I knew I was getting old, when I realized I remembered a time when I could go to the cinema without taking anti-nausea and pain medication first. In the case of The Hobbit trilogy, that meant that I had to sit through the longest misguided attempt at pandering in history sober, since you're not supposed to drink alcohol with any of those. The answer to the trailer question of “How shall this day end” is “in three movies, the titles of which are longer than the book itself.” Assuming, naturally, that we have not all been conned into being testing subjects for a frame rate experiment and instead of the test conductors paying us, we paid a stiff tax for the (dis)pleasure. Side-effects include nausea, dizziness and occasional boredom. If these effects persist, support your local art-house by seeing one of these excellent indie films: Leviathan, Winter Sleep, Citizenfour, The Tale of Princess Kaguya, Nightcrawler... .
I should go back to reviewing The Hobbit now, shouldn't I?... . Well, the movie did get inflicted upon me so I might as well inflict a rant about the experience upon my readers.
The last chapter of Peter Jackson's “I'm not leaving Middle Earth and you can't make me” saga is bloated, messy and stuffed to the brim with so much overblown CGI, that entire scenes look like computer games. In fact, there is not one instance, in which the green screen is not evident. The CGI even seems improperly or fully polished at times and is never anything but fake and cartoonish. With the novelty worn off, even Smaug is less convincing than in the previous installment. It is possible that the 48 fps, in which I saw the film, amplified the effect, so it all might look better for normal viewings. The high frame rate, however, truly does the movie a disservice, making it all look like a high definition soap opera, diminishing scope, stripping VFX of any illusion of reality, and emphasizing things I should rather think the film-makers would like to keep hidden, such as the uneven direction.
As with The Desolation of Smaug, Jackson's over-reliance on the second unit really shows here as well, as the film doesn't quite gel together. The whole looks a lot like a Frankesteinian monster with its parts not always well sowed together. Throw in several pointless cameos that go nowhere, a clichéd and utterly forced romance and an uneasily shifting tone, and the resulting film is a patchwork of elements that test well with Lord of the Rings nostalgic focus groups.
The performances are solid, with a few over the top notes, and some do feel extracted by waving the check in front of the actors off-screen, like in the case of Cate Blanchett. Martin Freeman is great as Bilbo, a role he seems to have been born to play, and I wish he had seen more of him.
There is, however, one very good thing that can be said about the trilogy in its entirety: these movies did make a significant contribution to the economy of New Zealand and helped promote its tourist industry. I am happy for all the people who got jobs thanks to them.
At least, it's over, unlike the ending of Return of the King... until of course, Peter Jackson gets his hands on the rights to The Silmarillion, Leaf by Niggle, The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth Beorhthelm's Son, Farmer Giles of Ham, Tolkien's poetry, his academical papers, every grocery list he's ever scribbled, and turns them all into trilogies or tetralogies. All in 3D and frame rates so high they making bothering with CGI useless so they just show us the green screen instead.
My assessment is that this movie needs two rating systems:
- for Tolkien purists – rage-inducing, you might want to take heart attack medication in addition to all the other pills mentioned above... you know what, just consult your physician before going in;
- regular viewers and Tolkien don't carers – mediocre.
Film details according to imdb.com:
Directed by: Peter Jackson (and let's be honest, the entire second unit)
Written by: Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens, Peter Jackson, Guillermo del Toro
Cinematography by: Andrew Lesnie (and let's be honest, all those many, many people in the VFX department)
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