[MUSIC PLAYING]
I'm going on an adventure!
This is The Hobbit movie trilogy.
A trilogy of action-packed fantasy films directed
by Peter Jackson might sound pretty good,
but The Hobbit trilogy actually has a lot of problems.
And there's no better way to talk about those problems
than to see them in action during the barrel scene
in 2013's Desolation of Smaug.
Based on the beloved children's fantasy story of the same name,
The Hobbit movie trilogy dominated a large chunk
of culture between 2012 and 2014,
made a two dragon's horde worth of money,
and enraged quite a few Tolkien fans.
[SCREAMING]
Leading up to Unexpected Journey's release in 2012,
we already knew that production had
been cursed with studio interference, the loss
of a director, and intense pressure
to deliver a finished product within an impossibly
short amount of time.
What was originally pitched as a two-movie deal directed
by Guillermo Del Toro eventually snowballed
into a trilogy of films more akin to The Lord of the Rings
in terms of scope.
Oh, and Peter Jackson was back to direct.
Jackson did pull off the greatest
book-to-film adaptations of all time with his Lord of the Rings
trilogy, so why couldn't he do the same with The Hobbit?
Well, for starters, The Hobbit is
a single book made for children, one with 95,000 words.
The Lord of the Rings novels are a more mature trilogy
weighing in at a little over 480,000 words.
To put it bluntly, the decision to make The Hobbit
into three movies, each with a theatrical runtime of over two
hours, was completely asinine.
According to Peter Jackson, the decision
to chop up and overstuff The Hobbit into a trilogy
was a creative one made in order to give Bilbo's Unexpected
journey the same amount of respect and time as Frodo
and the story of The Lord of the Rings.
Though, if you're a tinfoil hat theory crafter,
you may be more keen to think that the studios pressured
Del Toro, and later Jackson, to wring out as much money
as they possibly could from this multimillion dollar endeavor.
It's ours!
But the fact that The Hobbit movies
are a trilogy instead of a duology
is only the beginning of their problems.
And to address them all, we've got
to talk about the barrel scene.
Bilbo Baggins and his band of dwarves
are captured by elves after getting
lost in Mirkwood Forest on their way to the Lonely Mountain
where Thorin Oakenshield aims to reclaim his home
and kill the dragon that guards it.
After Thorin and Thranduil get into a
where was Gondor-type of argument,
the dwarves are in prison, but Bilbo's quick wit
and magic ring help him evade capture.
He formulates a plan to smuggle the dwarves out
in old wine barrels, and the adventuring party
floats downstream towards Lake Town.
That much is in both the book and the movie,
but Desolation's version of the barrel scene
takes things a little further.
Once Bilbo and the dwarves start heading down the river,
it becomes clear that we're in for a lot of action.
First, we're introduced to some Disneyland-level rapids
and waterfalls as the elves fight
to recapture their prisoners.
The elves close a gate blocking the only path
Bilbo and the dwarves had to freedom
and draw their sword for a fight,
but they are interrupted by a group of Orcs
who growl directly into camera.
[GRUNT]
[ROAR]
This is where the real fight begins.
It becomes a mad dash to open the gate
and escape further down river while tens of Orcs flock
to the scene with the movie-only character of Bolg
leading the charge.
The elves, dwarves, and Bilbo must fight together
against this new threat that kills multiple faceless extras,
Kili is shot with an arrow, but ultimately saved
by yet another movie-only character,
Tauriel, the lowly Silvan elf.
Legolas arrives on the scene as well
doing what Legolas does best while the rest of the party
remains unscathed, shockingly so at times.
We get to see more white water rafting with some weirdly
out-of-place GoPro shots, as well as more elven
action, and then this.
[SQUEAKING]
[GRUNTING]
Arguably, the most cartoonish and baffling sequence
in the entire trilogy, and yes, that includes Legolas' fancy
footwork a mere 15 seconds later.
Eventually, Legolas does away with the remainder of the Orcs,
and watches Bilbo and the dwarves float away.
So in the interest of fairness, let's address
the oliphaunt in the room.
There is a lot to critique about The Hobbit trilogy,
and that doesn't mean that they're all bad.
There is some great stuff in these movies.
Pretty much everything about Gollum, for example,
and the riddles in the dark sequence, Benedict
Cumberbatch's Smaug, and Bilbo's first interaction with him,
and of course, Martin Freeman's portrayal
of Bilbo Baggins, absolute perfection.
You don't have one, a home.
It was taken from you, but I will
help you take it back if I can.
But the bad is really bad.
One of the worst and most obvious problems
with the whole Hobbit trilogy is its inconsistent tone.
What might have been a duology tone
in a more traditional fairy tale style under Del Toro
was transformed.
It had to chase the success and grand tone
of The Lord of the Rings movies while trying and mostly
failing to inject some sort of childlike whimsy of The Hobbit
book.
Just in Desolation's barrel scene,
we get moments where Legolas and Tauriel are fighting off
leagues of Orcs single-handedly.
Alongside bouncing baby Bombur, it's total chaos.
Had the movie stuck to the original feel
of the book they were based on, this
might have been a fun scene.
Taken out of context, it is.
It's l-choreographed and imaginative,
but then you remember that this is
part of a self-serious trilogy intended to mirror the epic
tone of The Lord of the Rings.
The whole trilogy had moments of tonal dissonance like this,
but the barrel scene is particularly guilty.
That's not to say these movies shouldn't have jokes
or lighter moments in them.
Jackson's Lord of the Rings managed to find the balance.
What's taters?
Po-ta-toes.
Boil them, mash them, stick them in a stew.
But it's a matter of what and especially when,
which brings us to our next pervasive issue, weird pacing.
The barrel scene spans nearly 10 minutes of Desolation's two
hour and 41 minute runtime, and the fast-paced action
is kept up for the entire duration.
But while the scene itself may be paced well,
it's emblematic of the trilogy's pacing problem
because it's an entirely needless addition to the movie.
Remember when they killed off Smaug
in the prologue of the third film
and then spent entirely too much time giving us slow mo Thorin
Oakenshield going mad from dragon sickness,
or the long plot pause we got to watch Kili flirt with Tauriel
in Desolation?
The barrel scene is just another example.
Did we need 10 minutes devoted to a completely unnecessary
action scene that did nothing to advance the plot?
No.
Actually, throughout the entire series,
so much attention is paid to big action set
pieces that character development and story
gets totally sidelined.
And when we do get character development,
it's usually from a character that
shouldn't have been there in the movies in the first place,
except for Bard.
Making Bard an actual character was a good move.
Even if he spends a lot of time with Alfred,
who is one of many unnecessary characters
that make an appearance in these movies.
Wrong.
It's the Master's business, which makes it my business.
Desolation's barrel scene is absolutely chock full
of characters that should have not been in The Hobbit movies
or at least not in their current forms.
Tauriel, Bolg, and yes, even Legolas
take up so much screen time and bring little to nothing
to the actual story.
Apparently, there was some form of the script which
had a lot more to do with the dwarves
and their individual personalities,
but that idea was shelved somewhere along the way, which
is a pity as in their stead, we got an awkward love
triangle, a cowardly assistant, and Orc daddy issues.
A more cohesive story and fleshed out characters
definitely would have helped the trilogy,
but it wouldn't fix its reliance on misguided special effects
or its strange aesthetic.
The trilogy was mostly filmed on a camera designed
to shoot in 48 frames per second rather than the industry
standard 24.
It makes the world of The Hobbit look
unnaturally smooth and blurry.
That, along with some extremely fake-looking moments
and the unreal overall style of the movies,
makes those low-quality GoPro shots
in the rapids that much more jarring.
Peter Jackson announced that two movies
would be split into three on July 30th of 2012,
just months before the first film was set
to release in December of 2012.
Since the next two movies were slated for 2013 and 2014,
this meant some dramatic reshoots,
rewrites, and reworks.
Jackson was literally writing the script
of each movie while on set.
Sets, costumes, and props were being finished
on the day they were needed.
Compare that to the years of pre-production
that went into The Lord of the Rings
and it's easy to see why The Hobbit movies ended up
the way that they did.
While the creative minds behind the project
were largely the same as those who
worked on The Lord of the Rings, there just
wasn't enough time or consideration
put into The Hobbit to make it truly great.
The world is not in your books and maps.
It's out there.
Now, none of this is to say that they should have followed
the book by the letter.
The Lord of the Rings trilogy made changes
to its source material, and they're better for it,
but The Hobbit movies swung so far in the wrong direction
that they are almost unrecognizable.
And that's all we have for you today.
If you like this video, be sure to subscribe
to the Nerdstalgic channel for more content just like this.
And let us in the comments, are you a fan of The Hobbit movies?