2014 Post! (Another Mildly Worded Observation That Peter Jackson Is Not JRRT)

(I promise more posts in 2015! I really do.)


By now we know that PJ's Hobbit movies are not so much Tolkien as Tolkien-derived. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but you have to shape your expectations accordingly.

Scattered notes on seeing The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies:

First and most, Martin Freeman remains forever terrific as Bilbo. There isn't enough of him in TH:TBot5A, but he's the best thing here.  (Smaug of course barely gets any screen time at all, but he steals every second. Cumberbatch has got the voice.)

(Also, I have spent a significant portion of my life imagining what a dragon would look like attacking a highly flammable late-medieval village, and the PJCGI gets that much pretty much perfect. Whatever other complaints we might have, there's a huge amount of visual feast in these movies.)

A huge chunk of the movie is pure over-extended battle sequence, like a much longer version of the Pelennor Fields in ROTK. It's impressive and exciting, but despite all the clashing and smashing the stakes are much, much lower. Orcs are orcs, but this isn't a fight for the soul of Middle-earth; it's like some WW1 Austrian-Russian engagement that no one remembers anymore.

PJ has finally, belatedly toned down his tendency towards ridiculous elaboration. There's nothing in this movie that's truly embarrassing to watch--no fart jokes, no snot jokes, no Goblin Town roller coaster, no dragon bath in molten gold. If you somehow removed the battle sequences, this installment would feel restrained, even a little dignified. The rabbit sled is there, but only incidentally.

The Tauriel/Kili relationship figures importantly, but it isn't overblown. Thankfully there's no Goldilocks bedroom scene (if you know what I mean). I still like Thranduil, especially when he just-doesn't-give-a-shit-about-your-Dark-Lord. Thranduil continues to make immortal boredom look sexy as hell.

Time, however, is not kind to Orlando Bloom.  Everyone looks noticeably older now, actually. It is long flight to New Zealand, I suppose, but the added texture is slightly disconcerting in a prequel, and will be only more so on Blu-ray.

Thorin's arc is nicely done. His gold hoard greed ("dragon sickness") is convincing, and it merely echoes the power of the Ring without being tied to it directly. Speaking of that Ring, I was worried that the foreshadowing would be laid on way too thick, but thankfully it's fairly subtle. The denouement of the return to the Shire is short and nicely focused on Bilbo. There's no unwelcome announcement that Only Frodo Matters Now.

Bad reviews prepared me for something worse than this movie. (Perchance those reviews were taking PJ to task for the excesses of the first films and for the bloat inherent in a trilogy.) This third installment isn't perfect, and it still isn't The Hobbit, but there's nothing here I hated like I hated the worst parts of the first two. It's a solid and enjoyable finish to what was started.  

It needs to be remembered that Jackson really is good when he faithfully brings memorable Tolkien moments to life: the arrival of the dwarves at Bilbo's house, the butterflies in the treetops, the Riddles in the Dark, the interview with Smaug, the parlay at the gate. It's when he decides to add his own brand of farce or action that everything falls embarrassingly apart.

This must be said, though:  In the end, all three movies still feel like a huge and inappropriate overdose of violence.  This matters more than any of the broad indulgences and failures of tone. Tolkien's books have plenty of desperate struggle and some very significant battles, but he seldom describes and never dwells on violence itself. For Tolkien, violence is a symptom of moral failure. He never relishes it, and he could never love it the way these movies obviously and unfortunately do.

I Saw Another Hobbit

About a hundred years ago I posted after seeing Peter Jackson's first Hobbit movie.  At the time I gave it a decent grade, but over time my impressions soured and I became less and less enchanted.  Too much silliness, too broad; too much fighting, too little Hobbiting.

Now I'm just back from seeing The Hobbit Part 2: The Desolation of Smaug: The Desolationing with my son and his friends for his 10th birthday.

This movie *is* better than the first. While it suffers from a lot of the same action-movie excess, there is also more atmosphere and less absurdly broad humor. There's no loopy Radagast Jar-Jar business here, and no full equivalent to the roller-coaster ride through Goblin Town. It's telling that this movie is nearly as long as the first but feels much shorter.

Deviations from the beloved-children's-book-that-wasn't-quite-yet-a-prequel-and-that-I-read-almost-a-dozen-times abound.  Here are my spoiler-heavy impressions:

1) Legolas exists (which he didn't in JRRT's Hobbit), and he gets screen time across the whole second half of the movie.  It's definitely more than the cameo some of us expected.  Of course his presence in Mirkwood does make sense; he is the son of King Thranduil, who rules there.

This movie's Legolas is kind of dour and severe--there's nothing of the charm and wide-eyed wonder seen in the LOTR movies.

2) The female wood elf Tauriel is invented from whole cloth for the movie and is almost a major character.  She is romantically linked to Legolas but somehow falls for Kili, presumably because he is The Sexy Dwarf.  This dwarf-elf attraction would be more interesting if it didn't seem completely unearned.  I don't mean the basic fact of Dwarf-Elf mutual racism but that Kili seems to win Tauriel's attention with a joke about what's down his pants.

She follows the dwarves to Lake-town and ends up using the Athelas plant to save the wounded Kili from a Morgul blade in a weirdly complete and unnecessary prefiguration of Arwen healing Frodo in LOTR.

Despite her odd role in the plot, I quite like her as a character.  If elves are generally androgynous anyway, female elves ought to kick as much ass as male ones.

3) Jackson hints very early at the power of the ring over Bilbo.  Bilbo drops the ring, then fights like a madman to get it back from one of the spiders in Mirkwood.  Afterwards, we see his mingled relief and horror at his own violence, and already we have the sense that the ring is pulling at him.

Nothing like this appears in the book, but it makes perfect sense and fits very nicely we everything we know about the ring.  I like this moment a lot.

4) I love PJ's depiction of the Woodland Realm. Thranduil has an edge of sexy menace that actually works.  Wood elves are supposed to be somewhat more feral than their high-elf kin, so they ought to be this dangerous.  Also, playing down Tolkien's oddly Edwardian drunk-scene dialogue between the Butler and Chief Guard was the right choice.

5) Rather than escaping Thranduil's realm in sealed barrels, the dwarves ride out in open barrels and must survive a running battle between orcs who are trying to kill them and elves who are trying to recapture them.  This is just another excuse for a heavy action sequence with lots of 3-D, but it's also plenty fun.  The sealed barrels of the book are memorable, but they wouldn't make great cinema.

Later on the dwarves do get covered up in the barrels another way, which is funny.

5) Gandalf's investigation of the Necromancer (who is actually Sauron) is not depicted in The Hobbit but is based on canonical explanations.  As shown here, Sauron is building an army of orcs in Mirkwood, which I don't recall as being part of the standard history.  This implies that the orcs who will be fighting at the Battle of Five Armies are in Sauron's power rather than simply pursuing their own nasty interests as (IIRC) they're doing in the book.

I do wish the movie had given us less Orlando Bloom and more Sir Ian.

7) Also more Stephen Fry, please.  He is wonderful as the Master of Lake-town (a locale that emerges with far more personality and feeling here than it did in the book).  His oily little minion is also excellent, a sort of Blackadder version of Grima Wormtongue.

8) Azog's orcs, who have been pursuing Thorin's company throughout both movies, infiltrate Lake-town and attack the dwarves there (or at least the ones who are left behind there because of Kili's wound).  This is an excuse for more fighting and more heroics by Legolas/Tauriel, who are also unexpectedly at Lake-town.  I found this to be a distraction from the real drama.

9) Smaug is excellent:  majestic and terrifying.  This is exactly how a dragon ought to be, inside Tolkien or out.

10) At the end of the movie, PJ inserts a long and complicated fight between the dwarves and Smaug at the Mountain before the dragon heads off to attack Lake-town.  This is the one part of the movie I absolutely didn't like.  The violence is far too over-the-top and features some unbelievable and silly dwarf "ingenuity" being used against the dragon.  In the end it comes to nothing anyway.  I wish this part had been cut entirely.

11) Most of all, Martin Freeman is a perfect Bilbo Baggins. He is full of clever wonder and appropriate dismay, finding his way in a strange and dangerous world that is no longer entirely new to him. The movie suffers from every moment that he is not on screen or is relegated to the background. 

More on the First Hobbit Movie Because Words

Here's something more on the first Hobbit movie before seeing the second...

First, a reconsideration.  Back when I first impression'd PJ's The Hobbit: An Unexpected Series of 3-D Action Sequences, I gave it a hazy 85%.  That was then.  I've now seen the movie again (at home this time), and I've decided that Peter Jackson has far too much money and cred to deserve a B just for trying.

Seeing the first movie again, not so flushed with the sheer happiness of just being back in cineMiddle-earth, I'm disappointed with many of the choices made.  Lots of people have already remarked on the frantic, manic quality given the action.  Plenty have complained about the departures from the novel's plot.  A necessary and sufficient number have been offended by Radagast. 

What tipped it for me, however, was the erasure of William's, Bert's, and Tom's best lines.

William, Bert, and Tom, of course, are the three trolls encountered by the party on the road east of the Shire in Chapter 2, "Roast Mutton." In Tolkien's book they are every bit as Cockney and rough as in PJ's movie.  They are definitely played for larfs; they're even drunk.  And they treat the dwarfs at least as cruelly as their movie counterparts do.  The difference is in the escape and how the sticky situation is resolved.

     "No good roasting 'em now, it’d take all night," said a voice. Bert thought it was William's.
     "Don't start the argument all over-again. Bill," he said, "or it will take all night."
     "Who's a-arguing?" said William, who thought it was Bert that had spoken.
     "You are," said Bert.
     "You're a liar," said William; and so the argument beg all over again. In the end they decided to mince them fine and boil them. So they got a black pot, and they took out their knives.
     "No good boiling 'em! We ain't got no water, and it's a long way to the well and all," said a voice. Bert and William thought it was Tom's.
     "Shut up!" said they, "or we'll never have done. And yer can fetch the water yerself, if yer say any more."
     "Shut up yerself!" said Tom, who thought it was William's voice. "Who's arguing but you. I'd like to know."
     "You're a booby," said William.
     "Booby yerself!" said Tom.
     And so the argument began all over again, and went on hotter than ever, until at last they decided to sit on the sacks one by one and squash them, and boil them next time.
     "Who shall we sit on first?" said the voice.
     "Better sit on the last fellow first," said Bert, whose eye had been damaged by Thorin. He thought Tom was talking.
     "Don't talk to yerself!" said Tom. "But if you wants to sit on the last one, sit on him. Which is he?"
     "The one with the yellow stockings," said Bert.
     "Nonsense, the one with the grey stockings," said a voice like William's.
     "I made sure it was yellow," said Bert.
     "Yellow it was," said William.
     "Then what did yer say it was grey for?" said Bert.
     "I never did. Tom said it."
     "That I never did!" said Tom. "It was you."
     "Two to one, so shut yer mouth!" said Bert.
     "Who are you a-talkin' to?" said William.
     "Now stop it!" said Tom and Bert together. "The night's gettin' on, and dawn comes early. Let's get on with it!"
     "Dawn take you all, and be stone to you!" said a voice that sounded like William's. But it wasn't. For just at that moment the light came over the hill...

The voice that sounded like William's but wasn't is of course Gandalf's, and he has been ventriloquizing half of the argument to keep the trolls bickering until the sun comes up.  The mixture of humor and danger is top-notch, like Abbott and Costello with baseball bats, and the stakes are high.  The trolls are defeated in the book just as soundly as in the movie, but they're defeated by their own defining stupidity, and they're defeated with words.

Peter Jackson, for some reason, decides to replace this whole dialogue with a medley of snot jokes, fart jokes, eye pokes, and yet another fight scene.

Unfortunately, this isn't the only place where Peter Jackson ignores or dismisses JRRT's fun with words.  The substitution of huge heavy action sequences for important language is at least partially inevitable when translating a sprawling novel to the big screen, but it is also sometimes symptomatic of a failure of imagination and a failure to apprehend themes.

More on that in a later post.

Galactica Season Two Impressions: Space is Dark

Season Two is dark.  Besides the usual bang-up violence (with attendant blood and bruising), some things we've seen include alcoholism, cancer, terrorism, torture of prisoners, fascism, rape, contempt for dissent, martial law, forced impregnation, forced abortion, soldiers shooting civilians, prostitution, child trafficking, and assassination.  This is just so far; I'm still working through the episodes.  A lot of these things (and not just the ones you'd expect) have been perpetrated or at least intended by the show's good guys.

I really do like all this murk, at least as drama, and all the more because much of it is impossible to endorse.  Characters here often make the wrong decisions, and the show doesn't always follow up with correction, nor does it attempt to concoct justifications.  We're still unsure, for instance, how to take the brutality with which Colonials treat their entirely humanoid Cylon prisoners.  It's one thing when the abrasive and cruel Admiral Cain does it, but one of the most memorable incidents was Starbuck's, and we're supposed to love her thoroughly.

The politics of BG are hazy and variable, hard and soft by turns, not quite incoherent but definitely inconsistent.  In this, the show really does reflect the War on Terror that is both its context and its uneasy inspiration.  I'm sure some people have written off the series as ridiculously right-wing (or left), but I think it's somewhere else.  More than anything, it reflects the insecurity and discomfort of our uncomfortable search for security since 9/11.

The Economicon

What does it tell you when significantly influential economists are putting out lists of the science fiction you should be reading?

Noah Smith's List
Paul Krugman's follow-up