I
have maintained from the start that Peter Jackson's "Hobbit" movies
wouldn't be as bad as George Lucas's "Star Wars" prequels, and now that
"Battle of the Five Armies" is behind us, I can safely conclude that I
was right. The "Hobbit" movies weren't nearly as bad on any level as
the "Star Wars" prequels, and I quite liked the second one, "The
Desolation of Smaug." There were big chunks of the first and third
films that I thought werevery strong too. Overall, however, I have to
concede that the "Hobbit" films didn't live up to the "Lord of the
Rings" films, and it's perfectly fair to characterize them as having had
a pretty negative impact on the film series. I doubt they're going to
be viewed very kindly by future generations. But while the two shared
some of the same problems, the faults of the "Hobbit" movies are very
different from the faults of "Star Wars" Episodes I through III.
We
all knew that the "Hobbit" novel simply didn't have enough material to
sustain a trilogy of blockbuster films. Most of the worst missteps
could have been completely avoided if the filmmakers had simply made one
long film or two shorter ones that cut out all the padding and the
unwieldy original material that was needed to stretch a 320 page
children's book into nearly eight hours of screen time. There are
already Tolkien buffs hard at work producing fan-edits to excise the
ill-considered elf-dwarf romance between Tauriel and Kili, the Gandalf
storyline, and my nominee for the "Hobbit" equivalent of Jar-Jar Binks,
the comic relief character Afrid (Ryan Gage). The "Lord of the Rings"
films benefited from having to cut out some of the book's smaller
episodes and minor characters like Tom Bombadil. The "Hobbit" films
easily could have gotten by without the shapeshifter Beorn or even a few
of those extra dwarves. After three films, I still can't name more
than six of the thirteen.
As much as I disliked
the "Star Wars" prequels, they were alwasy first and foremost the
chronicle of the early years of Anakin Skywalker, from his childhood to
his corruption as an adult. Bilbo Baggins is a much better protagonist
than Anakin Skywalker, and had the benefit of Martin Freeman's wonderful
performance. However, for much of "The Hobbit," especially in the last
film, he doesn't feel like the main character. Instead, the dwarf
leader Thorin Oakenshield (Richard Armitage) and the human leader Bard
(Luke Evans) were often at the forefront, and both characters were
portrayed as much more classically heroic than their literary
counterparts. I wonder if Jackson was trying to evoke Boromir and
Aragorn from "Lord of the Rings," though the characterizations felt so
forced that Thorin and Bard weren't particularly appealing leading men
in the end. Then there was all the time taken up by Gandalf (Ian
McKellan) and Tauriel (Evangeline Lilly) and their stories. Sure, all
the extra characters made the story larger scale and more epic, but
Bilbo ended up a bit lost in the crowd.
I think
"The Hobbit" fared better than the "Star Wars" prequels did regarding
references to the previous series, though not by much. I liked the
framing device with the older Bilbo (Ian Holm) and a couple of the minor
in-jokes. There weren't many instances of the ham-fisted foreshadowing
George Lucas deployed. However, I found that Peter Jackson had a hard
time letting the "Hobbit" be its own story instead of another
installment of "Lord of the Rings." He kept reusing bits and pieces
from the previous films, including several that he's been criticized for
- the the massive CGI battle sequences, the deus ex machina, mucking
with basic character motivations, rearranging the story structure, and
the addition of questionable original characters. Watching some of the
action scenes in "Battle of the Five Armies" certainly reminded me of
"Return of the King," but not in a good way. Since I didn't care about
most of the characters, the warfare just felt tedious and endless, and
it was much easier to see the bad bits. And those ended up reminding me
of the flaws from the earlier sequences, which I was no longer inclined
to forgive or ignore. In short, watching parts of "The Hobbit" made me
like the "Lord of the Rings" films less.
I feel
that one of the biggest mistakes that both Peter Jackson and George
Lucas made at the outset was trying to utilize a new technology in these
movies that wasn't quite ready yet. With Jackson, it was the increased
frame rate projection systems, which resulted in some very unsettling
visuals in the first film. Fortunately he made the necessary
corrections so that the second and third installments fared much
better. However, Jackson and Lucas also share a more damaging trait:
they misunderstand what audiences enjoyed about their previous work.
Jackson brought back everything that we loved about "Lord of the Rings,"
regardless of whether or not it was a good fit for "The
Hobbit." A good example is Legolas, a highlight of the first trilogy
whose appearances in "The Hobbit" movie just served to lessen the character overall.
And too
often, that's how I felt about the "The Hobbit" as a whole.
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