The Hobbit Trilogy: My Impressions
Jan. 3rd, 2025 08:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
between_time_and_42On New Year's Day, I sat down intending to marathon all three of the live-action Hobbit movies. I ended up watching two of them, and then I watched part of the third one last night and fell asleep, so I just finished it this morning. Imagine my surprise when, after popping the DVD out of my computer and closing the software on which it was running, I saw at the bottom of my screen, in the corner of the search bar, what looked like an image of Bag End. Turns out it's J.R.R. Tolkien's birthday today! (But I already knew that because fun fact, the whole reason I revisited the LOTR movies, which set me on the path of reading the books in the first place, was because my library is having a "Tolkien Day" event in honor of his birthday, and that got me interested in his work. Also, I signed up for the cosplay contest and I'm going as Smaug. Wish me luck, because I'm terrified.) Yesterday was Isaac Asimov's birthday, too... how wonderful to have back to back author birthday celebrations. (I know Asimov's work doesn't hold the exact same place in pop culture as Tolkien's work does, but I would LOVE for my library to do an Asimov Day someday. We could have a robot-building event!)
Anyway... There's a lot to unpack about these three films so let's get right into it, shall we?
So. I had seen the first movie, oh... about nine or ten years ago. And when I was watching it two days ago, I realized that my memory had retained almost nothing from it. The only parts I remembered were the beginning where the dwarves show up at Bilbo's house, and the ending where the eagles save the Company (and I only remembered that because I remember thinking "they could have dropped them off closer to the mountains," not knowing the reason from the book why the eagles only carried them a short distance). I don't even remember if I liked it or not! Now that I've both read the source material and seen the movie again, though, two things immediately stuck out to me:
1. I don't care for Martin Freeman's performance as Bilbo Baggins. In fact, I'm not sure if he was the right choice for the role. I know when I was reading the book, Bilbo gave me Arthur Dent vibes at the beginning, and Martin Freeman played a perfect Arthur Dent in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy movie. So it didn't seem too unlikely for him to play Bilbo, since Bilbo is a similar character to Arthur. However, right from the beginning, I knew that his portrayal wasn't going to work for me, simply due to how he acted in the "unexpected party" scene. In the book, I got the sense that Bilbo is struggling to keep his good manners on display, while being upset and put off about his uninvited houseguests, and that was a very humorous scenario for me to imagine. In the movie, I got more of a sense of repressed anger, like Bilbo is trying really hard not to snap and lash out at the dwarves. There was also never a huge sense to me of him trying desperately to be polite- he spent a lot more time running after them going "no, no, no!" Now, perhaps other readers interpreted this scene differently from me and therefore have less of a problem with it than I did, but for me, this acting choice set the tone for his performance throughout the rest of the movie, and he just didn't feel like Bilbo to me. Throughout the movie (and, in fact, the entire trilogy), I wouldn't characterize Bilbo as someone who is rightfully afraid and out of his depth, as he seemed to be in the book, but as someone who is completely Done and fed up. It seemed like the only reactions to anything that Martin Freeman knew how to give were confused "wait, what?" double takes, and irritation that ranged from mild to "are you fucking kidding me?" The absolute worst moment for me was his reaction to Fili's death. Maybe "understated" was what he was going for, but for me, his reaction was more like he was seeing something odd/unusual and thinking "huh, that's weird," rather than, you know, seeing one of his traveling companions being brutally killed and being shocked by it. There were only a few moments in the entire trilogy when his acting choices made me feel connected to Bilbo as a character- the moment during the spider battle when Bilbo takes off the Ring to taunt the spider in front of him, the ending of the last movie where he was mourning Thorin and then saying goodbye to the dwarves, and... some moment from the second movie that I've sadly already forgotten about. Note how I didn't name any moments from the first movie... I also didn't really like the little character tics he gave Bilbo, like how he would wiggle his fingers and his nose. It did nothing to help me see him as the character. And (for me most crucially) I couldn't connect his performance to Ian Holm's performance at ALL. When we saw Bilbo at the beginning of the first movie and then the scene transitioned to a younger Bilbo 60 years prior, they hardly felt like the same character. I feel like I should be more lenient about that because Bilbo in the prologue had undergone significant character development by that point, so it's reasonable to expect him to act differently, but... I dunno, man, I've seen two actors play an older and younger version of a character who undergoes major development in the same movie before- Paul Dano and John Cusack playing Brian Wilson in Love & Mercy- and they matched their performances so well (despite not consciously intending to do so), so I was expecting something more like that. Bottom line: Bilbo Baggins was my favorite character in The Hobbit and yet, I couldn't connect to him at all in the movies, so that hurt them for me right out of the gate.
2. Every single time I see a movie that was adapted from a book, I end up thinking- "why couldn't they have just adapted this exactly like how it happens in the books?" And these movies were no exception. I mean, they must have been incredibly expensive to make as they were, so it's not like they were sparing any expense by leaving out certain parts of the book. However, it wasn't so much anything that the movies left out which annoyed me, but the parts of the movie that were added in and had nothing to do with the book's version of events. The second film was particularly egregious in this regard. If the plan was to start the movie when the Company is entering Mirkwood Forest and end it with Smaug flying off to destroy Lake Town, then they had SO MUCH GROUND to cover from the original book. Mirkwood was an entire fucking Ordeal in the book, from the crossing of the cursed river that led to Bombur falling in and becoming enchanted, to the giant spider battle, to the interruptions of the elf party and subsequent capture of the dwarves by the elves. Then there were the weeks spent in the Elvenking's home, the perilous escape via barrel on the river, the welcome and feasting at Lake Town... All of that PLUS the stuff with Smaug AND the stuff with Beorn at the beginning could have easily been its own movie. So... Tell me WHY it felt like all these moments from the book, which I had so loved because it really showed just how dangerous the journey was even before a dragon came into the picture, were breezed past in favor of stuff that WASN'T in the book? Fuck it, I'm just going to bulletpoint all the parts from the book and how I felt they were handled, and all the parts that weren't in the books and how I felt about them:
-Beorn. My third favorite character from the book (after Bilbo and Smaug). For one thing, I didn't like the design of his human form, and I also didn't like how the actor delivered his lines. But what I mostly didn't like was how his entire part of the story was over and done in the span of... I dunno, ten minutes? Granted, I do feel like Beorn could be cut entirely from any adaptation that decides to streamline the narrative (and indeed he was cut from the animated version of The Hobbit, which I found mildly disappointing, but I understood and respected that decision since the finished product didn't suffer as a result of his character being cut). But my feeling is, since the filmmakers bothered to include him in the story at all, they might as well have included everything that happened at his home from the book- including the original introduction of Beorn to the dwarves, how they arrived two at a time so as not to overwhelm him. I thought it was strange that Gandalf pointed out that Beorn doesn't like dwarves, and yet this was AFTER all the dwarves had holed up in Beorn's house while Beorn was in his bear form. I could only imagine how upset Beorn would be if he came home as a man to find his house overrun by people he doesn't like (whether that prejudice is justified or not). Not to mention that the introduction in the book was just really funny, and I feel like the films could have used a bit of humor by that point.
-The crossing of the cursed river: I don't have a huge problem with this being cut, but the fact that it was cut in favor of... things I didn't like was annoying to me. I also wonder if the whole plot with Kili being hit by a poisoned arrow and nearly dying was a nod to Bombur's situation from the book. It's like they wanted to have one of the dwarves be in danger and preserve the suspense from the book, but they didn't want to adapt this particular incident, for some reason. (Probably because it would have unnecessarily lengthened the movie, but like, if they hadn't added in all the stuff they added later, then that wouldn't have been a concern.)
-The giant spider battle: Ruined by one thing- Bilbo didn't sing in it. :P I actually didn't mind the giant spider battle, although it didn't serve the narrative in the way that it had in the book. In the book, the spider battle was Bilbo's first moment of true heroism, where he fought off the spiders all by himself and kept them away from the rest of the dwarves. This led to the dwarves beginning to respect Bilbo as a true member of their Company. However, in the movies, Bilbo had already had his heroic, respect-earning moment in An Unexpected Journey (which, by the way, I thought was kind of unrealistic for Bilbo to have done at that point, although I do feel like SOMETHING like that had to happen towards the end of the movie to show Bilbo's growth as a character), so the battle with the spiders was just another challenge that the Company had to face and a cool fight scene for the audience to watch. I did sort of like how that scene showed Bilbo getting possessive over the Ring, but as far as references to LOTR go, that moment was on thin fucking ice.
-The capture of the dwarves by the wood elves: Okay. Here my gripes begin. I didn't mind that the reason the elves captured the dwarves in the movie was different from their reason in the book, because it would have felt out of character with how the elves were portrayed in the movies to show them feasting and making merry in Mirkwood. I also didn't hate certain aspects of this part of the movie, but the parts I didn't hate were so overshadowed by the parts (or, really, PART) that I DID that I'm going to have to make a bulletpointed list within a bulletpointed list to break it all down:
*I LOVE THRANDUIL. He was the saving grace of this part of the movie. That's not to say that I feel particularly affectionate towards his character, but holy shit, Lee Pace's performance blew me away. He had such a mysterious, regal presence about him, perfectly befitting the Elvenking. Which is funny, because I've only ever seen Lee Pace as Ned the Piemaker in Pushing Daisies, who is a dorky, down-to-earth sort of character, so to see him suddenly commanding so much attention and power as this majestic, otherworldly king made me REALLY appreciate his acting range. No scene enthralled me as much as his first scene, when he was questioning Thorin, but I also LOVED seeing him ride a giant stag in the Battle of Five Armies, especially when it gored a bunch of orcs with its enormous antlers, and I liked his final scene with Legolas. (I also have to be perfectly honest here, as much as I loved the first scene with Thorin & Thranduil because I loved Lee Pace's acting performance... I also spent a significant portion of it not being able to focus on what Thranduil was saying because I was LOSING MY GODDAMN MIND going "HOLY SHIT, HE'S SO HOT." :'D To be fair, while Thranduil is objectively gorgeous on a physical level, I also think half the reason I found him so attractive was the way he spoke and moved. Like I said, that man has a Presence about him, one that certainly made me sit up and take notice.)
*Although it would make sense for Legolas to be present during the scenes in the Elvenking's home, since he is the son of the Elvenking, I feel like the better option for the sake of the movie and the story would have been to have him make a cameo role as one of the guards who brought the dwarves in from the woods, and maybe show him marching with the army at the Battle of Five Armies, instead of giving him an entire subplot that went nowhere. Or, failing that, why not have Thranduil or one of the other elves mention at some point that they wish Legolas could be there to help out in the battle, except that he's away for... some reason that the scriptwriter probably could have conjured up without having it sound contrived? Sort of like how Gimli got a brief cameo appearance in the photo that Gloin was carrying with him. They could have EASILY just mentioned Legolas and not have shown him. However, since they DID show him, I guess they didn't want to waste Orlando Bloom once they had hired him, and so they had to fashion a full-fledged subplot for him out of nowhere. I'll admit, I got a pretty big kick out of some of his stunts (not so much during the Battle of Five Armies, but all his antics during the barrel escape sequence were as entertaining to me as they were ridiculous. Definitely one of the few things from the movies where I went "okay, that's not in the book, but I'll give it a free pass"), and I also felt for him during his last scene, where he spoke with Thranduil- would it have killed Thranduil to have said "your mother loved you, AND I LOVE YOU TOO?" I felt like that was what that whole scene was leading up to, and when Thranduil only said "your mother loved you," I was like... that's it???? That's all you're going to say????? But anyway, on the subject of Legolas once more, what I DIDN'T like was his subplot with Tauriel, which I'll get into in more depth below- though I will say, I didn't sense any chemistry between him and Tauriel, other than being siblings-in-arms who fight orcs together. I certainly never got the sense that Legolas had romantic feelings for Tauriel, and the fact that this had to be outright stated via dialogue for the point to be made shows poor writing/directing/acting. Furthermore, I also couldn't connect Legolas as shown in these movies with Legolas as shown in LOTR. He was a much more brooding, serious character, and I couldn't help but wonder just WHAT happened to him in those years that LOTR didn't cover that made him lighten up so much. The ending of his arc was extremely unsatisfying, and I couldn't help but wonder why he was even in the movie if his subplot wasn't going to receive a satisfying conclusion.
*Tauriel. Let's talk Tauriel, shall we? From what I understand, Tauriel is a very divisive character, and I understand the primary reason why- she's a complete fabrication of the screenwriters, and she's a female character, which I'm sure made fans cry about the screenwriters being "woke" and forcing diversity on the films. But here's the thing. I really liked the idea of Tauriel. I'm totally down for seeing a badass lady elf who slays orcs in this universe, even if she wasn't created by Tolkien. More female representation is always a good thing in my eyes. Plus, I thought Evangeline Lily's performance was one of the standout acting performances in all three films. I've never seen her in anything else, but she killed that role in particular. However... If the idea behind including Tauriel was to give the audience a strong female character to whom they could look up... WHY, OH FUCKING *WHY* DID THEY HAVE TO INSERT HER INTO A LOVE TRIANGLE?!?!?!?!?!?! To begin with, DO YOU KNOW WHAT A BREATH OF FRESH AIR IT WAS TO NOT HAVE ANY ROMANCE IN THE HOBBIT?!?! I know I'm probably speaking as an aro person, but GOD I love stories that don't have any romance in them, and that was just one tiny reason why I enjoyed The Hobbit as much as I did. It didn't need to have romance to be interesting. And secondly (and most importantly)... If you're going to create a female character in a show of diversity as a feminist stance, do you know how reductive it is to then have that female character serve as a love interest? It's like whoever wrote the script couldn't fathom a female character being compelling in her own right, or see a female character as anything other than an object of attraction from the male characters. At any rate, I HATED Tauriel's love story with Kili, because, uhhhh... insta-love much? At the end, when Thranduil consoled Tauriel by telling her that her love with Kili was "real," I was thinking... NO IT'S NOT! YOU KNEW THE GUY FOR LIKE THREE DAYS!! To me, this entire plotline came across more like Kili being flirty and shooting his shot without actually taking any serious interest in Tauriel, and Tauriel being fascinated by Kili's boldness and developing an unusual fondness for him. It wasn't the star-crossed tragedy of two lovers cruelly fated to be separated that I think the movie was trying to portray it as, and I was just so pissed that the movie wasted my time with it.
*One last little note: I got so bored during the scenes of Tauriel and Legolas fighting orcs in Lake Town that I started saying "yeah, yeah, just show me the evil dragon!" throughout them. Because at that point, that was all I cared about. :'D (We'll get to that evil dragon shortly...)
-Barrel escape scene: I don't really want to talk about it, since I feel like the same criticism can be leveled at scenes that I want to talk about more. Maybe I'll elaborate later.
-Lake Town: My GOD, talk about boring. I don't understand the point of all the false suspense where the dwarves have to be smuggled into Lake Town and keep a low profile, because as it turned out, the result of them coming to Lake Town was the exact same result from the book- they're welcomed with open arms and a feast. I also didn't care about the brief subplot surrounding the inner politics of Lake Town and Alfred and the Master's suspicion towards Bard. And for that matter, I FUCKING LOATHED ALFRED. He wasn't so terrible in the second movie, but by the time the last movie rolled around... Hoo, boy. Every single moment he was on screen was a moment that felt designed to make the audience hate him even more. Throughout the entire Battle of Five Armies, I was waiting for him to be brutally killed... but it never happened. So what was even the point of showing him being such a horrible human being if we weren't going to be shown his comeuppance? (Not to mention, what happened to him after the battle, anyway? It seemed as if the movie decided to hit the gas pedal and speed away from the narrative as soon as Thorin had died. I got a vague sense of closure for Bilbo's arc, which I suppose is fitting since he is the protagonist, but not for any other character.) On the other hand, I did love Bard and I was happy that he received more characterization. His great feat in taking down Smaug impressed the hell out of me, and I loved that his son was there to see it and help out.
All right, so. Speaking of Smaug. I think it's about time I gave these films some praise, so here we go: SMAUG WAS PERFECT. <333 I love the evil dragon, your honor. I loved him in the books because he was so simultaneously terrifying and awe-inspiring at the same time, and I also loved how cocky and prideful he had become and how that ended up being his downfall, because in his vanity/eagerness to boast in front of Bilbo, he ended up exposing his weakness, which Bilbo passed on to Bard via a thrush, who used this knowledge to kill Smaug. In The Desolation of Smaug, he was all that and more. He was beautiful and frightening and looked invincible and sounded menacing, and I. Loved. Him. (There's a reason I chose him to cosplay tomorrow, lol.) I didn't even really mind the sequence of the dwarves fighting him, which I've heard others criticize as being too slapstick/goofy, because it just gave Smaug more screentime. :D And I also loved how the dwarves' golden statue wasn't enough to bring him down. Obviously I knew that falling into the molten gold wouldn't kill Smaug, because Bard was going to kill Smaug, but it was still a great, satisfying moment when he popped out of the gold, shook it off, and flew into the air off to destroy Lake Town. Ugh... although the movie kept me waiting far too long to see him, it certainly paid off when I did see him. <3
Speaking of characters I love who are beautiful and terrifying... Lady Galadriel wielding her Ring of Power against Sauron was another scene where I was like "That wasn't in the book, but I'll allow it." I love Galadriel so much. That being said, I have some reservations about the subplot in which this scene took place, so let's get into it now...
The bottom line here is: I could have done without all of the constant call-forwards and references to Lord of the Rings. This included small moments like the foreshadowing relating to Bilbo's Ring (side note, I was disappointed that Bilbo wasn't shown wearing the Ring as often as he was in the book, and I have two suspicions as to why that was- 1. it's hard to shoot a movie where your main character is invisible for most of the major action-oriented scenes, and 2. showing Bilbo putting the Ring on carries a LOT more weight in light of LOTR, and audiences would have probably been thinking "no, Bilbo, don't put the Ring on!" instead of rooting for him to do so like unsuspecting readers would have been doing when reading The Hobbit- in fact, there was a moment where I yelled at the TV "No, Frodo, don't do it!" and then I remembered that Bilbo was the current Ringbearer, lol), but also the entire subplot where Gandalf discovered that Sauron had returned and went off to fight him. I have many thoughts about how all of this played out, but I'm running low on blogging energy right now, so I'll just say this: That subplot felt like fanservice included to prop up the movie's narrative. I'll liken it to one of my favorite book series from when I was a teen, the Uglies series. Uglies consists of three books that tell the story of Tally Youngblood, and a fourth that takes place several years after the events of the first three books and features a different protagonist. Part of the way through the fourth book, Tally Youngblood and all the characters from the first three books return and sort of take over the narrative, unfortunately sidelining the new protagonist, Aya Fuse, in her own story. That choice always felt to me as if Scott Westerfeld wasn't sure if fans of the original Uglies books wouldn't like this one as much without Tally as the protagonist, and so he felt he had to include her and all the other characters to keep the fans interested. And that is EXACTLY what I felt like The Hobbit was doing with all the references to the Lord of the Rings trilogy and the extended subplot focusing on Gandalf. Except, the funny thing is, the main narrative of the films wasn't just some random story that a screenwriter came up with, which would be a hard sell for fans... The main narrative was the fucking Hobbit. You know, the story written by J.R.R. Tolkien that paved the way for Lord of the Rings and established a lot of the basic lore of Middle-earth. These movies didn't NEED LOTR references to keep the fans interested. They could have stood on their own. But whoever wrote and conceived them clearly didn't even want to give them a chance.
Like I said, I'm running out of steam here so I just want to make one more point about the films, and then maybe tomorrow I'll come back and finish writing up my thoughts in a separate post. The point I wanted to make was about "Riddles In the Dark"- one of my favorite scenes from the book. I was SO excited to see Bilbo and Gollum face off. However... I hate to say it, but just like how I didn't like Martin Freeman's performance as Bilbo... I didn't like Andy Serkis' performance as Gollum. Which is bizarre, because Andy Serkis IS Gollum to me, as far as I'm concerned, to the point where I couldn't help but envision him and hear his voice when I read this scene in the books. I just felt like his character was written as slightly more comical in An Unexpected Journey than in the LOTR movies, and this killed it for me. I really love the idea of bringing the Gollum/Smeagol split into play in The Hobbit-in fact, I have listened to this chapter of the audiobook which is read by Andy Serkis, and there's one particular moment in that chapter that he interprets as Gollum and Smeagol arguing, and that had my jaw on the floor when I was listening to it. But the way it was interpreted in the movie, with Gollum constantly telling Smeagol to "shut up," was just weird and it took me out of the tension of the moment. (Although I did laugh when Bilbo replied with "I didn't say anything" and Gollum goes "I wasn't talking to you!" He sounded so human in that moment. :D )
Anyway... There's a lot to unpack about these three films so let's get right into it, shall we?
So. I had seen the first movie, oh... about nine or ten years ago. And when I was watching it two days ago, I realized that my memory had retained almost nothing from it. The only parts I remembered were the beginning where the dwarves show up at Bilbo's house, and the ending where the eagles save the Company (and I only remembered that because I remember thinking "they could have dropped them off closer to the mountains," not knowing the reason from the book why the eagles only carried them a short distance). I don't even remember if I liked it or not! Now that I've both read the source material and seen the movie again, though, two things immediately stuck out to me:
1. I don't care for Martin Freeman's performance as Bilbo Baggins. In fact, I'm not sure if he was the right choice for the role. I know when I was reading the book, Bilbo gave me Arthur Dent vibes at the beginning, and Martin Freeman played a perfect Arthur Dent in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy movie. So it didn't seem too unlikely for him to play Bilbo, since Bilbo is a similar character to Arthur. However, right from the beginning, I knew that his portrayal wasn't going to work for me, simply due to how he acted in the "unexpected party" scene. In the book, I got the sense that Bilbo is struggling to keep his good manners on display, while being upset and put off about his uninvited houseguests, and that was a very humorous scenario for me to imagine. In the movie, I got more of a sense of repressed anger, like Bilbo is trying really hard not to snap and lash out at the dwarves. There was also never a huge sense to me of him trying desperately to be polite- he spent a lot more time running after them going "no, no, no!" Now, perhaps other readers interpreted this scene differently from me and therefore have less of a problem with it than I did, but for me, this acting choice set the tone for his performance throughout the rest of the movie, and he just didn't feel like Bilbo to me. Throughout the movie (and, in fact, the entire trilogy), I wouldn't characterize Bilbo as someone who is rightfully afraid and out of his depth, as he seemed to be in the book, but as someone who is completely Done and fed up. It seemed like the only reactions to anything that Martin Freeman knew how to give were confused "wait, what?" double takes, and irritation that ranged from mild to "are you fucking kidding me?" The absolute worst moment for me was his reaction to Fili's death. Maybe "understated" was what he was going for, but for me, his reaction was more like he was seeing something odd/unusual and thinking "huh, that's weird," rather than, you know, seeing one of his traveling companions being brutally killed and being shocked by it. There were only a few moments in the entire trilogy when his acting choices made me feel connected to Bilbo as a character- the moment during the spider battle when Bilbo takes off the Ring to taunt the spider in front of him, the ending of the last movie where he was mourning Thorin and then saying goodbye to the dwarves, and... some moment from the second movie that I've sadly already forgotten about. Note how I didn't name any moments from the first movie... I also didn't really like the little character tics he gave Bilbo, like how he would wiggle his fingers and his nose. It did nothing to help me see him as the character. And (for me most crucially) I couldn't connect his performance to Ian Holm's performance at ALL. When we saw Bilbo at the beginning of the first movie and then the scene transitioned to a younger Bilbo 60 years prior, they hardly felt like the same character. I feel like I should be more lenient about that because Bilbo in the prologue had undergone significant character development by that point, so it's reasonable to expect him to act differently, but... I dunno, man, I've seen two actors play an older and younger version of a character who undergoes major development in the same movie before- Paul Dano and John Cusack playing Brian Wilson in Love & Mercy- and they matched their performances so well (despite not consciously intending to do so), so I was expecting something more like that. Bottom line: Bilbo Baggins was my favorite character in The Hobbit and yet, I couldn't connect to him at all in the movies, so that hurt them for me right out of the gate.
2. Every single time I see a movie that was adapted from a book, I end up thinking- "why couldn't they have just adapted this exactly like how it happens in the books?" And these movies were no exception. I mean, they must have been incredibly expensive to make as they were, so it's not like they were sparing any expense by leaving out certain parts of the book. However, it wasn't so much anything that the movies left out which annoyed me, but the parts of the movie that were added in and had nothing to do with the book's version of events. The second film was particularly egregious in this regard. If the plan was to start the movie when the Company is entering Mirkwood Forest and end it with Smaug flying off to destroy Lake Town, then they had SO MUCH GROUND to cover from the original book. Mirkwood was an entire fucking Ordeal in the book, from the crossing of the cursed river that led to Bombur falling in and becoming enchanted, to the giant spider battle, to the interruptions of the elf party and subsequent capture of the dwarves by the elves. Then there were the weeks spent in the Elvenking's home, the perilous escape via barrel on the river, the welcome and feasting at Lake Town... All of that PLUS the stuff with Smaug AND the stuff with Beorn at the beginning could have easily been its own movie. So... Tell me WHY it felt like all these moments from the book, which I had so loved because it really showed just how dangerous the journey was even before a dragon came into the picture, were breezed past in favor of stuff that WASN'T in the book? Fuck it, I'm just going to bulletpoint all the parts from the book and how I felt they were handled, and all the parts that weren't in the books and how I felt about them:
-Beorn. My third favorite character from the book (after Bilbo and Smaug). For one thing, I didn't like the design of his human form, and I also didn't like how the actor delivered his lines. But what I mostly didn't like was how his entire part of the story was over and done in the span of... I dunno, ten minutes? Granted, I do feel like Beorn could be cut entirely from any adaptation that decides to streamline the narrative (and indeed he was cut from the animated version of The Hobbit, which I found mildly disappointing, but I understood and respected that decision since the finished product didn't suffer as a result of his character being cut). But my feeling is, since the filmmakers bothered to include him in the story at all, they might as well have included everything that happened at his home from the book- including the original introduction of Beorn to the dwarves, how they arrived two at a time so as not to overwhelm him. I thought it was strange that Gandalf pointed out that Beorn doesn't like dwarves, and yet this was AFTER all the dwarves had holed up in Beorn's house while Beorn was in his bear form. I could only imagine how upset Beorn would be if he came home as a man to find his house overrun by people he doesn't like (whether that prejudice is justified or not). Not to mention that the introduction in the book was just really funny, and I feel like the films could have used a bit of humor by that point.
-The crossing of the cursed river: I don't have a huge problem with this being cut, but the fact that it was cut in favor of... things I didn't like was annoying to me. I also wonder if the whole plot with Kili being hit by a poisoned arrow and nearly dying was a nod to Bombur's situation from the book. It's like they wanted to have one of the dwarves be in danger and preserve the suspense from the book, but they didn't want to adapt this particular incident, for some reason. (Probably because it would have unnecessarily lengthened the movie, but like, if they hadn't added in all the stuff they added later, then that wouldn't have been a concern.)
-The giant spider battle: Ruined by one thing- Bilbo didn't sing in it. :P I actually didn't mind the giant spider battle, although it didn't serve the narrative in the way that it had in the book. In the book, the spider battle was Bilbo's first moment of true heroism, where he fought off the spiders all by himself and kept them away from the rest of the dwarves. This led to the dwarves beginning to respect Bilbo as a true member of their Company. However, in the movies, Bilbo had already had his heroic, respect-earning moment in An Unexpected Journey (which, by the way, I thought was kind of unrealistic for Bilbo to have done at that point, although I do feel like SOMETHING like that had to happen towards the end of the movie to show Bilbo's growth as a character), so the battle with the spiders was just another challenge that the Company had to face and a cool fight scene for the audience to watch. I did sort of like how that scene showed Bilbo getting possessive over the Ring, but as far as references to LOTR go, that moment was on thin fucking ice.
-The capture of the dwarves by the wood elves: Okay. Here my gripes begin. I didn't mind that the reason the elves captured the dwarves in the movie was different from their reason in the book, because it would have felt out of character with how the elves were portrayed in the movies to show them feasting and making merry in Mirkwood. I also didn't hate certain aspects of this part of the movie, but the parts I didn't hate were so overshadowed by the parts (or, really, PART) that I DID that I'm going to have to make a bulletpointed list within a bulletpointed list to break it all down:
*I LOVE THRANDUIL. He was the saving grace of this part of the movie. That's not to say that I feel particularly affectionate towards his character, but holy shit, Lee Pace's performance blew me away. He had such a mysterious, regal presence about him, perfectly befitting the Elvenking. Which is funny, because I've only ever seen Lee Pace as Ned the Piemaker in Pushing Daisies, who is a dorky, down-to-earth sort of character, so to see him suddenly commanding so much attention and power as this majestic, otherworldly king made me REALLY appreciate his acting range. No scene enthralled me as much as his first scene, when he was questioning Thorin, but I also LOVED seeing him ride a giant stag in the Battle of Five Armies, especially when it gored a bunch of orcs with its enormous antlers, and I liked his final scene with Legolas. (I also have to be perfectly honest here, as much as I loved the first scene with Thorin & Thranduil because I loved Lee Pace's acting performance... I also spent a significant portion of it not being able to focus on what Thranduil was saying because I was LOSING MY GODDAMN MIND going "HOLY SHIT, HE'S SO HOT." :'D To be fair, while Thranduil is objectively gorgeous on a physical level, I also think half the reason I found him so attractive was the way he spoke and moved. Like I said, that man has a Presence about him, one that certainly made me sit up and take notice.)
*Although it would make sense for Legolas to be present during the scenes in the Elvenking's home, since he is the son of the Elvenking, I feel like the better option for the sake of the movie and the story would have been to have him make a cameo role as one of the guards who brought the dwarves in from the woods, and maybe show him marching with the army at the Battle of Five Armies, instead of giving him an entire subplot that went nowhere. Or, failing that, why not have Thranduil or one of the other elves mention at some point that they wish Legolas could be there to help out in the battle, except that he's away for... some reason that the scriptwriter probably could have conjured up without having it sound contrived? Sort of like how Gimli got a brief cameo appearance in the photo that Gloin was carrying with him. They could have EASILY just mentioned Legolas and not have shown him. However, since they DID show him, I guess they didn't want to waste Orlando Bloom once they had hired him, and so they had to fashion a full-fledged subplot for him out of nowhere. I'll admit, I got a pretty big kick out of some of his stunts (not so much during the Battle of Five Armies, but all his antics during the barrel escape sequence were as entertaining to me as they were ridiculous. Definitely one of the few things from the movies where I went "okay, that's not in the book, but I'll give it a free pass"), and I also felt for him during his last scene, where he spoke with Thranduil- would it have killed Thranduil to have said "your mother loved you, AND I LOVE YOU TOO?" I felt like that was what that whole scene was leading up to, and when Thranduil only said "your mother loved you," I was like... that's it???? That's all you're going to say????? But anyway, on the subject of Legolas once more, what I DIDN'T like was his subplot with Tauriel, which I'll get into in more depth below- though I will say, I didn't sense any chemistry between him and Tauriel, other than being siblings-in-arms who fight orcs together. I certainly never got the sense that Legolas had romantic feelings for Tauriel, and the fact that this had to be outright stated via dialogue for the point to be made shows poor writing/directing/acting. Furthermore, I also couldn't connect Legolas as shown in these movies with Legolas as shown in LOTR. He was a much more brooding, serious character, and I couldn't help but wonder just WHAT happened to him in those years that LOTR didn't cover that made him lighten up so much. The ending of his arc was extremely unsatisfying, and I couldn't help but wonder why he was even in the movie if his subplot wasn't going to receive a satisfying conclusion.
*Tauriel. Let's talk Tauriel, shall we? From what I understand, Tauriel is a very divisive character, and I understand the primary reason why- she's a complete fabrication of the screenwriters, and she's a female character, which I'm sure made fans cry about the screenwriters being "woke" and forcing diversity on the films. But here's the thing. I really liked the idea of Tauriel. I'm totally down for seeing a badass lady elf who slays orcs in this universe, even if she wasn't created by Tolkien. More female representation is always a good thing in my eyes. Plus, I thought Evangeline Lily's performance was one of the standout acting performances in all three films. I've never seen her in anything else, but she killed that role in particular. However... If the idea behind including Tauriel was to give the audience a strong female character to whom they could look up... WHY, OH FUCKING *WHY* DID THEY HAVE TO INSERT HER INTO A LOVE TRIANGLE?!?!?!?!?!?! To begin with, DO YOU KNOW WHAT A BREATH OF FRESH AIR IT WAS TO NOT HAVE ANY ROMANCE IN THE HOBBIT?!?! I know I'm probably speaking as an aro person, but GOD I love stories that don't have any romance in them, and that was just one tiny reason why I enjoyed The Hobbit as much as I did. It didn't need to have romance to be interesting. And secondly (and most importantly)... If you're going to create a female character in a show of diversity as a feminist stance, do you know how reductive it is to then have that female character serve as a love interest? It's like whoever wrote the script couldn't fathom a female character being compelling in her own right, or see a female character as anything other than an object of attraction from the male characters. At any rate, I HATED Tauriel's love story with Kili, because, uhhhh... insta-love much? At the end, when Thranduil consoled Tauriel by telling her that her love with Kili was "real," I was thinking... NO IT'S NOT! YOU KNEW THE GUY FOR LIKE THREE DAYS!! To me, this entire plotline came across more like Kili being flirty and shooting his shot without actually taking any serious interest in Tauriel, and Tauriel being fascinated by Kili's boldness and developing an unusual fondness for him. It wasn't the star-crossed tragedy of two lovers cruelly fated to be separated that I think the movie was trying to portray it as, and I was just so pissed that the movie wasted my time with it.
*One last little note: I got so bored during the scenes of Tauriel and Legolas fighting orcs in Lake Town that I started saying "yeah, yeah, just show me the evil dragon!" throughout them. Because at that point, that was all I cared about. :'D (We'll get to that evil dragon shortly...)
-Barrel escape scene: I don't really want to talk about it, since I feel like the same criticism can be leveled at scenes that I want to talk about more. Maybe I'll elaborate later.
-Lake Town: My GOD, talk about boring. I don't understand the point of all the false suspense where the dwarves have to be smuggled into Lake Town and keep a low profile, because as it turned out, the result of them coming to Lake Town was the exact same result from the book- they're welcomed with open arms and a feast. I also didn't care about the brief subplot surrounding the inner politics of Lake Town and Alfred and the Master's suspicion towards Bard. And for that matter, I FUCKING LOATHED ALFRED. He wasn't so terrible in the second movie, but by the time the last movie rolled around... Hoo, boy. Every single moment he was on screen was a moment that felt designed to make the audience hate him even more. Throughout the entire Battle of Five Armies, I was waiting for him to be brutally killed... but it never happened. So what was even the point of showing him being such a horrible human being if we weren't going to be shown his comeuppance? (Not to mention, what happened to him after the battle, anyway? It seemed as if the movie decided to hit the gas pedal and speed away from the narrative as soon as Thorin had died. I got a vague sense of closure for Bilbo's arc, which I suppose is fitting since he is the protagonist, but not for any other character.) On the other hand, I did love Bard and I was happy that he received more characterization. His great feat in taking down Smaug impressed the hell out of me, and I loved that his son was there to see it and help out.
All right, so. Speaking of Smaug. I think it's about time I gave these films some praise, so here we go: SMAUG WAS PERFECT. <333 I love the evil dragon, your honor. I loved him in the books because he was so simultaneously terrifying and awe-inspiring at the same time, and I also loved how cocky and prideful he had become and how that ended up being his downfall, because in his vanity/eagerness to boast in front of Bilbo, he ended up exposing his weakness, which Bilbo passed on to Bard via a thrush, who used this knowledge to kill Smaug. In The Desolation of Smaug, he was all that and more. He was beautiful and frightening and looked invincible and sounded menacing, and I. Loved. Him. (There's a reason I chose him to cosplay tomorrow, lol.) I didn't even really mind the sequence of the dwarves fighting him, which I've heard others criticize as being too slapstick/goofy, because it just gave Smaug more screentime. :D And I also loved how the dwarves' golden statue wasn't enough to bring him down. Obviously I knew that falling into the molten gold wouldn't kill Smaug, because Bard was going to kill Smaug, but it was still a great, satisfying moment when he popped out of the gold, shook it off, and flew into the air off to destroy Lake Town. Ugh... although the movie kept me waiting far too long to see him, it certainly paid off when I did see him. <3
Speaking of characters I love who are beautiful and terrifying... Lady Galadriel wielding her Ring of Power against Sauron was another scene where I was like "That wasn't in the book, but I'll allow it." I love Galadriel so much. That being said, I have some reservations about the subplot in which this scene took place, so let's get into it now...
The bottom line here is: I could have done without all of the constant call-forwards and references to Lord of the Rings. This included small moments like the foreshadowing relating to Bilbo's Ring (side note, I was disappointed that Bilbo wasn't shown wearing the Ring as often as he was in the book, and I have two suspicions as to why that was- 1. it's hard to shoot a movie where your main character is invisible for most of the major action-oriented scenes, and 2. showing Bilbo putting the Ring on carries a LOT more weight in light of LOTR, and audiences would have probably been thinking "no, Bilbo, don't put the Ring on!" instead of rooting for him to do so like unsuspecting readers would have been doing when reading The Hobbit- in fact, there was a moment where I yelled at the TV "No, Frodo, don't do it!" and then I remembered that Bilbo was the current Ringbearer, lol), but also the entire subplot where Gandalf discovered that Sauron had returned and went off to fight him. I have many thoughts about how all of this played out, but I'm running low on blogging energy right now, so I'll just say this: That subplot felt like fanservice included to prop up the movie's narrative. I'll liken it to one of my favorite book series from when I was a teen, the Uglies series. Uglies consists of three books that tell the story of Tally Youngblood, and a fourth that takes place several years after the events of the first three books and features a different protagonist. Part of the way through the fourth book, Tally Youngblood and all the characters from the first three books return and sort of take over the narrative, unfortunately sidelining the new protagonist, Aya Fuse, in her own story. That choice always felt to me as if Scott Westerfeld wasn't sure if fans of the original Uglies books wouldn't like this one as much without Tally as the protagonist, and so he felt he had to include her and all the other characters to keep the fans interested. And that is EXACTLY what I felt like The Hobbit was doing with all the references to the Lord of the Rings trilogy and the extended subplot focusing on Gandalf. Except, the funny thing is, the main narrative of the films wasn't just some random story that a screenwriter came up with, which would be a hard sell for fans... The main narrative was the fucking Hobbit. You know, the story written by J.R.R. Tolkien that paved the way for Lord of the Rings and established a lot of the basic lore of Middle-earth. These movies didn't NEED LOTR references to keep the fans interested. They could have stood on their own. But whoever wrote and conceived them clearly didn't even want to give them a chance.
Like I said, I'm running out of steam here so I just want to make one more point about the films, and then maybe tomorrow I'll come back and finish writing up my thoughts in a separate post. The point I wanted to make was about "Riddles In the Dark"- one of my favorite scenes from the book. I was SO excited to see Bilbo and Gollum face off. However... I hate to say it, but just like how I didn't like Martin Freeman's performance as Bilbo... I didn't like Andy Serkis' performance as Gollum. Which is bizarre, because Andy Serkis IS Gollum to me, as far as I'm concerned, to the point where I couldn't help but envision him and hear his voice when I read this scene in the books. I just felt like his character was written as slightly more comical in An Unexpected Journey than in the LOTR movies, and this killed it for me. I really love the idea of bringing the Gollum/Smeagol split into play in The Hobbit-in fact, I have listened to this chapter of the audiobook which is read by Andy Serkis, and there's one particular moment in that chapter that he interprets as Gollum and Smeagol arguing, and that had my jaw on the floor when I was listening to it. But the way it was interpreted in the movie, with Gollum constantly telling Smeagol to "shut up," was just weird and it took me out of the tension of the moment. (Although I did laugh when Bilbo replied with "I didn't say anything" and Gollum goes "I wasn't talking to you!" He sounded so human in that moment. :D )
