- Released: 13 December 2013
- Directed by: Peter Jackson
- Running time: 2 h 41 min
- Rating 4/5
Synopsis
The Company finally arrives at the Lonely Mountain after much trials and tribulations. However, Smaug may not be as dead as the Dwarves had hoped, and an ancient evil is rising in Dol Guldur.
My Thoughts
Definitely the best out of the three if you ask me. Funny, because with the Lord of the Rings trilogy the second movie was my least favorite of the three (though still amazing).
This one just presents a lot of action, a lot of different locations and I like it a lot. I like the characters, I like the action scenes, and of course the big showdown with Smaug.
It's of course still not perfect, still not coming even close to a Rings-level of good. The CGI still looks rough in a lot of places (I beg of you go back to prosthetic-wearing orcs instead), there's some scenes that drag a bit and I'm of course not a fan of the needless dwarf-elf love triangle between Tauriel, Kili and Legolas.
Another flaw is (in my opinion) of how Alfrid and the Master are portrayed. They don't feel like characters that belong in this world, they feel like the type of characters you'd find in an average children's cartoon. And I get that the Hobbit book is for younger readers. But when they're adapting these movies to be almost the same level of epic and pretty mature as Lord of the Rings, inserting these over the top cartoon-y characters just feels off.
Pretty much all of the other characters here, even some of the more comic relief, feel like real people. Even Gimli, who was the most comic relief-type character to come out of Rings, still had a level of dignity to him (especially in the first movie), and of course he also had some great scenes and banter with Legolas. Here? The Master and Alfrid just don't feel like they belong in the movie, or even the universe. You can have comic relief characters, you can have more simplistic characters, but they really overdid it here. And (spoilers for the next movie) this issue regarding them persists into Battle of Five Armies.
Of course I'd also still like to get to know some of the Dwarves better. Some of the still haven't had as much as a line. I don't need all of them to be fleshed out, that'd probably be impossible to do even within the trilogy's runtime, but at least some semblances of quirks or personalities would be nice. Like, what does Gloin have going on? Or Bombur? They have one trait at most (Gloin reading signs, Bombur being a fat comic relief character that likes to eat) and I just wish for slightly more than that. Maybe thirteen characters really is just too much to balance, especially with how many side characters they add in movies two and three.
I don't mind Legolas being here since logically he was probably around in Mirkwood at this time it took place, but Tauriel? Eh. Look, I don't mind the fact that they added a new major female character, whether it's for diversity's sake or not. Tolkien's books (at least The Hobbit and the Rings trilogy) tend to mostly have masculine casts with only a few major female characters. So they gave Galadriel an (expanded) role in the film, and added Tauriel. I really don't mind this.
But the execution of Tauriel's character is just so bland. She feels like your standard "action girl" character who is just here to be cool and pretty much nothing else. And of course to be in a love triangle. I really wish that, instead of her triangle between Legolas and Kili, we actually got some time to develop her as a character outside of who she loves. Make her into an interesting and rounded character that doesn't need to rely on two men (three if you count Thranduil putting her down sometimes) for character development. Just let her be her own Elf.
Again, them adding more female characters is not the problem (I'd personally rather they add new ones rather than start genderbending pre-existing ones). But how Tauriel's execution was handled just feels so hollow and empty. She feels like a stock "strong and capable" female character with nothing to her outside of her romance with Kili.
There are quite a few good things about the movie as well, as I mentioned. I like some of the characters a lot still (Bilbo, Bofur, Thorin, Balin, Gandalf), we get some nice mystery regarding what's going on with the Necromancer, the scenes with Smaug are pretty good and he looks fantastic, there's a wide variety of locations and conflicts.
Overall I do really consider this to be a good movie, it just also has quite a few things working against it. Mostly regarding to how some characters were handled.
No comments:
Post a Comment