Thread: The Desolation
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Old 12-21-2013, 09:51 PM   #97
Kuruharan
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Boots Just saw the movie...

...it was trite, childish, and vulgar. So…it was standard fare to expect from PJ. I am willing to give credit that there were no overt snot or fart jokes. There was the thing about coming up the toilet...but since the toilet just seemed to drop right into the lake, it didn't seem such a big deal.

I also want to credit Ken Stott's performance as Balin as I thought he did a good job with what he had to work with (and the writing wasn't his fault).

First major point: I can tell that Jackson did this film all wrong because he lost my wife and parents. Even they didn't think the movie was very good, my wife in particular.

Second major point: At the showing I attended at the end of the film there was a loud chorus of groans and a smattering of boos from the audience at the way the movie ended.

Minor point: Nice to see that Jackson has added "murdering helpless prisoners" to "killing ambassadors" on the Things the Good Guys Do list.

Other minor point: Is aiming loaded weapons at each other a common elven greeting? Makes me glad I'm not an elf. Last thing I'd want on my tombstone is "Killed when greeting his grandmother because granny's hand isn't as steady as it used to be and her finger twitched." Seriously, anybody who has ever used a weapon for real knows that you never point a loaded weapon at something you don't intend to shoot! Admittedly a minor point but geeze.

Now, rather than go on an extended rant point by point about what was wrong with this movie, I'm going to discuss something that hasn't really been discussed by other Downers in this thread as for the most part the problems of this film have at least been mentioned already.

I thought the confrontation with Smaug was very poorly done. I'm not even talking about on the level of how it was so different from the book, that sequence was just bad film-making par excellence.

The writing and conceptualization of the sequence were beyond awful, I will break this down point by point rather than in one long paragraph.

The biggest problem by far in my opinion was that the pacing was bad. The first thing my wife said to me when we got in the car after the movie was, "The pacing when they were in the mountain really dragged." I completely agreed. The movie was in a mad rush to get to that point and then it just hit a brick wall of tedious, uninteresting action. Boredom set in when Thorin was dancing on Smaug's nose. (Personally I will start using the phrase "danced on Smaug's nose" in place of "jumped the shark" for the future...not that I didn't already think the film and indeed the series are irredeemably bad, it just amuses me.)

From a writing standpoint the dialogue was dreadful (that was the thing my Dad disliked about the film as a whole, and it’s the first time I remember hearing such a complaint from him). While the bits of dialogue retained from Tolkien in this sequence were partially let down by the poor performance of the actors (I will get to that below) the...alterations that Jackson made to the basics of the scene made everything just really strange. As an example, why did Smaug show such a marked reluctance to actually killing Dr. Watson and the dwarves? In particular, that Smaug could see Watson throughout almost all of their conversation and didn't kill him was just nonsensical. However, at least he was consistent because he showed the same overall tendency to not kill as soon as he'd started chatting with the dwarves. If only the dwarves and the Dalemen had started shouting zippy one-liners at Smaug the day he first attacked the dragon might not have taken the mountain in the first place.

Now I'm sure the answer to that is, "But, but Kuru, dragons love and can't resist riddling talk. Not only is it in the appendices that is in The Hobbit itself." Yeah...except that whole situation in the book was predicated upon (aside from obvious differences like the dwarves being absent) Smaug not being able to see Bilbo. In the film Smaug could see Watson almost the entire time and yet for some reason did not kill...even though he apparently knew somehow that the dwarves were coming for him and had known for some time. It just made no sense, except that Smaug couldn’t kill them, the script said so. One can only shake one’s head.

The computer animation: for Smaug it was good enough. The gold looked awful, awful, awful! I play video games that have more realistic images than that. What Jackson ended up doing was creating a set-piece that not only was absurd and not at all based on anything in the book, he didn't even have the tools at his disposal or maybe the artists with the ability (not sure which, could be either or both) to make said set-piece look anything approaching good or believable. The giant gold statue in particular looked laughably bad. I think part of the problem lies in that I've observed in CGI it is paradoxically easier to make complex things look realistic as opposed to simple things. I'm not sure why, it may have something to do with texture. However, that doesn't absolve Jackson from going down that path when there was nothing compelling him to do so.

Performances: I have to say that given how well he did in Sherlock, almost against my will, I wanted to see Freeman do well. Overall in the film he kind of faded from view in my opinion. I think the intent was that he was really supposed to shine in the confrontation with Smaug. Alas, I'm not certain why (I have a few theories) but I thought Freeman's performance in this sequence was terrible. I don't know whether he was just genuinely phoning it in or if the silliness of the situation just left him sort of flailing about but everything about his performance from his delivery, to his tone, to his physical movements just struck me as completely off kilter and just…bad. I also have a growing impression that Freeman basically plays the same character no matter his role and I kept on seeing him as Dr. Watson. However, Watson is the only other role I can remember seeing him in so that may be an unfair criticism of Freeman as an actor...but Bilbo and Watson sure don't seem that different.

Cumberbatch as Smaug...well, might be nice to see that in something more grounded in what Tolkien wrote. As it was, I couldn't get past the strangeness of Smaug's behavior. I think the material itself was so bad that the actor’s performance was irrelevant.

Thorin...umm...I gather the Arkenstone is supposed to have a similar effect to the Ring? Thorin was certainly...uneven. Was anybody else reminded of Treebeard seeing the destroyed forest in the scene with the starved dwarves in what I assume was supposed to be the guard post on Ravenhill?

Parting shot: My wife was reminded of the Little Engine that Could by Smaug's closing lines. She said it was like he was trying to give himself a pep talk. "I think I can, I think I can, I think I can, I think I can..." I thought her comment was hilarious because I’m pretty sure The Little Engine that Could was not an intended association.
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Last edited by Kuruharan; 12-21-2013 at 09:55 PM.
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