Above: Evangeline Lilly plays Tauriel in the conclusion of Mr. Jackson's "Hobbit" trilogy
In “The Hobbit: The Battle of
the Five Armies,” there are multitudes of exotic, computer-generated
effects—snarling, screaming giants; hordes of gold-armored warriors; and,
briefly, an animated dragon imbued with smarmy nastiness by Benedict
Cumberbatch. Yet none of these digital
marvels can compare with the sight of Evangeline Lilly as the elf warrior
Tauriel. Outfitted in a dark green robe
and a gloriously long auburn wig, she gracefully leaps into the multi-army fray
of title, her eyes as taut as bowstrings.
She looks powerful, confident, and deadly. She looks hot.
Forgive my lapse in professionalism. I know it is not customary for reviewers to
lapse into romantic reveries, but quite frankly, “The Battle of the Five
Armies” is so atrociously awful that it left me little choice. I’ll grant you that it’s the work of a serious
filmmaker (Peter Jackson, the architect behind the previous “Hobbit”
films). But the story he tells here is
so thin, soulless, and arbitrary that there’s little worth admiring besides the
beauty of his well-coiffed cast (which also includes Cate Blanchett and Ian
McKellen).
What else can I mention?
There is that dragon, who tears through the movie’s opening scene by
lying the village of Lake Town to fiery waste.
In Mr. Jackson’s previous “Hobbit” film (last year’s “The Desolation of
Smaug”), he cut to the credits before we got a chance to see the noble Bilbo
Baggins (Martin Freeman) and his dwarf companions (led by Richard Armitage’s
Thorin Oakenshield) witness the last gasp of the dastardly beast and its
plastic-hued hide. This time, though, the
fearsome creature is felled by a “black arrow,” allowing the dwarves to finally
reclaim their mountain homeland, Erebor.
The political conflict within and around Erebor provides
“The Battle of the Five Armies” with what little potency it posses. Left homeless by the dragon’s assault, the
residents of Lake Town hike to Erebor’s craggy gates and beg Thorin to give
them shelter. But will he? Not easily.
He and his fellow dwarves have long been homeless themselves and for
them, the thought of sharing their beloved (and treasure-filled) stronghold with
a pack of desperate refugees is not an enticing one.
In the prickly, growling debates between the dwarves and
the villagers, you can sniff out hints of real world strife (is it too much to
suggest that the movie proposes a fantasy film metaphor for the conflicts that
plague actual nations in the aftermath of violence?). Yet watching the dwarves and the villagers
natter about broken promises and reclaimed land, I found myself squirming anxiously,
impatient for another bout of the franchise’s magical-medieval fighting to
begin.
And
yet when it does, the movie, unbelievably, becomes even more boring. So weak has the character development been
throughout the “Hobbit” trilogy that it’s painfully hard to care whether
Thorin, Bilbo, or any of their comrades survive the digital mayhem of swords
clashing and war beasts yowling. And
while I’ll grant you that the film’s bloated spectacle of a battle has its
magnificent moments, even they rely on the embarrassingly
unreal—gravity-defying, video game-style theatrics that are at once sublimely
cool and laughably inane (like Orlando Bloom’s Leogolas leaping across a
crumbling stone staircase in slow motion).
Perhaps beholding this bloodless bloodbath will be heaven
for “Hobbit” devotees; having never been a fan of the series (which occupies
the same mythological universe as Mr. Jackson’s “Lord of the Rings” trilogy), I
cannot say for sure. I also can’t say
what author J.R.R. Tolkein would have made of Mr. Jackson turning his short
children’s novel into a brutish trilogy, though I suspect he would have asked
the obvious—with so much screen time, would it have been too much to squeeze in
some meaningful emotions?
I'm a Tolkien devotee, and I actually love these Hobbit films. However, paradoxically, I can all but guarantee that Tolkien himself would not approve of them. It betrays the actual spirit and whimsy of the book in a number of ways, as the book is a much more simple fairy tale in which the events Bilbo finds himself in are more incidental than epic. However, at the same time, I would argue that the films actually have a lot more depth to them than the book, as they actually explore character relationships much more and also incorporate the actual extended mythology of Middle-Earth into it that perhaps only devotees like me would appreciate. However, I can definitely understand why general audiences (and even other fans of the book) would not care for these movies: to me, it is still "The Hobbit", but it is also definitely a prequel and a taste of the larger Middle-Earth mythos.
ReplyDeleteGood points, Cody! What you said made me think about some things Peter Jackson said about going deeper into the characters when he was working on the script. It's very interesting to contemplate the tension between him trying to make a good movie, trying to articulate Tolkein's original vision, and trying to bring something new to it all.
ReplyDeleteVery true, it really is a situation where you literally can't please everyone, because you're sort of trying to do it all. Another thing I've thought of, in retrospect, is that maybe Jackson hasn't really betrayed the spirit of the book, but perhaps just the specific style or way in which the book is told. What I mean by that is, in some ways the movies are still "incidental": Bilbo finds himself tagging along on someone else's quest, recording what he sees. Many have said that Thorin seems to be the main character of the films: in my eyes, I don't think there really is a main character, and what we see is mainly an account of events. I think that is pretty true to the book, since Thorin isn't even featured that prominently in it and Bilbo doesn't really contribute as a protagonist so much as record and learn from new experience. When looked at that way, I think the films are interesting just by fleshing out the world of Middle-Earth.
ReplyDeleteMy dad and I saw this in France in French, which was hilarious, because even though my dad didn't understand the dialogue, we still had some good laughs watching what the hell moments like Legolas defying gravity as always. So the language wasn't really that important because my dad knew it would just be about the battle and thinking Smaug was saying, "Bard I'm going to eat you." So really a lot of translating wasn't really necessary.
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