I went to a midnight showing of The Hobbit last Thursday (Friday?) and I'm not sure I liked it. What's worse, I'm not sure how to feel about not liking it. I'm a huge Lord of the Rings fan. I learned to speak Elvish in high school because I thought it would be cool (it wasn't). I wore the one ring on a chain around my neck. I drew countless posters with characters, runes, elvish script and songs. I made a diorama of Helm's Deep. For fun. In 9th grade we had to pick a country and do a big end-of-the-year presentation in front of the school and I did it on the various regions of Middle Earth.
I only say this to emphasize just how much I love Tolkein. And how much I loved Peter Jackson's re-imaginings of the series.
So you can imagine how much I wanted to love The Desolation of Smaug. I paid $60 for a pair of tickets to a theater party with swag and a double feature. I was bouncing in my seat. Midnight came and one of the theater employees came out to play trivia and give out prizes. I cringed when he started out with, "I've never seen any of the films, so you'll have to bear with me with the questions."
There was a bit of an argument over whether 'Erebor' is the name of the Lonely Mountain itself, or merely the city inside. (It is, despite how hard my date fought that one) There were many people talking and giggling throughout the first movie. There were two girls behind me wearing cloaks and whispering about how they hopes Legolas was shirtless. Nevertheless, I was excited.
Let me start with the previews. Divergent is an interesting, sci-fi flick and I can see fans of LOTR liking it. You get a pass. Godzilla? Yes yes yes yes yes. God yes. Then it got a little weird. Lone Survivor? Grudge Match? A couple other touching dramas? I feel like that wouldn't have attracted as much interest as Spiderman, that Frankenstein movie or maybe even Winter Soldier would have. I'll never understand who chooses what trailers to play before which films... but it was very off-topic.
Whatever, not important.
We start the film by staring straight into one of Peter Jackson's eyes. The audience hoots and simmers down almost immediately as the camera moves into The Prancing Pony. Thorin is enjoying a meal and avoiding the gaze of several shifty characters. Unlike the original trilogy, Gandalf shows up to shoo the vagabonds away and start the quest.
I've heard complaints about this scene, but I sort of liked it. Bringing it back to Bree and The Prancing Pony makes sense. The town itself seemed rather multicultural and it's not unheard of for a traveler to stop at one of the biggest inns around. They talk, blah blah and life goes on.
I'm going to skip to Mirkwood elves because, really, everything was well-done up until then. I've also got one major complain in that forest. It's a common complaint, it's one I've heard often, but it's something I feel very strongly about.
I hate Tauriel.
I hate her. I feel like her character is uninteresting, trite, and I think she is more insulting to my gender than the movie would have been if they included no females at all. I hate that the only woman in the series (besides Galadriel) is someone's love interest. I hate that we have a strong, capable, independent woman with grand dreams and the only reason the characters find a connection to her is that she has a crotch that isn't shaped like theirs. I hate that the love between her and Kili seems to trivialize the love between Gimli and Legolas later on (as well as Galadriel). I hate that we take Legolas and turn him into a smoldering hunk when he *wasn't like that at ALL* in the original series.
I feel like she adds nothing to the story and only solidifies the idea that women are only around to be the romantic interest of a male character. Fuck, Kili doesn't matter at all! Legolas doesn't matter! Neither of them need to be in the story to make it work. So why would you create this very interesting Tauriel, who gives us insight into the Sindarin elves and their treatment, and make her the pretty sidekick to two people whose roles aren't that big themselves?
I understand that she's pretty much the Eowyn of *The Hobbit*, but I thought that Eowyn/Aragorn was handled much more tactfully. They had time to interact and fall for each other. Aragorn was at the point where he thought the love of his life was gone and was likely romance-starved enough to flirt. Eowyn finally saw an awesome member of royalty who wasn't related to her and didn't (often) patronize her. And yet they still had issues. She defied him to go and fight, completely disregarding the fact that she had feelings for him when those feelings got in the way of her goals. Tauriel, on the other hand, defied the man that she (apparently) loved *as well* as the position she worked hard for in order to save another man she fell in love with after half an hour of talking about some rock. It's ridiculous, it's insulting and I absolutely couldn't believe that Peter Jackson would be so stupid as to add this character. He doesn't normally go for the Hollywoodization shtick, why did he suddenly do it now?
Nothing against Evangeline Lilly. I think the character is portrayed as best as it can be and the scene between Tauriel and Thranduil was thrillingly beautiful. She's a good actress and I give her props for having to work with so little.
Thranduil. Hoo! What a great character! Mad, but with purpose. Regal and so attuned to nature. Whoever designed him needs to get an award because he *looks* so perfect. Except for the fact that he looks younger than Legolas... but hardly a criticism because it doesn't distract from anything. That scene where he bends and gets into Thorin's face... wow! I love seeing how the greed of Erebor has corrupted someone like an elf--who were these absolutely perfect beings up until now. I love seeing where power twists the mind. I want to hug him and take his wonderful hat.
Speaking of wonderful hats, Laketown! Stephen Fry is another one of those characters that I'm unsure how to feel about. He does a fantastic job, but it's at a strange point where the juxtaposition of 'kid's movie' and 'adult's movie' don't mesh. He plays a character that's strangely reminiscent of Denethor/Cursed Theoden with a Grima to go with him. But he's so very over the top that he feels like he would be more at place in a cartoon! Not a bad choice (*The Hobbit* was a children's book, after all) but it's weird not long after you see an eviscerated cow, see a charismatic character get badly wounded and deal with mildly racist undertones with the elves. It's just a strange mix, and maybe I'm the only one who saw it.
Smaug was gorgeous. Bilbo and Smaug's scenes were so much fun and well-written. "My wings are hurricanes" Yay! I've nothing bad to say about the entire Erebor sequence. There were parts that were oddly childish or defied physics... but it's a fantasy film and I'm not expecting it to follow the laws of how molten gold flows.
Some parts were cut, like most of Beorn and the White Council. Some parts were added, like the Necromancer/Gandalf fight and Bard's backstory. I think they were good decisions as the book itself is very difficult to film without any sort of embellishment or connection to the Lord of the Rings trilogy. But it somehow didn't quite live up to my expectations of how I thought it was going to go and I'm not entirely sure how to feel about it. I'm going to see it again. I'm going to buy it on DVD. But... I don't know. I think I've got all my fingers and toes crossed that the next one is better.
Woo!
Rants, ramblings and whatever else from a desperate, professional geek.
No comments:
Post a Comment