I've said it before, and I'll say it
again: I am a big ol' nerd. I'm not bragging about how nerdy I am,
because who really would? It's just that I'm okay with my nerdiness,
and don't really give a crap what other people think anymore. So I've
seen every single one of Peter Jackson’s Tolkien based movies as
close as possible to opening day. I still watch the movies or read
the books every few years (because it's one or the other. It takes so
long to get through that you can't really do both in the same year).
I've even labored through The Silmarillion a few times, but then I've
always been a big fan of the elves. I almost entirely blame my
school-girl style crush for Orlando Bloom on Peter Jackson. I don't
think I would had ever been giddy over what seems to be such a
douchey human being if he hadn't been made cool by the Lord of the
Rings movies. I mean what I consider cool, that is. And I took my
Tolkien nerdiness up to 11 this year by seeing The Hobbit: The Battle
of the Five Armies on pre-opening night.
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| Look dude, I don't know what I'm doing here either... |
By far the best part of the second
movie was Benedict Cumberbatch as Smaug. Don't get too attached. I
don't really feel like I'm giving spoilers by telling you what
happens in an almost 80 year old book so I won't apologize for saying
that you won't get to hear much of that fabulous voice this time
around. He does the voice of the Necromancer (who is the older
version of Sauron) too so at least you get to hear him twice, but
it's definitely not enough. Don't get me wrong. Everyone else in the
movie is perfectly fine, but that's kind of all they are. Martin
Freeman was a stand out in the first two movies, but he really
doesn't get to do much this time around. He just shows up to keep the
plot moving, and is great when he does it, but there's not much room
for one hobbit when you're making a big epic CGI fight movie. Elrond,
Galdriel, and Saruman showing up kind of took me out of things a bit,
as did the inclusion of Billy Connolly. His voice is so distinctive
that you immediately know it, and once you realize it's him you can't
think about anything but the fact that Billy Connolly just showed up
in the big CGI fight you're watching. Now here's my biggest problem
with the whole movie. There's a huge battle raging, but who is the
bad guy? Smaug is dead, and Sauron is pushed back so who are we all
really fighting here, an orc? Just one kind of cool looking orc?
That's it? Well, and the orc armies, but still. Everyone in this
movie is kind of a dick, and they're all a little bit a bad guy.
Thranduil is a dick, Thorin is a dick, and even Bard is a bit of
a dick. It's just a bunch of dicks getting in this epic CGI battle.
It's a CGI cock fight...
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| Sleepy, Surly, Dopey, Dreamy, and the rest of the dwarves |
And don't get me wrong. The big epic
CGI battle everyone is watching this for in the first place is top
shelf. It is beautiful, and epic, and such well done CGI that you'd
probably be amazed if you had never seen the battle for Helm's Deep.
Or the two really big battles that wrap up Return of the King. It's
like Peter Jackson shot his load in the first trilogy, and this is
kind of all he has left in him. How do you one up the best thing
you've ever done? You don't really. You just do the best with what
you've got left of the shortest part of the shortest book of the
source material you're working with. I really really wish that Peter
Jackson would have started with The Hobbit, and worked his way out
from there. Chronologically it would make more sense and there were
so many more places he could have gone. There are appendices of The
Lord of the Rings that are longer than The Hobbit. They would have
been fine stand alone movies. I would totally watch Legolas and Gimli
go off adventuring together. Or the later life of Aragorn and Arwen.
Any of those should be coming out now to help wrap things up. Instead
we're getting wrap up from some more made up crap. Thranduil telling
Legolas to try and find a young ranger in the north who we all know
is Aragorn. And I looked it up. In The Lord of the Rings Aragorn is
87. That's the prime of life for the Dunedain so if Legolas does go
out and look him up he's only 27 when he finds him. And it's "Lord
of the Rings Babies" at that point. Although I'd kind of like to
see that, I don't need bows wrapping up my huge multi-book Tolkien
adventuring. When Aragorn saw Legolas in the first Lord of the Rings
movie they obviously knew each other, and I didn't need a reason why.
They're both old, and did some shit before, and that's all I need to
know about it because I'm not nosy. I don't need to see the entire
life story of a character to care about them. Maybe I'm weird like
that because the producers and writers obviously thought someone out
there wanted to know.
Despite what some people (Sharron)
think I don't hate everything. I didn’t hate this. I just hated
that this was made into something it shouldn't have been. It's epic,
it's beautiful, and it's totally worth seeing on the big 3D screen. I
just think Peter Jackson needs to rest up for a bit before he does
anything else.
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