Given that Peter Jackson's adaptations of Lord of the Rings made all the money, it was inevitable New Line would make an adaptation of The Hobbit, they would have been financially irresponsible not to. Also, given that The Hobbit is vastly different in tone, register and structure to the Ring trilogy it was inevitable that substantial changes were needed to make it fit in with the earlier films. And, given that puffing up a children's bed time story to the size of a Beowulf-esque epic is something of a big ask, you could also argue that it was inevitable that the new films would suffer in comparison to Jackson's earlier efforts.
This was most true of the first Hobbit film, where the boom and blare of Jackon's additions about falling civilisations and quests for revenge - copy pasted from the appendices - clanged like a motherfucker when set against the sing song pitter patter of Tolkien's original narrative. The second film was a definite improvement, settling into a more consistent tone, even if the action was that little bit too cartoony, undermining any sense of threat. The third movie is all crescendo; a two hour fight scene relying on the previous two films to provide it with context and substance
Luckily it's a good fight scene. There's an actual feeling of weight and peril to proceedings that was missing from the previous instalments (assuming that is, your not Legolas - in which case the laws of physics are your bitch). As for the few quiet bits, the stand off outside the gates of Erebor and Thorin's tap dance along the edge of sanity are well handled, and Martin Freeman remains the best Bilbo Baggins they could have possibly cast, even if here, as in the books, he's more or less run out of things to do at this point. Also there are war goats. I now want a war goat. But there's so little story here that it's hard to justify it being its own film and even at two and a half hours it feels too long. It's difficult to view The Battle of the Five Armies as its own thing, as opposed to the final third of a larger story. That's fine. That's exactly what it is. But it presupposes a lot of heavy lifting in the earlier films which was simply not present.
In a broad sense all the changes that Jackson introduced are clever or at least understandable, creating dynamics and threads that run through all three films and going at least partway to reduce the gratuitous use of deus ex machina employed in the book. But it's when it comes to the execution that the adaptation sometimes sags. Take the much derided dwarf/elf romance, which didn't fall flat because the idea itself was stupid. On the contrary I thought it personalised the ongoing conflict, helped distinguish important characters within a large cast, created new dramatic tensions within the group and raised the stakes for the final confrontation. The reason it didn't work was that it was dealt with in an entirely perfunctory way, making it feel forced and unbelievable. Similarly anyone who's read or seen the supplementary material the film makers put out knows the individual dwarfs are all reasonably well formed characters, with a culture that a great deal of work had been spent into realising. It's just that almost none of that made it onto the screen, the preference instead being for overlong action sequences, comedy mugging and episodic scenes from the book that could have easily been cut, resulting in a amorphous, beardy mush.
I'm ultimately fond of The Hobbit films. Even putting my affection for the original novel to one side, Jackson's films have always been at least fun and now we've seen the trilogy in full it's possible to make out the shape of something very worthwhile. Whether that something would bear that much resemblance to its source is debatable, but it's hard to shake the suspicion that a ruthless, two film cut that included more character development while sheering the bloat off some of the spectacle wouldn't merely be good, but excellent.
Anyone remember the scene in Candyman where Virginia Madsen wakes up in a strange flat, no recollection of how she got there, covered in the blood of a dog that it appears she's beheaded, some wifey screaming in the corner and a small baby missing. Yeah, well, after a not dissimilar Friday night I've decided to knock alcohol on the head for January. No sooner had I made this decision than an advert in my local bus shelter informed me that this was a thing that Cancer Research UK is encouraging people to do. While I am generally speaking pro cancer, I understand that a lot of people aren't and figured I might as well try and raise some money for charity while I'm giving my liver a stay of execution. If you feel inclined to donate you can find my Just Giving page by clicking the following link
I wont be posting next week due to festivities so I'll wish you Merry Christmas - unless you don't celebrate it, in which case Merry Thursday - and I'll resume my witless rambles in the new year
Love and Fishes
Dave Denton
