In theatres: 'Desolation of Smaug' [2] SPOILERS

I think Boyens Tolkien knowledge is at least equal to her scripting skills   

Ive twiddled more wax out of my ears than she's got brains ! especially about Tolkien.

 

haha.. ha??  (that was the correct reply, right?)

DOS EE box art and statue.

The box art is wrong (that orc that died in AUJ is for some reason next to Bolg in the top right) and as to the statue- seriously? Thats meant to look like Freeman?   

Thats horrible, dont like it at all, That figurine of Bilbo looks just like a little 6" figure I had of Sam or one of the other Hobbits ? Looks cheap, a rehash of some other model that hit the bottom of a bargain bin. should have been melted along with the rest of this crap.

Mrs Figg wrote:it seems they are trying desperately to Aragornize Bard into some noble outcast ready to take back his realm.

I think they tried to Aragornize the story.

You've got Thorin and Bard there, and LOTR even was more concerned with Aragorn's story (in the films I mean) than the Hobbit at the root of the story, though LOTR forced it to be about Frodo because he was destroying the ring. TH is unfortunate in that Bilbo moves the story along, but he's not the object of the journey, the dwarves are, though the journey is from Bilbo's perspective. And perspective is lost in adaptation.

I think perspective can be achieved  in film, but it requires faith in the main character which these films dont seem to have.

I have been thinking about what is wrong with these films and I think its a few things all combined.
Here is my top 9.

1. PJ doesn't know what to do with the dwarves.
PJ cant do large crowd scenes. Its just not his thing. The two main examples of this are the Council of Elrond and the Bag End scenes in TH.
In both cases you have large numbers of people sitting around talking. And in both cases PJ follows exactly the same pattern- burst of exposition- dramatic outburst- exposition- dramatic outburst.
The conversation continuously breaks down into shouting for its drama, as if PJ has no idea how to get the drama from the characters and dialogue.
PJ has voiced his early concerns about the numbers of dwarves and how to present them.
There are only really two choices when it comes to the dwarves. Do what Tolkien did and emphasis a few and make the rest an indistinguishable blob- the company.
Or you can do what PJ did, give them extensive character backgrounds, personalities and jobs and make them all look very different from one another to give recognisable silhouettes.

Unfortunately what PJ actually did was to make them all visually distinguishable, and not much like dwarves to do so, but then did not have the time for any of the individualism to come out, or even dialogue for most of them, leaving them as much like the books amorphous blob as anything else, but stuck with ridiculous individualistic non-dwarf looks. It gives the visual message that there will be some development of all these dwarves, so the lack of it, instead of being something the film works with as the book does, is only more noticeable by its absence.

But the biggest change to the dwarves is in Thorin. Film Thorin and book Thorin are opposites- book Thorin talks a good game but is actually a hopeless leader, driven more by personal desire, ego and greed and filled with old grudges. As such it allows Bilbo to slowly blossom until he becomes the de facto leader of the group.

Film Thorin is heroic and tragic from the word go. He is young and his cause is noble and he is presented as a capable leader and fighter but troubled by the failings of his fore fathers before him. He is in fact very much the traditional hero of the tale, and this is the start of the problems with how it affects his relationship with Bilbo in the narrative.

2. Bilbo.
The film has no perspective. Whose film is it? Who is the lead? What is the main story? Is Bilbo the lead?- we start with Bilbo and he seem to be the lead right up until the journey begins.
But then the focus starts shifting to other stories- is the rise of Sauron and the WC attempts to stop him the main story, its certainly in the grand scheme at least as important as Bilbo's quest and with the added emphasis on the Ring its seems to overshadow a quest to kill a dragon.
Is Thorin the main character and his tale of revenge and reclaiming his home land from his people the main story? We certainly spend a lot of time on Thorin and his back story and his nemesis Azog.
The films have no focus for the audience, there is no clear individual whose story and perspective we are seeing.
Despite the films title the script has no confidence that Bilbo's story is the most important one to be told, and increasingly his tale becomes only a part of a much bigger story that does not directly involve him.

And it gets worse when other characters are introduced- Beorn needs an arc, so his appearance becomes nothing but exposition and Bilbo again just becomes someone in the room while its going on.
This is taken to its worst in Rivendell and in the Elven King Halls. In Rivendell  (EE) what should have been a nice Bilbo focused scene where he speaks with Elrond about Rivendell is instead hijacked to be a scene about Thorin and the dragon sickness. And in the Elven-King Halls an invisible Bilbo is used just solely as an excuse for the audience to hear the seemingly more important matter of Tauriel and Legolas.
By this point Bilbo has ceased to be even a character let alone the main one, and has instead become merely a writing tool to allow the setting of scenes that are not about him.

The split to three films has also had a bad effect on the characterisation of Bilbo, especially with regards Thorin.
The need for there to be a sense of completion to film one, and the wrapping up of some arc or other, forced the films into making Bilbo an action hero and killing much sooner than he does in the book, and not only that but to save Thorin's life and in so doing earn Thorin's admiration.
All of this is way too soon of course. And the changes to Thorin's character mean that there is nowhere left for their relationship to go in the seocnd film. And indeed the entire matter of their relationship is largely ignored throughout the second film as a consequence. Right when Bilbo coming into his own as leader of the group should be the main narrative thrust of Bilbo's development at this point, and his first action against the spiders and saving Thorin and the others a significant moment, they are not. They wrapped that arc up at the end of film one and so killed what was important and significant about Bilbo's actions here stone dead.

So between having nothing development wise for Bilbo do it, having crammed it all into film one, and with multiple character story lines, and seemingly larger more important events overshadowing Bilbo's tale, he quickly becomes lost as the focus of the film.
And the feeling is left that the film has no central focus but is drifting about between story threads without knowing which ones to attach the narrative significance to, and so leaving the audience with no real sense of what the central thread is or whose story they are watching.

3. Plot.
The book has a very straight forward plot- Bilbo goes on a quest with some dwarves to steal treasure from a mountain guarded by a dragon. As a result, he discovers lots about himself, and returns a wiser, better hobbit.
Along the way he meets interesting people, gets in frightening scrapes, discovers his own inner strengths and there is a big fight at the end before he returns home a different hobbit.

Film hobbit is about what exactly? How would you sum up the plot?

They have to go kill a dragon to reclaim the dwarf homeland, but Sauron, disguised as the Necromancer has got a deal with some orcs, who are hunting down Thorin because of  an old battle, and the Necromancer wants to use the dragon for something. And the WC have to stop the Necromancer before he can get the dwarves and get to the dragon. And the Elf King doesn't want to help the dwarves but Tauriel does, but she is torn between her feelings for Legolas and for one of the dwarves as well to her duty and her responsibility to wider society.
And they all have to get to the dragon, so Bilbo can steal the Arkenstone, so Thorin can unite all the dwarves to fight the dragon. And the WC need to stop Sauron getting there first. I think.

There are too many plots which have nothing to do with the main character or his experiences.
Most of this stuff Bilbo is not and cannot be present for- all of the WC/Necromancer plot line takes place with no tie to Bilbo save through over emphasizing the Ring, which instead of adding to Bilbo's development merely takes him further away from the character in the book. And made even worse because there can be no pay off to the Ring/Necromancer connection in these films.
All the Azog chasing Thorin story line has nothing to do with Bilbo, and most scenes concerning Azog take place away from Bilbo, talking about Thorin not Bilbo.
The same is true for the Tauriel/Legolas/ Fili thing. Nothing to do with the main character and not present for those scenes.
To much of the films content concerns Bilbo's character and events only indirectly, if at all. As a consequence Bilbo's significance to the plot is greatly reduced as huge chunks of it no longer concern or involve his character.

4. Tone

TH book is aimed at children, its tone is whimsical, comical, faery tale, or just childish depending on your take.
It, like its main character grows up in the telling.
But its still Bilbo's tale to the end and its still talking directly to its young audience.
The films dont know what tone they are. We can go from the physics defying crockery of the Chip the Plates song to shortly afterwards violent battle scenes and decapitated heads being held up for public display.
The clash is most apparent perhaps in the escape from goblin town sequence- there is a shocking number of impalements, decapitations and stabbings in that sequence, and yet to try to keep the tone lighter, and probably to avoid the censors, the violence is cartoon like. The good guys are indestructible, they can fall any height, bounce and survive anything.
The end result however is to disengage the audience. If the main characters seem impervious to peril and the enemies inconsequential and no threat then why should the audience care for their plight?
Instead of keeping a children's book tone it undermines the drama by forcing the adult tone of the violence and the drama of the escape together with the childlike tone of a Warner Brothers cartoon.

5. Lots of stuff that doesn't make sense

The film has large plot holes and inconsistencies.
In the not making sense list we have the Dwarf battle told in flashback by Balin- if they just lost the Lonely Mt and the Arkenstone, how did all the dwarves get united in the crazy mission to retake Moria?- why did the think there were no orcs there?- how were they planning to retake Moria when there is a Balrog in it?- why did none of the thousands of dwarves seem to remember there was a Balrog inside?- why does Thorin think Azog was killed when everyone else clearly doesn't?
Trolls- how did the trolls not get seen or be heard stealing ponies and uprooting trees ten foot from Fili and Kili guarding them and only about 40 foot from the main camp?
Why were they sending Bilbo to investigate when they knew it was trolls- why not just go back and get the others?
How did all the ponies get in the pen when the trolls had not stolen that many? And what happened to the ponies still tethered to the trees, did they just leave them there to die?
Why dont the trolls know what a burglar is?
Why does Thorin surrender?
The bunny sled- how does Radagast get from one side of the Misty Mountains to the other so quickly? How does it get across the mountains at all when we are shown the only path is single file and not big enough for his sled?
How does Gandalf know the dwarves were planning to leave? There was no time for him to discuss it with them?
If Balin knows the mountain paths how come the path is a knee of a stone giant?
How did Gandalf get to the cave when the path to it is completely gone and smashed? Why did he not assume they were all dead somewhere in the rubble below? How did he find them to rescue them when he didn't know where they had gone let alone they had gone into a cave with a hidden trap floor and been captured in the depths of the mountains by goblins?
How does Azog keep just turning up exactly where the dwarves are even when the dwarves end up somewhere they hadn't planned to be?
The list could go on and on and that is just the first half of AUJ.

6. The Lord of the Rings

PJ's previous films sit like a great shadow over TH films. They are full of visual cues and dialogue taken directly from the first set of films.
But rather than being fan pleasing they simply detract from both sets of films at the same time. Cheapening moments of emotion in the original films by reusing the lines in lesser, often contrived situations, and further robbing TH films of their own sense of individuality.
This complaint sits alongside the issue of tone. PJ's attempts to make the stakes seem as large as before instead of being content to tell a smaller tale means a loss of focus on what the original tale was all about and the effective simplicity of its structuring.

7. Visual choices

PJ choose to go for super ultra HD and he choose to go for 3D.
These two choices had a knock on effect as it meant other things were now impossible- the 3D meant that traditional forced perspective tricks like those used to great effect in the LotR's films had to be abandoned, replaced with filming in separate green screen stages.
The cameras were more difficult to manoeuvre and made filming outdoors less appealing than in the controlled environments of a studio- so more of the films took place in stages and less in real locations.
Miniatures had to be abandoned in favour of all CG environment to fit with the requirements of the new tech Pj wanted to utilise.
All these decisions I believe were in error.
The all cg environs do not quite fool the eye, despite the beauty of much of the cg work. There is an unreal, unsatisfactory quality to the films look that makes the viewer question what they are being shown rather than becoming lost in the world presented, as happened with the visual landscapes of LotR's. That sense of a solid real world has been lost.
And no matter the quality of actor you will never get their best work when they have to act alone to a tennis ball on a stick, rather than feeding off the responses of fellow actors.
And confining so much to studio work means that even when the cg shows the characters in a vast expanse of space, they are still confined because they have to move on very narrow preset paths so the effects people can match everything up- and something in the mind picks up on al these little unrealities and combined they undermine the sense of solidity and believability of the world being presented.

8. Poor editing

Probably the most surprising given the professional work of all involved the editing is often shocking in these films.
It ranges from more minor examples- such as the editing in the chase to Beorns house where they leave the same forest twice and where the run either takes all day in an hour, or they run all day somehow outrunning Beorn and a pack of wargs, but however you view it the editing is shockingly poor- to the more serious- such as the terrible choice to cut away from the Bilbo and Smaug conversation to an inconsequential fight in Laketown the film could have well done without.
Much of the editing issues are no doubt caused by the change to three films but it doesn't excuse them.

9. Spectacle

The main thing these offer film goers is spectacle. Sense, plot and even physical laws are abandoned often in the name of sheer spectacle. Whether its the stone giants, the escape from goblin town, the domino trees, the barrel sequence. or fighting Smaug- the spectacle is ramped up to beyond breaking point, and impossible sequence of events become the norm.
And again it comes down to shifts in tone.
In AUJ the audience is meant to go from seeing the dwarves seemingly immortal in goblin town to fearing for Thorin's life in the fight at the end.
But the two types of entertainment are at opposite ends of the spectrum. One is cartoon spectacle the other drama.
Goblin town has all the danger of playing a video game, the dwarves survive a ridiculous amount of orcs and do so by increasingly cartoon means- ladders and huge boulders bowling orcs áside, falling platforms.
Thorins confrontation with Azog on the other hand is supposed to be full of emotion and weight for the character, his near death and rescue by Bilbo significant.
But having the two side by side just undermines each other. By the time the drama is reached all expectation in the audience of actual physical consequences for actions has been removed.


When you take all these points together the end result is a set of films which dont know what tone to set, are uncertain who the main character is or which of the main plots is the central one. Have large lapses in logic and characterisation, no sense of peril for the well being of the main characters and are in places poorly edited with rushed effects work and decision making.

Part of me wonders if they had stuck with two films, would there be as much bloat from minor characters? I have a feeling that the original versions of the two films were much more Bilbo-centric, but while filming, found he had more ideas that HE wanted to add to the story. This goes back again to his lack of restraint, and most likely his boredom with the source material.

I think the split to 3 films had a huge impact on the pacing, scripting and the content. All of it for the worse.

I was just watching the "Making of Firefly" video and thinking how exactly opposite the situation was to "The Hobbit".  Josh Whedon says something like, "A lot of the pressure of being a show that might be cancelled at any moment really helps you. It doesn't help your digestion. It doesn't help your marriage. But what it does  help is your storytelling. Because what you do is you go back and ask, 'What is the most important thing I need to feel?' "

That's exactly the opposite of what happened to PJ. Rather than being forced to focus, he was encouraged to expand to three movies which forced him to lose focus. You never get the sense of him asking that central question, "What is the most important thing I need to feel?" as he desperately tries to fill the extra time and space with spectacle.

fuck pj

Short and to the point Bungo. Have you been taking lessons from Norc?  

 

Pettytyrant101 wrote:Short and to the point Bungo. Have you been taking lessons from Norc?  

no

Well, PJ doesn't hold a candle to Joss when it comes to story telling!

Tinuviel wrote:Well, PJ doesn't hold a candle to Joss when it comes to story telling!

  

I used to think that- but then there was the Avengers movies and tv spin offs which were painfully dull with poor characters but they probably paid for his mortgage and his kids education s I can see why he did them.
And Dolls House of course, which was a good idea badly done. And he probably should not be let off too lightly for Alien: Resurrection either.
Even if he did redeem it somewhat by, ironically, resurrecting the crew in that film as the main cast of characters for Firefly. WHich was brillaint and therefore immediately canned by the powers that be.   

You know, I didn't watch Dolls House and I skipped Alien:R on a recommendation, but I'm inclined to give him a pass on those. Working for FOX or a major studio must be hell, but everything I've seen of his has moments of writing that make me smile.

If you are a fan of Firefly then there is at least an interesting angle to Alien R- seeing the early versions of the Serenity crew- most are in place- Mal including his brown coat, Jane is there with a different name, if you have an interest in the creative process it can be quite fun spotting who morphed into who inbetween him writing Alien R and Firefly.

Thanks for that Petty. I'll have to give Alien:R a try then. I'm not a firebreathing Browncoat fan, but I do love Firefox. It somehow managed to capture a lot of the dynamics of life on a modern tall ship as we move from port to port while trying to keep the bills payed and the engines running.

A little late here, but I just wanted to say that I think Petty's big post on the previous page is an excellent summation of the problems with the Hobbit trilogy.