You ever watch a film based on a book and feel like they
had to leave out A LOT of important stuff because of time and money
constraints? Of course you did! Pretty much every Hollywood film based on a
book has been guilty of this crime, but you really can’t blame them. The
producers and directors of these films are more or less forced to cram a
700-1000 page novel into a film that’s barely two hours. Films like the middle
4 Harry Potter films, early James Bond films, and the Hunger Games films are
particularly guilty of this sin, and even people who have never read the books
can often get the impression that entire segments of the book were changed or
flat out eliminated to make the basic story concepts fit in the film.
The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug is a case study
of a film, namely because I can honestly say that it’s the first film I have
ever seen that is actually guilty of the opposite
problem. I’ve never read the book The Hobbit, but even without the knowledge of
the novelization I get the distinct feeling that massive segments of Tolkein’s
other works were shoehorned into this film in order to pad out three whole
movies based on a singular kid’s book, a move which would pad out the
producer’s wallets as well. Now I know by reading reviews that the first Hobbit
movie was guilty of this problem as well, but to me this padding felt pretty organic and flowed
relatively well with the story. In fact, if you were to ask me to pick out
which parts of the film were added and which were in the book I’d probably fail
to get even half of my choices right.
In Desolation of Smaug however, these additions seem
to stick out like a sore thumb, and there are a lot of scenes that seem to jar,
or flat out halt the flow of what is more or less a very interesting fantasy
tale. To make matters worse, this is the first Peter Jackson “Middle Earth”
film that (to me at least) fully felt like the nearly three hour running time. How
early into the film did I get this odd impression you may ask? Try the first
five minutes.
One of the first scenes of the film revolves around Bilbo
and company meeting a new supernatural character. He’s an interesting character
to be sure, and it certainly is a unique scene, but his introduction and
subsequent dialogue amounts to nothing more than “Have fun in Mirkwood guys”.
If they had eliminated this early scene altogether and simply had Gandalf warn
the company about the impending dangers of Mirkwood instead they could have
literally cut twenty minutes off the bloated run time right there, and this is
an idea I just had off the top of my head. Now I could be wrong, and maybe
the character was a big deal in the book, but to me his role seemed completely
useless and out of place.
I know it may seem like I’m already being harsh on this film
right out of the gate, but I did this to demonstrate a point. Believe it or not
I actually enjoyed this film quite a bit, but it was one of those few movies I
like that I also find incredibly frustrating because it was a few simple fixes
away from being a great film. It
just feels like they took the template of something awesome and just kept
cramming more and more crap into it to inflate the running time of the movie. When you have such
a well written and widely known story as this, why would you mess with it? We
all remember what this leads to right?
Oh…
Nowhere is this “mountains out of molehills” style of
film making more apparent than in the inflated action scenes. Now I kind of got
the impression that the entire barrel action scene was never in the books, so
after the film I looked into it and while there is a barrel scene in the book
it is limited to the dwarves hiding in barrels to sneak out of Mirkwood. Here
however we are treated to a fifteen minute action scene of elves vs. dwarves in
barrels vs. orcs, and it doesn’t flow as well as previously extended action
scenes.
Now I know that Peter Jackson has a habit of doing this,
even doing so quite a bit in the original Lord of the Rings films. The
difference is that in those movies the drawn out action scenes advanced the
storyline and were more or less necessary components in the War for the Ring.
Yeah, Helms Deep was a much longer fight than in the books, but these scenes flowed
well and advanced the story just as the book originally intended. It
also helped that these battles, while having fantasy elements in them like
orcs, and elves, and wizards, were much more grounded in reality than the
longer action scenes in the Hobbit film counterparts, so it’s easier to sit
through despite the long running times.
Uh oh! I appear to have opened a can of worms, so it’s time
for us to go down the rabbit hole of filmmaking 101 again. Now what do I mean
by an action scene being easier to sit through by being grounded in reality?
Well I have a theory in film, which we will call the “Guthrie Principle”.
Patent Pending
Basically my belief is that the more grounded an action
scene is to real life, the longer you can sit through it before you get bored
or your mind starts to wander. Black Hawk Down was more or less a 100 minute
firefight between Somali and American forces, but not once have I ever met
anyone who said they got bored at any point in the film. The most memorable and
well regarded Bond fights in the franchise (the train fight in From Russia
with Love, the opening fight from Thunderball, the foot chase from Casino
Royale, etc) all have the distinction of being the most realistic fights,
and they often end up being the longest. At no point do we see Bond using
gadgets, gizmos, or wacky weapons at any point of the more memorable fight
scenes.
Conversely, over the top, elaborate, insanely choreographed
fight scenes involving beyond belief settings seem to wear out the audience
much quicker than the realistic counterparts. The last eighty minutes of Transformers
3 featured dazzling effects, otherworldly action, and breathtaking
explosions and settings, and yet despite all this high-tech wizardry for the
life of me I can’t remember more than roughly two or three minutes of it! But
the big example of this problem is none other than the final lightsaber fight
between Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker in Episode III.
This is literally a sword fight with laser weapons between
two demi-gods with perfect choreography inside an erupting volcano using flying
robots, explosive eruptions, and disintegrating set pieces, the epitome of
over-indulgence in an action. So how come I can remember every thrust, parry,
and swing from Luke and Vader’s lightsaber fight from Empire Strikes Back,
but I can’t really recall many of the details of the Obi-Wan/Anakin fight? Don’t
just take my word for it though, here’s a quote from none other than Obi-Wan
himself.
“It was a challenge with the Obi-Wan/Anakin fight because
three or four minutes into it you get over the initial explosion of the fight
and why they’re fighting”-Ewan McGregor
He’s basically saying that for such a large and epic set
piece the hardest challenge is keeping the audience’s attention through the
whole scene, a problem that grounded action scenes never really have to deal
with. Now obviously there are other factors to keeping your attention during an
extended action scene such as character attachment, personal investment in the film,
etc, but as a general original theory I may honestly be onto something.
In fact, some of what I consider to be the best and most
memorable victories in action films have nothing to do with action themselves,
but with the hero using their intelligence and wits to beat the bad guy with
very little or even no violence. One of my favorite “action” climaxes actually
comes from a fantastic comedy called Galaxyquest, where the main hero
tricks the villain into thinking he’s charging the villain's ship, but in
reality he’s hiding the fact that he’s dragging a shitzillion mines behind his
ship and directly into the villains main reactor. It’s a fantastic, feel good
ending, and while it doesn’t involve a single punch or gunshot it’s nonetheless
exhilarating to see such a simple idea payout in the villains defeat.
Think about it, some of the greatest films share this
characteristic, and some of them (like Galaxyquest) aren’t even action
films:
The point is that you can create a great scene chock full of
tension, action, and suspense without using a lot of violence, and a lot of
times this payout is even more rewarding. Why else do you think I love Doctor
Who so much? Pretty much every episode ends with the Doctor using his intellect
and wits to trick a superior force, usually followed with…
But getting back to the review, the drawn out action
sequences in the original LOTR trilogy never really bothered me, but in these
films they feel shoehorned and unnecessary. Like I said, this is the first film
in the Lord of the Rings and Hobbit film franchise that really felt like the
full running length, and it’s a bit of a shame because once the film gets to
the actual introduction of Smaug it’s like a breath of fresh air since the film
felt like it was really beginning to drag on.
Smaug, like Gollum, is one of the greatest creatures to ever
be created in a film, and every second he’s on screen is breath-taking and exhilarating.
The first exchange between him and Bilbo is flat out brilliant, and if I had
seen this movie a few months ago it would have hands down ended up on my top
five moments of last year. The movie really lights up when he’s on screen, but
the only problem is the looooong lead up to get to it.
I need to stress why this film felt so long, and I hate to
nitpick because I really did like this film, but the shortcomings really began
to get on my nerves after a while. There were a lot of scenes (just like the
first scene) that they could have trimmed about 30 percent off of the majority
of them. That alone could have reduced the running time by about 45 minutes.
Also worth noting is that the entire Gandalf exploring that deserted castle
storyline reeeeally felt like they were milking it, you could have gotten
everything you needed from that storyline in about 20 minutes, but instead we
get a sequence that runs roughly 45-50 minutes.
The final real issue I had with the film was that Peter
Jackson seems to have forgotten how to break up the tension of an extended
action scene, a trait he excelled at with the previous trilogy. Remember the
awesome battle scene of Helm’s Deep? If you do, then you remember that they
kept switching back to a comparatively slow and dry scene of Merry and Pippin
talking with a bunch of tree ents. The transition of regularly switching from
an action scene to a dry scene allows the audience to retain the tension from
the action scene while the story can create a secondary tension with the slower
scene. This is called scaling or see-sawing, and if done correctly it can
perfectly maintain the tension of an exciting and drawn out action scene
without the audience getting bored of the action.
This tactic is used in almost every competently directed
action movie. Die Hard scaled the epic climactic fight between Karl and
John by balancing it with scenes of Hans discovering that Holly was John’s
wife, which created a secondary tension that transitioned into the ongoing
fight. Return of the Jedi scaled their climax with three scenes occurring
simultaneously, and while yes, all three were technically action scenes (the
space battle, the forest battle, the showdown between Luke and Vader) at any
given time one of those scenes was in a lull that allowed the audience a moment
to breathe.
But in Desolation of Smaug Jackson seems to have
forgotten this trick that he had previously perfected, and many of the early
action scenes drag on without transition and allow the audience to lull and
grow somewhat tired. Action scenes are like sprints, and if you don’t take
occasional breaks then you will burn out very quickly. Jackson begins to remedy
this problem towards the end of the film by interjecting the frantic battle against Smaug with some much
slower scenes back in Lake Town, but then he undoes this by throwing orcs,
Legolas, and Tauriel into an unnecessary action scene.
Now that I’ve gotten my major gripes out of the way, I can
finally talk about the things that I liked in this film, which were actually
quite abundant. First of all, I still love the cast. Bilbo,
Gandalf, Radaghast, and every one of the dwarves were fantastic in the film, and as I’ve mentioned,
Benedict Cumberbatch perfectly voiced Smaug to really put his role in the film
over the top. I also loved Stephen Fry in his role as the Mayor/Dictator of
Lake Town, and his fantastic turn reminds me that he’s quite possibly the best
overlooked comedic actor in the business.
Despite the fact that it dragged on a little (as I’ve talked
about), I still really loved the barrel scene. It has a real sense of over the
top adventure that perfectly lent a lot of excitement to an already exciting
fantasy film. I also really loved Barrel Bombur (you’ll understand what I’m
talking about you see it). When I first saw the scene in the trailers I was
seriously worried it was really going to stink and irritate me, but the final
product was so over the top and insane that it was really hard NOT to become
totally enamored by it.
I loved both the orcs and the elves, and while I loved them
for different reasons they both delivered exactly what we needed as otherworldly
characters. I liked how the Mirkwood elves were considered dangerous and little
insane because of their proximity to the encroaching darkness and the years of
warfare it has entrenched their world in. On the other hand, I loved the looks,
designs and attitudes of the orcs, and it was so damn great to see villains in
film that just plain liked being evil without any reservations. I also liked
seeing Legolas back in action again, but it was a little weird because
apparently Orlando Bloom has been hitting the weights since he vanished off the
face of the Earth.
I loved the scene where Gandalf and Radaghast visited the
graves of the Nazgul, and I loved how the location was both impossible to get
to and impossible to escape from. This really set the stage for just how
twisted, evil, and powerful these guys are to escape from their prison. Also,
even though I ragged on how overly long the sequence was, I actually loved the
was Sauron finally made himself known to Gandalf. It was shot brilliantly, and
I’m a sucker for the Eye of Sauron effect since it’s just one of those iconic
effects that has become a part of pop-culture.
Now get ready for this, but possibly my favorite part of
this film was the love story between Kili and Tauriel. Anyone who knows me
knows that I’m not the biggest fan of romances on film…
F*CK YOOOOOOOOOOOOOU!
But this romance is handled so perfectly and feels so real
that it’s hard NOT to root for Kili through the whole film. I’ve never felt so
hopeful or so involved in Tauriel’s race to cure Kili, and I’ve never wanted to
see two people get together so badly since a little starship captain named Mal
met a space hooker named Inara. Apparently I’m not the only one who seems to
think so, as typing in Kili and Tauriel into Google will prove.
Do NOT type Kili and
Tauriel into Google.
Finally, the last thing I’d like to bring up is that in five
movies, this is the first one that ends on a sour note. It doesn’t end on a
downer (well, maybe a little), but it literally just ends in what seems like
the middle of a scene. All the other Peter Jackson middle Earth movies ended
with the story still needing to be continued, but for the most part the most
pressing issues in the film were more or less resolved. This is not so much the
case in this film however, so be prepared to say “There’s no way this movie is
over” at the screen seconds before the credits start to roll.
In a nutshell, The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug is
an enjoyable movie with a lot of flaws. The flaws aren’t nearly enough to ruin
the film, or even make in a mediocre film, but they are certainly enough to
keep it from reaching the levels of the original Lord of the Rings trilogy.
8 out of 10
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