Hey youtubers it’s Charlie, hopefully you’ve had a chance to see the Hobbit this week.
This is going to be my review but since a lot of you probably haven’t I’ll start
with a non spoilery part and then get into specific moments.
I’m a huge Peter Jackson fan and even though it’s been a long long time since I’ve
read any Tolkien, I’m a huge fan of the books and the films.
I still think the animated Hobbit Movie is one of the scariest cartoons I ever saw as
a child.
That’s a much more faithful adaptation of the original novel.
Which is the shortest Tolkien book by far.
And one of the only ones, specifically intended for little children.
Being that this movie was Part 3, I went in thinking about that.
I totally didn’t mind that they took a short book and turned it into a 7 plus hour movie
but I feel like when they release it on DVD.
That’s how they need to market it.
As one really long movie.
Because there is no way you will understand the what or the why of the action of this
movie without watching the first two movies.
I saw both of those, so no problems there.
But I consider it a big thumbs down that the movie can’t stand by itself.
For example look at the Lord of the Rings trilogy.
Return of the King was a much stronger narrative.
You could watch that movie by itself and it would still feel like it had a beginning,
middle and an end.
The Hobbit Part 3 feels like it was taken out of Peter Jackson’s extended cut of the
second film, Desolation of Smaug.
Like this would have worked a lot better if Part 2 had been a 4 hour movie and they’d
have used this as the third act.
Find the mountain, defeat the dragon, battle the other armies and take a hobbit nap for
about a hundred years till Gandalf comes to take Frodo on an adventure.
All those issues aside, the movie was classic Peter Jackson Middle Earth.
Martin Freeman and Richard Armitage were amazing.
They were the real stars of the film.
Ian McKellen as Gandalaf has a big role as does Lee Pace, Evangeline Lily and Orlando
Bloom.
But the core of the story is about the friendship between Bilbo and Thorin.
And that breaks through what is mostly a two hour extended action scene.
Remember the Battle for Gondor in Return of The King.
Imagine the whole movie is just that battle.
Normally that would be a thumbs down, but because I’m trying to think ahead and think
of this as a 7 or 8 hour movie.
It works fine in that context.
There’s just not a whole lot of story.
And what story there is, mostly serves to tee up the events of the first Lord of The
Rings movie, Fellowship.
There is a seamless transition between this movie and Fellowship that everyone will enjoy.
So if you ever find yourself with like 20 hours to kill, you can do the Star Wars Prequels/Original
Trilogy treatment, where you watch all six films in chronological order.
Just make sure to do the Extended Editions, because that’s how it’s done.
I think the last time I actually had time like that was during my College Summer Breaks.
Overall, I gave the movie a B plus for the sheer weight of accomplishment and that it
works so well when you look at it as the third act of the second film.
I would have given it an A, but I had to thumbs down the lack of story.
It just didn’t have enough to exist without those first two films.
I will definitely be buying the extended edition blu rays.
Peter Jackson is always one of the best when it comes to bonus features.
Sometimes I just with they could release bonus features without the actual movies.
If I’ve already seen a movie, I care more about what the Director and Cast have to say
about it than just re-watching it over and over.
Now I’m going to get into my favorite moments and a slightly more detailed analysis.
So careful for spoilers if you haven’t seen it yet.
Starting with Top 5 moments:
Number 5 - Bard Kills Smaug
This definitely should have been the end of the second movie, but it was such a huge deal
and it tees up an almost Return of The King type moment where Bard takes up leadership
of Dale.
In the canon he does become the first king of what you can consider New Dale in the events
following the movie.
Benedict Cumberbatch was barely in this movie and I was watching it in 3D, so the action
was a little out of focus and there were some brightness issues.
But that had nothing to do with the film.
I could have done without his son.
I feel like parts of this movie were made for little children.
Like anytime the camera followed his son it just slowed the action down so much.
But Hollywood caters to children, so I think that, in addition to the Hobbit Source material
being a children’s book, is why they added the extra children scenes.
Number 4 - Thranduil versus Everyone
So happy to get a ton of Lee Pace this time.
He is like the ultimate emo elf.
If Martin Freeman flipping people off in his Bilbo makeup isn’t enough to crash tumblr.
Lee Pace in his Thranduil makeup will finish the job.
As a dramatic arc, there’s not a lot here for
his character, other than to tie up a minor story teased in the prologue of the first
film.
Get back the gems of pure starlight.
This is one of the big easter eggs of the movie.
And the conflict that Thranduil is referencing goes all the way back to Thingol, who was
the first Sindarian King.
They’re the group of elves that Thranduil belongs to.
There were a lot of different groups of Elves and all of them had their own cultures.
They’re mostly delineated by three big groups.
But it gets way more complicated than that.
The reason The Dwarves and the Sindar feuded was over payment for a very famous necklace
called Naglaumir.
It was made of those white gems.
The dwarves constructed it and later Thingol, High King of the elves had one of the simarils
added to it.
I know everyone is asking about a Simarillion tv series.
The dwarves felt like the elves didn’t give them fair payment.
The necklace was the finest piece of dwarven craftsmanship during that age.
Thus the feud began.
And continued to where we are right now.
That’s like the super short version of it.
Number 3 - Bilbo and Thorin
They are the emotional core of the film, I would argue the most important part.
If not for them, there would have been no movie.
Martin Freeman and Richard Armitage were amazing.
Thorin going crazy was a lot of fun to watch.
I kept wondering how far they’d push it.
Like how far over the top they’d make his hallucinations.
The Gold Sucking him under was pretty trippy, and I did laugh a little.
It got a little silly.
But so much fun watching their back and forth, especially before Bilbo decides to tell him
about the Arkenstone.
Number 2 - Galadriel Defeats Sauron
This is almost like a tie with my number one moment.
Back when the second film had already come out and Peter Jackson was talking about Part
3.
He said that we’d get to see Galadriel lose her shit.
Imagine that being said with Peter Jackson’s voice.
It just sounds so funny.
So I knew that we’d get a Galadriel battle scene.
But I didn’t know how it would go down.
I loved the Sauron fight, but some of the CG action was a little too crazy.
It just didn’t feel very real to me.
So out of that whole sequence of events, I just focus on Galadriel beating Sauron back.
It gives you a good sense of the scope of her powers.
And just to give you something to compare it to.
The Elven rings of power.
The three given to them by Sauron.
Elrond is the keeper of the most powerful one.
Galadriel has one and Gandalf has the other.
They don’t make a big deal about it.
The rings enhance some of their abilities, but they all have different properties.
Galadriel is still the most powerful person in Middle earth next to Sauron.
And for those asking about the rings.
When the One Ring was destroyed in the fires of mount doom.
The power faded from all the other rings.
Number 1 - The Young Bilbo transition to Lord of the Rings Bilbo
This wasn’t the most eye gouging intense moment, but the way Peter jackson cut the
film makes it perfect for your bookshelf and marathon viewing.
So later, when we’re all watching these films for the billionth time.
They’ll all work as one continuous narrative with no significant act breaks.
And this is the kind of epic fantasy series that’s mean to be re-read, re-watched several
times.
Which I will begin doing right now.
Let me know though, what was your favorite part of the movie and do you want to see Peter
Jackson or someone else try to adapt the Simarillion as a television series.
It would be the events of the war of the jewels.
In and around that.
So about 2400 years before the events of this movie.
It was after that war that Thranduil’s father came west to establish the kingdom of the
Sindar Elves.
That’s how long ago it was.