The Hobbit, the Desolation of Smaug
Dec. 23rd, 2013 02:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shapinglightNo 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.
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.
no subject
Date: 2014-01-03 05:40 pm (UTC)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).
no subject
Date: 2014-01-03 08:45 pm (UTC)* 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.)
no subject
Date: 2014-01-04 07:12 pm (UTC)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.