The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug

An adrenaline-fueled trip to a Middle-Earth-themed amusement park.

I prefaced my review of “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey” by making a distinction between Myself: Tolkien-Lover and Myself: Film-Lover. It is a distinction I had hoped not to have to make this time around, but alas the second installment of Peter Jackson’s “Hobbit” trilogy could not appease both aspects of my personality. While the film-lover inside me couldn’t help but be giddy by the maniacal and absurd cinematic spectacle that Jackson generates so proficiently, the Tolkien-lover couldn’t help but see the soul of Middle Earth being drained for sake of some cheap thrills.

With the delightfully meandering setup of the first film out of the way,”Desolation” is free to throw us into the middle of Bilbo (Martin Freeman,) Thorin Oakenshield (Richard Armitage) and twelve other mostly nameless dwarves’ journey to The Lonely Mountain, where a massive hoard of treasure, guarded by a nasty dragon named Smaug (Benedict Cumberbatch) and their abandoned home awaits them. Thorin-obsessed goblin Azog still pursues them relentlessly, though he delegates some of this duty to his even bigger son Bolg. Gandalf (Ian McKellan) has left the group for a very dull personal mission of great importance battling an imposing Computer Generated shadow.

“Desolation” makes a fair number of deviations from Tolkien’s novel, including the appearance of Legolas (Orlando Bloom,) the addition of Jackson-only elf character Tauriel (Evangeline Lily) accompanied by her in love-with-a-dwarf subplot, and a number of film-conceived character interactions and conflicts,  but these aren’t a problem unto themselves. Instead of content, the issue is one of tone. What this film lacks which the novel has in abundance is a sense of whimsy, but therein lies the rub. Whimsy has much less popular appeal than kinetic action sequences and visceral thrills, so moments of fancy and wry humor, moments which generally fill Tolkien-loving me with joy, moments like dwarves singing songs and drinking beer at Bag End are not to be found in this film, but frenetic, bombastic moments of grandiosity are crammed in at every opportunity.

Three sequences are more bombastic and grandiose than the rest. The first is a Bilbo-led struggle against giant spiders in the oppressive Mirkwood forest, the second a wonderfully overblown trip down a river with the dwarves in barrels while a pack of orcs runs along side flinging arrows at them, and the third a needlessly drawn out confrontation with the incredibly impressive and possibly best-dragon-in-movie-history Smaug, which is every bit silly as it splendorous. Yet when the film isn’t engaged in one of those sequences, it zips along in a standard listless CGI haze which fails to generate anything but the most superficial semblance of emotions and arcs for its all-too-crowded cast of characters, and its all-too-gloomy narrative. As someone that loves meandering asides in Tolkien’s world, I had trouble being vaguely-engaged in the activities of Gandalf, as crucial as they are to the fate of Middle Earth. The film isn’t completely devoid of charm and ambiance, a flashback of an earlier meeting between Gandalf and Thorin at the Inn of the Prancing Pony hits the Tolkien spot so to speak, but these moments are scattered in so infrequently and are over so abruptly that it impossible to savor them amidst the kinetic chaos.

It is of course unfair to criticize a film for not being like the book that inspired it, and what film could really live up to the declarative voice-filled wonder that Tolkien’s prose fills me with. As a film, “Desolation” is no doubt fun, but it is the kind of fun you would have at an amusement park. Exciting at times, but hollow and fleeting. Expecting more than that is a fool’s hope. I just wish I wasn’t such a fool.

3/5

The Hobbit

I cannot in good conscience review this film without first making a distinction between myself as a lover of Tolkien, and myself as a lover of film. While these two versions of myself are not mutually-exclusive, they nevertheless have pronounced differences in their expectation for a live-action adaptation of “The Hobbit.” For example, the Tolkien fan in me can sit in a theater for hours and hours, reveling in the minute details of Middle Earth. The film fan, however, understands that a film needs to justify its length, and stuffing it with copious amounts of what will surely seem like filler to most viewers is problematic.

For better or worse, Jackson has linked much of the fate of his prequel trilogy with his use of cameras enabling the film to be shot at 48 frames per second. Streaming visual information at twice the rate we are used to, this turns out to be mostly for the worse. Whatever the long term fate of this technology, in the short term it causes more problems then it solves. While the camera picks up an absurd amount of detail, blades of grass swaying in the distance are crystal clear, things seem almost too real. Some scenes look like they are a History Channel re-enactments, not a mega-budget Hollywood production. While the CGI effects are granted better texture and sharpness by the higher frame rates, many of the action sequences bear a closer resemblance to video game cut scenes or a thrill ride at Disney then anything traditionally cinematic. I struggle to envision how some of these sequences will look in 2-D.

The slash-bang thrills in many of these later scenes are contrasted with the film’s first 45 minutes, where there is a dirth of action. A mix of backstory and portentousness, this time is spent explaining the high stakes for both the characters in the film and Middle Earth at large. Planting narrative seeds that will bear fruit must later on, we are also introduced to the film’s rather large cast. Martin Freeman, in a role he was born to play, is Bilbo Baggins, the hobbit of the title. Bilbo is encouraged to leave the comfort of his hobbit hole by the wizard Gandalf, played once again by Ian McKellen in a role that he also was born to play, in favor of joining a company of thirteen dwarves on a quest to slay the dragon Smaug. Smaug has set up shop in a mountain the dwarves once called home. Led by Thorin (Richard Armitage), the proud son of the former king of that mountain, whose business with Smaug rises to the level of a vendetta. The rest of the dwarves, they all blend together in an amorphous blob of Scottish accents, axes, and boisterous buffoonery.

As for the film’s narrative structure, the Tolkien fan in me was relatively pleased. Except for a minor quibble about a line of Gandalf’s dialogue taking away from Bilbo’s agency later on in the film, very little is changed in terms of the essence of Tolkien’s source material, even the humorous edge with which it approaches Bilbo’s adventure. However, it is the film’s numerous additions and expansions on Tolkien’s tale which have generated the most criticism. At 2 hours and 50 minutes (which the Tolkien fan in me did not notice at all), a good chunk of the film’s running time is spent fleshing out information not strictly relevant to the plight of Bilbo and the dwarves. While as a Tolkien fan, I am perfectly aware of the footnotes and annotations Peter Jackson is using to expand “The Hobbit” narrative and I all around enjoy their inclusion, this film suffers from feeling almost exclusively like setup, as though this film is a prologue to the real films. I suspect (and hope) that much of the tedium included in this film will yield greater rewards down the line in the later films.

Tolkien fan or film fan, I left the theater excited and satisfied, but with the knowledge that whatever the merits (or lack thereof) of this film, that was as good as it will get. Away from the experience of watching it for the first time and the glossy sheen of the theater, the visual effects are bound to look less impressive. Time will only serve to make the CGI look more and more poor and the clunky pacing issues more and more obvious. Despite this gloomy prediction, the film is a spectacle-filled, rollicking good time, with some truly excellent setpieces, not least of all the brilliant sequence in which Bilbo and Gollum (Andy Serkis) exchange riddles in the dark. Jackson’s decision to make three films lies at the heart of this film’s troubles. We’ll have to wait and see if it was worth it.

3.5/5

The Quiet Earth

Good science fiction is less a product of eye-popping special effects and gigantic budgets than it is of ingenuity and a tenacious belief in the material. How else do you explain The Quiet Earth, a wonderfully weird little science fiction film from New Zealand with visual effects that can only be described as wonky? Shots in which the Universe is unraveling consist of nothing more flashing lights, tilted cameras, and slowed motion. Yet so firmly does this film believe in its premise that we too buy into it, million dollar budget and all.

Bruno Lawrence stars in the film, along with co-adapting the screenplay from a Craig Harrison novel of the same name. In it, Lawrence plays Zac Hobson, a man who wakes up one morning to find that everyone else on Earth has vanished. This is explained via an attempt to create an international “energy grid” which airplanes could tap into in order to stay up in the air indefinitely. Something in this attempt went awry, and every human with the exception of Zac, who was working on the project, disappeared. Despite the scientific explanation, the sight of Zac with a shotgun and wearing a dress in a church, threatening to shoot a statue of Jesus unless God answers him, the parallels with the Rapture are undeniable.

Zac wanders this Earthly limbo, which has the antipodean sensibilities of Mad Max with all the buildings in tact and sans the marauders in fetish gear, reveling in his vast freedom and despairing in his extreme loneliness. He drives a car through the mall, raids stores, and dresses like Julius Caesar and declares himself God. Thoughts of suicide cross his mind, but the sight of fires rising from an explosion causes him to reconsider. Perhaps he sees the flames of hell awaiting him in the afterlife.

Zac’s solitude is interrupted by the discovery of two other survivors, a redheaded woman named Joanne (Alison Routledge) and a physically imposing Maori man named Api (Pete Smith). It is here in which the film begins to get lost in a burgeoning love triangle, which is as contrived as it is dull. With the physical constants of the universe shifting, there are frankly more important and interesting things to worry about. Thankfully does not push it too far into the foreground, opting to head towards an ambiguous ending which further escalates the inherent tension between a scientific and religious explanation for this film.

The film straddles this line between the hubris of man and the wrath of God deftly, but it is unclear it has much to say about either. It is content to simply posit both options and to let the viewer decide which is correct. That the film never tries to do too much is one of the keys to its success. The low-budget look of the film only adds to its raw, survivalist aesthetic and Bruno Lawrence convinces as the man trapped in a sort of existential netherworld, racked with guilt and anger and moral angst. The performances by the other two actors leave quite a bit to be desired, though Lawrence is enough to see the film through to the end. Not having survived an apocalypse or a Rapture myself, I couldn’t tell you how it feels or what the minutia of your thought process would be like in such a crisis, but I imagine it would feel something akin to that of Zac. Unbridled terror, self-righteous joy, and a whole lot of fun in malls.

4/5

Braindead (Dead Alive)

Gorefest. That is all the analysis that this film requires. There is a bare bones of a plot, enough to create excuses to dispatch zombies in a string of orgiastic explosions of viscous bodily fluid. There is some acting, if moaning, groaning, and screaming is acting, but not enough to get in the way of the special effects. When all you want to see is zombies killing and being killed, those things have little function. This is a film that celebrates the gore and absurdity of zombie films and is a great deal of fun.

Lionel (Timothy Balme), is a twitchy nervous guy. His mother, (Elizabeth Moody) is domineering and overprotective. Lionel meets Paquita, (Diana Penalver), who believes that she is destined to be with Lionel. The two go on a date, while Lionel’s mother spies on them and she is bitten by a rat monkey, which slowly turns her into a zombie. The remainder of the film is a lot of gooey zombie fights, culminating in a showdown between Lionel and his mother, a giant rat demon that resembles the mother on Pink Floyd’s The Wall.

What to say about this film? There is zombie sex, which results in a zombie baby, and a bizarre scene in which Lionel decides to take the zombie baby out for a walk in a carriage. There are animal tranquilizers, lawn mowers, shots to the testicles, a greedy, lecherous uncle, and lots and lots of spraying, gushing, oozing blood. The gore, however, is not an attempt to be scary. Rather, this is a film that loves zombie flicks and wants to honor them, but does not want to be take them too seriously. There are numerous shots here that zoom in and out, adding to the deliberate campiness of the film. The special effects are not so much convincing as a homage to ridiculous special effects. Here is a film which revels in its own absurdity, paying little heed to things like story and characters, creating instead a ludicrous and morbidly funny horror film.

3.5/5