Desolation of The Hobbit (a movie review post)

[Warning: This post may (will) contain offensive language and/or concepts, things I don't generally have on my blog. Thinking about it, I should just send this post over to the Beer Guys and let them do it in the way they do best, but, hey, it's my review, so... just be prepared.]

Disclaimer: As I've mentioned before, the main problem with what Jackson has done with The Hobbit stems from his dishonesty about his intentions. If he had said upfront, "I'm going to adapt the book to fit with my version of Middle Earth," there wouldn't be nearly the problem. However, what he said for years, right up to the release of the first movie, was "I am being completely faithful to the book." Either he's just a liar or he's delusional (and, at this point, I'm leaning toward delusional).

The terms "rape" and "childhood" are often used when anyone of my generation talks about the Star Wars prequels. I don't actually feel that way about them. My view has more to do with the fact that Lucas has the right to do whatever he wants to do with his own stuff. It's like if I want to paint my living room in orange and green stripes, you don't get to tell me I should change it. I'm the one that lives in it, and, if I like it, it's no concern of yours. You don't have to come over and see it if you don't want to. And, if my house is full of all the coolest things in the world, which makes you want to come over, you still don't get to complain about the color scheme. That's the price you have to pay to come over and play with my toys.
And, hey, my kids love Jar Jar, as do all of the "Star Wars kids" I know.

However, The Hobbit does not belong to Peter Jackson. What he's done with The Hobbit is like you coming to my house and re-painting my living room in puke green and neon pink. Except, actually, it's more like Peter Jackson bending Bilbo and Tolkien over, reaching up their asses simultaneously, grabbing their intestines, and ripping them out through their assholes. Then he uses the intestines to decorate the room. And, by the way, the stench he creates from that just doesn't go away.

Seriously, I have never seen more disrespect delivered to source material than what Jackson has done in The Desolation of Smaug. With the first movie, An Unexpected Journey, Jackson at least held to some semblance of the story from the book: a group of dwarves seeking to reclaim their homeland from a dragon. However, Jackson wastes no time at all in destroying all of that in the very first moments of Desolation. He does a dance on the bloodied corpse of Bilbo and Tolkien while waving their innards through the air and splattering the walls with their blood.

In The Hobbit, Gandalf is never fully behind the trip to the Lonely Mountain. He's willing to help the dwarves along so that they have a chance of surviving, but he views the whole thing as more of a fool's errand. And (and this is a big "and") he never intends to accompany them on the entire trip. He just happens to be going in the same direction, so to speak, so travels along with them to keep them out of trouble as best as he can while he's there. But Jackson makes the whole venture into a plot by Gandalf. It's not Thorin who decides he wants to retake his homeland; it's Gandalf. And it has nothing to do with "homeland;" it's about finding the Arkenstone and uniting the various dwarven kingdoms under one king so that he can raise an army.

WHAT?

Gandalf wants to raise an army? Why the heck does Gandalf want an army? The implication is that the army is needed to fight The Enemy, but, see, even in Jackson's timeline, no one knows about that yet. The ring has not been found, no one knows the Necromancer is Sauron, there is no great threat to the world. But Gandalf wants an army and sends Thorin into the mountain for the sole reason of retrieving the stone.

And, of course, everyone knows what's going on except Bilbo and the other dwarves. When the dwarves are captured by the elves, Thranduil knows without asking that Thorin is after the Arkenstone. When Bilbo sneaks down to check out Smaug, Smaug already knows that it's Thorin after the Arkenstone. The whole thing is stupid. STUPID. I cannot express how much this whole thing violates the premise and the theme of the book.

And, see, I can't even give a breakdown of where the movie deviates from the book, because it would just take too long. There is virtually nothing from the book in this second movie apart from some characters with the same names.

The worst of it is that when I saw the trailer for the movie and saw the whole barrel thing (which is beyond ludicrous the way Jackson has done it with his "magic" floating barrels (they're not magic) that never fill up with water and sink despite the number of times they go under water), I thought, "Well, that's going to be even more dumb than the domino trees in the first movie," but, really, I thought that would be the worst of it. Just more stupid stuff like that. And the Pale Orc, of course, because Jackson had already started his descent into total depravity; I just didn't realize how far into the sewer he was willing to go. And not just willingly, he's actively swimming in shit and loving it.

Yes, it all makes me mad to think about.

Like I said, there is not time to go through all of the things that makes this movie so horrid, but here are some of the worst:
1. The aforementioned mess with the Arkenstone.
2. Kili doesn't have a beard. A dwarf without a beard? Seriously, what the heck? [And, yes, I suppose he didn't have a beard in Journey, but Kili wasn't highlighted in that one, and, I guess, I just didn't notice, but the whole thing is wrong.]
3. Elf/dwarf romance? Again, seriously, what the heck?
4. The dwarves split up and some stay in Laketown. WHAT THE HECK?
5. There is a huge battle in the mountain between Smaug and the dwarves. WHAT THE DOUBLE HECK?

Did Peter Jackson even read the book? I mean, it's bad enough that Jackson used the spiders as an excuse to feature the elves (just like he did with Helm's Deep in The Two Towers) and Legolas doing spider surfing (what the heck is up with Jackson and elf surfing?), but he's ripped the heart out of The Hobbit, put it in a blender, and... I don't know what. I suppose he drank it. Actually, he reminds me of Gollum singing to that fish in the LotR movies. Singing to the fish and, then, beating it on the rocks. That's what he's done with The Hobbit. Followed by ripping into it with his teeth.

I'd really like to be able to tell how the movie is just as a movie, but I can't do that with this one. The Hobbit has been with me for something like 35 years, and I can't think of it from the position of "What would I think of this if I had never read the book?" What that makes me think of is how Jackson is actually destroying the book for a whole generation of readers. Can you imagine having seen these movies first and then trying to read the book? You'd be wondering where all these other characters are: Radagast, Legolas, Tauriel. Even Azog. This issue, I think, is even worse than the movies. That's saying a lot, because Desolation is like all of the worst things ever mixed into one "worst thing ever" package. And that just doesn't approach the long-term damage Jackson may be doing to kids that want to read the book.

So, yeah, I have no way to independently evaluate this as "just a movie." There is no "just a movie" in this to me. This is the kind of thing that lives in my nightmares as a writer. I mean, we all know that Hollywood can be terrible with intellectual properties and strip mine them just to get at the money. Or, maybe, these days, I should say they frack them for all they're worth. But what Jackson has done to The Hobbit goes so far beyond what typical Hollywood has ever done. And that's where I'll end, because, to go on, I'd have to start making value judgements about Jackson and what he thinks of himself, but I don't actually know the guy. I do not, however, have any "benefit of the doubt" left for him.

"I guess that concludes negotiations," and the Lucky Hat

We finished The Lord of the Rings at Skywalker Ranch this past week. We did not, however, run into George Lucas again. My friend said it was because I didn't wear my lucky hat. I didn't know I had a lucky hat, but, evidently, I do. Because I was wearing it the week before when we did see George but not wearing it any other time, my friend has declared it "lucky" and decreed that I must wear it any time I'm on any of George's property with him. heh

I feel uneasy about The Return of the King. Part of the problem with that is that it's been longer since I read that one than the rest, so the movie just gives me a feeling of being "off" that I can't really pinpoint. I love Gondor. I love the oliphants, even though they are just, really, too much. They're still spectacular. Maybe it's that the little changes that started in Fellowship take things too far off target at the end for me to deal with. But the movie really ends on target so that can't be it. I don't know. My summation of Return is that it's a great addition. Fellowship still should have been the one to get the Best Picture Oscar, but I can live with Return getting it if the alternative was that none would get it.

When I was younger, much younger, I used to do this thing. It's that thing that, sort of, everyone does. Any time a book is being made into a movie, readers always rush out to read the book before they see the movie. I used to do that, too. Inevitably, it lead to the movie being ruined for me. Always (always) my response was "the book was better." Of course, the book was better. Being almost the only reader out of my friends, it gave me a sense of superiority, I think, that I could always say "the book was better" in the midst of all of them saying that they liked the movie. Bottom line was that it caused a disenjoyment of the movies for me.

That all changed with The Hunt for Red October. I had never had any interest in reading Tom Clancy before the movie was coming out. I didn't read his genre. I toyed with the idea of reading the book before the movie, but, in the end, I figured, why bother. I didn't want to go out of my way to read something I wasn't actually inclined to read. The only reason I wanted to see the movie, anyway, was because of Sean Connery, so why bother with  the book. Connery wasn't in  the book.

As it turned out, I loved the movie. I loved the movie enough that I wanted to read the book. And I did, and the book was better. But not by much. It was better just because there was more stuff in it. But I discovered something... see, my cousin read the book first, and he had nothing good to say about the movie, because he had just read the book, and I found that to be very interesting. Especially after Patriot Games. Because I just kept reading Clancy for a while after Red October, so, by the time they got around to making Patriot Games, I'd already read it. And I didn't like the movie because of it.

That experience changed the way I did the whole book to movie thing. If there was a movie coming out based on a book, I wouldn't read it first. Reading the book first can ruin a movie, but it's very rare that seeing a movie can ruin a book (the one exception I've found to this is Percy Jackson--the movie is just so much better). This has made me able to enjoy many movies that I may have been overly critical of if I had read the books first, including The Lord of the Rings.

But, yes, I did read The Lord of the Rings first, many times, in fact. Here's what happened. I was actually in the process of reading LotR to my oldest son when the whole movie thing came up (I think that was my 4th time through the trilogy). We were in the middle of The Two Towers. I quit reading it. He was young enough, at the time, to not really care that I quit, because I just picked up something different to read to him. As long as I was reading something to him... he wasn't really particular. I wanted to have time for the details to fade a little bit so that I wouldn't be holding the books up to the movies the whole time. This is why I always have this uneasy feeling about Return. It's been quite a long time since I read that one, at this point, and a lot of the details are hazy. I just have a feeling that things aren't right. But I can still enjoy the movie, of which I am glad.

A good friend of mine, the one that looks so much like Ryan Reynolds, took the other route. As soon as they announced the movies, he determined to read the books first. He finished Fellowship just weeks before its release. He had a difficult time with the movie, especially with Arwen's role in it. It reminded me, again, of the dangers of inoculating myself with the book before seeing a movie. It is, however, time, again, to read The Lord of the Rings. If I can ever manage to finish these other two books that I'm reading! oy!

In other news, I finally saw Deathly Hallows Pt 2, and I'm glad it's been so long since I read the book. I'm sure I would have been more upset at the amount of stuff left out if I'd read it more recently. Now that the movies are finished, it's probably time for another re-reading of Harry Potter, too. I do feel, though, that they did a better job with this movie than they've done with most of them. It was quite enjoyable. Except for the histrionic girl sitting in the row in front of us that just would NOT SHUT UP. Seriously. She was one of those people that doesn't understand the internal part of "internal monologue." I have never been in a theater with a more obnoxious person, and that's, sort of, saying something.

"Look for your friends, but do not trust to hope..." Also, George Lucas Says "Howdy"

This week was the presentation of The Two Towers at Skywalker Ranch. Attendance was down from last week. I'm just going to go off of the assumption that that's because The Fellowship of the Ring is the best of the three movies. It also has the most significant addition of the extended cuts, so the other two don't necessarily have to be viewed that way, although I never choose to watch any of them in their theatrical release. I'm surprised at the number of people showing up that have never seen the extended cuts of these movies or, in some cases, the movies themselves. I guess there has to be a first time, though.

In many ways, I have the most difficulty with The Two Towers as a movie. There are things that are so good. Like the ents. They're perfect. The assault on Isengard is incredible. Faramir and his actor, David Wenham, are great. The return of Gandalf is excellent. And Gollum... well, I'm not sure they actually could have done a better job with Gollum. And, yet... and, yet... almost everything related to the Battle at Helm's Deep causes me to grit my teeth.

Let me put it like this:
You know that part where Legolas surfs down the stairs on the shield as he fires arrow after arrow at the orcs? I'm okay with that. Yes, I am. That bit of foolishness is fun, and, although completely wacky, it comes off as just believable enough. At least, it does for someone who would have actually tried doing that when he was 10 if he had had a shield and a long flight of stairs like that. I can get behind that.

However, the bit at the beginning of the battle when the orcs are charging and Aragorn is telling all the archers to hold their fire? I can't deal with that. It makes me cringe. It is so ridiculous. I get it. Jackson wants the suspense. But it just doesn't work for me.

Let me back up a bit.
There was a video introduction by Jackson. In it he talked about how he'd always wanted to film a big battle scene ever since he was a kid. The Battle at Helm's Deep was his first chance to do that. I suppose, at this point, you can go one of two ways: 1. You can film it like you always imagined it as a child. 2. You can research it and make it as true to life as possible. Jackson went with option 1. There is nothing strategically or tactically sound about this battle. Instead of modeling the battle after the Battle of Agincourt, which would have made emminent sense, he makes it "don't fire until you see the whites of their eyes." With bows and arrows. That not firing thing came from the time period where you had to hand load your gun before each shot, so you had to make your one shot count when the enemy was charging, because you wouldn't get another. When Jackson does it with the arrows, it makes me want to throw things at the screen.

Then there's the whole thing about how no one has ever breached the walls of Helm's Deep, yet the doors are like plywood. The orcs barely hit it with their battering ram, hand-held battering ram, and they just crash open. An impregnable fortress, and the doors just fall apart? Maybe they had dry rot since the last time they'd been there?

Oh, and there's a side door. Yeah, a side door that the orcs don't bother with, and Aragorn and Gimli can conveniently slip out of. What? Seriously?

And don't even get me started on the orc torch bearer with the one and only special torch that can light the bombs under the walls. There are torches everywhere. EVERYWHERE. But we suddenly need this one, special torch to light the bombs? And Legolas suddenly loses his ability to kill any orc he shoots with just one arrow?

The only good thing about the battle is when Gandalf shows up with Eomer. That part is actually perfect. The sun rising behind the charge and Gandalf shining like the point of a spear is an incredible sight. But that's it. The only good moment of the battle.

And there are so few orcs left when they flee into the forest of Fangorn that there's hardly a point. Wait a minute. The men of Rohan were just being slaughtered and, suddenly, there are just a smattering of orcs left to flee into the trees?

Anyway...
With the ranting about Helm's Deep, I may sound like I don't like the movie. That's not true. I do. It's still a great movie, and The Lord of the Rings is probably the best film adaptation ever made. It's just that Fellowship is the best of the three, and I have to try and not think about Helm's Deep.

Oh, and Jackson also revealed that the argument Gollum has with himself while Frodo is sleeping was entirely the responsibility of Fran Walsh. She wrote that scene and directed it, because they didn't have time to do it otherwise. He says he has envy.

But, now, on to the big news:
As I've stated, these are being shown at Skywalker Ranch. The Ranch is, of course, owned by George Lucas. I've been to number of Lucasfilm events at this point, but Lucas hasn't been at any of them. There were rumors that he was going to make an appearance (along with Spielberg and Ford) at the big premiere party they did for Crystal Skull (which I attended), actually, that they had plans to do so, but that didn't happen. They ended up somewhere else. My friend that I go to these things with has, of course, been in meetings with George in attendance, but that's George on a stage giving a presentation with a huge screen behind him so everyone can see him better. It's somewhat akin to watching a special video presentation before a movie by someone like Peter Jackson. Which is to say, it doesn't count.

However...
We got there later for Towers than we arrived for Fellowship last week. We were sort of rushing to get to the theater, although I didn't realize that we were rushing, because that's how we rush, evidently, without looking like it. Or even knowing it. But the theater was still locked. Whoever was supposed to show up to open it all up hadn't arrived, yet. More curious was the fact that, although we were at least 20 minutes later than the week before when the theater was already open and about 1/3 full of people, there was no one else there waiting to get in. There were some people up in the cafeteria area eating, but that didn't mean they were going to the movie. They were, more likely, staff taking a break from whatever sound stage they were working in.

We went back up to hang out in the entry area of the tech building, which houses the theater, until something happened. I could see my friend questioning himself about whether we were there at the correct  time or whatever, but the guard had said "enjoy the film" when he let us in  the gate and, since I was driving, and he didn't recognize me, gave us directions to the tech building (which I already knew, since, as I said, I'd been there before). The building has an... interesting layout. And I haven't even seen the whole thing. But the front portion, at least, has an unconventional design.

Rather than try to explain what the building looks like, I'm just going to tell you what happened:
Walking toward us from a hallway that goes off into the building to the right (and over the theater, because you go down to get to the theater) was George Lucas. It was just a glimpse through an adjoining hallway. There are sound rooms all down that hall, and he passed through the opening through which we saw him fairly quickly. I turned to my friend who said, "Well, he does live here," which is not exactly true, but close enough to count. A moment later, he appeared in the cafeteria area which is a big open area in the center-ish of the building. Now, my friend and I are standing near the front doors. Just off to the right as you come through from the outside, because that's the direction to the theater. My buddy starts trying to act like George is not walking through the same space as us, ducking his head and trying to look like he's deep in conversation with me. I acted as close I could to how I would act if anyone had walked into the room, which is to stay, I looked at him. Just like I would have looked at anyone.

George looked back. And made eye contact. And I did that guy thing, and I nodded to him. And he said, "Howdy." He continued on his way out the front doors and down  the walk. I think he drove off shortly after, but I'm not completely sure that was him in the car that went by a moment later.
I think my friend almost died. My whole response was, "It's a good thing I'm a restrained kind of person." That was when I found out that part of the interview process for working at Lucasfilms, in any of its divisions, are a bunch of questions about what you would do if you ever found yourself in the same room with George. I would have passed. People who own up to the fact that they would wig out and accost him, in whatever manner, do not get hired. So, you know, if you are that kind of person and you ever do have the opportunity to work for Lucas, you should now know how to respond to those questions.

Somehow, during the movie, although I didn't see my friend do it, he told people about what had happened. After the movie, without me saying anything, there were questions from people that my friend works with who have never been that close to George, much less have him speak to them. Including my friend. My kids... well, my kids said bad things about me when I told them what happened. Okay, well, my daughter didn't, but she doesn't quite get that, yet. It's not quite that important to her. She was just kind of oh wow neat while my sons were busy telling me what a jerk I am. Of course, my oldest is mad already that I'm getting to go see these movies down there. I'd take them if I could...

So... there you go. My tendency for saying "howdy" has been justified by knowing that George also greets people that way. And, yes, he was wearing a plaid shirt. Probably flannel.

"All shall love me and despair!" -- The Fellowship Revisited

I got to go out to Skywalker Ranch the other night to watch the newly digitally re-mastered extended cut  of Fellowship of the Ring. This is (sort of) in honor of the Blu-Ray release of the movies. It is, at least, because of the Blu-Ray release. Lord of the Rings was actually long enough ago, at this point, that the movie was filmed on, um, actual film. Being digitally re-mastered is part of the whole Blu-Ray process. Evidently, only a very small pool of people will get to see a theatrical release of the digital version, so I was very glad to get to be a part of that. Of course, The Two Towers and The Return of the King will follow over the next two weeks.

It's actually quite thrilling to see them on the big screen again. And Fellowship is my favorite of the three. In fact, and I know we're in the midst of gushing over Harry Potter at the moment, it may be the best film adaptation of a book ever (sorry, the adaptations of Mr. Potter were, on the whole, merely adequate). The same can't be said for the other two installments, but Fellowship is as close as I've seen with any movie for capturing the essence of the book it came from. [If we include comic books into the mix, I'd have to say that Spider-Man comes pretty darn close, too.]

See, the problem is they're so long. Okay, well, that's not the main problem; the main problem is that we've already seen them. Even though we own the extended cuts, it's hard to just sit down and watch them from beginning to ending without taking breaks. It's like that with, basically, any movie we've already seen, but it's worse with the LotR films. Because they're so long! They need to be long (I like that they're long), but, when you have three kids, no, wait, when you have my daughter, it's fairly impossible to do anything for even half that time without interruption. Last time we put Fellowship in, I think it took us about six hours to watch the whole thing. Six hours! It's really hard to stay immersed in the fantasy when you have to continually feed the human-sized hummingbird that keeps zipping in for food.

But at the theater... at the theater, you are forced to stay immersed. And, of course, my daughter wasn't there, so that made things a lot easier, too. And it was so good to flow back into Tolkien's world. I love the Shire in Fellowship. I don't know that there's anything Jackson could have done to make it more like the world I imagined from the book. And the fact that the stone trolls are there... And I could never believe they didn't include the gift giving scene in the theatrical version, so I love that part in the extended cut. Of course, the real triumph of the films is the casting. Those aren't actors; they are those characters. There is no Ian McKellen, only Gandalf.

I only have one issue with the film version of Fellowship: the Balrog. I can understand why they chose to use a large demon-like creature, and it is very impressive within the confines of the movie. However, the description in the book suggests more a creature of impression rather than substance. A creature of shadow and darkness and fire. And, yes, the Balrog in the movie is exactly that, but, still... Oh, and I'm always unhappy that Glamdring doesn't behave appropriately. Sting glows, yet Glamdring does not. For me, that's a huge oversight.

Seeing the movie, again, reminded me just how long it's been since my last reading of LotR. It's definitely time to do that again. As I've said before, I don't often re-read, but Tolkien is one of those exceptions to that, and it is time. The issue is that, now, I just want to toss aside the books I'm currently reading and pick up Fellowship. I won't do that, but I want to. It may be time for another reading of The Hobbit to my kids, too.