The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies

[scarlettina]

Elizabeth and I went to see The Hobbit last night. My goodness, what a lot of CGI! And the truth about the movie is that, at its heart, is IS about people, but Peter Jackson has become so enamored of relying upon special effects--and so sure that what worked for the Lord of the Rings films will work here--that the heart of the movie gets lost. Apparently, in every film, we need to see Legolas do something physics-defying and therefore elfish. We need to see crane shots of magnificent landscapes. We need to see overhead shots of people running across narrow bridges that span harrowing depths. We need to see hordes of barbarians massing for battle and the butchery that follows. We need flocks of sinister-looking flying creatures (in this case, bats) menacing our band of stout heroes from the sky. And we need hero shots of heroic men looking heroically across landscapes, their ropey locks blowing heroically in the wind. Yes, I could have predicted all of it.

From my perspective, the best things about the movie (besides the darkly handsome and talented Richard Armitage and the brilliant Martin Freeman) are its quietest moments--between Tauriel and Kili, between Bilbo and Thorin, between Thorin and Bard, between Legolas and Thranduil. In those moments, Jackson lets his actors actually, you know, act, and we see who these characters are and why any of this matters to them at all. But it's all so swallowed up by the CGI monsters and the padding over of aging that the truth gets kind of lost.

Glad the series is over. Glad to have seen it. Done with it now.

Comments

Brings to mind a line from Woody Allen's old nightclub act.

[bedii.livejournal.com]

"Noel Coward has bought the rights to My Fair Lady and is painstakingly reworking it back into Pygmalion."

Re: Brings to mind a line from Woody Allen's old nightclub act.

[scarlettina.livejournal.com]

Brilliant, Bruce. :-)

[mcjulie.livejournal.com]

I saw it yesterday. I liked most of the first dragon-slaying act, but missed the device of the thrush telling Bard where the missing scale was. But that fits a more fairy-tale mood which is obviously not what Jackson was going for.

I would have enjoyed the casting-the-necromancer-from-the-tower scene more if it had been more clear exactly what the wizards, and Galadriel, were actually trying to do. The implication is that Galadriel used the power of her own ring against the necromancer in some way... but then why was she doing it alone and not with the help of Gandalf and Elrond, who were both standing right there and had the other elven rings? I mean, I know Gandalf had been hurt, but...

I really liked the handling of Thorin's madness, the growing conflict with the elves, and Bilbo's betrayal/attempt to save everyone. The movie treated gold sickness as being a little bit like ring lust, and that worked for me. Given that this movie is supposed to set up the LOTR story, though, I thought Legolas should have ended the story with more open animosity toward dwarves. In fact, that's where I thought they were taking the Tauriel/Kili storyline, that both of them were going to get killed and Legolas would blame dwarves in general for that.

I liked the setup on Tauriel/Kili in the first act, but did not like the payoff. She was one of the few characters whose fate was really in doubt, and I wanted that to matter more. Also, the final "it hurts because it was real" bit seemed borrowed from some hokey romantic tragicomedy, and why on earth was Thranduil the one to deliver that line? I mean, I guess they were trying to make him less of a jerk to imply that he'd had some kind of redemption and forgiven Tauriel for defying him, but it felt so... unearned, I guess.

I got a bit fed up with "I have to go warn them!" as a device for getting the characters in the same physical location, because they used that more than once and it never really seemed to affect the outcome. But I did love Bilbo struggling to think of some useful way to engage with the battle and not just get killed right away, and resorting to throwing rocks at the Orcs.

Legolas defying the laws of physics was both irritating and unnecessary. But I did like him running out of arrows.

Overall, what I would really like to see is the whole trilogy edited down to three and a half hours. I think that would be brilliant.

[scarlettina.livejournal.com]

I completely agree with your second, third, and fourth paragraphs. No arguments there; those were my thoughts almost exactly. Regarding Bilbo throwing rocks, his choice was a perfect demonstration of our protagonist acting protagonisty, i.e., taking agency in his own fate. I kept thinking, as he and Gandalf walked through the elf army, that given the creatures preparing to attack, being right there in the middle of things was a bad place to be. The likelihood of Bilbo surviving in that location was low.

I liked Legolas running out of arrows, too. In fact, when he first appeared, his quiver didn't look full and I wondered if Jackson was going to use that. I'm glad he did.

[madrobins]

Martin Freeman made the movie. The scene with him sitting next to Gandalf at the end was wonderful. But really, Freeman's smallest twitch of expression does a lot more than all the Big! Impressive! Battle scenes.

The rest, eh. Although I kept counting armies and could only come up with four, which for some reason really annoyed me.

[skidspoppe.livejournal.com]

I think the fifth wasn't so much an army as a set of dwarves and a hobbit....

[skidspoppe.livejournal.com]

I agree in terms of glad I've seen it, it's done now. And it seemed to me the HD makes everything look a bit unrealistic and slightly under cranked, so everyone is moving just a bit too fast.

[scarlettina.livejournal.com]

Interesting observation about the film looking undercranked. What I noticed as I watched was how doctored Orlando Bloom's face looked. He's supposed to be younger in this film--an ageless elf--but we all age, and the production team had to compensate for it. He looked over-made-up and over-retouched to me. It was distracting.

[amheriksha.livejournal.com]

Oh my goodness, that threw me off too. That and his contacts looked...off. (The fact Luke Evans looks slightly like Orlando Bloom really threw things off too.)