pleasant surprise for me because no one on my LJ flist had seemed to like it and I thought it was pretty good (apart from Disney Radegast), but this was just...dreadful.

:sigh: So disappointed.

[beer-good-foamy.livejournal.com]

Just saw it, and while I did think it was a slight improvement on the first one, it still feels mostly like watching someone play a computer game and you could easily have cut 90 minutes or so. Bambiwick Thumperthatch had a lot of fun as Smaug, as anyone in their right mind would, but nobody else seemed to - the dwarves are all so very dour and the elves all so very smug that the comedy just feels pasted on and the drama overdone. And just like in the first movie, the story never gets to breathe. There are bits in the Mirkwood that seem genuinely spooky, but it's 10 seconds of spook followed by 10 minutes of CGI (and not even very good CGI, surprisingly - maybe it's harder to do CGI in 3D, but IMO the original trilogy looks more impressive than the Hobbit movies), and even with three hours to tell a story Jackson crams so much in there between all the fastforwardable fight scenes that there's no sense of storytelling. This is supposed to be a fairytale, damnit, where's the sense of wonder and myth?

[shapinglight]

and while I did think it was a slight improvement on the first one

Really? I honestly don't get that. I liked the first one. Apart from that, I agree with you completely. The film was very short on magic of any description. It might has well have been based on a theme park ride, like Pirates of the Caribbean. The Mirkwood sequence so disappointed me. It should have been much longer and with more psychological horror, but they skipped all that to concentrate on Mrs Boring Perfect Mary Sue.

The original trilogy is way better in every way. I've just rewatched it and fallen in love with it all over again (which isn't to say it doesn't have faults).

[beer-good-foamy.livejournal.com]

I honestly didn't care much for the first one; it felt like 45 minutes of crashing boredom followed by 2 hours of motion sickness. Yes, there are some nice moments, but for the most part I thought it felt like what it was; 50 pages of novel padded to 3 hours thanks to endless action scenes (seriously, the entire Goblin town scene needs to go). I think part of the reason I preferred the second one is that I'd adjusted my expectations, and that I didn't see it in 3D*, but also it feels like there's just slightly more meat to it. (Also, I didn't hate Evangeline Lilly, though I can see why people do; yes, she's a Mary Sue, but so is every other elf in the entirety of Tolkien canon). Bard interests me far more than the dwarves (partly because I need to keep reminding myself that Thorin is supposed to be a dwarf, despite appearances), Smaug is a more interesting** villain than Gollum, Stephen Fry is a better actor than the CGI goblin king...

* Supposedly, 3D movies are supposed to lose something in 2D. But I spent the entire 3D Hobbit I being annoyed (and with a slight headache) because they put in a lot of scenes that served no purpose but to show off the 3D, and when I saw Hobbit II in 2D I could just write them off as eyecandy and skip the headache.

** Gollum is one of the most intriguing characters in the entire story and his scene was the best thing in Hobbit I, but that's partly because we already know him. His story belongs to LOTR, all he does here is hand Bilbo the ring. Smaug, on the other hand, is new, belongs in The Hobbit, and has an actual influence on the plot.

That's not to say I thought it was a vast improvement. The first one was meh, the second one is meh plus.

(Also, they all but cut Mikael Persbrandt (Beorn) completely and put him in such heavy makeup for his 20 seconds that you couldn't recgonise him, which I love since all Swedish papers have touted him as the STAR of The Hobbit for three years now.)

[shapinglight]

I haven't seen either film in 3D. I can't cope with it. The glasses give me a headache anyway, and slogging through three hours of it in 3D would probably have given me a crashing migraine.

I'm glad you enjoyed this one more. Agree that the Goblin town sequence in the first film went on way too long. The same is true of the barrel ride sequence in this film. Both scenes felt like theme park rides and made my eyes hurt even in 2D.

I was disappointed with the Beorn scene. I would have preferred more humour. The whole thing was so dour, and the dialogue they put in the character's mouth was teeth-grittingly awful.

As for Tauriel, while I appreciate that Peter Jackson probably thought sticking this character into the story was redressing the gender imbalance, I just found her nauseating. It's bad that there is this gender imbalance, but it is understandable, given the sort of man Tolkien was and when he was writing. I think that addressing it in this ridiculous superficial way was worse than not addressing it at all. JMO, of course.

Having said that, I've just rewatched the entire LotR trilogy and found myself wishing that Jackson had done more with Eowyn. She does still do something very heroic, of course, but I wish - as in the book - that other characters had acknowledged this afterwards. She killed a Nazgul ffs, but no one even mentions it. Instead, she just disappears from the story.

[kidcyclone.livejournal.com]

Things I liked about The Hobbit, Part II:

The bits with Bilbo/Smaug

Stephen Fry

Legolas and Thranduil being bitchy at one another

Things I disliked about The Hobbit, Part II:

Everything else

[shapinglight]

Yeah, it was a bit like that, wasn't it? ;)

So disappointing.

[kidcyclone.livejournal.com]

Amending initial comment to add more complaining:

Things I liked about The Hobbit<, Part II :

The bits with Bilbo/Smaug

Stephen Fry

Legolas and Thranduil being bitchy at one another

Things I disliked about The Hobbit, Part II:

Everything else



ETA more bitching: (Caution: spoilers in the bitching)

As has been pointed out but apparently Peter Jackson doesn't care, who leaves the lids off the barrels?! That was ridiculous.

The scenes in Laketown were way too long and pointless. The whole Kili-gets-poisoned bit was also pointless. Maybe Peter Jackson thought it was some sort of brilliant foreshadowing but for me it was a pointless distraction and I REALLY disliked the 'Female Elf Made Up To Be Kili's Love Interest' subplot. Needless to say, for people who know the story of the Hobbit there was no tension regarding whether or not Kili will pull through (although I suppose since Peter Jackson has decided to take such liberties with the story, one should watch it under the assumption he might be going to make majour plot changes *bites nails*).

Conversely, the scene in Mirkwood was far too short and lost almost all its dramatic tension. This is supposed to be a big heroic moment for Bilbo-- a turning point in his character arc. Instead, it loses almost all dramatic impact and is reduced to another brief action scene. Also, as a side note, I like Martin Freeman as an actor, but he seems far tougher and more hardened than I imagine Bilbo being. I recall Bilbo being described as 'squealing' frequently in The Hobbit's text. Martin Freeman's Bilbo does not seem the type to squeal. He seems the type to squint at an orc with steely eyes just before making a quip and kicking it in the knackers.

And I also really hated the bit with the sudden addition of the dwarven mining forge and Thorin surfing on moulten gold. That giant dwarf made of moulten gold looked like a butter sculpture and the whole concept was ridiculous. Also, I was getting distracted thinking things like how would this even work, and wouldn't the gold coating somehow interfere with Smaug's flying ability. I also don't like how the dwarves are now a cartoonish cavalcade of wacky one-dimensional characters. Except for Thorin, who is just cranky.



And yes, very disappointing. I thought the first episode was rather a disappointment, but this part was so much worse. :(

[shapinglight]

I can't really add to this, because I agree with most of it, though I do like Martin Freeman and don't mind him not being that like Bilbo in the book.

I definitely agree that the Mirkwood scene was very short-changed.