The Hobbit: Battle of the Five Armies was sullied by many things. It smelt of the boardroom, for one. It was kind of uncool to the source material, for two. And for three (threes are gonna be important): parts of it functioned as a commercial for a video game and quite possibly a theme park addition as well. Don't be surprised if in the next five years a middle-earth theme park opens (if it hasn't already, I am not bothering to look). And it wasn't just the action scenes, major characters were added to make it right. Maybe you don't care, but if this were middle-earth, then there is only a handful of villains spooky and evil enough to think up such a subtle and convincing marketing scheme.
Another thing you might have noticed if you watched it (and it was a grand spectacle, there is no denying that) is how each movie had at least one theme park ride of a scene in it. For instance the sterling standard of 'theme park ride scene' that anybody could recognize is the barrel escape (lazy river/barrel ride variant) from the second movie in the series. There were other such moments... I can't afford to go back to document them.
I'll admit, I'm the wrong person to point this out. The last time I read the book I had not yet lain with a lover, driven a car, or drank alcohol. I read The Hobbit at least five times. It's a slim volume packed with adventure, humor, and the odd dwarf song/elfin slam poetry session that you may skip if you're a kid. In short: it's brief, to the point, and quite fantastic. I don't think there's a lot of modern fare that could boast it was better, if any. It might be the best, but I don't indulge in fantasy as such anymore, so I don't know. In my mind it gets the gold.
However that's not even to the point. To clarify: I may be the wrong person to look upon the Hobbit Trilogy Franchise because as soon as I heard it was to be a trilogy I already thought 'Oh, oh no. This is not how things should be. I must ride... to New Zealand!' because damn it all, it is not impossible to pack the whole little book into a single two and a half hour (three and a half extended) film. It could've been done, it would've been considerably more exciting, taken more skill, more risks with narrative, trusted the audience more... in essence it would've been greater than it was, doing more with less. I'll state that one of my chief contentions with the modern world is its increasing inability to do more with less, and how it instead does less with more, and leaves the increasingly tone-deaf uncritical audience squalling with idiotic delight anyhow. That is the degradation brought into the world by the explosion of Nerd Culture... that is what has been wrought. I will say no more at this time.
It would've taken skill to condense the story into a manageable screenplay. It'd take some 'hard' decisions like throwing Frodo Baggins and Legolas out, which would've saved about an hour. All the backstory nonsense could've been stripped out (1.5 hours), the business with the Necromancer could've handled as it was in the book (saving roughly another hour), and the love story could've been shit-canned (which would've hurt Orlando Bloom's feelings and destroyed Evangeline Lilly's lifelong dream of playing a cute elf – and also saved another hour and a half). So with basic, sensible ideas I have already cut the length of the movie by 5 hours, making my originally stated aim possible. Plus I'm reducing the budget - you're welcome.
There could've been less bloat in this fantastic franchise vehicle. I won't say the series is shit. It's pretty good – not as good as the LOTR movies (which confronted me with less major issues, though the omission of Tom Bombadil was unforgivable) but I suppose that's the price you pay when Nerd Culture rampages through the things you loved as a child. The technical achievement of the movie cannot be understated: many talented people worked hard to make it happen and I do not deride their efforts in saying the movie could've been better. Parts were cheaper than I liked, and cheapening the source is somewhat of a sin. And sometimes it all looked a little plasticky, a little too videogamey for my tastes. Which leads to the most interesting angle: the commodification of middle-earth.
What really burned me, what really made me feel squeamish, and what really sullied and cheapened the experience is the fact that it was a big old commercial – a vehicle to create retail appetite in the viewer. As stated earlier, it was a subtle one (or at least subtler than Transformers), but not too subtle for this viewer (who, cards on the table, never played Shadow of Mordor). The game was quite hyped and the movie was incredibly hyped, so much so that I, who was quite outside of the media ecosystem, still heard more than enough about the trilogy's finale. Two rentals and a discount midweek viewing later I had all the facts at hand to make my dismal voice heard in the matter. I was free to state my opinions bloggishly, and I knew I had to.
The videogame-like action sequences (when Galadriel, Elfin Agent Smith, and Saruman battle the ghost skeleton warriors springs to mind, or almost every other major straight-up fight or battle) set the tone to a degree where I cannot hold my peace. Watch the rhythm of the fighting, artificial enough in execution, and you can almost imagine someone pressing B three times and forward once on the joystick to execute a daring feint or parry, or the blatant finishing moves... not that filming the chaos of battle with any fidelity is possible in a staged event, but care should be taken to keep it separate from interactive experiences. The choreography doesn't have echo the digital dance. One can almost see the gang teaming up for an epic loot raid, Radagast complaining meekly about having to buff everyone and that he's got to go to sleep while the rest slash meaninglessly at a big enemy, hacking away the health bar and exchanging terse gamese jargon.
Most of my contention stems from the final movie, when all the pieces fell into place, confirming my suspicions. Azog the Defiler is a clear Shadow of Mordor Nemesis-system entity, and so is Golg. The final fight at the end, gratuitous as it is, is nothing more than a winking reference to the videogame. The whole backstory of Thorin and Azog is basically an example of the Nemisis system – wherein you slay an enemy only to find out it survived, gained power, and has your death on its mind. Their final battle is so on the nose that I had to Google, Yahoo, and AskJeeves search about the commercial theory, and finding nothing begin to write this very post you are reading. The media are so interlaced it boggles my mind, and chilled my enjoyment of the show. Also there's a little part in the second movie where the gang climbs up a blocky staircase that looked specifically Minecraftish... dreary, maudlin, maybe even unintentional, but I could not escape the connection.
The writing could've used polish and was almost painfully amateurish at times. Dain repeatedly saying bugger as if he knows of no other term for orc. The 'forcing the hand' of the Necromancer (this phrase is used and reused so much as to be admirable - a true testament to recycling lines) is the only idiomatic phrase the writers seemed to know. The love story is filled with lines that groan under their own dull and predictable weight. The earnestness with which the lines are delivered is sometimes their only saving grace, but all deviations from the book are apparent because the lines are either too flat or too flowery, and the actors make them work, but a critical ear will hear what it will. The Master of Laketown and his wormish assistant are so baldly written they become parodic, which was out of place in a movie that took almost everything else too seriously. I did enjoy Stephen Fry's portrayal for all that, but it was really very super on the nose... a little subtlety would've carried it far. The wormish guy was just... feh, super overdone, even a deaf-blind fish would've grimaced a bit at the character as he kicked infants and old women, exhibited unrealistic cowardice, stole gold from the poor, and threatened to transform into a cartoon villian. I don't recollect if they were this blatant in the book, but probably not. Tolkien was a little subtler than that.
The schmaltzy love story was for the girlfriend, the insipid video game action sequences (you can literally tell when a character has unlocked Quad Damage, Rage Counter, or God Mode by how easily they plough through the abundant fodder enemies, and there must be Life Regeneration going on) were for the boyfriend. Good for more than dates, even, but best for dates... millennials will go crazy for it. Everyone will love it, in fact, except the critics and who gives a shit about their pernicious skepticism? What a perfect creation, what an essential excretion of our era – a timeless expression of the values of 2014. The book got shafted again by the light rays of the cinema, the synergistic marketeering of commerce, was it ever any different, et cetera...
Finally: what's up with the alleged Brian Cranston cameo? It might be the most underlooked part of all, and the least offensive. I truly hope that it was Brian Cranston I saw at the horn-blowing sequence after the battle... others have noticed it as well, but I'd like to know more. If anyone gets the DVD/BluRay, please do screenshot that moment and post it. It would be good to confirm or deny this one.
There could also be a great two-hour epic of all the walking scenes in the entire Peter Jackson middle-earth series. I wouldn't watch it, but it would be hilarious enough after five minutes of steady walking in various beautiful locations.
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