The Hobbit Trilogy
So, The Hobbit trilogy is finished and popular opinion seems to be weighting heavily on the 'favorable' side of the scale.
What's my verdict?
Well, I haven't seen the third movie, and I'm not planning on it any time soon. I had a chance two weeks ago to see it with my brother and his fiance; I wouldn't have had to pay for my ticket, either, so it sounded like an attractive option. Unfortunately I had a cold and couldn't go. But, from seeing clips of it and from watching the first two movies, it's pretty unnecessary.
How does a small novel for children get bloated beyond all recognition into a nine-hour orc-killing fest?
Many people protest that Peter Jackson (hereafter referred to as PJ) is the biggest fan of Tolkien besides Stephen Colbert. In contrast, I think PJ is a fan of himself. Just look at the movies. Every reference he can make back to his original trilogy is made; and there is no subtlety in any of the references either. He pushes it into your face. See how the Ring is already corrupting Bilbo? Oh look, Galadriel's bare feet, how I loved shooting that scene! LEGOLAS COOLEST OF ALL ELVES EVER! Mirkwood is really just another part of Lothlorien.
Added to his love of self-reference is his love for Speeches of Doom and Creepy Elves Who Talk in Slow Motion; arguably the most tedious place in the entire trilogy of LotR movies was Lothlorien (although the Ent scenes run a close second) and it was even more tedious in the extended edition. Here, every single elf talks like they've been given a tranquilizer to varying degrees. Galadriel, of course, is the Slow Talking Elf of All, but even the made up elf Tauriel doesn't talk in anything like a normal voice.
Speeches of Doom abound in this trilogy. Not one person manages to say anything remotely normal. Everything is a Pronouncement or a faux-poetic Description or a Veiled Threat.
Then there's the problem with characters. First we have Tolkien's original characters like Beorn, Thranduil, and Bard.
Beorn is just ruined here. I have no idea how you can get the idea of a such a stupid character as he is from reading the book. The Beorn of the book is suspicious of strangers, but he's willing to listen to Gandalf's tale and Gandalf cleverly brings it about in such a way that Beorn welcomes the dwarves into his home, gives them food and shelter, and even laughs and jokes with them.
But in the movie, there's no time for such niceties. Beorn chases the dwarves into his own fortress and a few minutes later they are on their way to Mirkwood. We all know that this is the part PJ's been aching to get to, because elves are his favorite and especially Legolas; it's actually quite a shame that Tolkien decided Legolas was Prince of Mirkwood, because that was all PJ needed. We are then introduced to the female counterpart of Legolas, one by the name of Tauriel. Yawn. Also barf. Because within minutes of her introduction to the dwarves she's already engaging in sexually-suggestive banter with Kili (which isn't the first time that crude and inappropriate lines were slipped into these movies).
Thranduil is portrayed here as some kind of freaky dude whose cheek is rotting. In the book he captures the dwarves for rousing the spiders and for, as he believed, attacking his feasting court; but overall he's pretty aloof and distant, willing to wait out Thorin's unwillingness to tell him about their quest because elves are immortal anyways.
Here, he's the ultimate overplayed, cheesy elf, with nothing remotely interesting about him.
And Bard. Oh, Bard, boy did PJ mess you up. Let's try go gin up sympathy by giving him a dead wife (yawn) and three children (double yawn) and popular hero-of-the-town status (triple yawn) and in the bad graces of the Master of Laketown (sigh). Let's forget Bard the grim-voiced bowman, and instead insert yet another person with a tragic past and not enough acting skills to force his pretty face out of a wet paper bag. Also, seriously, a gigantic crossbow instead of a longbow? Really? Yeah, someone needs an Original Thinker of the Year Award.
PJ is really just an average fanfiction writer, self-indulgent to the point of nausea, inserting OCs and changing Tolkien's work to fit his own desires; he just happens to have made a very successful trilogy fourteen years ago, and so has the money to put his fanfic on the screen.
There is nothing in these movies which could be interpreted as thoughtful changes from book to film. Instead, it has all the abandon of an MMORPG where each kill advances the players closer to the next rank, with cut scenes in between the violence to give a sort of story foundation; it bears absolutely no resemblance to Tolkien's light-hearted tale of a Hobbit and thirteen Dwarves going on an adventure to reclaim stolen treasure.
The Hobbit himself, the central character who is featured in every scene of the book except for Smaug's attack on Laketown and the flashback to Thorin's capture by the elves, is shoved into the background in favor of 'touching' love scenes, 'scary' orc speech scenes (can anyone tell me of a duller way to spend five minutes than listening to an orc vomit out a ton of words that have to be subtitled?), and 'exciting' White Council scenes.
There is a lot more I could say in this review. Things about the loss of nobility for every character, the fact that Tauriel is simply a way to get guys to salivate over the screen (just as Legolas serves to draw in the fangirls), the utter pointlessness of the Smaug-Bilbo-Dwarves interaction in the second movie, the oh-so-lame love triangle, my anger that Tauriel didn't die, etc.
But I'll just leave with this last thought:
Really? Only five boss monsters in nine hours (Azog, Bolg, Goblin King, Smaug, Sauron)? There should seriously have been at least one boss monster in every major battle, so that each main character could level up!