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I'd been thinking of giving this post a play-on-wordsy subtitle like "The desperation of Smug", or something like that, but that I realised that
a) It wouldn't be funny, and
b) It didn't actually mean anything.
So I didn't.
Anyway. When the first of the Hobbit films came out last year I rather enjoyed it. Yeah, it wasn't as good as the Lord of the Rings films, where Peter Jackson had things like a limited budget and an external producer to keep a lid on his excesses, but so long as I took it as being "Inspired by" the book rather than "Based on" I actually got rather a lot out of it and I went into this film with the same frame of mind expecting more of the same.
Ah.
We open with a flashback as Gandalf meets Thorin for the first time in the Prancing Pony in Bree and discuss needing a burglar to gain the Arkenstone and unite the Dwarven people, before lurching back to the present and an exciting chase sequence as our heroes flee a pursuing gang of orcs to Beorn's steading. It's all very exciting; lots of sweeping long shots, running, shouting, orcs, pounding drums etc, and you'd better get used to that right now as you're going to be sitting through a heck of a lot of that for the next two and a half hours. In fact, at any point for the rest of the film when you think things might be about to slow down it's Orcs! Shouting! Running! Drums!
One of the things which made the Lord of the Rings films a pleasure to watch was that they occasionally took a step back from the orcs, shouting, drums and running so, ooh, I don't know, the characters could maybe have a conversation which lasted more than ten seconds and wasn't drowned out by pounding drums, or you'd get a pause as the camera swept over the contryside to a sweeping orchestral score and subliminal messages reading "Visit New Zealand" flashed up on screen. In The Desolation of Smaug even minor, quiet conversations are punctuated by pounding, portentous Moria-like Drums! and any sweeping shots of the countryside will include several dozen Orcs! galloping across it with, you guessed it, more dramatic Drums!. I hope the drummer got a bonus.
All the confident film-making in the Lord of the Rings where Peter Jackson appeared content at times to step back and have quiet moments for the story to breathe are missing here. Instead, the pace never lets up; despite the film being two and a half hours long it's non-stop and that appears largely because a lot of stuff which wasn't in Tolkien's original has been shoehorned in. And much of it really, really doesn't need to be there.
Perhaps the most interesting of the additions is Gandalf investigating the return of Sauron at Dol Guldur, which has the twin advantages of being nicely designed and Ian McKellern doing that acting thing he does. Less interestingly we have an entire elf/dwarf subplot featuring Orlando Bloom looking like he could have done with going for a jog and doing a few situps before squeezing back into Legolas' straining robes, and Evangeline Lily as Tauriel, a new lady-elf character who has a peculiar love triangle thing with Legolas and Kili and whose only real purpose in the narrative is to give other people someone to tell their motivations to before dying horribly in the battle at the end of the next film*.
What's perhaps worse than these additions are the entirely unnecessary alterations to the story. The Barrel-escape from the elf-king's halls, in the book a sneaky operation, becomes here an extended Orcs! Drums! Running! Shouting! chase sequence. I actually couldn't think why a tense Escape From Colditz-like scene featuring Elves instead of Nazis might not have worked instead, but Jackson clearly felt the film needed more Orcs! Drums! Running! and Shouting! because they're key to Tolkien's vision. Either that or the sheer weight of expectation (and money) on his shoulders means he's lost the confidence to do anything else.
Other stuff has been changed too; Bombur falling asleep in Mirkwood is removed, the discovery of the secret door at the Lonely Mountain scene is changed for no reason whatsoever except to create some false drama, and perhaps most surprisingly Smaug the dragon no longer has jeweled mail from lying on his hoard solely in order to give Bard the Bowman an unnecessary bit of backstory.
There are some bits to like but they are few and far between. For example I rather liked Thranduil the elf-king and his reminiscences of fighting another dragon, Glaurung, at Gondolin, but the stand-out scene is, as in the first film, a two-hander with Bilbo and a major villain - in this instance Smaug.
The conversation with Smaug is really enjoyable. A sequence of pure acting and confident direction with none of the usual Drums! Orcs! Running! Shouting! bits which serve as interludes to the rest of the film. Smaug is fantastically realised and the halls of the mountain king he dwells in are one of the best bits of the film**. Unfortunately it doesn't last. In no time at all we're into the closing action scenes - neither from the book - featuring an Orcs! Drums! Running! Shouting! fight in Laketown with Legolas and Tauriel and a stunningly ropy CGI horse***, whilst meanwhile the dwarfs run around the interior of the Lonely Mountain trying to restart the old furnaces so they can forge what appears to be a gigantic Lindt Chocolate Santa.
Seriously. I have no clue whatsoever what was going on there. Pursued by Dragon? Light ancient furnaces and cast a huge festive novelty confection. It's the only response that makes sense.
Like many people, I occasionally fantasise about owning a time machine. It'd be great. I'd be loaded in very short order and I could send robots back in time to kill Gordon Brown's parents. But one other thing I'd do would be to go back and show artists what became of their work after their death. HP Lovecraft, for example, died thinking he was a failure and his work would be forgotten and I'd like to show him my anthology of his work where Stephen King's introduction describes him as the most influential horror writer of the 20th century.
Likewise, Tolkien believed Lord of the Rings was unfilmable and I'd like to show him the films that were made as I think he'd love them. And then, at the end, he'd turn to me and ask "And did they ever film The Hobbit?". And I'd look him in the eye, shake my head gravely, and say "No. No they didn't."
It'd be a kindness to the poor man.
Two stars.
*I bet you ten pounds this happens.
** Smaug's hoard is immense; quite clearly it contains more gold than there is in the entire real world and the dwarfs were apocalyptically wealthy so it's no wonder the local economy collapsed when they stopped spending. During the exciting Orcs! Shouting! Running! Drums! final sequence of the film I found myself idly thinking that when the dwarfs re-took the mountain they should stop spending gold and instead begin issuing promissory notes against their wealth, and let's face it when that's more interesting than Orcs! and Drums! you know you've lost your audience.
***I'm not kidding. The shot looked unfinished.
a) It wouldn't be funny, and
b) It didn't actually mean anything.
So I didn't.
Anyway. When the first of the Hobbit films came out last year I rather enjoyed it. Yeah, it wasn't as good as the Lord of the Rings films, where Peter Jackson had things like a limited budget and an external producer to keep a lid on his excesses, but so long as I took it as being "Inspired by" the book rather than "Based on" I actually got rather a lot out of it and I went into this film with the same frame of mind expecting more of the same.
Ah.
We open with a flashback as Gandalf meets Thorin for the first time in the Prancing Pony in Bree and discuss needing a burglar to gain the Arkenstone and unite the Dwarven people, before lurching back to the present and an exciting chase sequence as our heroes flee a pursuing gang of orcs to Beorn's steading. It's all very exciting; lots of sweeping long shots, running, shouting, orcs, pounding drums etc, and you'd better get used to that right now as you're going to be sitting through a heck of a lot of that for the next two and a half hours. In fact, at any point for the rest of the film when you think things might be about to slow down it's Orcs! Shouting! Running! Drums!
One of the things which made the Lord of the Rings films a pleasure to watch was that they occasionally took a step back from the orcs, shouting, drums and running so, ooh, I don't know, the characters could maybe have a conversation which lasted more than ten seconds and wasn't drowned out by pounding drums, or you'd get a pause as the camera swept over the contryside to a sweeping orchestral score and subliminal messages reading "Visit New Zealand" flashed up on screen. In The Desolation of Smaug even minor, quiet conversations are punctuated by pounding, portentous Moria-like Drums! and any sweeping shots of the countryside will include several dozen Orcs! galloping across it with, you guessed it, more dramatic Drums!. I hope the drummer got a bonus.
All the confident film-making in the Lord of the Rings where Peter Jackson appeared content at times to step back and have quiet moments for the story to breathe are missing here. Instead, the pace never lets up; despite the film being two and a half hours long it's non-stop and that appears largely because a lot of stuff which wasn't in Tolkien's original has been shoehorned in. And much of it really, really doesn't need to be there.
Perhaps the most interesting of the additions is Gandalf investigating the return of Sauron at Dol Guldur, which has the twin advantages of being nicely designed and Ian McKellern doing that acting thing he does. Less interestingly we have an entire elf/dwarf subplot featuring Orlando Bloom looking like he could have done with going for a jog and doing a few situps before squeezing back into Legolas' straining robes, and Evangeline Lily as Tauriel, a new lady-elf character who has a peculiar love triangle thing with Legolas and Kili and whose only real purpose in the narrative is to give other people someone to tell their motivations to before dying horribly in the battle at the end of the next film*.
What's perhaps worse than these additions are the entirely unnecessary alterations to the story. The Barrel-escape from the elf-king's halls, in the book a sneaky operation, becomes here an extended Orcs! Drums! Running! Shouting! chase sequence. I actually couldn't think why a tense Escape From Colditz-like scene featuring Elves instead of Nazis might not have worked instead, but Jackson clearly felt the film needed more Orcs! Drums! Running! and Shouting! because they're key to Tolkien's vision. Either that or the sheer weight of expectation (and money) on his shoulders means he's lost the confidence to do anything else.
Other stuff has been changed too; Bombur falling asleep in Mirkwood is removed, the discovery of the secret door at the Lonely Mountain scene is changed for no reason whatsoever except to create some false drama, and perhaps most surprisingly Smaug the dragon no longer has jeweled mail from lying on his hoard solely in order to give Bard the Bowman an unnecessary bit of backstory.
There are some bits to like but they are few and far between. For example I rather liked Thranduil the elf-king and his reminiscences of fighting another dragon, Glaurung, at Gondolin, but the stand-out scene is, as in the first film, a two-hander with Bilbo and a major villain - in this instance Smaug.
The conversation with Smaug is really enjoyable. A sequence of pure acting and confident direction with none of the usual Drums! Orcs! Running! Shouting! bits which serve as interludes to the rest of the film. Smaug is fantastically realised and the halls of the mountain king he dwells in are one of the best bits of the film**. Unfortunately it doesn't last. In no time at all we're into the closing action scenes - neither from the book - featuring an Orcs! Drums! Running! Shouting! fight in Laketown with Legolas and Tauriel and a stunningly ropy CGI horse***, whilst meanwhile the dwarfs run around the interior of the Lonely Mountain trying to restart the old furnaces so they can forge what appears to be a gigantic Lindt Chocolate Santa.
Seriously. I have no clue whatsoever what was going on there. Pursued by Dragon? Light ancient furnaces and cast a huge festive novelty confection. It's the only response that makes sense.
Like many people, I occasionally fantasise about owning a time machine. It'd be great. I'd be loaded in very short order and I could send robots back in time to kill Gordon Brown's parents. But one other thing I'd do would be to go back and show artists what became of their work after their death. HP Lovecraft, for example, died thinking he was a failure and his work would be forgotten and I'd like to show him my anthology of his work where Stephen King's introduction describes him as the most influential horror writer of the 20th century.
Likewise, Tolkien believed Lord of the Rings was unfilmable and I'd like to show him the films that were made as I think he'd love them. And then, at the end, he'd turn to me and ask "And did they ever film The Hobbit?". And I'd look him in the eye, shake my head gravely, and say "No. No they didn't."
It'd be a kindness to the poor man.
Two stars.
*I bet you ten pounds this happens.
** Smaug's hoard is immense; quite clearly it contains more gold than there is in the entire real world and the dwarfs were apocalyptically wealthy so it's no wonder the local economy collapsed when they stopped spending. During the exciting Orcs! Shouting! Running! Drums! final sequence of the film I found myself idly thinking that when the dwarfs re-took the mountain they should stop spending gold and instead begin issuing promissory notes against their wealth, and let's face it when that's more interesting than Orcs! and Drums! you know you've lost your audience.
***I'm not kidding. The shot looked unfinished.
