One movie too many for Peter Jackson's Hobbit

Finally, the conclusion to the Hobbit series, or as I like to call it The $500-Million Object Lesson on How to Overproduce a Simple Children’s Book. I’m retiring if this movie spawns that 12-part Green Eggs and Ham miniseries, or perhaps that Poky Little Puppy quadrilogy.

Listen, there is such a thing as “too much,” and it’s right here in The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies, the endpoint to Peter Jackson’s Hobbit adaptation, a book that would have been perfectly suitable within one movie or, what the hell, even two. But three!?! The wheels have finally come off this unnecessarily long franchise that began on an ominous note with the hated high-framerate 3D in An Unexpected Journey, slowly began to course-correct in The Desolation of Smaug, but finally putters into heap here with battle scene after battle scene after battle scene. It’s enough war to give the orcs PTSD. 

The problem, in the beginning and still now, is the script, which deviated far and wide from J.R.R. Tolkien’s original Hobbit text just to pluck prequel strings for Jackson's Lord of the Rings franchise. New locations were plotted, new characters were written, villains were crafted out of the ether, and trivial episodes were stretched thin, “like butter that has been scraped over too much bread.” Keep in mind, all this in a story that already has too many characters, including 13 dwarves, of which only a fraction are identifiable by name — the leader, the wise white-haired one, the twins and that fat one. The rest are just background filler.

Tasked with going to the Misty Mountains to reclaim their lands and wealth, the dwarves, captained by Thorin Oakenshield (Richard Armitage) — and joined by wizard Gandalf (Ian McKellen ) and Hobbit burglar Bilbo (Martin Freeman) — have fought their way through trolls, orcs, wood elves, Mordor ghosts, man-bears, a mutant orc with a sword for an elbow and, in the previous film, a giant dragon named Smaug, who might be the most sympathetic character in a series tragically lacking sympathetic characters.

The Battle of Five Armies opens on Smaug as he begins to torch a human city floating on a lake near his mountain throne. The film does not make any effort to submerge you back into the Hobbit; it simply drops you in headfirst — Gandalf is in a cage somewhere, a noble human is in jail, a ruthless tax collector is swimming away with the town’s loot, and Thorin drools over his mountain’s abandoned wealth. There is also a love-smitten elf, Tauriel (Evangeline Lilly), whose romantic intentions lead to a catastrophic dead end. A refresher course on all this interrupted story would have been nice, but I guess that’s what happens when you break a single story up over multiple movies. The bigger problem here is that there is just too much of it; a leaner story and cast list would have gone a lot further.

The dragon’s defeat is mostly a foregone conclusion, which leaves lots of time for the dwarves to politically scorch Middle Earth with their greed, much of which is inspired by Thorin, who’s so overwritten he becomes a parody of Tolkien’s character. The dwarves camp out in the gold mountain, and their protest-like stand sends ripples through every race of creature, from bow-wielding tree elves to pig-riding dwarf armies to legions of orcs with armored artillery units mounted on the backs of trolls. They all descend on the mountain to wage war for the treasure, a gold haul that 13 dwarves refuse to give up because of their misplaced sense of entitlement.

Notice that I haven’t really talked about Bilbo much, and that’s intentional. Bilbo is mostly an afterthought. Remember, he was brought on the quest to burglarize the dragon’s den. With that job fulfilled, he’s left twiddling his thumbs as Thorin barricades Middle Earth’s Fort Knox, Gandalf tussles with Sauron’s ghost, and elves Legolas and Tauriel inject themselves into a story in which they don’t belong. Legolas has a line here about some rabid bats: “These bats are bred for one purpose … war.” It echoes a line by Thorin: “We have no choice then … but war.” I think every character has a line that ends with a pause and “war.” And war they are all given.

The centerpiece of the film is essentially an 80-minute battle with all of the characters, and many we didn’t even know about, including Christopher Lee, Cate Blanchett and Hugo Weaving all reprising their Rings roles in a non-canon scene meant as lip service to Tolkien fanboys. Peter Jackson, although weighed down by three films of character confusion and watered-down story, still knows how to arrange some impressive battle scenes. His scope for war and carnage seems to have no bounds. And, once again, the Weta Workshop does a stellar job at populating Tolkien’s world with believable props, costumes and digital effects. It’s unfortunate the story couldn’t have been boiled down a little more.

The key word there is “story” and The Battle of Five Armies’ is a wreck. It’s all loose ends and forced drama, and just too many reverse-engineered plot points that honor Jackson’s earlier films but not Tolkien’s book. So why did this work for Lord of the Rings, but not the Hobbit? It’s hard to say, but I think it comes down to the nature of the characters, the points at which they’re introduced in the story and the ultimate goal to which they strive. In Rings, the key figures of the film were introduced within the first hour of the first film, whereas The Hobbit is still introducing heroes (and villains) deep into the third film. How can we identify or appreciate characters that are ninth-inning additions?

Other key components are the character motivations. In Rings, everyone was united in defeating Sauron and destroying the ring. There was never any question about that endgame. Yet here, I’m stumped. I think this is about the reclaiming of a dwarf city that was stolen by a dragon, but Five Armies complicates that with all the politics of the gold, the reluctant gratitude of the dwarves, and the request of payment from everyone else. If only the movie could end with the death of the dragon, which is a conclusion that makes sense, and just feels like a natural stopping point. I know the book examines the post-Smaug landscape, but I don’t remember it feeling this anti-climactic and long-winded.

This franchise has let me down, and spoiled the simplicity of the book. And it casts a shadow on the awesomeness of the Lord of the Rings franchise, which was executed with supreme precision and fluid storytelling. Mostly I’m just sad that Jackson thought he could do it all again. He’s a talented director, and his work is always entertaining, but this film was doomed the moment it was split, and then split again.

That’s not how you build movies, although it is precisely how you break them.\

 

 

 

 

 

Disney goofs with awful Maleficent

And this is why you don’t needlessly tinker with franchises.

Never before in Disney’s history — at least, not its theatrical history — has a movie been so poorly constructed, so rattled, so lost, so hopelessly written and so inconceivably misguided. From top to bottom, Maleficent is a wreck heaped on more wreck, a smoldering ruin of what was once 1959’s Sleeping Beauty. Disney has been sitting pretty the six months since Frozen blew out the windows, and now comes this awful setback.

Fairy tales are known for their simplicity, but you’d never guess that here as a simple premise — an enchanted sleep, “true love’s kiss” and a demonic sorceress — is turned on its head and punted into the backfield. Angelina Jolie stars as the fairy Maleficent, a name that will challenge even the most gifted public speakers. I think the syllable-busting name is pronounced mall-eff-iss-cent, though it’s hard to tell since each character says it differently.

The winged and horned fairy lives in a tree kingdom called James Cameron’s Avatar, which is right next door to a human kingdom of stone and iron, presumably called King’s Landing based on its number of mindlessly cruel old white dudes. One day she falls in love with the human Stefan (District 9's Sharlto Copley), who is clearly just bored with life. When Stefan doesn’t show much interest, and later hacks off her wings, she goes on an epic bender that culminates into her publicly cursing an innocent baby in its cradle. If she had friends they would stage an intervention at this point. Anyway, you’ve heard the curse before: before her 16th birthday, the baby will prick her finger on spindle and fall into a death-like sleep. The movie gets that part right, though not much else.

This plot is a mess, one that begins with a 25-minute voice-over introduction and then flops forward in flailing lunges for the next hour. Once the film establishes Maleficent is a wounded lovelorn fairy, it doesn’t take long to make her a villain, first with a big Lord of the Rings-style battle and then with her creepy stalking of the baby, Aurora, as she grows up in a nearby forest. These Aurora scenes are unintentionally hilarious as Maleficent lingers outside windows and behind trees for 16 years. Other witches have glowing orbs or swirling cauldrons that will show them the things they want to see; Maleficent has to sneak through the bushes in black latex bodysuits and velvet robes. And with those horns, she better hope it’s not elk season.

Making matters much worse is the comedy relief, three fluttering bobbleheaded fairies played by Lesley Manville, Imelda Staunton and Juno Temple. Of the dozen or so jokes they were given — including throwing flour, fidgeting with blue butterflies, and lots of ditzy cluelessness — only about two ever land a hit as the others fizzle into oblivion. Their heads are digitally cut and pasted onto little pixy bodies in a terrifying special effect right out of 2002. Another noteworthy side character is Maleficent’s henchman Diaval, a shapeshifting crow. He’s played by Sam Riley, who bears so much resemblance to another feminine-featured fantasy hero that his Rent-a-Bloom tag is showing.

Even Jolie, an Academy Award-winning actress, struggles. Aside from a few sequences of giddy delight as she hams it up, Jolie has the loosest grasp on the limp material. Her tortured screams early in the movie are especially cringey and in need of some overdubbing. Much of her role is about holding uncomfortable poses for dramatically long periods of time in forests, behind bushes, hovering with her wings high above the clouds, or in Stefan’s lifeless castle. And speaking of poor Stefan, this guy is simply the worst. First he snubs his lady and then the flubs roll one after another: he starts a pointless war, marries another lady, ditches his baby in a forest, spends more time burning spindles than being a father, and then he tries to kill Maleficent after she’s saved the day. This character literally does nothing right for an entire movie.

What irks me most about Maleficent is the dangerous branding that Disney is imposing on its vintage franchises. The premise here is that the evil sorceress isn’t all that evil; in fact, she’s the hero who’s been misunderstood all these years. By recasting the villain as the hero, Disney is invalidating its own movies.

What’s next, a movie about a gentle wildlife enthusiast who heads deep into the woods to shoot a deer to feed his starving family? They could call it Bambi Killer.

 

 

Angels, demons collide in vapid fantasy romance

A Winter’s Tale is undiluted romance. Cut it with some sugar and water and you’re likely to get a quadrilogy of sappy love stories.

This movie knows its audience and preach-panders directly to it. I don’t want to generalize and say the audience is women, but it’s mostly women. They’ll adore this movie. They’ll cherish every innocuous detail, every pretentious prop, every whispered stanza of romance. It will live on in their spongy lovelorn hearts as the ultimate personification of emotional tenderness, sacrifice and redemption.

Listen, I’m going to complain about this, but please understand this is the way it goes: men get dragged to these movies and, after a brief window of whiny complacency, they shrug their shoulders and admit the movie wasn’t made for them. This is my window to complain. 

A Winter’s Tale plunges headfirst into lady culture. It’s about a girl effortlessly playing the piano, the exchanging of miracles, flying magical horses, princess kisses, charcoal drawings of feminine figures, cute little girls in overly large woolen mittens, beds of roses, an abundance of star metaphors, boxes full of sentimental mementos, cancer scares and eternal love sprinkled in the cosmos. This laundry list might sound exaggerated, but I promise you it’s entirely accurate.

It begins in the 19th century when an immigrant family is turned away from America at Ellis Island because the husband has some sort of contagious disease. In the New York harbor, before a boat takes them back to their home country, the couple stuffs their baby in a wooden model boat and sends it sailing toward Manhattan — because pulling a Moses on your infant is better than, oh I don’t know, being a parent. The baby grows up to be Peter Lake (Colin Farrell), a masterclass thief whose special move is using a comically large grappling hook to shimmy up the front of Brownstones in broad daylight.

After running afoul with henchman Pearly (Russell Crowe), Peter prepares to leave the city on an especially agile horse that won’t gallop away until Peter makes one more score. This horse is a bad influence, but nevertheless Peter Bat-grapples into the home of Beverly Penn (Jessica Brown Findlay), who is home sick with “consumption,” which means she has to stay icy cold like a comic villain. They meet in the parlor, her at her piano banging out Brahms and he with his pistol unholstered and his burglar bag empty. She invites him in for tea. Of course, they fall in love. 

What happens next I wasn’t prepared for: angels and demons reveal themselves as vital players in this otherwise sleepy game of romance. And when I say angels and demons, that’s not allegory or metaphor, but actual angels and demons. Pearly plays the demon, and he has a scene where he ventures to meet Lucifer, who turns out to be Will Smith in a cameo so nutty it felt like a product placement for Planters. Lucifer and God have an agreement that neither angels or demons will interfere too much in the lives of humans. “Lou” has to tell Pearly to back off a little, which makes him even more sinister.

Meanwhile, Peter, who might be an angel, has to escape from Pearly without endangering Beverly and without using his “miracle,” which is apparently something he can just give away to anyone, although I first thought it was Beverly’s virginity which also figures into the plot. Before he knows it, though, Peter is waking up in modern-day New York City and trying to right more than a century of wrongs. And Pearly, his crime den now filled with flat screens instead of blackboards, still has a chip on his shoulder for the one who got away.

Yeesh, this movie. It just keeps going and going. And as the dialogue gets blander and blander (“You are my distant star, bright and special … blah, blah, blah”) the acting grows more and more frustrating. Beverly is interesting, if only because her medical condition is so laughably odd. She has to sleep in tents in the winter, walk through the snow in nightgowns, and take icy baths when her hand can fog a mirror. If only they had a refrigerator they could stuff her into like that baby and the boat. Farrell is also intriguing, even though I never thought he knew what was happening. I can picture him on the set asking questions and then shrugging, “Bollocks, it’s easier when I don’t know.”

The movie is directed, written and produced by screenwriter Akiva Goldsman, who worked tirelessly for many years to bring Mark Helprin’s novel to the screen. While I thought A Winter’s Tale was tirelessly self-involved and plotted, I must acknowledge that fans of these types of movies will likely adore all that transpires. Two women sitting near me were unabashed by their infatuation for Peter, Beverly and their magical tale; when the movie ended, they were in puddles. I also must admit that his movie makes much more sense than anything in the Twilight series — not a difficult feat, though.

And a quick word on women and Valentine’s Day movies: I’ve made some cheap jokes here about how A Winter’s Tale is a woman’s movie, but we live in a changing world, where a woman might soon be in the White House, a gay man might soon be in the NFL and the pictures on bathrooms doors are merely suggestions for bathroom users. The gender landscapes are ever changing. Women will appreciate this movie, but they won’t be the only ones. If a movie brings joy into your life, then it has succeeded at something.

My heart does go out to spouses and dates, no matter the gender, though — grumble silently without ruining it for anyone else. It'll be over soon enough.

Stretch, stretch goes the Hobbit franchise

Vast improvements can be found in Peter Jackson’s new Hobbit movie, but the root problem still remains: why was a book that could be read on a flight from Denver to Saskatoon being spread out over three movies, themselves spread out over three years?

I’m growing impatient with this franchise, which is a shame because it’s getting better. The first one had its janky construction and some wobbly gears, but the Peter Jackson Fantasy Machine seems better oiled for this go around in The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug. It rides smoother. It also carries its characters a little steadier. And when it doesn't, it shoves some action on the screen, which is an effective strategy in this case.

The Lord of the Rings, itself three separate books, managed to get away with the taffy-pulling that is modern-day franchises because the films had logical ending points: Gandalf falls from the bridge, Frodo and Sam descend into the last valley before Mt. Doom and, finally, the ring is destroyed. The movies let their individual conclusions play out without needlessly teasing us to the next film. Essentially, they ended on downbeats, where The Hobbit has twice now ended on the upbeat of an abbreviated strum.

The first one closed on a disposable villain — a cancer-ridden orc with a talon-like claw impaled into the entire length of this forearm — surviving the natural arc of his dead-end storyline to become the ultimate villain of the entire trilogy. I guess that qualifies as a promotion in the baddie department. With no bad guy to slay or mountain to climb, the movie fizzled until it was flat and then it evaporated without a payoff. This one doesn't fizzle, but it does just end. Abruptly. Just as things are getting good. "I am fire. I am death," a character says as he approaches his ultimate destiny and then — wham! — curtains, credits and house lights as the theatergoers file out to wait another year, and not just for the conclusion of the franchise, but the conclusion to the movie they just finished watching. And paying for.

The movie picks up pretty much right where we left off, seemingly hours after the events of the first movie, An Unexpected Journey. A gray wizard, 13 dwarves and a furry-footed Hobbit are stomping through the enchanted land of Middle Earth looking for a sacked dwarf kingdom inside a mountain, a kingdom presided over by a dragon named Smaug. (The fanboys and Tolkien elite are screaming that it's pronounced "smowg.") Their first encounter is with a man-bear in his comfy cottage. Other adventures include a spider fight in a dark forest, a barrel escape from an elf castle, the infiltration of a floating lake town and the eventual meeting of Smaug, who is remarkably well spoken and fair, considering he's pretty much a flying asshole.

Again, as with the first movie, the script — by Jackson, original director Guillermo del Toro, and Rings veterans Fran Walsh and Phillipa Boyens — doesn't understand how to properly utilize Bilbo (Martin Freeman), the fellowship's burglar. He does get a rather complex game of verbal chess with Smaug, but otherwise Bilbo is the Forrest Gump of Middle Earth — he gets to witness all the big events, but his involvement in them is negligible. Oh, he flips a trapdoor or two and steals the prison keys to the dwarves' elvish prison, but everyone treats him like a pedestrian taking too long to cross the street. Other times, the movie seems to turn its attention to lead dwarf Thorin Oakenshield, the smug bastard. Thorin, the film's loser-hero if ever there was one, is not a likable guy. Most of the dwarves aren't. Notice what happens when they get to the secret door into the dragon's mountain: they labor to find a keyhole for their magical key, but when none can be found they shrug their shoulders and hustle off, "Oh well, we tried." Nevermind that they just wandered across half of Middle Earth, were regurgitated up by elephant-sized spiders, nearly killed by orcs and fell down the Niagara Falls of elf-land only to walk away defeated at the first obstacle they didn't have control over. If World War II were fought that way, we would have gave up when General Eisenhower stubbed his toe the evening before D-Day.

These old characters aren't much to brag about, including the ones whose names are never spoken. Like you, Groin. (Or is it Gloin?) We meet new characters as well, including Tauriel (Evangeline Lilly), an elf princess who's makin' the sexy eyes at one of the less stumpy and less beardy dwarfs, Kili. At one point, they share a long conversation about life and love, and it's really quite beautiful, especially considering that, here, in this grand movie about orcs and dragons and war, two characters could share an intimate moment without the rest of the movie crashing on top of them. Another new Hobbit character is not a new Tolkien character: Legolas is back, but this time all the sparkle and magic is gone from Orlando Bloom's soulless eyes. He has these cold and dead eyes. Villain eyes. Lifeless eyes. Seriously, something did not look right about his face, no matter how many arrows he shoots through orc skulls.

Jackson's movie, as usual, is a technical masterpiece. His special effects — blue screen, green screen, physical stunts, digital matte paintings, fight choreography — are fantastic and more fluid than they have any right to be. He really makes it look easy juggling all these elements without dropping any. And consider this: every species in the Tolkien' universe is a different height, which means that even simple dialogue sequences require forced perspectives, digital trickery or giant stand-ins. Multiply that times a thousand for every battle or barrel chase, one of the best action sequences in the film. This is laborious, meticulous, agonizingly slow filmmaking, but Jackson hits his stride early and just rips into it without flinching. I may have misgivings about some things, but Peter Jackson is an impressive director.

So about those misgivings: some of them I've touched on, including Bloom's glass eyes and the sequel bating that is downright shameless. What most frustrates me is that the movie needs a star. At this point, it could be Bilbo, Thorin or Gandalf, but it refuses to pick. I mean, come on, this isn't Sophie's Choice; who's it going to be?! I do like how Gandalf (Sir Ian McKellen) is wandering about putting the pieces together on the mysterious force that is rallying the armies of evil. (This wasn't in Tolkien's Hobbit, but it's fun to see the beginnings of The Lord of the Rings come together.) And Thorin serves an important role as the future king of Dwarf Mountain, even though he's an arrogant prick. Mostly though, I'm mad that the film neglects Bilbo, who is the film's rightful star. Certainly his role expands in the third movie, There and Back Again, but he's getting shortchanged now.

Honestly, that's my biggest problem with this movie: I can't see all three of them together yet. I think I'd like it more if I could just marathon through it. I'd be able to see the bigger pieces and larger narratives. As it is now, though, the film is incomplete — incomplete by design.

So before I go, let me end on different topic: the high frame rate nonsense. Yes, Peter Jackson is still releasing these movies in that fakey, phoney, soap opera-quality high frame rate version. It looks awful. Jackson knows that critics don't like it, so he's not letting critics see that version, which is a wise PR move. But even though critics are seeing the normal 24fps version, he's actually increasing the number of screens that are getting the HFR version. Whatever you do, don't the HFR version. Just don't. Your eyes will thank me. No word on if Orlando Bloom's eyes will thank you, though … especially since their dead.