Review: The Hobbit - The Battle of Five Armies

I would like to tell you a story.

In 2001, The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Rings was released in theaters. I was a young college student in a semi-serious relationship, a best friend I saw on a near daily basis, and a core of friends I saw at least twice a week.

It is now 2014, and none of those things is true.
The Hobbit is about a journey and, in some larger sense, encapsulates a good part of my life. 13 years of my life, to be precise. Over the course of the last 3 years we've seen a Hobbit movie once per year. When they first started releasing I was, yet again, in another relationship. That relationship endured through the second film and then sputtered into nonexistence.

I don't mean to say the Hobbit sputters out. It doesn't, but it's distinctly changed from its film conceptions birthed over a decade ago. Of course, that should be the case. In many ways, the Lord of the Rings changed how fantasy films were done. The sort of battles we saw on the silver screen were unrivaled in scope and set standards that other films now had to aspire to. Even The Chronicles of Narnia felt compelled to stage every film's end with a mammoth battle. If you go back and look at The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, you can even see filming similarities from its last battle and The Return of the King. Narnia was supposed to be a fairytale!

Which says a lot about how The Hobbit, as influenced by its predecessors and the evolution of the fantasy film market, also had to drastically change the story it set out to tell. Suddenly the film could not be a pair of films. No, now it had to be a trilogy, because of course all good film series come in trios.

Except that they don't and The Battle of Five Armies suffers not because of lack of talent, directing or writers, but because of artificial demands placed upon it by money figures and the ensuing demands of movie studios. Peter  Jackson mines almost every minute detail from the background lore of the Silmarillion that he can to fill in the storyline and stretch this final movie into a third, final installment.

Let's be clear about the obvious: The camera work is still superb, the special effects are still superb, and the acting is still superb. Legolas is still Legolas, although slightly younger and a bit more rigid in his approach to life. Gandalf is still spectacularly Gandalf, in all his intelligent wizardry, cunning and strength of will. Finally, I can't say enough about Bilbo and the performance given by Martin Freeman, who mines such emotional depth out of the role that I could have been swayed into a fourth film that focused more on Biblbo and Hobbits.

And that's the rub. There just isn't the material to cover that, and so Peter Jackson is caught between
impossible demands. First, he has to honor the source material. Second, he has to create a 'blockbuster' that will sell spectacularly. Finally, he has to have a story to tell.

I put that final notion last because story was the greatest victim in this demand to stretch the films out. Bilbo's relationship to Thorin Oakenshield, leader of the Dwarves, reaches touching depth. Unfortunately it has little basis in the books and so it never quite balances establishing it while still remaining true to the books. Likewise, stories of love between Tauriel and Kili are great stories to plunder, except for their lack of existence in the source.

Impossible demands changed what The Hobbit was envisioned as by J.R.R. Tolkien: A children's adventure story. It could no longer be such a thing in the face of what The Lord of the Rings became: a fantasy epic.

But does that make it bad? Is the version of you from ten years ago bad in comparison to what you are now? Is it vice versa? The Hobbit was changed because of the journey taken to tell it. It is different. For better or worse is hard to tell.

I can only end this review by saying what I did at the film's end. I sat and enjoyed the touching final song, The Last Goodbye, as the credits scrolled by. I remained, as I have done for every one of these films, until the screen went black. And then I left, having enjoyed a good story, that at times reached for emotions it sometimes hit, and at other times did not. I left satisfied, a changed person, because I felt the story was worth the telling.


4 / 5 Stars.  

Kind of in love with Tauriel.

 

How I felt after the movie.

Film Review: Gravity

3-D Films, by and large, are dreadful. Well, perhaps that deserve qualification. The use of 3-D is dreadful, and very often little more than a way to drive up the ticket price. In many cases the movie is not even filmed natively for three dimensions but instead converted to be 3-D, lessening the quality. 

In the end the final result is rarely worth the price of admission, with a little needed third dimension added for gimmicky moments in which characters zoom toward the screen, and headaches acquired from the badly done conversion process. Almost to a one, three 3-D films should die a quick death, because most films do not need to be seen in 3-D.

Gravity is not one of those films.

I’m almost at a loss to understand how the particular effects achieved in this movie could be done without a third dimension. The issue is not merely that the movie unfolds in space. No, if that were it, then it wouldn’t require three dimensions by virtue of that fact alone. Many good movies have used the isolation and deadliness of outer space as a setting, and to good effect. What Gravity does goes beyond simply the isolation of space. Instead, it presents us with moments that require 3-D to be as completely effective as they end up being.

 In many instances the movie takes place from the first person perspective, with the protagonist, Dr. Ryan Stone (Sandra Bullock), whipping about, the earth spinning into view, then out, then the space shuttle passing into view before giving way to a sight of the sun. Circle after circle is flipped in which the added sense of depth puts a churning into your stomach. When Stone flies toward the shuttle and grabs desperately for a handhold, you feel you’re the one grabbing it. That’s why three dimensions was needed here. It was a film that demanded it.

What makes a good movie, though? Could Gravity get by on the strength of its effects alone? Perhaps, if it were aiming to merely be a thriller. In fact, many times the film veered on the edge of being just that, a movie content to indulge in its gut churningly impressive views of space as Stone tries to make her way to safety. Accident after accident happens it what can only be described as ‘accident-porn’. Think you’ve seen the last of a cloud of space debris hurtling toward our hero and threatening to kill her? Just wait, you’ll see it three more times, alongside explosions, fires, and escape pods hanging on the edge of destruction.

It was almost tiresome, but the movie was impressive enough that it could have danced on the precipice of being a C-Grade, or low B-Grade film. What was difficult was investing into Bullock’s character. What seemed to be throwaway lines about her having a child that died and having nobody on Earth that might miss her if she died, seemed at first to be ways of forcing the audience to care, faux-sentimental moments drowned by wave after wave of accidents threatening her life.

And then, Stone finds herself struggling to survive, trying to pilot a craft she has little training in, and listening to a radio transmission from earth. Then, in that one scene, the movie came together. Patience was rewarded. Gravity is not about Bullock’s attempt to survive in space; no, it’s about her attempt to survive the act of living. Childless, friendless, what is there to give her reason to survive? Why should she even try? Director Alfonso Cuaron addresses these questions using space as the scene, and these lonely moments hammer home the things that Stone misses, wants, desires, and how those give her the willingness to face life. In finding the courage to face life, truly the greatest challenge for us all, she also finds the willingness to fight back against a relentlessly uncaring void of outer space. The answers she finds in herself give her the answers she needs to battle against her predicament.

Aided by composer Steven Price’s wonderful soundtrack, which evokes typical tense moments but, more critically, captures isolation, loneliness and the thrill of survival, the movie surges toward a harrowing and triumphant ending. The sound direction, as well, needs complimenting. It’s one of the few cases of stereo sound done right, with incoming radio signals touching your left ear, then your right, as if you were inside a space suit yourself. Finally, the most powerful moments are graced by George Clooney’s character of Matt Kowalski. Obsessed with setting the space walking record, he’s an ever calm presence in quickly deteriorating circumstances. Not only a source of peace and wisdom, Kowalski and Stone share such a powerfully moving moment that I all at once understood what the film was trying to convey.

Life is for the living.
4 / 5 Stars.