The Hobbit: Desolation of Smaug
So Tuesday Night is Date Night at the Dollar Theater. But now we play D&D on Tuesdays, so Monday Night is Date Night! And the second Hobbit movie was finally flat enough and cheap enough for us to go see. WOOHOO!
Well, I say WooHoo...and I mostly mean WooHoo, but golly, that movie gave me so much approval whiplash. It would go from Awesome to Terrible and back again with utterly no warning and often within a single sentence. It was like watching "the End of Time" all over again. On the balance I think I liked it, but, as with the last movie, it needed to end one scene earlier.
My biggest problem with the movie was the pacing. It's a multifold issue. First off, it ran into that "stations of the canon" problem that some of the Harry Potter movies run into: we need to check off these famous scenes - but without any sense of building a story out of them. That was Mirkwood. It's like "okay, we have a list. Beorn, check, got him. Butterflies, check. Spiders, check. Elven King, check. Barrels, check. Okay, we're done here, let's get to the STORY." They were all just...stuff that happened, signposts, rather than a cohesive plot. And a lot of that was because of the second pacing issue - they were really obviously hurrying to get to the dragon. And that's why you don't call this movie the Desolation of Smaug, guys. Because then you build it all around the dragon, which, okay. But you don't want to actually kill the dragon until the third movie, so you rush through all of the really awesome act II stuff, and then have to shovel in all this filler in the second half. Which leaves the movie simultaneously feeling rushed and dragging like nobody's business. Like seriously. The action scenes dragged. There's this fight between Bolg and Legolas for no reason and, while I honestly really enjoyed watching Elves fighting Orcs, it was really boring and totally pointless, because you know neither of them is going to kill the other. Well, you know if you've read the book and know who Bolg is. The same thing with the fight with Smaug. By necessity neither side is going to accomplish anything - it's gratuitous pointless violence. And there was SO MUCH of that. It was very telling that all of the previews before the movie were for action films. And I don't mind adding action to a story that really has very little. Elves fighting Orcs at the border of the forest - that was awesome. But it gave the pacing no variety. That was my third big pacing issue. The second act of the Hobbit is a lot of ...waiting. They wait for three days for Beorn to show up. They are in Mirkwood for what feels like forever - and intentionally so, it starts to mess with their heads and leads them vulnerable. They spend ages languishing in the Elven King's dungeons. The barrels are all about highlighting Bilbo's loneliness and isolation. And then they're waiting on the doorstep for something to happen. Admittedly, that's a lot of waiting. You want to spice up some of that with action, go ahead. But. Not a single one of those waiting periods made it into the movie.
Let's tally, shall we?
Beorn: They arrive in the afternoon, spend one day, leave the morning of the third. (Book: three days waiting for him)
Beorn --> Mirkwood: Arrive at Mirkwood what looks like the same day they left Beorn, mid-afternoon. (Book: several days ride, maybe a week)
Mirkwood: one or two days until they stumble off the path. Bilbo climbs his tree - immediately captured by spiders. Fight the spiders in the night. Captured by Elves the next morning. (Book: When Bilbo climbs his tree, the season is shifting to Autumn, it having been early June when they left the mountains. They've been in the forest at least three weeks, possibly a month or more).
Elven King's Halls: Captured in the morning, escape that evening. (Book: at least a month)
Barrels: a single action-packed day (Book: about a week, during which Bilbo get's sick)
Laketown: about a day in transit/fish, about a day with Bard before the confrontation, leave the following day (Book: about a week, after which everyone is genuinely pretty surprised they're going on to the Mountain)
On the Doorstep: It's Durin's Day RIGHT NOW (about a day out from Laketown). Maybe half an hour. (Book: at least a week, in stark contrast to the hurry right at the end of it)
So, by my count, in the movie, from Carrock to Erebor takes them...about nine days. In the book it takes them three months. If not more (early summer to late autumn). And, like, I know they skipped 12 whole years in "Fellowship of the Ring" and clearly aren't looking at calendars if they think that events that happen around the beginning of June (or, heck, October, if we're counting backwards from Durin's Day) are in any way "12 months later" than events that happened on March 25th (tiny nitpick, I know, but March 25th is important, dang it!)...but still. Your draggy scenes rushed and your action scenes dragged. That, to me, is doing it exactly wrong.
What they should have done is made Mirkwood the meat of the film. And ended it probably with them setting off to Erebor from Lake Town all full of hope and stuff. And then start the next movie on the doorstep, with Thorin being all ornery about how long they've been sitting there with nothing happening, and isn't it about time Bilbo actually did what they were paying him for, and Martin Freeman Bilbo being all aggrieved and such. Call it something like "the Shadow of Dol Guldur" which will tie in the Necromancer plot and Thranduil's isolationism and the fact that Mirkwood really kinda sucks, and dark things are moving. Let the Dwarves get desperate. Show glimpses of Elves being super sinister moving through the trees. Ramp up the suspense. Have Bilbo find himself alone more - muffled noises and screams, but a heavy stillness in the air sapping strength and determination. Give the very best chapter in the whole freakin book the treatment it so richly deserves. GRRRRRRRRRRR. And the beauty of it is - it wouldn't really have taken any longer.
That said, so much of the movie was absolutely wonderful. It starts with Gandalf and Thorin's "chance" meeting in Bree (with special guest appearance by Peter Jackson and the 60 Year Carrot - but I digress). Fantastic. Including and expanding upon appendical matter is what these movies have been doing best, and I approve so hard. And I also really like the idea of the Arkenstone itself as the object of the quest. It makes sense (in a way that burglarizing the entire hoard never did). Not that it doesn't open up problems in and of itself. Like, Bilbo giving the Arkenstone to Bard is going to be way more problematic of a move now than it already was in the book. In the book by claiming the Arkenstone (before knowing what it was) violated the spirit of his agreement with Thorin - now it's going to violate the letter of it as well. (Also it breaks the nice Beowulf parallel Tolkien obviously put so much work into with the great two handled cup, twelve warriors and their angry king, lead by the thief to the dragon's lair... but I'm probably the only one who cares about that). And this is what I mean with my reactions being a mixture of delight and disapproval. I love what they're doing with the Arkenstone as a plot. I'm not sure I like what they're doing with the Arkenstone itslef. That is, they're treating it in itself as an object of corruption, which seems very wrong to me. Like, in the first movie, I figured it was because Thror was under the thrall of the ring (which would have made sense, yeah?) but now it seems to be the Arkenstone itself? Which I guess they're trying to explain why Thorin does the things he does later on but... you don't really need to. It's all right there in his character. The Arkenstone as a symbol is enough to drive Thorin's Act III actions. He doesn't need an Object of Corruption. And I know that they're trying to set up a parallel between Thorin & the Arkenstone and Bilbo & the Ring, which is working very well and is really quite effective, but... the Ring is evil - deliberately created by a malevolent power to dominate minds. The Arkenstone is just a rock. A very pretty rock, admittedly, but a natural thing. Thorin's issues surrounding it are all his own.
Or are they going to use Fili and Kili (and Bofu and...Oin, I think?) as the bargaining chip instead of the Arkenstone? But that would circumvent Bilbo's betrayal entirely and...sort of miss the point of the book. Or maybe they're going to use it to highlight how round the bend Thorin has gone - he won't bargain for his nephews (and heirs) but he will for the Arkenstone? I don't know...I just don't know...
Which - OMG YAY they brought up the fact that Fili and Kili are the heirs! Thorin is like "Fili, someday you will be King." Hooray for sister-sons! It confirms that Kili is the younger, though, by contrast to the book in which Fili is the youngest... but I feel like I was just reading about how in LotR they're flipped from the Hobbit anyway so whatever. Kili can be the youngest if he wants to. They'll both be dead soon, so it hardly matters.
Speaking of which, let's talk about Tauriel. She was cool. I have absolutely no problems with Tauriel at all. If you're going to have extraneous elves running around anyway, sure, make some of 'em girls. It makes total sense. Moar Elvish Politics is always a good thing as well. Having the dynamic with her as the no-nonsense Captain and Legolas as the spoiled princeling works really well as well. Internal dissention - beautiful! I was honestly surprised by how much I liked Tauriel. She was...pretty great all around. Also, I can't get over how...thuggish they managed to make Legolas look. Maybe it's the armor. Maybe Orlando Bloom has put on a lot of weight. Maybe it was intentional to highlight the fact that he's on the "wrong" side of the debate. I dunno. I liked it. And as much as I got bored by the gratuitous action scenes, Legolas and Tauriel fighting Orcs at the river gates while the Dwarves just sort of did their thing was awesome. Tons of fun. And in almost a bad guys fighting bad guys kind of things. The Elves are the bad guys in this scene - they're trying to stop our heroes. But the orcs are a much bigger problem for everyone. And so I liked the idea of the orcs kind of saving the day by giving the elves someone more important to worry about, and proving that their isolationism was perhaps not a good plan. And the subplot with "didn't I tell you to kill those spiders?" was similarly really great.
The trouble is they shoe-horned in this awkward love triangle...thing. Which, honestly, was way less terrible than I feared. Like, I get it. You want to give Kili as much screen time and plot and characterization and yada yada yada as you possibly can so that we will be sad when he dies. I approve of this plan. It'd be nice if Fili got the same benefit, but you do what you can. Like, if it were the case that you could predict which dwarves don't make it out of the story by who gets character development - that would be fine! Totally legit story telling. Lay it on as thick as you want. Although leaving them behind so that we can have them die defending a mountain they've never seen the inside of seems a bit cold to me. Also OMG did we NOT need a penis joke in this movie. Like seriously WTF people. But yeah, I don't know if the OH NOES KILI IS DYING OF A THING I GUESS subplot is going to make the ultimate end of this storyline more poignant or kind of rob it of its force. But whatever. But like, okay, there's serious Unfortunate Implications of "we have this female character THEREFORE LOVE TRIANGLE" which I seriously resent. But also... when you introduce a love triangle, you have to resolve the love triangle. We know she's not going to end up with Kili - he dies. We know she's not going to end up with Legolas because Legolas is unattached in movies we've already seen. If they were just going to carry on as before, they would not have introduced the freakin love triangle. Like, I'm not saying that Legolas and Kili are the only options in the universe - there's other folks and of course being single - but they are the only options in the love triangle. right? Which means they're probably going to kill Tauriel at the Battle of Five Armies. Which, on the one hand - yay! As many named corpses as possible please. If they do it right, the Battle of Five Armies should punch us all in the gut as hard as possible. Like, Bilbo waking up, looking around at the field of the dead, and going "so. victory then." is one of the most powerful moments in the book. The more people we can kill the better that point will be made. I want a big corpsy montage. Elves and Men and Orcs and Dwarves all tangled together. Which means we need more sympathetic Laketowners to kill as well. All we've got so far is the Bardings - which, three kids? At least one of em's gonna go. Calling it now. Probably the older girl. She's the one who's had screen time. Although Bard already has the dead wife, so maybe not... On the other hand, building this character just to kill her off seems a bit shoddy, all things considered.
I loved loved loved the Bardings. Heck, I loved Bard. At first I was disappointed that he wasn't the gloomy gus everyone kind of tolerated but didn't actually like - but then he did end up doing that and I was well pleased. I disapproved of them changing the lines of the song and making it a "prophecy"...I prefer having it be Bard's good sense that puts him on the other side of that debate. Also I prefer Tolkien's poetry to most things. Oh man and I was waiting for Thorin to rise like Boticelli's Venus out of the barrel, scattering fish everywhere, yet every inch a King. The way it actually went down wasn't too bad, but how great would that have been? Also, Laketown...dystopia much? For why? Maybe they needed to throw in that line about the Master of Laketown disdaining elections so that it doesn't seem too much like we're replacing democratic leadership with dynastic leadership. I dunno.
Also, Thranduil. I know being racist and aloof is kind of your thing, and I'ma let you finish but dude. You're a wood elf. She's a wood elf. You're all frickin wood elves. Sylvan elves. Sindar. Laiquendi. Right? Like, you are not some High Elf dwelt-in-the-blessed-light-of-Aman holier-than-thou stick-up-your-butt bastard. We can tell because you have character flaws. Your actual High Elf will carry the wisdom that sadness brings, burdened down with the Curse of the Noldor. This is not you Thranduil. You're petty, worldly, and kind of a jerk. Heck, you might even be Moriquendi. I'd have to look it up. So where exactly do you get off with 'no son of mine is gonna marry a lowly sylvan elf.' Dude. You're a sylvan elf. Like, are you sending matchmaking letters back and forth to Lothlorien? Are you trying to improve the bloodlines by setting him up with Arwen or something? Good luck with that buddy.
Also I feel distinctly robbed of Party Dad Thranduil. There are two scenes of Wood Elves partying it up in the book. Neither one was in the movie. Come on guys. Elf party! There's even a line "I can hear the sounds of partying" - can you, Kili? Cuz I sure couldn't. I need me some more party elves, all I'm saying.
Also, I guess Tauriel is a king then? Cuz...athelas, right? The hands of the king are the hands of a healer, and thus shall the true king always be know. I understand you're trying to redo things that were already cool in Lord of the Rings but (a) stop. Don't do that. Nobody likes it when you do that. (b) Um, Kingsfoil does not grow that far north. (also it has broad leaves). Don't mess with Tolkien and Botany guys, he knew what he was doing. (c) also Morgul arrow? Hello? Minas Morgul is thousands of miles away. And nobody lives there right now. These orcs came from Dol Guldur...and before that they came from either Moria or Mt. Gundabad. Morgal arrows my foot. (d) way to steal Bofur's thunder. It's like Dwarves can't do anything for themselves in this movie about dwarves. And also "it is a rare gift to see Elf magic at work!" Oin, for Aule's sake show a little pride! Sheesh. And of course (e) TAURIEL YOU ARE NOT A KING WHAT ARE YOU DOING. And like, you have spare kings coming out of your ears. Especially if heirs work just as well. Let's see, hanging out in functionally the same room as you are Legolas (heir apparent to the Woodland Throne), Fili (heir apparent to the King Under the Mountain), Bard (heir to Dale - not technically a kingdom but probably close enough), and Bard's son (heir apparent to Bard and whatever kingliness he possesses). Four kings. Or king enough for your purposes. Four of them. Do we call in any of them to help with this royalty-based healing magic? Of course not, that would just be silly.
Also why is everyone missing the same eye? Crackpot theory - Bolg is actually just Thranduil without his makeup.
I'm a little confused by Bolg, honestly. I notice they dropped the "son of Azog" bit, which makes sense because Orcs reproducing in a familial sort of way is a wee bit squicky and also makes them far more potentially sympathetic. But like, I figured the whole point of what they're doing with Azog was to have a character worthy of killing Thorin. And they're doing a great job with that. So, in that way, Azog replaces Bolg at the Battle of Five Armies. So...what is Bolg doing here then? Cuz I mean, Thorin kills Bolg, but is mortally wounded in the process. So then what's Azog here for? Or if Thorin's going to duel Azog instead, which would make more sense, what is Bolg here for? Like...I thought I knew what they were doing, but now I'm super confused. And why have both Bolg and Azog if you're not going to make them related?? Maybe Bolg is here to kill Tauriel? I suppose we shall see...
Speaking of killing poor Thorin - Beorn! They didn't cut Beorn! I mean, cutting Beorn would have been a serious mistake given that you've stretched this book into three freakin movies. And Beorn was great! Everything about Beorn was great. Giant bees! Lupins! His magnificent animals! Beeeeeeooooooooooorrrrrrnnnnn! I was so happy. Again, I wish they hadn't rushed through his section as much as they did, but I'm comforted by the fact that he'll be back. And he looked great. And I loved that his accent was strange - old. I really liked them playing him as indigenous. Not sure what I thought about the race of skinchangers slavery narrative thing. I do wish they'd done the intro to Beorn as it was in the book, which having to draw him in with a good story - but then, the book is a comedy of manners and the movie isn't. Oh well. If they'd at least kept in the bit where they have to name drop Radagast though that would have been awesome, since, like, Radagast is actually in this version, so revealing that Beorn and Radagast are buddies would have had some context behind it. But by and large I though Beorn was very well done.
Radagast was also very well done! No drug use jokes this time around, which helped. Actually, I loved every single thing in the necromancer sub plot. Although, Gandalf, I get you're trying to be all dark and mysterious and technically accurate with your "nobody knows his name" bit, but if you'd just said "the Witch-King of Angmar" I'm pretty sure Radagast would know who you're talking about. But that's a minor quibble. Because SERIOUSLY OH MY GOD THE BATTLE WITH SAURON WAS SO FRICKIN COOL. And I loved the way Gandalf is like "promise you won't come back for me" and Radagast is like "oh yes yes yes" in that incredibly Sylvester McCoy sort of way. (I may have punched the air and cheered when we got to Sylvester McCoy's name in the credits because Sylvester McCoy is awesome and there was like nobody in the theater anyway). I can't wait to see him come back with Elrond and Galadriel and Saruman and drive out the darkness. Also... Thrain. Where the crap is Thrain. I am waiting for Gandalf to find Thrain in the the dungeons of the Necromancer because Thrain's plotline has been conspicuously absent from the movies thus far.
There have been a lot of...nice touches throughout. I like how they're doing Bilbo's slow corruption by the ring, although I spent a lot of time going 'just put on the ring already!' Like, the obvious thing to do when the elves closed the river gate was for Bilbo to put on the ring, climb up the bank, and pull the lever. Right? But no, we had to have Kili take an arrow to the knee. Yeah, that's my other big complaint - Bilbo really didn't do anything in this movie. More on that later. But I really loved how he can understand the spiders once he puts on the ring. Really clever, especially since they have cut out pretty much all the instances of animals talking. (If they cut out Roac the talking raven, though, I will be most displeased.) Okay, that's another thing that puzzled me. They had Bilbo discover the chink in Smaug's armor (though not through Smaug's own hubris, which is a shame)...but then they never went back out to the doorstep, where he tells the Dwarves about it, which is overheard by the thrush, who tells Bard... So, what was the point? Is Bard just going to get lucky?? But anyway, yeah, the spiders were cool, what we saw of them, and I really liked Bilbo just messing with the spiderwebs earlier. And I did love the scene with the butterflies. The contrast to the stuffiness of Mirkwood was great. I don't know why Smaug knew about the ring. Does he have Detect Gold or something? Smaug knew about everything. Honestly he knew way too much - he was like Smaug the exposition dragon. I'm intrigued by the idea that he's already had some communication from Dol Guldur, but still. Can't eat dwarves now, expositing.
I did like the Inside Information scene between Bilbo and Smaug. It was the only part of the movie where Bilbo got to do things. Although why was he spending so much of it visible? That seems like a terrible plan. And I loved how Balin was like "whatever you do don't wake the Dragon." BILBO YOU HAD ONE JOB. heh heh heh. That said, I hated the big fight with the dragon. Totally unnecessary. Kind of boring. They should all have been dead fifteen times over. They should have cut it out entirely and ended the movie half an hour earlier. Although I did like Thorin being all "I'M ON FIRE I'M ON FIRE I'M ON FIRE I'm good." But apart from that scene being totally futile, repetitive, and unnecessary, it also highlighted that the dwarves can't do anything for themsleves. The whole movie was Bilbo getting upstaged by the dwarves and then the dwarves getting upstaged by the frickin elves. Bilbo's scenes of individual heroism - Flies and Spiders, Barrels out of Bond, Inside Information - all became action scenes starring the Dwarves. And accomplishing nothing. And then getting rescued by elves. Well, not that last one so much - the Dragon just flies off to cook Esgaroth - but certainly the other two. Bilbo is barely in this movie. Although they did preserve the scene where he's packed them all into the barrels and he's like "waiiiit a minute..." That was utterly lovely.
Random incidentals... the men of Laketown had really great hats. Reminded me of "the Ribos Operation." Gandalf lost his hat - and "any plan where you lose your hat is... " "a bad plan?" Oh yeah. Hah, and Legolas got punched in the face a bit. That's always good. The look on his face was just "HEY! You made me bleed my own blood!" (hah, I've been watching so much Star Trek that I honestly expected the Elves to have green blood. My bad).
On the whole I liked it....I think. I liked the first one better. This one did a lot of stuff that just confused me. Most of the things I really liked in it, though, are things I haven't seen anyone else talk about, which is interesting. But that's the internet for you. It definitely needed more of what was in the book and less of what wasn't, and as before the stuff I liked best was the appendical material. Oh well though.
Well, I say WooHoo...and I mostly mean WooHoo, but golly, that movie gave me so much approval whiplash. It would go from Awesome to Terrible and back again with utterly no warning and often within a single sentence. It was like watching "the End of Time" all over again. On the balance I think I liked it, but, as with the last movie, it needed to end one scene earlier.
My biggest problem with the movie was the pacing. It's a multifold issue. First off, it ran into that "stations of the canon" problem that some of the Harry Potter movies run into: we need to check off these famous scenes - but without any sense of building a story out of them. That was Mirkwood. It's like "okay, we have a list. Beorn, check, got him. Butterflies, check. Spiders, check. Elven King, check. Barrels, check. Okay, we're done here, let's get to the STORY." They were all just...stuff that happened, signposts, rather than a cohesive plot. And a lot of that was because of the second pacing issue - they were really obviously hurrying to get to the dragon. And that's why you don't call this movie the Desolation of Smaug, guys. Because then you build it all around the dragon, which, okay. But you don't want to actually kill the dragon until the third movie, so you rush through all of the really awesome act II stuff, and then have to shovel in all this filler in the second half. Which leaves the movie simultaneously feeling rushed and dragging like nobody's business. Like seriously. The action scenes dragged. There's this fight between Bolg and Legolas for no reason and, while I honestly really enjoyed watching Elves fighting Orcs, it was really boring and totally pointless, because you know neither of them is going to kill the other. Well, you know if you've read the book and know who Bolg is. The same thing with the fight with Smaug. By necessity neither side is going to accomplish anything - it's gratuitous pointless violence. And there was SO MUCH of that. It was very telling that all of the previews before the movie were for action films. And I don't mind adding action to a story that really has very little. Elves fighting Orcs at the border of the forest - that was awesome. But it gave the pacing no variety. That was my third big pacing issue. The second act of the Hobbit is a lot of ...waiting. They wait for three days for Beorn to show up. They are in Mirkwood for what feels like forever - and intentionally so, it starts to mess with their heads and leads them vulnerable. They spend ages languishing in the Elven King's dungeons. The barrels are all about highlighting Bilbo's loneliness and isolation. And then they're waiting on the doorstep for something to happen. Admittedly, that's a lot of waiting. You want to spice up some of that with action, go ahead. But. Not a single one of those waiting periods made it into the movie.
Let's tally, shall we?
Beorn: They arrive in the afternoon, spend one day, leave the morning of the third. (Book: three days waiting for him)
Beorn --> Mirkwood: Arrive at Mirkwood what looks like the same day they left Beorn, mid-afternoon. (Book: several days ride, maybe a week)
Mirkwood: one or two days until they stumble off the path. Bilbo climbs his tree - immediately captured by spiders. Fight the spiders in the night. Captured by Elves the next morning. (Book: When Bilbo climbs his tree, the season is shifting to Autumn, it having been early June when they left the mountains. They've been in the forest at least three weeks, possibly a month or more).
Elven King's Halls: Captured in the morning, escape that evening. (Book: at least a month)
Barrels: a single action-packed day (Book: about a week, during which Bilbo get's sick)
Laketown: about a day in transit/fish, about a day with Bard before the confrontation, leave the following day (Book: about a week, after which everyone is genuinely pretty surprised they're going on to the Mountain)
On the Doorstep: It's Durin's Day RIGHT NOW (about a day out from Laketown). Maybe half an hour. (Book: at least a week, in stark contrast to the hurry right at the end of it)
So, by my count, in the movie, from Carrock to Erebor takes them...about nine days. In the book it takes them three months. If not more (early summer to late autumn). And, like, I know they skipped 12 whole years in "Fellowship of the Ring" and clearly aren't looking at calendars if they think that events that happen around the beginning of June (or, heck, October, if we're counting backwards from Durin's Day) are in any way "12 months later" than events that happened on March 25th (tiny nitpick, I know, but March 25th is important, dang it!)...but still. Your draggy scenes rushed and your action scenes dragged. That, to me, is doing it exactly wrong.
What they should have done is made Mirkwood the meat of the film. And ended it probably with them setting off to Erebor from Lake Town all full of hope and stuff. And then start the next movie on the doorstep, with Thorin being all ornery about how long they've been sitting there with nothing happening, and isn't it about time Bilbo actually did what they were paying him for, and Martin Freeman Bilbo being all aggrieved and such. Call it something like "the Shadow of Dol Guldur" which will tie in the Necromancer plot and Thranduil's isolationism and the fact that Mirkwood really kinda sucks, and dark things are moving. Let the Dwarves get desperate. Show glimpses of Elves being super sinister moving through the trees. Ramp up the suspense. Have Bilbo find himself alone more - muffled noises and screams, but a heavy stillness in the air sapping strength and determination. Give the very best chapter in the whole freakin book the treatment it so richly deserves. GRRRRRRRRRRR. And the beauty of it is - it wouldn't really have taken any longer.
That said, so much of the movie was absolutely wonderful. It starts with Gandalf and Thorin's "chance" meeting in Bree (with special guest appearance by Peter Jackson and the 60 Year Carrot - but I digress). Fantastic. Including and expanding upon appendical matter is what these movies have been doing best, and I approve so hard. And I also really like the idea of the Arkenstone itself as the object of the quest. It makes sense (in a way that burglarizing the entire hoard never did). Not that it doesn't open up problems in and of itself. Like, Bilbo giving the Arkenstone to Bard is going to be way more problematic of a move now than it already was in the book. In the book by claiming the Arkenstone (before knowing what it was) violated the spirit of his agreement with Thorin - now it's going to violate the letter of it as well. (Also it breaks the nice Beowulf parallel Tolkien obviously put so much work into with the great two handled cup, twelve warriors and their angry king, lead by the thief to the dragon's lair... but I'm probably the only one who cares about that). And this is what I mean with my reactions being a mixture of delight and disapproval. I love what they're doing with the Arkenstone as a plot. I'm not sure I like what they're doing with the Arkenstone itslef. That is, they're treating it in itself as an object of corruption, which seems very wrong to me. Like, in the first movie, I figured it was because Thror was under the thrall of the ring (which would have made sense, yeah?) but now it seems to be the Arkenstone itself? Which I guess they're trying to explain why Thorin does the things he does later on but... you don't really need to. It's all right there in his character. The Arkenstone as a symbol is enough to drive Thorin's Act III actions. He doesn't need an Object of Corruption. And I know that they're trying to set up a parallel between Thorin & the Arkenstone and Bilbo & the Ring, which is working very well and is really quite effective, but... the Ring is evil - deliberately created by a malevolent power to dominate minds. The Arkenstone is just a rock. A very pretty rock, admittedly, but a natural thing. Thorin's issues surrounding it are all his own.
Or are they going to use Fili and Kili (and Bofu and...Oin, I think?) as the bargaining chip instead of the Arkenstone? But that would circumvent Bilbo's betrayal entirely and...sort of miss the point of the book. Or maybe they're going to use it to highlight how round the bend Thorin has gone - he won't bargain for his nephews (and heirs) but he will for the Arkenstone? I don't know...I just don't know...
Which - OMG YAY they brought up the fact that Fili and Kili are the heirs! Thorin is like "Fili, someday you will be King." Hooray for sister-sons! It confirms that Kili is the younger, though, by contrast to the book in which Fili is the youngest... but I feel like I was just reading about how in LotR they're flipped from the Hobbit anyway so whatever. Kili can be the youngest if he wants to. They'll both be dead soon, so it hardly matters.
Speaking of which, let's talk about Tauriel. She was cool. I have absolutely no problems with Tauriel at all. If you're going to have extraneous elves running around anyway, sure, make some of 'em girls. It makes total sense. Moar Elvish Politics is always a good thing as well. Having the dynamic with her as the no-nonsense Captain and Legolas as the spoiled princeling works really well as well. Internal dissention - beautiful! I was honestly surprised by how much I liked Tauriel. She was...pretty great all around. Also, I can't get over how...thuggish they managed to make Legolas look. Maybe it's the armor. Maybe Orlando Bloom has put on a lot of weight. Maybe it was intentional to highlight the fact that he's on the "wrong" side of the debate. I dunno. I liked it. And as much as I got bored by the gratuitous action scenes, Legolas and Tauriel fighting Orcs at the river gates while the Dwarves just sort of did their thing was awesome. Tons of fun. And in almost a bad guys fighting bad guys kind of things. The Elves are the bad guys in this scene - they're trying to stop our heroes. But the orcs are a much bigger problem for everyone. And so I liked the idea of the orcs kind of saving the day by giving the elves someone more important to worry about, and proving that their isolationism was perhaps not a good plan. And the subplot with "didn't I tell you to kill those spiders?" was similarly really great.
The trouble is they shoe-horned in this awkward love triangle...thing. Which, honestly, was way less terrible than I feared. Like, I get it. You want to give Kili as much screen time and plot and characterization and yada yada yada as you possibly can so that we will be sad when he dies. I approve of this plan. It'd be nice if Fili got the same benefit, but you do what you can. Like, if it were the case that you could predict which dwarves don't make it out of the story by who gets character development - that would be fine! Totally legit story telling. Lay it on as thick as you want. Although leaving them behind so that we can have them die defending a mountain they've never seen the inside of seems a bit cold to me. Also OMG did we NOT need a penis joke in this movie. Like seriously WTF people. But yeah, I don't know if the OH NOES KILI IS DYING OF A THING I GUESS subplot is going to make the ultimate end of this storyline more poignant or kind of rob it of its force. But whatever. But like, okay, there's serious Unfortunate Implications of "we have this female character THEREFORE LOVE TRIANGLE" which I seriously resent. But also... when you introduce a love triangle, you have to resolve the love triangle. We know she's not going to end up with Kili - he dies. We know she's not going to end up with Legolas because Legolas is unattached in movies we've already seen. If they were just going to carry on as before, they would not have introduced the freakin love triangle. Like, I'm not saying that Legolas and Kili are the only options in the universe - there's other folks and of course being single - but they are the only options in the love triangle. right? Which means they're probably going to kill Tauriel at the Battle of Five Armies. Which, on the one hand - yay! As many named corpses as possible please. If they do it right, the Battle of Five Armies should punch us all in the gut as hard as possible. Like, Bilbo waking up, looking around at the field of the dead, and going "so. victory then." is one of the most powerful moments in the book. The more people we can kill the better that point will be made. I want a big corpsy montage. Elves and Men and Orcs and Dwarves all tangled together. Which means we need more sympathetic Laketowners to kill as well. All we've got so far is the Bardings - which, three kids? At least one of em's gonna go. Calling it now. Probably the older girl. She's the one who's had screen time. Although Bard already has the dead wife, so maybe not... On the other hand, building this character just to kill her off seems a bit shoddy, all things considered.
I loved loved loved the Bardings. Heck, I loved Bard. At first I was disappointed that he wasn't the gloomy gus everyone kind of tolerated but didn't actually like - but then he did end up doing that and I was well pleased. I disapproved of them changing the lines of the song and making it a "prophecy"...I prefer having it be Bard's good sense that puts him on the other side of that debate. Also I prefer Tolkien's poetry to most things. Oh man and I was waiting for Thorin to rise like Boticelli's Venus out of the barrel, scattering fish everywhere, yet every inch a King. The way it actually went down wasn't too bad, but how great would that have been? Also, Laketown...dystopia much? For why? Maybe they needed to throw in that line about the Master of Laketown disdaining elections so that it doesn't seem too much like we're replacing democratic leadership with dynastic leadership. I dunno.
Also, Thranduil. I know being racist and aloof is kind of your thing, and I'ma let you finish but dude. You're a wood elf. She's a wood elf. You're all frickin wood elves. Sylvan elves. Sindar. Laiquendi. Right? Like, you are not some High Elf dwelt-in-the-blessed-light-of-Aman holier-than-thou stick-up-your-butt bastard. We can tell because you have character flaws. Your actual High Elf will carry the wisdom that sadness brings, burdened down with the Curse of the Noldor. This is not you Thranduil. You're petty, worldly, and kind of a jerk. Heck, you might even be Moriquendi. I'd have to look it up. So where exactly do you get off with 'no son of mine is gonna marry a lowly sylvan elf.' Dude. You're a sylvan elf. Like, are you sending matchmaking letters back and forth to Lothlorien? Are you trying to improve the bloodlines by setting him up with Arwen or something? Good luck with that buddy.
Also I feel distinctly robbed of Party Dad Thranduil. There are two scenes of Wood Elves partying it up in the book. Neither one was in the movie. Come on guys. Elf party! There's even a line "I can hear the sounds of partying" - can you, Kili? Cuz I sure couldn't. I need me some more party elves, all I'm saying.
Also, I guess Tauriel is a king then? Cuz...athelas, right? The hands of the king are the hands of a healer, and thus shall the true king always be know. I understand you're trying to redo things that were already cool in Lord of the Rings but (a) stop. Don't do that. Nobody likes it when you do that. (b) Um, Kingsfoil does not grow that far north. (also it has broad leaves). Don't mess with Tolkien and Botany guys, he knew what he was doing. (c) also Morgul arrow? Hello? Minas Morgul is thousands of miles away. And nobody lives there right now. These orcs came from Dol Guldur...and before that they came from either Moria or Mt. Gundabad. Morgal arrows my foot. (d) way to steal Bofur's thunder. It's like Dwarves can't do anything for themselves in this movie about dwarves. And also "it is a rare gift to see Elf magic at work!" Oin, for Aule's sake show a little pride! Sheesh. And of course (e) TAURIEL YOU ARE NOT A KING WHAT ARE YOU DOING. And like, you have spare kings coming out of your ears. Especially if heirs work just as well. Let's see, hanging out in functionally the same room as you are Legolas (heir apparent to the Woodland Throne), Fili (heir apparent to the King Under the Mountain), Bard (heir to Dale - not technically a kingdom but probably close enough), and Bard's son (heir apparent to Bard and whatever kingliness he possesses). Four kings. Or king enough for your purposes. Four of them. Do we call in any of them to help with this royalty-based healing magic? Of course not, that would just be silly.
Also why is everyone missing the same eye? Crackpot theory - Bolg is actually just Thranduil without his makeup.
I'm a little confused by Bolg, honestly. I notice they dropped the "son of Azog" bit, which makes sense because Orcs reproducing in a familial sort of way is a wee bit squicky and also makes them far more potentially sympathetic. But like, I figured the whole point of what they're doing with Azog was to have a character worthy of killing Thorin. And they're doing a great job with that. So, in that way, Azog replaces Bolg at the Battle of Five Armies. So...what is Bolg doing here then? Cuz I mean, Thorin kills Bolg, but is mortally wounded in the process. So then what's Azog here for? Or if Thorin's going to duel Azog instead, which would make more sense, what is Bolg here for? Like...I thought I knew what they were doing, but now I'm super confused. And why have both Bolg and Azog if you're not going to make them related?? Maybe Bolg is here to kill Tauriel? I suppose we shall see...
Speaking of killing poor Thorin - Beorn! They didn't cut Beorn! I mean, cutting Beorn would have been a serious mistake given that you've stretched this book into three freakin movies. And Beorn was great! Everything about Beorn was great. Giant bees! Lupins! His magnificent animals! Beeeeeeooooooooooorrrrrrnnnnn! I was so happy. Again, I wish they hadn't rushed through his section as much as they did, but I'm comforted by the fact that he'll be back. And he looked great. And I loved that his accent was strange - old. I really liked them playing him as indigenous. Not sure what I thought about the race of skinchangers slavery narrative thing. I do wish they'd done the intro to Beorn as it was in the book, which having to draw him in with a good story - but then, the book is a comedy of manners and the movie isn't. Oh well. If they'd at least kept in the bit where they have to name drop Radagast though that would have been awesome, since, like, Radagast is actually in this version, so revealing that Beorn and Radagast are buddies would have had some context behind it. But by and large I though Beorn was very well done.
Radagast was also very well done! No drug use jokes this time around, which helped. Actually, I loved every single thing in the necromancer sub plot. Although, Gandalf, I get you're trying to be all dark and mysterious and technically accurate with your "nobody knows his name" bit, but if you'd just said "the Witch-King of Angmar" I'm pretty sure Radagast would know who you're talking about. But that's a minor quibble. Because SERIOUSLY OH MY GOD THE BATTLE WITH SAURON WAS SO FRICKIN COOL. And I loved the way Gandalf is like "promise you won't come back for me" and Radagast is like "oh yes yes yes" in that incredibly Sylvester McCoy sort of way. (I may have punched the air and cheered when we got to Sylvester McCoy's name in the credits because Sylvester McCoy is awesome and there was like nobody in the theater anyway). I can't wait to see him come back with Elrond and Galadriel and Saruman and drive out the darkness. Also... Thrain. Where the crap is Thrain. I am waiting for Gandalf to find Thrain in the the dungeons of the Necromancer because Thrain's plotline has been conspicuously absent from the movies thus far.
There have been a lot of...nice touches throughout. I like how they're doing Bilbo's slow corruption by the ring, although I spent a lot of time going 'just put on the ring already!' Like, the obvious thing to do when the elves closed the river gate was for Bilbo to put on the ring, climb up the bank, and pull the lever. Right? But no, we had to have Kili take an arrow to the knee. Yeah, that's my other big complaint - Bilbo really didn't do anything in this movie. More on that later. But I really loved how he can understand the spiders once he puts on the ring. Really clever, especially since they have cut out pretty much all the instances of animals talking. (If they cut out Roac the talking raven, though, I will be most displeased.) Okay, that's another thing that puzzled me. They had Bilbo discover the chink in Smaug's armor (though not through Smaug's own hubris, which is a shame)...but then they never went back out to the doorstep, where he tells the Dwarves about it, which is overheard by the thrush, who tells Bard... So, what was the point? Is Bard just going to get lucky?? But anyway, yeah, the spiders were cool, what we saw of them, and I really liked Bilbo just messing with the spiderwebs earlier. And I did love the scene with the butterflies. The contrast to the stuffiness of Mirkwood was great. I don't know why Smaug knew about the ring. Does he have Detect Gold or something? Smaug knew about everything. Honestly he knew way too much - he was like Smaug the exposition dragon. I'm intrigued by the idea that he's already had some communication from Dol Guldur, but still. Can't eat dwarves now, expositing.
I did like the Inside Information scene between Bilbo and Smaug. It was the only part of the movie where Bilbo got to do things. Although why was he spending so much of it visible? That seems like a terrible plan. And I loved how Balin was like "whatever you do don't wake the Dragon." BILBO YOU HAD ONE JOB. heh heh heh. That said, I hated the big fight with the dragon. Totally unnecessary. Kind of boring. They should all have been dead fifteen times over. They should have cut it out entirely and ended the movie half an hour earlier. Although I did like Thorin being all "I'M ON FIRE I'M ON FIRE I'M ON FIRE I'm good." But apart from that scene being totally futile, repetitive, and unnecessary, it also highlighted that the dwarves can't do anything for themsleves. The whole movie was Bilbo getting upstaged by the dwarves and then the dwarves getting upstaged by the frickin elves. Bilbo's scenes of individual heroism - Flies and Spiders, Barrels out of Bond, Inside Information - all became action scenes starring the Dwarves. And accomplishing nothing. And then getting rescued by elves. Well, not that last one so much - the Dragon just flies off to cook Esgaroth - but certainly the other two. Bilbo is barely in this movie. Although they did preserve the scene where he's packed them all into the barrels and he's like "waiiiit a minute..." That was utterly lovely.
Random incidentals... the men of Laketown had really great hats. Reminded me of "the Ribos Operation." Gandalf lost his hat - and "any plan where you lose your hat is... " "a bad plan?" Oh yeah. Hah, and Legolas got punched in the face a bit. That's always good. The look on his face was just "HEY! You made me bleed my own blood!" (hah, I've been watching so much Star Trek that I honestly expected the Elves to have green blood. My bad).
On the whole I liked it....I think. I liked the first one better. This one did a lot of stuff that just confused me. Most of the things I really liked in it, though, are things I haven't seen anyone else talk about, which is interesting. But that's the internet for you. It definitely needed more of what was in the book and less of what wasn't, and as before the stuff I liked best was the appendical material. Oh well though.