When you first found out that there was going to be
three films out of a 300-page book, you may have been surprised and scowling,
indeed. Nevertheless, once Peter Jackson did not disappoint me with The Lord of the Rings, I decided to go
to the movie theater without any prejudices. The first installment of the
trilogy, The Hobbit: The Unexpected Journey, rather pleased
me since I do not seek much violence and exaggerated actions in movies. To make
my points in this review I should also note that I have gotten ever so tired of
hearing ‘the book is better than the film’ in reference to every movie that has
been made out of a book (how can we even compare a film to a book?), so my
review shall regard the film version, not the book.
The Hobbit: The
Desolation of Smaug has, compared to the prior part, very exaggerated action scenes, so
exaggerated that they make us think whether Jackson really meant them
seriously, alas, I reckon he did. The dwarfs are ridiculously immortal so that
when Smaug hunts after them for a half an hour in the Lonely Mountain, he
cannot kill them, even though he has got fire coming out of his mouth at will –
I do not understand how he could conquer Erebor in the first place, lazy
dragon. Secondly, there is this rather peculiar dwarf-elvish romance which is
obviously a very unlikely thing to happen (well, it teaches us not to be
racist; but a dwarf and an elvish lass, seriously?), so why did it happen? I sense that Peter
Jackson has fallen to the stream of creating entertainment where cheap laughs,
romance and exaggerated actions are essential to entertain. The romance thing
quite worked in The Lord of the Rings
(Arwen and Aragorn) perhaps because it was not so far-fetched. Tolkien wisely
omitted involving romance in his books, I wish Jackson had as well.
The main problem is, I believe, that the movies
attempt to trick us into thinking it is the LOTR
all over again - but it is not! It is a different book and we do not really
need to be seeing all those LOTR
characters that has no say in the plot anyway because of its little story (with
the exception of Legolas that actually was
in the Hobbit book - even though Tolkien himself did not know his name then - ,
because he really comes from Mirkwood and Bilbo and his dwarfs do encounter
Elves there). The same goes for dividing the 300-page book into three
three-hour long films - the extended edition of The Return of the King is
mind-bogglingly astonishing despite its four-hour run time. But what shall you
see if you get the extended version of The
Hobbit movies? Well, more walking and singing, I reckon.
Another problem is, that neither of the first two
installments of The Hobbit films do
not have an ending. Each of the LOTR
movies had one because it was made out of three separate books but The Hobbit: There and back again is just
one book, and if you divide it into three parts, you get two somethings and one
ending.
