[Suzerain of Sheol]

So, I finally saw this. And... oh dear. I'm going resurrect this thread to post my review of the film, it's probably going to be long. (Edit: It's really, really long.)

Suffice it to say, there will be many, many spoilers.

Where to begin. I suppose a caveat, I saw the "normal" version of the film, in 2D at 24 FPS. I'm planning to go see the "real" version soon, just to compare, though I don't expect much of an improvement. Perhaps I'll be pleasantly surprised.

Let's break this down in categories for easier consumption.


VISUALS

I have a lot more to say here than I ever thought I would for this movie. I was... honestly, really disappointed. For all that I hate on the Lord of the Rings trilogy, I always thought the visuals in those were beyond reproach. Here, though, it feels... imitative. Seeing Hobbiton again didn't take me back to Fellowship of the Ring, it just... made me wonder why we really needed to see Hobbiton again, why these movies needed to be made. They take such pains to try and capture the "magic" of the Lord of the Rings movies, but for me, it just felt forced.

Beyond that, I felt the CGI in this movie (barring Gollum, who was a masterwork) was a massive disappointment. There was a consistent layer of "fakeness" over the entire film that was present nowhere in the first trilogy. For instance, Erebor in the beginning looked like a dwarf kingdom straight out of a fantasy RPG, including the CGI dwarves. Even the few real actors looked distorted and inauthentic. I thought King Thrain was particularly offensive in this category, as I honestly could not tell if he was computer-generated or not, and not in the good way. The entire sequence was just so blurred and bizarrely-rendered that my eyes seemed to keep sliding around him rather than focusing on him. I do wonder if this would be improved in the 3D 48FPS version. We'll see.

The CGI goblins were another problem for me, they had the effect of making the combat in the movie feel entirely inauthentic. In the LotR films, there was a weight and gravity to the fight scenes, every blow could practically be felt; here, swords pass right through goblins without resistance and ridiculous moves and made to fit post-hoc digitally-produced targets in ways that look utterly silly. The entire "escape from goblin-town" sequence feels like nothing so much as a level in a (particularly poorly-made) hack&slash video game.

On costumes, I thought the dwarves looked utterly ridiculous. The only ones I "bought" were Dwalin, Balin, and Gloin (who bizarrely had almost no role in these movies despite being Gimli's father. You would think...) Their weapons were so over-the-top that I simply could not take them seriously. One of them (Ori?) uses a slingshot, for Eru's sake. A slingshot! Not a sling. A child's toy. Also, on the subject of weapons, I do not understand why Orcrist and Glamdring were not given the same glowing effect as Sting. It presents a hole in the story's logic... for no discernible benefit.

In terms of environments, there was some truly incredible New Zealand landscapes shown off here, but... they were few and far between, and more often, the landscapes felt more like boring retreads of the ones shown in LotR, with less natural wonder, somehow. Rivendell looked even more enchanting than it's previous incarnation, I will give credit there, but otherwise... I mentioned Hobbiton already, and Goblintown. Not enough of Dol Guldur is really shown to make a judgment so far, but it seemed like a fairly generic "dark fortress" from the glimpses we were given, and not particularly scary.

I think that's all I have to say on the visual aspect of the film.

AUDIO

Much less to comment on here.

I found the music severely underwhelming. There seemed to be only three songs in entire film, most notably the "dwarves' theme" that replayed any time a dwarf did anything remotely exciting or active. It got exceptionally tedious by the end of the movie. Other than that, the rest of the music was just reprisals of material from the original trilogy that, again, felt forced and failed to capture my imagination. Giving Sauron's theme to Azog at the end was totally out of place, I nearly laughed out loud at how overdramatic it sounded.

That leaves voices. Something seemed really off in the sound editing, as there were numerous points during the movie where I missed a line of dialogue due to music or background sounds drowning out the actors' voices. Not to mention, the ridiculous faux-Scottish-at-your-convenience accents (or whatever those were supposed to be) given to the dwarves made much of their dialogue nearly indecipherable as well.

That's it for sound, though, which leaves...


STORY

And, oh my forsaking, justice-denying, horrible-plot-enabling God....

Let me just start off by making this perfectly clear:

THIS FILM LACKS UTTERLY IN ENCHANTMENT OR DIGNITY.

Perhaps two features that most define Tolkien's world, and they just nonexistent here. It's seriously depressing. Instead, what we're given is a tongue-in-cheek, self-aware, ironic, wry, vulgar romp of verisimilitude-shattering action sequences and a rewritten plot that convolutes what should be a very straightforward story. Once again, "Team Jackson" thinks they can "improve" or "clarify" on Tolkien's intent, and once again, they show themselves as inept, artless hacks flaying the soul from this poor, abused franchise.

To begin with, there is nothing English about this movie. Despite it's New Zealand origin, this is pure Hollywood, sanitized of all the colloquial thematics that make the Hobbit such a distinctive work of literature.

Where do I even begin?

The "beginning" of the movie is nothing but a stalling tactic. We spend a solid 20 minutes with Frodo and old!Bilbo reminiscing about Bilbo's adventures. The sequence is intercut with scenes of the fall of Erebor and the coming of the Dragon, which as mentioned above look completely unbelievable. Not to mention, the visual's are so distracting that they make Bilbo's narration exceptionally difficult to pay attention to, and frankly, Ian Holme doesn't have the best voice for narrating over a video game sequence. I'll also mention here the bizarre decision made by the filmmakers to portray the Men of Dale as some of kind of Crusades-era Mediterranean culture. The actors in their conical helmets look like they would be more at home in Kingdom of Heaven than anywhere in Middle-Earth.

Let us also make mention of the truly contrived "origin story" of the enmity between dwarves and elves, in which we are shown King Thrnaduil of the wood elves having mobilized his army and marched off to dwarves' mountain-kingdom presumably to their aid (with Thranduil, of course, astride a moose...) only to, upon their arrival, sit an smugly watch as the dwarves burn to death. Brilliant! So logical!

Once the movie finally begins, things actually start to go somewhat well. Ian Mckellan is fantastic as the more wily, snarky younger Gandalf and Martin Freeman pulls off Bilbo's prissy nature much better than I was expecting -- minus all of its "Englishness" of course. Still, the "Good Morning" exchange is straight out of the book, and it gave me hope. Even the party with the dwarves wasn't as bad as I thought it would be, with much less of the frat-house antics that the trailers implied, though it was still utterly out of character for the dwarves in the book. See again the complete lack of dignity in this story.

Unfortunately, that is the best ~30 minutes of the movie. Immediately upon beginning their journey, we're treated to another flashback sequence, this time of the Battle of Azanulbizar outside of Moria, which took place over 200 years ago, in which Dain Ironfoot slew the Orc Chieftain Azog.... except, it apparently happened 60 years ago, Dain Ironfoot is never mentioned, and Azog is only maimed instead of killed, thus creating a "nemesis" for Thorin. Let's be perfectly clear about this: Azog "the Defiler" has waited the last sixty years to take his vengeance on Thorin, and only now has he set out on the hunt for the dwarves. One wonders what he was doing all that time. And of course, Azog is about 13 feet tall, for some reason, and an albino, with a metal hook for a hand..... DIGNITY

This segues into the Troll sequence. To give credit where it's due, the first half (barring the bizarre rewriting of the impetus for this scene) is spot on for the book. The talking trolls work perfectly. Again, I was given a glimmer of hope. It would be the last. Unfortunately, as soon as the dwarves charge into battle against the trolls, it all falls apart. A ridiculous fight scene ensues, filled with wacky hijinks and not even the merest glimmer of the sort of brutal, impactful warfare Middle-Earth is known for. We then descend into an idiotic conversation about parasites and worms, and of course Jackson doesn't miss a beat to show off the dwarves as witless, bumbling fools as they shout contradictions at Bilbo as he's trying to save them. Gandalf eventually brings the sunrise in what feels like a relief from this agonizing scene, most notably with his wonderful line "Be stone to you!" nowhere to be found.

Then follows the exceptionally-insulting introduction of Radagast the Brown, one of Gandalf's fellow wizards. Let us remember, the Istari were angelic beings sent by the Lords of the West to aid man-and-elfkind against the evils of Sauron. Could someone please tell me how that translates to a delusional, paranoid, schizophrenic old man with bird excrement smeared over his face and hair, and a fondness for imbibing hallucinogenic mushrooms? Radagast is a travesty, an offense to all integrity, and I am appalled by the juvenility and vulgarity that have been heaped on his character. I shall make no mention of his magical sled pulled by a team of jackrabbits. Utterly ridiculous.

Radagast's storyline also ties into the most glaring plothole in the movie. He has, apparently, discovered that the Necromancer of Dol Guldur (read: Sauron) has "resurrected the Witch-King". We later learn from Galadriel that the Witch-King was apparently buried in a spell-sealed tomb after his defeat at the hands of men long ago. This... is completely made-up and a flagrant contradiction of the nature of the Ringwratihs as "neither living nor dead". Furthermore, the Witch-King was never defeated and introducing such a defeat has catastrophic resonance for the entire history of the Third Age. I cannot imagine why they chose to do this.

From there, a gratuitous chase sequence involving Wargs and rabbit-sleds ensues that sees the party brought to Rivendell. But oh! we simply cannot forget to address Thorin's bull-headed, bigoted hatred of elves nearly getting the company killed out of refusal to take refuge in Rivendell. Very mature, really adds to his character.

Rivendell is... boring, for the most part. After the unnecessary hostilities of their arrival, the lore of the swords and the moon-runes is rushed through to insert the White Council's meeting. Little is shown of the dwarves' and Bilbo's stay in Rivendell. Instead, we get a scene where Christopher Lee's voice is drowned out in favor of psychic flirting between Gandalf and Galadriel. I really have nothing to say here, this is just absurd. The motivations of all the characters here make no sense, Saruman's interest in Gandalf's activities and in the dwarves' quest is unbelievable, and he honestly feels like they just shoved him into this movie. Galadriel being portrayed as a love-interest to Gandalf is better left unspoken of...

Then we get the lovely CGI Stone Giant sequence in the mountains, 15 minutes of smashing rocks that does nothing to advance the plot or affect any character in any meaningful way.

Afterward, the Goblintown sequence begins as the dwarves are captured, and I've already touched on much of the absurdity. However, special mention is required for the Goblin King, who is a truly heinous caricature of his book-self. Yes, he is fat and he speaks the common tongue, but there the similarity ends. We are treated with a smarmy, erudite, cajoling master of ceremonies who... I don't even know. He just doesn't belong here. There is no sense of belonging to him at all. By this point, we're so far from Tolkien, I'm not even sure there's anything that can be said.

Gandalf's arrival and the rescue sequence is only the culminating absurdity of the film, filled with the most outrageous action that seems to be simply begging for a low-quality video game tie-in. Physics is thrown out the window as the dwarves tumble and crash the abysses of the mountain, gaining not a bruise nor a scratch from 50-foot falls against solid rock. This cannot be anything other than a blatant statement of the corruption Jackson and his crew have spewed into the integrity of Tolkien's story. This sequence could have been HORRIFYING, but instead of approaching with subtlety, delicacy, and the touch of an artist, we instead are force-fed gratuity and slap-stick buffoonery. I will not stand for it. This is awful.

The only saving grace of the film is the Riddles in the Dark sequence. Gollum is brought to life amazingly, even better than his rendition in the LotR trilogy, if possible, and the scene is nearly verbatim from the book. If the entire film followed this structure, we would have a very different, much more authentic and dignified movie.

The film culminates with a bombastic, over-the-top chase/battle scene with Azog's forces, that manages to once again strip the enchantment from this lovely scene in the book as the wargs bulldoze down full-grown trees and we're afflicted with stupefying cliffhanger sequences again and again, with no outcome but the obvious survival of all involved. Thorin is the worst offender with his fake death at the hands of Azog, failing even to resolve this horribly-contrived story arc. The arrival of the eagles feels completely mechanical and, with the omission of any relationship between Gandalf and the Lord of the Eagles, really makes no sense at all. They just show up, conveniently, thanks to the convenient magical moth of eagle-summoning....

I'm done. I have nothing more to say.

In short, I hated this movie.