pictured above: nonsense
(For further context, check out my previous reviews of An Unexpected Journey and The Desolation of Smaug)
Let’s go back to a better time, 2003, to The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King. Book, not movie.
There’s a scene, which might only be in the extended edition of the film, where Pippin and Gandalf stand on a balcony at Minas Tirith, looking out at Mordor on the verge of war. They talk about their fears, the impending war, and the mad steward of Gondor, before Pippin asks Gandalf, “Is there any hope, Gandalf, for Frodo and Sam?” Gandalf replies, solemnly, “There was never much hope. Just a fool’s hope.” The scene reinforces a major theme of the story: that, even in the darkest and most hopeless of times, the courage to go on remains. It’s a theme that resonates with me and is one of the reasons why I adore The Lord of the Rings so much as a film series.
So believe me when I say that, with the release of The Hobbit, this lesson has BETRAYED ME. I HELD ONTO HOPE PETER JACKSON. I SOLDIERED ON THROUGH THE DARKEST OF TIMES, AND THIS IS WHAT YOU GAVE ME???
My first thought, as the credits rolled on the preview screening of The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies, was that my soul hurt. The second thought was, “Why does everyone teleport in this movie?” Not a single character in the entire film walks into frame. Another character will be talking, and at a dramatically important time the camera will turn to reveal that shockingly, the person they’re discussing or they want least to overhear them will be right there. I know that’s a really odd point to make early in a review, but it happens every five minutes.
Where to begin? What is it about the Hobbit franchise that makes it so terrible? Is it the unnecessary length? The rapid changes between overly melodramatic drama scenes and cartoonishly goofy action scenes? The fact that Martin Freeman is barely in it, despite being perfect and playing the title character? The fact that the elvish characters are in it at all? The horrendous story structure stemming from the blunt-scissors that dissected two movies into three?
I’ll start with the last one. I’m sorry, you cannot begin a movie with the death of the villain of the previous two movies, and the major character defining moment for a character who was introduced halfway through the last movie. It doesn’t work, even remotely. The scene, which is one of the largest moments in the original novel, takes place entirely before the movie’s title shows up on screen. Take that in. Take that terrible, terrible, fact in.
As a fan of the book The Hobbit, I do have a bit of an inherent problem with turning the last 20 pages of a 200 page book into a 2.5 hour movie, but as a person who studies film, it’s even worse than it has to be. The film has so many subplots to tie up, each of which contains so much melodrama, that it’s less of a story in a film than a big unappetizing soup of people looking at things dramatically. No storyline is given enough time or the proper amount of slow, contemplative moments for their big action scenes to have much meaning to them, and even the ones that do are destroyed by having two thirds to one half of the character’s development entirely contained within another movie.
I suppose now I can give my final feelings on the whole trilogy of Hobbit movies: NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
On a more eloquent note: As an adaptation of The Hobbit, these films did an an atrocious job. The story of Bilbo, and his journey across Middle Earth with a band of dwarves, is completely loss in weird, unnecessary subplots, overly long overly goofy action scenes, and needlessly overdramatic added conflicts. As three movies on their own, they might actually be even worse. There are too many storylines, and none of the films is structured in a way that offers a satisfying dramatic arc for any of them. The beautifully detailed and real world of Middle Earth Peter Jackson first made in The Lord of the Rings is destroyed by the need for more and more action scenes, and there is barely anything, character or world wise, that feels real enough to emotionally connect to. Instead of a story, we get a series of scenes, which even on their own aren’t that interesting to watch.
Or, to put it simply: “Do not trust to hope. It has forsaken these lands.” -Eomer, The Lord of The Rings: The Two Towers.
TOP HAT ROBOT 